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Oct-30-2009
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Views expressed here are author"s own and not of this website. Full disclaimer is
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"Seek Knowledge even unto China," Commanded Prophet Mohammed
"All the money in the world cannot help a village, if they will not help themselves," Swami Vivekananda
"India is a rich county. Most people are poor to very poor," this I believe
Summary: The article focuses on my beliefs.
It offers in first Part my definition of leadership and what should be responsibility of educators. It identifies how horizontal thinking and management can help accelerate the replicability and scalability process for programs I used to develop my model for reforming secondary education. See,
1. www.ivarta.com at http://www.blogs.ivarta.com/Model-for-Reforming-Secondary-Education-Rural-India/blog-298.htmon 08072009) and
2. http://idcoa.cloverpad.org/Content/Documents/Document.ashx?DocId=62192 (07272009 IDC-America)
In second part, I assert Glocalization is essential for changes in context and culture. It concludes by offering some ideas for a sustainable program of poverty alleviation. Students should be empowered with 3G internet connectivity to thrive in the increasingly growing flat 21st century world.
Part I: This I believe
The primary responsibility of good educators and students in 21st century is to practice leadership by example. Educators should strive to prepare students to achieve their dreams in an increasingly flat 21st century world.
A job of any educator for the most part should be to impart true education. By true education I mean education that stimulates thinking, creativity and innovation. For most of the last millennium creativity and innovative power of India"s youth has remained dormant for lack of proper true education and tools available in the 21st century.
Educators, for major part, should help educate and explain to students what world they are living in and what they need to do if they want to thrive within it. Students should learn what risks are worth taking if they are prepared to work hard and get all the education they can not only in school but also in day to day living simply by being aware of their surroundings and environment relative to how life in "other" parts of country and the world stacks up against life in their communities. They can achieve their dreams if they learn math and how to have a numeric discussion.
To place students on a highway to sustainable growth path educators should learn how to implement educational reforms for they have power to transform education, infrastructure and governance in a much more profound manner. Reform involves looking at infrastructure, education, and governance and upgrading each one, so more of students have the tools and legal framework to innovate and collaborate at the highest levels.
Educators should understand and instill in students the value of horizontal integration as opposed to government dominated vertical integration of last century that has yielded unsatisfactory results for 70% of India"s population that is poor to very poor. Very poor Indians are about 38% as they make less than Rs. 3,000 for a family of five according to latest classifications by Government of India (Poverty line set to rise, number of poor to swell at http://www.hindustantimes.com/Poverty-line-set-to-rise-number-of-poor-to-swell/H1-Article1-464024.aspx)
Horizontal Thinking for Replicability and Scalability Process
Horizontal integrations means people understand complementarities in a flat world and NGOs are open to team up with other like minded NGOs and all other enterprises by sharing and extending a helping hand to redesign or reinvent themselves and manage a joint effort to accelerate growth through practical developments. There is a value creation in the horizontal collaboration when you begin to mutually reinforce each other.
Thinking and managing horizontally applies to everything from business to education to military planning. It takes an adjustment to move from vertical to horizontal management. Vertical management often starts by asking who controls what systems; horizontal management focuses on outcome and effect you want to create. Horizontal mangers start with how I can use my own network or network of networks to integrate each input to redesign my operations so we all can analyze our problems and operations together to optimize productivity. This is an effective process for replicability and scalability. Because all of us are smarter than one of us, my priority is not who controls the process but how do I create a horizontal response system to extract most analysis from all of us to understand most practical and effective means to replicate and scale my process to achieve optimum productivity in shortest possible time. We should strive to achieve the state of "we do it right the first time, we do as much as possible and we do as fast as we can" to deliver highest value for our investment of every rupee and workday.
With horizontal thinking and management we create a culture for glocalization.
