Siddhartha Ahluwalia 1:29

Hi, this is Siddhartha Ahluwalia. Welcome to The Neon Show. I’m your host and also founder of Neon Fund, a B2B SaaS fund that invests in the most enterprising software companies coming out of India at seed stage building for the world.

Today I have with me R. Balasubramaniam, also known as Balu. Welcome Balu to The Neon Show podcast.

Balu 1:46

Thank you. Thank you so much for having me here.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 1:48

Balu, you have been the founder of Swami Vivekananda Youth Movement and then you worked there for three decades in rural areas on ground. Also, it’s for three decades of community service.

So, you know, first of all, really grateful to have somebody like you on the podcast and thank you so much for doing for the country.

Balu 2:05

Thank you. Thank you so much.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 2:07

You are currently serving as a member HR of Capacity Building Commission with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, right? And you are also previously Rhodes Professor at Cornell University, right? So first of all, I would like to understand, we are going to talk about your book Power Within, you know, the legacy of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Why did you write this book?

Balu 2:28

You know, like you spoke about my community work and being at the grassroot level, being a physician working with indigenous tribal communities, I felt that the state was the biggest exploiter and I felt the state never understood indigenous community.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 2:42

You are talking about a…

Balu 2:43

State as a country.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 2:44

Okay.

Balu 2:44

State not as a government, as any country for that matter. And I realized the rules and regulations made are not keeping citizens in mind. And so, they build dams, they build declared national parks and all the tribals that I was working with were very troubled.

And this difficulty of trying to appreciate why can’t the government or the system or the state or the policymaker understand these communities. I was wrestling with those questions and then, you know, you suddenly feel that you need somebody who can listen to these voices from the grassroots. As I evolved and grew and started getting to understand this deeper and deeper, I realized it’s not just the policy, but the policymaker is possibly not able to appreciate this.

And then I went a little deeper and said, maybe the leadership abilities in these policymakers. So that’s how my journey of getting from being just a doctor with indigenous communities to appreciating policy, policymaking, acquiring more degrees or trying to go deep into doing fellowships on leadership. And then I realized that there’s so much of knowledge that’s embedded within these indigenous communities, within systems in India, the scriptural wisdom, and nobody pays attention to it because we live in a world where the moment you speak Bharatiya Parampara, they think that you’re romanticizing and you’re talking of the past, which is irrelevant today.

So we have two narratives. Either people dismiss all this stuff, saying that these are all useless, or the other narrative is they romanticize it and say everything, it’s all the problems of today. I think the answer lies in between.

And that’s what possibly led me to say that, can I capture all this wisdom and put it together in a book, which possibly maybe excites a few policymakers to recalibrate their leadership approach and be more citizen-friendly and citizen-centric. That’s what led me to writing this book.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 4:30

And if we see the title of the book and the images of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, but the contents are slightly different.

Balu 4:39

Actually, it’s a book on Indic leadership. Now what happens is when you, like 13-14 years of my deep research on scriptural wisdom, like from Jataka Tales to Panchatantra to Bhagavad Gita to Upanishads, Ramayana, Mahabharata and Kautilya’s Arthashastra, you discover a lot, but all these are in the past. And when I say Yudhishthira was like this or Rama was like that, they’re just characters.

And we live in a country or a situation where when you can’t live those messages, the best way to deal with your own inadequacies is to call them great, put them on a pedestal, make a statue, worship them, declare a Jayanti and that’s a proxy for not living their message. I actually wanted a flesh-and-blood example to something which all of us ordinary people could emulate. So I was looking for people whose life’s journey or leadership journeys were extraordinary.

And my guru and guide, Swami Suresh Anandji of the Ramakrishna Order, he told me, I don’t know much about all this stuff, but I know somebody young had come to join the Ramakrishna Order as a monk and maybe you want to go deep into his life and at that time I had no access. So I just thought this is not going to happen. I wrote another book called Leadership Lessons for Daily Living.

But later on, three and a half years ago, when I got a call to be a member of this commission and which reports the Prime Minister and this HR Council, when I started observing him and recognizing that he’s living these principles, which I was discovering, which I thought is humanly not possible. Here is a person who is selling tea on the platform of a railway station, negotiating the complexities of Indian politics, the barriers to entry, it’s not easy to just even win a corporation election today, but at every stage, but sticking on to one committed purpose of serving the nation, rises to the highest position of the land. I thought this is a story to be told.

He not only exemplifies what I was discovering, he gives hope and courage to all of us that we can also be this kind of a person. Otherwise, we think that only special people can occupy this post. But with hard work, discipline and a commitment to these leadership principles, all of us can rise.

That’s why I wrote this book and since it’s about his leadership legacy, the book is aptly titled as The Leadership Legacy of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 6:46

Got it.

Let’s start with some stories, right? Let’s start by, you know, the Prime Minister talks a lot about Seva Bhav. Where does the Seva Bhav come from and what is Seva Bhav?

Balu 6:55

See, essentially, Seva is a very unique Indian word. It’s very difficult to describe Seva in English because in the closest you can say, we say service or we say helping somebody. That’s a typical philanthropic attitude of Seva.

But in India, we say Seva is always done with the spirit of recognizing you in the other. It’s about an Advaitic expression where there’s no distinction between you and me and therefore, I am serving this divine spirit in you. So, it’s a Prasad I offer to, my Seva is a Prasad offered to the other divinity.

And finally, you reach the stage where you experience a oneness with the other. It’s very difficult to explain this or talk about this in a Western concept. Culturally, we can relate because this is something which we all grow up with.

Now for Prime Minister Modi, 50 years of his public life is what I could, me and my research team could go deep into his life and we realized that one consistent theme, which is very rare for a person, we all hold on to evolving themes. It’s not that we drop away something, but we evolve. But one thing consistent and absolute in Prime Minister’s life is this concept of Seva Baba, whereas I want to serve the other.

So, it intrigued me and I wanted to ask, where does it come from? It actually started when you’re six or seven years old. It’s a very fascinating anecdote that happens and Warren Benn is the great leadership expert.

He calls these moments as crucible moments. Prime Minister Modi’s crucible moment was when he was a child, when in a little village, his neighbor, neighboring family had no children and being a barren couple, they were longing for a child and after a long time of prayer and all that, they had a baby. The whole village celebrated and Modi was quite inspired that everybody’s celebrating the birth of the child.

