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Leadership calls, at Durban and Bhopal statecraft

Even before the final of the World Twenty20 cricket championship in Johannesburg on Monday, the new India’s itch for a new leadership idiom had manifested itself at Durban in the semi-final against a very, very formidable Australia. Johannesburg not merely confirmed the new style and new confidence, the joyous eruption of celebrations across the country also underlines the new mood of self-belief: not what the outsider can do to you and get away with but what you can do to him if the leader believes in himself and his team. Beyond the media-generated hype, what got underlined at Durban and Johannesburg was that the young and the younger generations are itching to break out of the paradigm of self-doubt and timidity that the old and the tired leaders have put in place in the polity in the name of experience and seniority.

Indeed, a sharp contrast to the self-assurance at display at Durban was unwittingly provided, more or less at the same time, by the Bharatiya Janata Party at its national executive meeting in Bhopal. The BJP show at Bhopal showcased the self-centredness of an ageing political elite, a cluster of less than half-a-dozen leaders forever willing to waste their limited energies and even more limited capacities in outmanoeuvring one another for the top leadership slot.

If the never-ending Atal Bihari Vajpayee-L.K. Advani sparring for the (non-existing) prime ministerial mantle was not bad enough, it was the harking back to the presumed electoral appeal of the “Ram Sethu” controversy that betrayed an unimaginative and backward-looking mindset. At Bhopal, the exhausted leaders tried to manufacture a new lexicon of demons and heroes, anchored in a very, very distant past, totally at variance with modern India’s pains, aspirations, and dreams. If Durban and Johannesburg came to symbolise the honesty of purpose and spirit of endeavour, Bhopal witnessed a relapse into calculation and cynicism.

True, the game of cricket is not to be confused with the more exacting tasks before political leaders nor with an equally rewarding arena of public life; yet it does seem that we have been given a glimpse of two different approaches to the challenges and opportunities that confront modern India — one at Durban and the other at Bhopal, one willing to take its chances, venture out into unknown territory, and the other mired in the old clichés, familiar and hackneyed arguments, and failed strategies. While the public life is conducted largely within and according to our self-devised and self-regulated (and often self-suborned) rules and regulations, those who lead in international cricket have to match their leadership wits against the foreigner, who is under no obligation to give us a break, in a contest conducted and supervised (mostly fairly) by global referees and umpires. For example, friends and acolytes of Mr. Advani are entitled to believe that their man deserves to be Prime Minister and that this is the least the country owes him in exchange for all the sacrifices he is presumed to have made; on the other hand, no one will ever want to give the slightest of the benefit of the doubt to a Mahendra Singh Dhoni in the highly competitive world of international cricket. At Durban we witnessed the self-confidence, bordering on self-conceit, of talented young Indians; at Bhopal we were treated to the selfish masquerading as dedicated public servants. Durban and Bhopal can be said to define two different national moods in a changing India.

The contrast between Durban and Bhopal is essentially a contrast between two variations of national sentiments — a desire to move forward, take risk, venture into unknown territory, rely on one’s wits, skills and instincts, and not be afraid to fail; and, then, there is the old style, content to play for percentages, a preoccupation with minimalist expectations, a reliance on cleverness (rather than wisdom), and a self-absorbed mofussil pragmatism, devoid of moral certitudes. The younger generation may be oblivious to the “legacy” of the national movement, it may be regrettably unconcerned with the farmers committing suicides in the Vidharbha region, it may choose to remain unimpressed with the bogus piety and spurious sentimentality regularly dished out by a cynical political leadership; but, this generation is also unwilling to let the tired and exhausted old men define its dreams for it.

It is not a simple argument between the young and the old leadership, though it is worth recalling our own experience against the British colonial rule. The freedom movement was led largely by young leaders. Jawaharlal Nehru, Maulana Azad, and Subhas Bose, for example, became Congress president at the relatively young age of 40, give or take a year. In recent years, the Bill Clintons and the Tony Blairs have steered established democracies and redefined leadership profile in competitive political systems. On the other hand, an old leader need not ipso facto be deemed a total liability. After all, Franklin Roosevelt did lead the United States to victory in the Second World War from a wheel-chair. Deng Xiaoping was in his 70s when he took charge of China and presided over its transition from an indifferently performing closed economy to a high growth path that has enabled his nation to discover the joys and fruits of unleashing a society’s entrepreneurial energies.

The choice is not necessarily between the old and the young leader but it is rather between the kind of leadership a leader has to offer — either an empowering leadership of the kind witnessed at Durban or the challenged leadership that was on display in Bhopal. An empowering leader propels a nation or a team to discover its dormant energy, tap its collective talent, work towards a common agenda and help devise an ethically sound vision; on the other hand, the challenged leader only works on his individualised glory or honouring a family’s tradition, obsessed with the past achievements or missed opportunities. In India, the challenged leader is perhaps just content to work only for a small resting place in the Rajghat complex. The new India will connect with only those leaders who will help it define a new, morally defensible infrastructure of dreams and opportunities.

The new national sentiment of the younger generation is at work not just in the metropolitan centres or big cities such as Bangalore or Hyderabad but essentially in smaller towns such as Surender Nagar, Nasik or Ranchi. We may bemoan this generation’s lack of compassion and concern but we cannot ignore that it wants to be part of the success story; ask any 16-year-old in an urban slum or a small town what he or she wants, and most likely the answer will be: computer training and English.

This generation, sadly enough, is not willing to make sacrifice for any anti-imperialist crusades; nor is it enamoured of Third World sentimentalism. It too wants a share of the pie in the globalised economic developments.

Unwittingly, the ICC World Twenty20 final in Johannesburg also provided two contrasting profiles in the national identities we have carved out for ourselves in this part of the world. Pakistan’s captain Shoaib Malik insisted on locating himself as the representative of “all the Muslims” around the world; and the Man of the Tournament, Shahid Afridi, conspicuously invoked Almighty Allah’s benediction. Earlier in the day, a badly besieged President Musharraf had stoked Pakistani nationalist fervour with demands that the players display fearlessness. In total contrast to this exhibition of religious sentimentalism, was the easy, relaxed, and joyful display of multiculturalism of the Indian team. The Man of the Match, Irfan Pathan, was, under no obligation to propitiate any god, only voicing a professional cricketer’s formulations. The Pakistani players’ preoccupation with a display of their religiosity parallels the fundamentalist inclinations exhibited at Bhopal. No young Indian, whatever his faith, would find attractive the contrived religiosity of the Johannesburg variety or its Bhopal version.

In a few days time, the Australian cricket team will be here, itching to settle a score or two with Dhoni and his comrades. That is part of the game. But no defeat can take away from the collective discovery of a new, larger self-belief.

The task of a forward-looking leadership will be to build on this moment of national discovery, deepen our collective identity and to devise innovative polices and programmes to help Indian society break out of intellectual stagnation and material backwardness.

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