Suggested readings:
1. The World Is Flat by Thomas Friedman (2006)
2. Hot, Flat and Crowded by Thomas Friedman (2008)
3. Imagining India by Nandan Nilekani (2009)
Part II: Glocalization and Culture
To glocalize means developing a culture of openness to foreign influences and ideas to focus on improving infrastructure, education and governance. Glocalization requires building trust within the society for strangers to collaborate together. Glocalization means elites have concerns for the plight of masses and they are ready to invest at home instead of investing abroad.
The more you have a culture that naturally glocalizes - that is, the more your culture easily absorbs foreign ideas and global best practices and melds those with its own traditions - the greater advantage you will have in the flat world. Cultures like that of India - open and willing to change - have a huge advantage in the flat world. You have to have a strong culture and also the openness to adapt and adopt from others. With openness you start tending to people for their talent and abilities. You are dealing with people in any part of the world on internet; you don"t know what is his or her color, ethnicity or race but on the basis of talent your views of the human beings are likely to change, subtly, over time provided you are into the talent and performance-based world rather than the background based world.
India has many natural resources but it also needs to globally source many more natural resources and technologies for industrialization and rapid development of all communities. Countries without natural resources are much more likely, through human evolution, to develop habits of openness to new ideas, as it is the only way they can survive and advance.
Culture matters and culture is nested in context, not genes. Cultures are a product of the context - geography, education level, leadership, and historical experiences - of any society. As context changes local leaders in open societies start changing and adapting initiating a process for precipitation of the cultural changes.
Internet Connectivity in the Flat World
With internet connectivity world is shrinking very fast; it"s a "Small World" out there. Introspections should reveal where you are and where your limits are. You know where you rank very quickly in a flat world.
In flat world all necessary tools are at the fingertip of every person with access to internet connectivity. Internet connectivity offers all students with basic education same tools as the graduates of prestigious IITs, IIMs, business schools, scientists and engineers and all entrepreneurs, multinational corporations, big and small businesses. Given math skills and access to internet connectivity any student with basic education has tools at his finger tips to access any information s/he needs to achieve dreams to thrive in today"s India that is offering even playing field to all genders and people of different faiths.
Sustainable Program for Poverty Alleviation
You don"t grow your country out of poverty by guaranteeing everyone a job. India offered many jobs to semi-skilled and skilled poor in bloated Indian government bureaucracies and state owned mega projects undertaken by the government in late 20th century. If it were just a matter of jobs, India"s development would not have stagnated in 20th century. The real issue is not just employment, but it is increasingly productive employment that allows living standards to rise. State-owned enterprises and state-subsidized private firms usually have not delivered sustainable productivity growth nor have taken any measures that have been assumed to be elixirs of growth.
Even massive investments in education won"t guarantee productivity growth.
Productivity growth and hence, the way out of poverty is a matter of using resources well. Persistent poverty is a practical as well as moral problem. As a practical matter, it does no good to focus just on our moral failings as many pundits in India from 1947 onwards have done. Poor people grow out of poverty when their government with demands from people, NGOs, business operators, etc create an environment in which educated workers and capitalists have physical and legal infrastructure that makes it easy to start businesses, raise capital, and become entrepreneurs and when they subject people to some competition from people in the other nations of the flat world.
Basic formula for comprehensive growth is horizontal management of reforms plus good governance, education, infrastructure and the ability to glocalize. Starting 1990 by freeing economy from the license Raj government initiated economic reforms as a first step towards good governance. Passage of RTI (Right to Information) law has empowered public to force accountability of bureaucrats. There is steady growth in infrastructure and power generation capacity developments and improvements in quality of tertiary education. My innovative, "A Model for Reforming Secondary Education for Rural Youth," at http://www.blogs.ivarta.com/Model-for-Reforming-Secondary-Education-Rural-India/blog-298.htm offers practical solution to empower rural youth with basic tools for wealth generation. Elimination of energy poverty and empowerment of rural youth with basic educational tools to access internet connectivity and improve productivity is urgently needed. Government is in the process of introducing 3G technology by end of 2009 for cell phones to greatly enhance rural people"s access to internet. Taken together the horizontal integration initiatives and accelerated developments places India on a sustainable path to poverty alleviation.
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