But a week later, the child falls sick and dies and the village also goes into gloom. But more importantly, the neighbor had a cow and when the child falls sick, the cow stops eating and when the child dies, the cow completely stops eating. Modi is confused.

He goes to his father and says, what is this? Why is the cow not eating? And like any father would explain to a six or seven-year-old child, he says maybe that’s a cow’s way of grieving for the child.

A week later, the cow dies. And this message stays in the child Modi’s mind and he tells himself that if an animal can feel so strongly for a human being, how much stronger should I as a human being feel for the suffering of another human being? And that’s when he sort of says, I will work constantly to ameliorate the suffering of others and that Seva continues.

So whether it is the Morbi tragedy, which I write about in the book or the earthquake and when he took over as Chief Minister after the earthquake and the relief that he did or as a pracharak of the RSS to the Prime Minister today, the consistent theme that is not diluted at all is the Seva.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 9:35

Let’s talk about the Morbi incident in 1979 and the Gujarat administration failure.

Balu 9:41

See, it was a massive dam break and close to 18-19 hours, the headquarters didn’t even know the dam had opened up and it has flooded and people are dying by tens of hundreds, right?

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 9:44

How many people died?

Balu 9:55

I don’t remember the exact number now, but thousands of people died. And obviously, you have different numbers, right? The civil society will have a number, the government will have a number, but the fact is 14-16 hours it took for the civil administration to realize this had happened. But the RSS had swung into action and the RSS, it’s got boots on the ground throughout India and Modi led the relief and he was there and that is such an enormously, what you call a tragedy of enormous proportions that people kept on discovering bodies, you know, as the water clears, you keep getting a swollen body and tens of bodies and you had no way of identifying them, they are bloated, you have to cremate them, they were smelling, putrefying. So Modi and a set of volunteers and literally the volunteers when I interviewed them, some of them whom I could validate this information with, told me that he personally would carry the dead bodies, you know, with his colleagues and sometimes on his shoulders, put them, bunch them all together, pour petrol or diesel on them and had to mass cremate them and just tie a kerchief around your nose and keep going about as you have to do it, which where even the administration of police were a little hesitant to do what he was doing, he continuously did this and it’s not a day or two. So whether it is the Gujarat famine where he could, he rolled out a very organized relief effort or the Morbi tragedy, it is this niswarthata of his seva.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 11:17

And where is this Morbi town in Gujarat?

Balu 11.20

It’s a ceramic belt of Gujarat, it’s today all the ceramic tiles, factories, everything is in that entire area, it’s known for its tiles, all the tiles that we buy usually come from some factory in the Morbi area.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 11:31

And you have since mentioned about the RSS and the Prime Minister’s Association. Let’s go back to the history of RSS and the other leaders it has provided the country.

Balu 11:40

See it’s a nation which is, it’s an organization which was set up in the context of pre-independent India, right, it was set up in 1925, it’s nearly, it’s going to be 100 years old next year. It’s an organization which is very unique, it only looks at serving the nation, it’s about building a culturally vibrant, nationally, I would say a resurgent India, the spirit of cultural nationalism where the individual and Bharat is important for us and we contribute to the nation whatever way we can. And these pracharaks are full-timers, highly qualified people, many of them, I know several of them are PhDs and Sarsanghchalak today is a veterinary doctor and so each of them are highly qualified but give up their entire life, they’re literally monks, you know, for a particular kind without the okra robes, you know, they live their lives, they have no money, they don’t take any salary, they go from house to house and that’s where they get fed or somebody pays some bus charge to travel to the next place, any tragedy anywhere in India, they are there.

So they work in, they have tens of organizations, work in education, health care, community welfare, cultural organizations, labor organizations, etc. and they also created this political organization which and they’re all independent organizations, once they’re created, they feel the society has to be comprehensively evolved, Dr. Hedgewar is a doctor himself and he was the founder and then there’s great people like what is known as Guruji and all this extraordinary leadership will come and the beauty of this organization is you don’t celebrate individual heads of organizations or Sarsanghchalak, everybody and it’s the largest volunteer-based organization in the world, it’s not even a registered organization and it’s so organized but it’s not structured into membership and membership fees, etc.

These are people who really believe that India should reach, you know, it should occupy its rightful place in the community of nations and they work hard for it.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 13:33

And what is that rightful place?

Balu 13:35

It’s a country which is soft power, it’s not just army and defense and all that, it’s a knowledge power which is the way it was. If you look at India’s past, my own research in the development space has been India’s past and if you look at it, our share of the global GDP, the only nation, Angus Madison, the great economic historian, he actually writes saying that the consistent growing nation in the world that he could track for 1600 years was India and we had close to 36 to 38 percent of global GDP and when we got a freedom, it was less than 2 percent and so that is the India they are dreaming of, where it’s advanced in everything, not just economically, culturally, financially, socially and in every sense of the word and so you break all these fragmented barriers that our country is now riddled with, how do you transcend all this and take it to that level of thinking and appreciation of life where others can emulate us.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 14:29

In your book, you have mentioned many times, right, the prime minister says that we have to get rid of the DNA of slavery that we had in the last 400, 500 years. What is that?

Balu 14:41

See, we all think of decolonization in a very narrow sense. We all interpret it as dressing like an Indian or traditional dresses, traditional food or eating with your hand. It’s a much deeper disease, you know, what had happened was at a very critical stage of our evolution as a country, despite all the different challenges we had for a thousand years of people invading our country, making us into different kinds of slaves, religious slaves, cultural slaves, etc.

What the British did was made us intellectual slaves and that’s something which people don’t recognize. Whether it’s macroization of Indian education or preventing India from really expanding its knowledge base and shifting it towards becoming just imitating blindly certain practices of the West rather than the deep inner thinking of the West, which they would not allow us to know, but eroding our faith in ourselves to the point where Swami Vivekananda actually writes in one of his books, he says, you give an Indian child a high school education.

The first thing he’s taught is to say, all my colleagues are idiots, my parents are fools, India is a poor nation and everything I should learn is from the West and he starts imitating it and we glorify it. So to reacquire this faith without glorifying it or without just romanticizing it, looking at it evidentially, a nation which discovered algebra, calculus, trigonometry, binary system to metallurgy to chemistry cannot be a nation of fools, right? Somewhere we forgot what we are capable of.

