How do people get what they want? Well, West Bengal’s chief minister and Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee clearly believes it’s by opposing what she doesn’t want. “I am opposed to FDI, I am opposed to fuel price increases, I am opposed to the Tata Nano factory, I am opposed to decisions my own minister takes in the railway ministry, I am opposed to paying back the Rs.2 lakh crore debt of the West Bengal government, I am opposed to people drawing cartoons of me, I am opposed to people asking me direct questions on TV,” she says in sum. Banerjee once claimed a doctoral degree from a non-existent East Georgia University, USA. Despite all this, Time magazine has listed her among 100 most influential people in the world.

Dr. J.P. Narayan, a medical practitioner and convenor-chairman of the Lok Satta Party, believes he can get what he wants by organising. He believes organisational ability and management is the prime factor which distinguishes successful societies from failed ones. The fledgling Lok Satta Party organised a simple awareness programme in Andhra Pradesh under which citizens were made to carry calibrated containers of fuel purchased from petrol pumps to demonstrate the difference between what citizens pay for and what they get. The campaign reportedly led to a visible change in behaviour and governance of petrol stations in the state. Narayan’s contribution in getting the Right to Information Act passed by Parliament is widely acknowledged. The Kukatpally constituency he represents in the state legislative assembly has actually seen street lights, reorganisation of sewage lines, and construction of toilets in high density areas.

N. Rajadhyaksha, editor of the daily newspaper Mint, says Indians value protest over action. There’s considerable truth in this observation. The great contributions of Dr. Verghese Kurien (a lifetime devoted to building milk cooperatives), Dr. Homi Bhabha (father of India’s atomic energy programme), and Dr. E. Sreedharan (Delhi Metro) are relatively unnoticed, whereas the nauseating din — created by Mamata Banerjee and Samajwadi Party leader Mulayam Singh Yadav — rules the airwaves everyday. However, a more revealing comment is made by Subroto Bagchi (founder of Mind Tree Consulting) who says: “Indians don’t want to engineer success, they want to inherit it,” as a matter of right or entitlement.

There are many factors behind this attitude of entitlement. I believe it’s rooted in the caste system and its inherent rigidity. You can’t change your caste in your life-span. Try washing, rubbing, scorching, or jumping off a cliff, you won’t shed it. It’s an immutable inheritance. But since we are a democratic nation, we can oppose the caste system, protest, throw a fit, get upset, demonstrate, wag admonishing fingers, stage a public fast and stop others from going about their business. Doing all this is certainly more ‘active’ than silently tolerating oppression, but how productive is such activity is a moot point. By protesting without constructing an alternate reality, constant protest becomes a form of illness over time, what psychologist Martin Seligman famously described as learned helplessness i.e, “the condition of a human or animal that has learned to behave helplessly, failing to respond even though there are opportunities for it to help itself”.

India’s freedom movement was fortunate to have courageous stalwarts of organised protest like Gandhi, and perhaps Jinnah, in the forefront. We saw what they achieved. But perhaps an even greater blessing was the gift of organisers like Nehru and Patel, who do not get the credit they deserve in this post-1991 world. Nehru may have made some himalayan egoistical blunders, but he also built a strong foundation for a modern, progressive India. His was the vision, core ideals and organisation capability which produced Kurien, Bhabha, M.S. Swaminathan, and Sreedharan. The point is that the youth of today need leaders like them as role models to address the country’s social and political challenges. Not those who throw temper tantrums.

Young people must develop a sense of right and wrong, and the courage to stand up against wrong-doing. For this, they must be taught organisation and management early in life, if things are to actually change. Perhaps the worst thing a young person can learn is not to take responsibility for his or her condition. Such fudging assumes many forms. We see it in the righteous belligerence that comes from absorption of half-baked leftist ideas; a one-sided view of history, and veneration of Machiavellian politicians who fan the flames of conflict.We also see it in ‘post call-center India’ where the lopsided demand-supply equation of talent has instilled poorly skilled youth with a distorted sense of capability and entitlement. Hence six-figure salaries, bingeing, international vacations and a new gizmo every month have become a birthright.

A hundred years from now, the deafening silence of Kurien’s cows and Sreedharan’s rails, will be louder than Mamata’s shrill cacophony. The young need to realise early in life that success is hard-earned.
You’ve got to work for things, not just scream for them.

(Ashish Rajpal is the founder and managing director of iDiscoveri/XSEED)