So rediscovering the strength of being an Indian beyond just the romanticized version of it, intellectually, politically, culturally, if you look at, that’s what I have tried to do in this book from the leadership perspective, I’ve tried to analyze it. So taking pride, now a nation with close to more than 10,000 languages spoken by a minimum population of 10,000, which other country can boast of this? Look at the cuisinary, India has a cuisinary cauldron, right?

Within Karnataka, I can say the same rasam would be prepared in four different ways. So we don’t celebrate all this or the way we dress, it’s all very culture-appropriate, climate-appropriate dressing. So every possible way you could look at India, we had something extraordinary.

But in a sense, we are made to ignore all that, though Gandhi, you know, Gandhi said it so beautifully, but we misinterpreted him is my way of understanding it. He said we need all ideas coming in through the doors and windows we keep open. But what Gandhi did not say was the inside air should get out.

So what we did is we brought all those ideas, but we threw out all our ideas. Decolonization is ability to absorb what is reasonably good for us to, because today’s world is a unified world, geographically, there are no boundaries, but not losing out what you can retain, take pride in and tell the world also, whether it’s Ayurveda or Yoga today, we are not probably talking about it as an Indian contribution, there are several such contributions. So I think taking pride, taking sense of ownership for what your nation is all about, not looking down on anybody, but being extremely tolerant of everybody else without losing your own sense of ownership and individuality that you need to have.

I think all this combination is what decolonizing is all about.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 17:42

And what according to Prime Minister, does he consider the tribal equitable to the current people living in the urban societies and is the measure still the economic measure or the measure has changed?

Balu 17:54

Now it’s changed.

If you look at all the current programs, it’s about empowerment, it’s about building human and social capital. Western narrative is GDP and growth. Maybe it was the narrative of India too.

But today it’s not that. It’s about how do you invest on building human and social capital of these communities, make them part of the citizenship narrative, where when he talks of Jan Bhagidari, make them partners to the state and not just recipients of dole from the state. I think that thinking and that shift is already there.

If you look at all the different programs, whether it is empowering villages, whether it’s what he calls the tribal Vandan program, etc. It is culturally appropriate and contextually relevant development, which actually tribals can relate to today.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 18:34

What is Jan Bhagidari?

Balu 18:36

See, Jan Bhagidari is a very highly advanced thinking. If you ask me, if you look at India itself, 1947, we inherited the Indian civil service. At that time, India was very poor and the citizens had to be taken care by the state.

The state had to provide everything. So, we are a providing government, whichever government it had to do that, we had to give food, ration. I still remember standing in front of a line, collecting kerosene and sugar for my mother in the ration shop.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 19:00

Which year is that?

Balu 19:01

I’m talking of 1970s, mid 70s, but 90s, if you look at it, and so our civil service is entirely focused on actually taking care of how to provide to people as efficiently as you could. 90s, the then government decided that it will liberalize, it will globalize, it will join the world economy. And we suddenly said we want private sector to become, to be facilitated to also be part of the growth narrative.

So, that’s when privatization and all happened and from providing, we became a provisioning nation. Earlier, it was only nationalized banks and suddenly we said, you could also run your own banks. And so, we started provisioning them with rules and regulations.

Our current Prime Minister talks about going beyond that. He doesn’t talk about citizen-centric governance alone. Citizen-centric governance is governing for the citizen, keeping him as a focus.

This is the next step. Jan Bhagidari is where the state becomes a partnership state, where I see you as my equal. See, the state by definition runs and operates on information asymmetry and power asymmetry.

I have enormous information, but I don’t give anything to the citizen, therefore, I can control you. Whereas, that’s what gives me power to the state executive apparatus, the officers, etc. But here the Prime Minister says, no, we’ll treat you as equals.

Even simple things like, if you have to get your documents attested, you know, 10 years ago, it was that 10 or 11 years ago, you had to go to an officer of the government and he will certify you are what you are or who you are. Today, the current thinking in Jan Bhagidari is, you know who you are and I trust you, you are my citizen. If I can’t trust you, who else can I trust?

You self-authorize yourself. A simple thing like that, symbolically from that level to where we decide and be participants in the nation’s narrative of development, I think that is Jan Bhagidari.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 20:47

But we still see, you are right, right? In the colonial era, the British officers looked down upon its citizens and still we have public servants still look down upon the citizens right and still exploiting the citizen at some scale.

Balu 20:53

No, you are absolutely right in the sense that, is the intent of the government wanting to be a partnership state 100%? It is 100%. Is the outcome that’s happening today 100%?

It can’t be. And that is why the Prime Minister conceived something fascinatingly extraordinary. He conceived a commission called the Mission Karmayogi and the heart and soul of that is Capacity Building Commission, which I am a member, where he recognized that you can’t overnight just by he saying Jan Bhagidari, it’s not going to happen.

There’s a very institutionalized process. So, institutional processes is Mission Karmayogi, where now we, our mandate is to make it, make the the shift in people’s mindset from thinking like, I am a Karmachari, I am a public servant, but I don’t operate like a public servant, I operate like a master of the citizens. Shifting them to feel and think like Karmayogis, where my job is to serve you.

We have designed competency models today, where Swadharma is crafted as serving the citizens. My Dharma is to serve you. I exist only for you.

So, shifting this mindset, making them feel I serve you and through an institutional process of training and capacity building, bringing in policy changes where everything becomes citizen-centric by definition of the process itself and not just by articulation and sloganing. I think that process began. But change is not going to be easy.

See, 75 years of crafting a position where I enjoy power and position, to let go, it’s not easy. The biggest challenge for any human being is to let go what he is very comfortable with. And to say that, you know, it’s very discomforting, insecure, it creates an enormous sense of insecurity in people saying, I have to let go and say we are equals now.

It doesn’t work that way. But the shift has started and to be fair to the system and the government, I am able to see at least in the national government at the highest levels, the seriousness of purpose and intent, even in government officers, to want to be part of this change is there. But to become a cultural DNA of government, my guess is it will take 10 to 15 years.

You can’t, it’s not control, I’ll delete and everything will change overnight. But the journey has begun. And I personally believe if the momentum continues like this, it will be irreversible in a decade.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 22:54

I’ll share a few examples, even like city like Bangalore, right?

Like if I have to get a passport applied for any of my family members, right, I have to still pay 500 to the police station. Though, these are small examples.

Balu 23:12

But that has been addressed today. Today, if you are already renewing your passport, you don’t have to get a police clearance. This passport will be sent to you and then the police clearance will happen.

Earlier, the citizens were stuck because without police clearance, the passport would not be issued. Today, you apply for a passport and this only you can experience it. You can go to any passport to Seva Kendra, apply for a passport within two or three days.

You don’t have to ask some passport officer to intervene. Two or three days you get your passport. Police enquiry happens later.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 23:40

On the reissue you are talking about.

Balu 23:41

Even, Even fresh applications, if you are, if you are, no reason, there is a particular algorithm which goes through it and if you have no reason to be validated, you are issued. Unless there is a suspicion where today’s world, you got to be careful also, if it flags it off, then the police enquiry is necessary and there also you can always highlight it, you can tweet about it. Today, we have tools where you can express it.

The problem is most citizens, we are not honest by convenience, we are not honest by conviction.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 24:07

I would say, for citizens also, the fear of overhangs from the past.

Balu 24:12

And I think we have to break it. That is where, when I wrote, I the citizen, I put the entire responsibility on the government for citizen-centric governance. Today, I would say, citizens also have to take the load and say, I will hold the government accountable.

I will refuse to pay this. So if you all decide that we will all be honest by conviction and go through the consequences. We also want things to be done and one day we think, if I don’t give 500 rupees, it won’t be done.

For example that you gave, I can give an example of a close friend of mine who applied for a passport and he had relocated to Delhi and was worried whether change of address, what will happen. I said, go through it and the constable came and maybe, I don’t know whether he actually asked but he didn’t, he went back saying that it will be a little difficult. I told him, don’t do anything, just see what will happen.

The certificate went because the police also verified how long it takes for you to issue the certificate. So I think we should allow the system to respond with faith and conviction. It’s difficult.

There’s a trust deficit both sides. It takes time for us to get over it but I think we all have to in the longer interest of the nation.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 25:16

What are the activities that your commission is doing right now to build that trust?

Balu 25:23

See, we are actually working a lot with our government officers. Earlier you know, the bulk of government is only 3.2 million people but in the complete sense, national government can be 20 million, state governments are 20 million. But 3.2 million are hardcore people. We have three levels of officers called A, B and C. The crux is 100,000 Group A officers and the hardworking, soldiering people are the B and C officers. All put together 3.2 million. So we have now re-looked at all the training. We look at all the academies that are training these people from the IAS academy to the police academy and help facilitate crafting curriculum which is relevant for today. We try to prepare them to be future-ready.

We have defined the entire competency framework on which training will be done. We have said what is Vikasid Bharat? What is Amrit Kal?

What is the next 25-year strategic plan? And how do you deliver on it? How do you prepare bureaucrats today who will possibly retire 25-30 years later but will be the one who can craft this entire 25-year plan?

What kind of skill sets they’ll need in every domain? So we identify behavioural competencies, functional competencies and whichever ministry, whatever roles people are playing, the domain competencies. We have mandated 50 hours of learning where we are constantly monitoring, we have actually measured and we have mapped out what learning every single government employee by designation requires in Government of India and then we map and measure whether he is actually acquiring it and how does it impact performance.

So our mandate is to enhance performance, ensure accountability of officers to themselves and to citizens, make sure that government becomes more transparent and we are able to actually bring in tools of technology to enable that and keep the system future ready. So all this is the mandate of the Capacity Building Commission and the world’s largest LMS, I would say, is getting crafted and the architecture is in place, courses are getting populated. We are close to now 1200-1300 courses which provide all these competencies and I see a situation where in the next one year we’ll have 4-5 thousand courses which will meet all these demands.

So there is digital training, online training, there is hybridized version of training and there is physical training whenever you need it. A combination of all this monitored, measured and mapped and delivered keeping in mind the needs of citizens, I think is a big shift in government thinking.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 27:33

And now I want to come to Ramakrishna Mission, like the importance of current society, you are a part of that mission.

Balu 27:41

I would say I am part of it by subscribing to the ideology, the faith, belief and being guided by the monks, but the monk order is different, monastic order is different. Now Ramakrishna Mission was set up by Swami Vivekananda and the beauty was this was something to live the message of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa and in a simple way Ramakrishna Paramahamsa said Shiva Jnane Jiva Seva, the seeing God, the real knowledge of God should be through service of mankind and Swami Vivekananda practicalized this message in terms of setting up the mission and the greatness of Vivekananda was he held no formal position.

It was an order which is more than 100 years old, Swami Vivekananda passed away in 1902. It’s an order which has got hundreds of branches across the world, thousands of monks who see Seva as an opportunity to attain Moksha. The Vedic message of Atmano mokshartham jagat hitaya cha, which I have written about in my book also and Swami Vivekananda gave this as the motto of the order itself.

So there are two distinct organizations. One is the mission which does the service part of it and there’s a mutt where the people spend a lot of time in japa, dhyana, meditation to understand evolution, but this combination of serving society and through that recognizing that you can evolve yourself is a powerful message of Ramakrishna order. All my inspiration, my guidance comes from wonderful monks in the order who are extraordinary people quietly doing their work and two specific people.

One Swami Achalananda ji was my Diksha Guru, he was not really part of the order, but he would stay in the order to guide the monks and Swami Sureshanandji was a very senior monk of the order, who was the one who guided me to write about Prime Minister Modi’s life and leadership message, where people who really nurtured my thinking helped me do what I have done in the world of Swami Vivekananda youth movement.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 29:27

And you mentioned about couple of things in your book, right? What is Panchpran?

Balu 29:32

Yeah, essentially this is a call given by the Prime Minister and he said that it’s, it’s a sort of, it looks at several things. One is it looks at development of India itself, because development is multiple, it’s not just, we already spoke, not just GDP growth, a very inclusive equitable sense of growth, where I would say it’s interpreted as a constant expansion of human capability and how do you bring vikas in. Second is how do you actually look at garb and the pride that you can get in so many things Indian, right?

Right from your dress to food to language, we have several reasons to be proud about. A simple thing I can give you an example, we opened up a space economy, very few people know this and you might be aware because you’re in that space, close to 100 to 120 startups in the last two years have emerged after opening up and they’re all now becoming suppliers to ISRO. Youngsters today would never imagine a career in aerospace, today are actually running startups taking India space forward, tomorrow it can happen to the blue economy, the green economy, the hydrogen that we want to do, the green hydrogen that we want to make, all quantum computing world.

So, India’s young people are waiting to sort of explode on the scene out there and that is a pride you can take, we take pride in all that, not just pride in the fact that a lot of CEOs are from India, but even our own upcoming generation and we are shifting the narrative and saying it’s not just the state alone who can develop, the lifeline of the nation should be we all have to contribute to development. Kartavya is a very important contribution of development, decolonization is a very important aspect of it, Ekta is very important, we can’t see India as Kannadigas, Tamilians, UPwala’s from West Bengal, we are all one nation, it doesn’t matter where you are, what language you speak, we are all Indians.

How do you unite all of us into one nation thinking, all this put together is a narrative of Panchpran.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 31:16

And you also mentioned about the Chanakya Neeti and what does it say about the leadership during the last 10 years.

Balu 31:22

See, it’s an extraordinary treatise on public administration, not just economic thought. There are multiple things in Arthashastra that we can look at. To explain that, I’ll just give you two stories from the epics. Bhishma is dying.

He’s lying on the bed of arrows and obviously he’s now given a boon that he can choose his time of death. Yudhishthira goes to him, the war is over. Imagine the scenario, the war is over, you killed your cousins.

It’s so difficult. It’s easy for us to say, but deep down it’s an emotive thing. You all grew up together and you just killed them.

Very high price to pay and he goes to Yudhishthira and says, now it’s all done and dusted. I have to now run the kingdom. I have to rule it.

What is your advice to me? And Yudhishthira gives him 10 tenets, so powerful. Bhishma gives Yudhishthira 10 tenets, the Rajadharma.

And this is what we call Rajadharma. And that’s how the word was first used. But we think Mahabharata is very similar to today’s world conflicts, Kurukshetra, we all have conflicts.

We are seeing multiple wars going on everywhere. And if you look at the 10 tenets, those are solutions for this. But you go a step further, look at Ramayana.

Even Ramayana, though it’s seen as celebrating an individual, the Maryada Purush Ram, and how at the individual level you live, it’s actually much deeper. It’s also got a treatise on good governance. Bharata goes to Rama.

Rama has just gone on his exile. Bharata goes and tells him, listen, I was not trained to be a king. You are trained, you are coronated also.

So legitimately you are expected to be king. I was the youngest of the prince. I was having fun.

I was a pampered little child of the family and suddenly you want me to rule. I am not ready. What is your advice?

I can keep your padukas and all that. But what is your advice on good governance? And Valmiki writes it so beautifully.

The tenets of good governance, Rama explains to Bharata and says this is how a king conducts himself. But I think Kautilya doesn’t have time for all the stories. He is a clinically incisive man.

He says, all that is nice, but a king’s responsibility is only two things. Yogakshema and Lokasamgraha. Welfare of society.

And he says, every citizen keeps acquiring a lot of securities, economic, political, social, intellectual. The king’s responsibility is to protect those securities he acquires and enable an ecosystem where he can keep acquiring securities. For that, he says, a king has to be a special person.

Otherwise, you can’t do this. He says he should be an Indriya Vijji. Which means Indriyanigraha is something celebrated in India.

Control of the senses. He says somebody was conquered and won over his senses. And to me, earlier you asked me also, why did I put Prime Minister Modi in the cover?

Because when I was analyzing his life and when I sat through his meetings or when I looked at, talked to people, I realized that one common theme I was discovering over 50 years of his life is his struggle to be an Indriya Vijji. See, none of us are perfect, but the struggle is so perfect. He keeps making sure, that way you never seem disturbed.

He is very equipoised. He neither celebrates when he wins something or loses his spirit when he doesn’t get something deflated. So, all this doesn’t come overnight.

It’s a constant struggle. So, he met the closest to an Indriya Vijji I could see. Kautilya is very clear.

These are only two things you should achieve and this is the role of a king. If we can just follow that today, whether whatever form of governance you have, it could be autocracy to monarchy to in different world or different things in our country, like a vibrant democracy and it could be loud and noisy, but we still have a vibrant democracy. Today results of two states are coming out.

It’s all democracy finally and whatever it is, if the responsibility of the ruler can just be these two, I think then good governance will emerge automatically.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 34:53

And what were those ten tenets that were told by Bhishma?

Balu 34:56

Bhishma’s ten tenets covered everything, the economy, the ecology, the conduct of the king, the mantra shakti, the power of council, how do you look at trade, how do you look at the environment and protect your, you are responsible for everything in the ecology, not just for you and your consumption, how do you look at social security. So everything that the government or state today does, how do you look at protecting your borders and sovereignty, when do you go to war, when do you, how do you work for peace. This is so beautifully explained that that’s exactly what good governance is.

How do you respond to citizens, why citizens are the focus of the entire responsibility of ruling the kingdom. All this is there embedded and captured so beautifully. I have described it in the book and to me, if every country’s ruler can keep looking at this and just doing it, how do you be just ethical, what are the qualities of a ruler and why should you be that.

He is seen as a custodian of peace and prosperity for his people, you know, in a single sentence if you can say that and that is all that we have to do today.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 35:51

So now few instances that I want to discuss, you know, from the last seven to eight years. So one is Doklam crisis in 2017 and the surgical strike in 2016.

Balu 36:03

See, I think you should also look at this in the evolving global space and the global responsibility India is crafting. It’s also the way our diplomacy is playing out. You know, earlier on every time we were defensive in our diplomacy, we are always being told what to do, everybody else could prescribe to India what it to do.

Now, we are, we are going to soon be the third largest economy even in terms of economic scale. We are setting up partnerships around the world, semiconductors to green hydrogen that we could sell later on to other countries. So we are reaching a position where we have to be recognized for what we are and there’s also an external presentation, there’s also an internal civilizational shift, both are happening today.

At the same time for too long we have been troubled by elements which are disrupting India’s law and order in terms of terrorism, it’s a challenge to our borders and we have to demonstrate that you know what, it’s not just talk for us, we can also act. We can also demonstrate that we are capable of coming deep into your territories and we are capable. As a nation our armed force are not sitting quiet.

For too long they were kept suffocated and stifled and we had to allow them to do their jobs and whenever it’s called upon. I think we sent out a message of strength. See, without defense diplomacy is meaningless.

It can be a powerful deterrent but we don’t, as a nation we have already said we’ll not go attack somebody. We’ve never done that. Civilizationally India has never said we’ll go acquire territory or we’ll go out.

We sent out, we are the largest people who sent out large numbers of people but there were Buddhists traveling around the world carrying the message of peace and goodwill and if you were interested in accepting what I’m saying, accept it. Otherwise it’s okay, I’m just sending a message. That doesn’t mean that we conquered land or brought anybody’s property or money inside.

Today we can’t stay quiet because if you have to be seen as a leader, strength is manifested in different ways, economic strength, defense strength, diplomatic strength, humanitarian strength and that’s what I described in my chapter. So, I won’t say that in one context but you should see that in the context in which I describe the global leadership of Prime Minister Modi and how humanitarian diplomacy to cuisinary diplomacy to civilizational diplomacy whether having yoga day declared. You also see this powerful change.

If you’re a diaspora, I just recently was in the US on a book tour and I came back. The pride they have in calling themselves Indian today is so visible. I’ve been going for the last 40 years traveling around countries in the world and I see how they respond and react.

For a long time we saw diasporas as people writing checks and sending back remittances. Today Prime Minister Modi sees them as brand ambassadors. He sees them as tourism ambassadors.

He says you all come to India, just don’t go to your hometown, travel around, bring back the knowledge from there, take back India’s civilization strength to the outside world. So, I think in a sense, we have to see what I’ve written in the context of all this put together.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 38:48

And let’s come back to these. What strength does India display during these two crises?

Balu 38:54

I think it showed several things. It showed the political strength, it showed decisiveness, it also showed that we can act when we want to. Till now if you’re not acting there was a particular strategic decision maybe the government took but today we are very clear.

We can be polite and nice to you. You should also see this not just from the context of the strikes. You should also see it in the context when Pakistan had floods.

One of the first countries to offer support was India. The fact that they didn’t want to take it is another matter, but we never separated. So, you should also see it in the context of not just a neighbor but Turkey, which has never had any friendly word towards.

Now they’re shifting attitude but earlier they were not. They had the earthquake. Our Indian army was the first ones who put up a hospital, a full-fledged hospital and immediately responded to trauma care and everything that they did.

Several surgeries and when they came back, the Turkish citizens were feeling bad that Indian army is leaving. So, we could send powerful messages both sides in a humanitarian way also, but also in a defense way. So, I think we demonstrated that political strength, administrative capability, the financial clout that we have today and today if we say we’ll stop trade, people love to bend over backwards not to ignore us also.

Whether it is palm oil, that episode that happened with Malaysia and today restoration of normalcy with Malaysia is because also that we are the largest consumer of palm oil. If tomorrow India says I’ll not buy palm oil, imagine what will happen to that nation’s economy. So, I think in multiple ways we’re showing our strength in a very responsible way.

We are not in a very reactive way. It’s a response, well-crafted response for the prime minister and our external affairs ministry and all of them thinking together. But my belief is we are not ashamed of showing we are powerful today.

We are not apologetic about our position. That is real smart power. India is not just a soft power.

I think India is now becoming a smart power.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 40:34

In these two incidences, the surgical strike in 2016 and you know the later on when our troops were destroyed during the Pulwama attack, India response during that. I think we have quite powerful messages to the world that hey, we’ll not sit quiet and we’ll go within the enemy territory now.

Balu 40:53

See, rest of the world can say I will protect my borders. Why can’t we say that also? The rest of the world always had two sets of rules.

One for emerging economies like India, you can’t do what you do unless I say you can do that. And for themselves, they could do whatever they want. They could go into another country and kill somebody who was a terrorist for them but they would not like us doing that.

But today India has said no. The world has got the same set of rules. My country’s interests are my rules and we have been proud of saying that today and I think that’s a big shift.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 41:21

I think that display of power is also quite important so that the neighbors don’t take us lightly on security.

Balu 41:27

Not just neighbors. Everybody in the world don’t take. Today’s war is not just neighbors.

Cyber wars are anywhere in the world and it’s happening all the time. So, we need to show that we are capable of taking care of ourselves.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 41:37

And let’s talk about the incidence of withdrawal of farm loans. Can you tell us more about that?

Balu 41:43

See, I think I would like to talk as a policy analyst, not just as an author now. I was actually thrilled when the farm laws announced. Having lived in the grassroots, having worked with farmers, having…

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 41:54

What are farm loans for?

Balu 41:55

Yeah, essentially it is about prevent, getting farmers recognized for the value of the produce they bring out.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia

The MSP, minimum selling price.

Balu 42:02

Not only the MSP, but it’s also a complex economic agrarian reform that was put in place. See, when farmers cultivate, there’s so many inputs that go into it. The price of the output should be proportional to the inputs that go into it.

When a software engineer spends four hours and says that the software is worth a hundred thousand rupees or just giving some numbers, and you ask him why you only work four hours, why it’s so expensive, you say it’s intellectual cost. Farmers also have got different physical inputs, intellectual inputs, financial inputs, material inputs, and there’s a product that comes out. But you want rice to be the cheapest in the world.

How can that happen? It’s unfair. So, and also the trading ability of the farmer, it was limited by a mafia which controlled the local produce marketing committees that were there.

So, each state had different laws and agriculture being a predominantly state-run subject, it all were driven by state law. So, farmers never got the market value for the produce. Why am I still paying a hundred thousand dollars for your software?

Because that’s a market price. It’s supply and demand. Now you supply, I need that and I will buy it.

Similarly, I need food too. But why isn’t supply and demand working there? We want it to be cheaper.

All the time, rice, food inflation. But farmers prosperity is not something we look at. This Swaminathan committee report, which came 30-35 years ago, an extraordinary work, really relooked at all this entire ecosystem.

And a lot of it was also integrated into law with the government of India pushed. The prime minister is deeply committed to doubling farmer’s income. It’s not just a slogan, he really believes that.

So, anything that’s a barrier to doubling farmer’s income has to be a policy intervention. It’s very simple. In the world of policy, that’s how I would see it.

So, it’s one of the finest policies that was brought in. Now, could it have been done better? Could it have been done with more communication?

All that is post-mortem. But were the intentions good? Perfect.

And unfortunately, and if you look at it even, if you saw the pattern, South Indians never really protested because they saw the benefit of it. Maybe for political reasons, they would have here and they protested there. But North India, only a particular set of people where the trader communities controlled agriculture to the point where they were the maximum beneficiaries.

And when you cut the entire trader mafia off and brought high returns for the produce that farmers brought in, and you took away market from a geographical definition of just your neighborhood or societies or producer communities to saying the whole world is your market. Tomorrow you sell potatoes and Pepsi America wants to buy your potatoes for what you would get 10 times your price. So be it, allow the farmers to do it.

Why are we suffocating him with loss? All these are so powerful. It will change India’s agrarian scenario, the rural economy.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 44:36

And why didn’t it get changed?

Balu 44:37

Because it’s a political narrative to it. See, every policy we say has to have three elements.

As a policymaker, as to a teacher of policy, I would say this. First thing we say, whatever you decide should be evidence driven. There’s a lot of evidence how this could have changed India.

It should be administratively feasible, where the state should be able to implement it. The third important thing is it should be politically sustainable, not just electoral politics, but all stakeholders. So how do you build and craft a story for the stakeholders to understand this?

How do you take care of communicating that? No, it’s not about trader community losing, but we could look at it in a different way. And how do you package it properly?

Maybe the failure was there. But what I would like to say in this is when the formula was passed, you didn’t see an exuberant prime minister saying that, oh, I did this and I’m going to change India’s economy. He always believed he wanted to change farmers economy and he’s very concerned about farmers.

When it was withdrawn also, look at it, a prime minister with 78% popularity goes out publicly and says, maybe I’m sorry, maybe I made a mistake. I didn’t understand the stakeholders interests, views and their perspectives. Maybe we can do it better next time.

We’ll come back to you with a better package, which all of you might appreciate. And I never saw him deflated also after that. So to me, that equipoise, that Siddha Pragnati which I write about is an extraordinary reflection of his leadership.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 45:56

And since you are also a policy teacher, why can’t this have been, you know, implemented in the south, set an example and then take it to the north?

Balu 46:06

See, there are so many things we could have learned from this. For example, states which are politically friendly, it could have brought in state laws. Agriculture is something you could have brought in a state law and we could have experimented and taken it further.

Maybe the urgency and the necessity for making, bringing about an agriculture revolution could have prompted, I really don’t know. I’m just guessing here. Could it have been done better from the leadership perspective?

We could have sensitized people more. Kashmir problem has been nearly solved today with the election results, right? And that is not a one-day repealing of the act.

It was from his, even before his Ekta Yatra, what Prime Minister believed in crafting the Ekta Yatra, the 30-year narrative was there, ripening the issue was there. Maybe we didn’t do our homework properly. Maybe the government could have educated people.

Maybe it could have tried out different steps. I’m sure knowing the Prime Minister and knowing the way he thinks and learns constantly, he’s a lifelong learner. He would have now crafted in his mind, how do you still get double farmer’s income?

How do you bring in a change without creating a disruptive feeling that something is going to be lost for people? Without communicating loss, how do you do it? I would really, my own research of his life, his leadership would definitely bring something out like that.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 46:15

One last thing that I want to talk about, you know, is Article 370, the Kashmir issue. And you know, Kashmir had always been a problematic state because at the time of partition, it was located between India and Pakistan, a Muslim-dominated state ruled by a Hindu Maharaja, who never agreed to join any of the countries, newly formed countries. And later on, when he joined India, Pakistan revolted and created a war and three parts of Kashmir got created, right?

One is the Pakistan-dominated Azad Kashmir, some part went to China and the other is JNK.

Balu 47:52

See, I think we call this in the world of leadership adaptive challenges, where you can’t have one solution, which will fit in a standard operating procedure, can’t be rolled out, draw a line and say, this is your part, that’s my part. These adaptive problems were a deep-seated human intervention in terms of changing behaviors, values, beliefs have to be brought in. It’s time drawn, you have to keep iterating solutions, trying out different experiments and looking at multiple stakeholders, their perspective and solving it.

That is what Prime Minister exemplifies and crafted it. People have to be increasingly, incrementally made a little more accepting of the possible solution. So, from the Ekta Yatra, where he was threatened, he will be shot dead by those then so-called fundamentalists and terrorists to actually going there boldly and saying, I don’t mind giving up my life, but hoisting the national flag to continuously looking at how to do it.

But staying focused on the fact that Kashmir has to be integral part of India. That was the decision taken by the founding fathers at that time, a particular model was taken to integrate it, which didn’t work. But we should have had the courage to go back and undo it and go ahead and do what it had to do.

Mistakes were made. We never, a lot of things like you cannot go look back and say, but things were done, like Pebbleside was called for and all that was not necessary. Every other place secession happened and we simply, if they didn’t secede, the police action happened.

But here we were very tolerant, whatever reasons, political bungling happened over the long, large amount of time. But people don’t understand that if you read my chapter, I talk about 100 families that captured not just political power, but also financial power. How could you have one country where two prime ministers, two central banks, two constitutions, two national flags, it is unthinkable.

It’s not integration, right? You can’t go by land there and the people lose. It’s not about outsiders, it’s about people there themselves lose.

Today, look at the thriving economy there. If you look at a lot of things, today, even politically 68% voting is not easy. In that state, nobody expected that.

The parliament elections happened, the panchayat elections happened, decentralization of power has happened, redrawing of deserving people who are never given any rights there. The tribal, some other tribals are given rights, some other categories, subcategories of Muslims are given rights. So much of change has happened.

But the prime minister is very staying focused on just saying development has to happen. Peace has to come back. Finally, it should lead to democracy.

Today, Today’s results or whatever it comes out as all these things have happened after the repealing has happened. It’s a well-crafted response that happened there. Obviously, there’ll be problems.

People who have enjoyed power and so much of money is not going to let go easily and they were the ones who made all the noise. They had to be managed. Power had to be democratized.

And once a lot of panchayat members got elected, you really democratize. They also understood that they can also be part of the political narrative. Why only selected 100 families?

When you become part of one Reserve Bank of India, you also understand that how money was being abused by the local JNK Bank and stuff like that. So, today corruption has come down. Anybody could be appointed.

They had more government employees than actually, how were they appointed, nobody knows. I become chief minister, I appoint my people and nobody asks questions. And so, I think all that administrative cleaning up has happened.

Politically, it is evolving and maturing. Economy is growing. So, to me, see it in its completeness.

Let’s not see it just as article repealing, 370 as a repealing. And it’s a great bold step, a problem which could never, people ever imagined could be resolved. I at least never thought in my lifetime it will be resolved.

We thought we had to live with it. Today, to great extent has been resolved.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 51:28

And now, I want to come on to some of the things in foreign policy. One thing which I want to discuss about is Qatar incident. The Qatar incident, the Russia-Iraq conflict, how did India take sides during those?

What is the right path that India took?

Balu 51:45

I would say it’s very difficult to say taking sides would not be the right way of looking at it. I think India and the foreign minister is extremely clear in his statement. He says, we do what is good for India.

I think that’s a narrative, whether it’s buying oil from Russia, if it is good for India, we have to, our energy is also a need. Our citizens are not going to pay 10 times the cost just because somebody declares war somewhere else. We have to take care of our wheat also.

At the same time, we know we have to worry about wheat from Ukraine or Russia, how to balance it. We have to worry about our people. You know, just imagine if India had not communicated strength, India had not communicated diplomatic friendliness, the Qatar thing, we couldn’t have got back our people.

Whatever the reasons, that country has its own laws, it interprets it in own way and whether justified, unjustified, that’s not the question here. But our country intervened. Look at the power.

Earlier, you know, I used to remember my young friends, my batchmates, etc., when they went to US and became citizens, then their storylines would be, we carry an American passport, anything happens anywhere, America will bring us back. India is doing it today. Vande Matram missions that we have, the way whether it’s Ukraine war, we brought back Indians, it’s other citizens also or the Covid crisis, we brought back people.

We don’t allow our citizens to suffer anywhere, whether the Norway situation, etc., it became a movie, India intervenes. So, I think to communicate such storylines, even in the Qatar case, to say that we are a friend, at the same time, we are also wanting this to happen because there are, it’s always give and take. A lot of the give and take is not in public domain, but give and take happens.

But if the interests are Indian and I think that is a big shift in policy today, saying that we are concerned about our people and our progress and therefore, we will do what it takes to do, what needs to be done.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 53:25

And the last leg, you know, you mentioned about in your chapter is Abraham Lincoln, three global leaders that I think have the highest impact on history. Abraham Lincoln, Lee Kuan Yew from Singapore and then Xi Jinping from China.

Balu 53:39

See, I think the whole world has got a lot of people who exercise leadership. The reason I bring that in is the title of the book is Leadership Legacy of Narendra Modi. How does it, it’s not about his other legacies.

There are a lot of other legacies. It could be administrative legacies, could be infrastructure legacies, etc. But I talk about the leadership legacy because that’s a prime mover of other legacies.

And every leader in this country has left a legacy behind in his own way, positive, negative. I just analyzed three leaders because that’s all in a book format, you cannot do too much, where the civilizational shift happened for their countries. Now, America traditionally exploited the slaves.

It thrived on slavery and therefore, denial of freedom. But in American constitution, they celebrate freedom as it’s a big thing, but they never give freedom to a lot of people. They even don’t have a woman president even today.

They’re struggling to get a woman as a president today. But I bring in Abraham Lincoln in the context of how did he bring in the shift and get that shift. It took a lot of courage, he got assassinated for it, to get that equality as a lived experience, to recognize the African Americans as equals.

Similarly, I write about Lee Kuan Yew because a country which was completely not a country, even Singapore, colonial legacy that even countries like India experienced, separating out from Malaysia, but had to rebuild his economy. And he, at that point of time, he crafted the theory of change saying that I’m going to make my country great. I’ll do what it takes to do that.

I may be sounding dictatorial, but I’m going to do it. But he left a legacy behind. Similarly, Deng Xiaoping, cultural revolution is done, a particular narrative was crafted.

Economic narrative was unthinkable that they could do here to shift it. Today, China is what it is today because Deng Xiaoping laid the seeds and had the courage to implement it. So, he brought, he said, black or white cat, I don’t care if it catches the mouse, that’s what matters. Economic growth, if it can eliminate poverty for my people, I’ll do it. They all shifted the legacies of their country and the real legacy for the country was this shift that they brought in.

Prime Minister Modi is bringing several shifts, which I described here, right? It’s a cultural shift, it’s a civilization shift, it’s a scientific shift, there’s a political leadership shift. There’s so many shifts that is brought about in our country.

But more importantly, I write in the context of, this is all, every leadership is in context. After the context disappears, that leadership will not work. Today, Abraham Lincoln’s leadership might be difficult.

If you redeploy it, it may not work. If you go to Singapore and say, we’ll bring it back like, like when your time, people are not going to accept it as easily as they accepted him. Context has differed.

Deng Xiaoping, the context has differed. But why I say that this is a real legacy is because the chapter is titled as the Dharma of Legacy and the Legacy of Dharma. Because Prime Minister Modi’s leadership, I’m trying to articulate it as driven by the Purusharthas, Artha, Kama, Moksha and Dharma, where righteousness forms a foundation of all the thinking.

And I also articulate where you look at the G20. I think it’s icing on the cake, the way I see it. Again, I’m seeing from policy analyst, leadership expert, critical analysis.

Bali, we couldn’t get a G20 declaration because what’s happening around the world, the same countries, right? And we expanded and got African Union inside. What a masterstroke it was.

How can you let out a bulk of humanity from a narrative of economic growth? And so he pushed for it, he got, made it happen. Then he said that Delhi declaration will happen.

And Delhi declaration, I write about it, the four Ps that colleague gave. We need planet, we need profits also, we need prosperity. You can’t say I’ll only have economy and no ecology.

We have to balance it. You need the solar alliance, you need to have carbon net zero. He gave a call 2070, even before the Delhi declaration, we had to move towards so many green mechanisms.

It’ll take time for us. We have a huge jump to do. Peace is something you cannot do without peace.

And peace is a casualty when you’re striving for economic growth. Everybody wants to make more money, the same pie, we’ll fight. So peace, prosperity, planet and people, because finally it’s all for people.

And that’s how the inclusion of African Union is also an example, our own people is an example. That is going to be his legacy, the leadership around the world in a conflict-ridden society, in an uncertain society that we have created for ourselves, in a consumer-driven society where contentment is not seen as a necessity. It’s not, It’s not seen as a spiritual value.

But in reality, it has to be a necessity for all of us to continue to live. I think he sets that narrative and that’s the legacy I talk about.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 58:00

Thank you so much, Balu. I enjoyed this conversation a lot. I learned a lot.

Balu 58:04

Thank you, Thank you so much for having me. I know it was fun talking to you too.

Balu 58:08

Thank you so much.