Leadership 1.0

A few weeks after I came back from my Vipassana 2.0, I wrote an inspired mail to all my friends. I have been recently reading a book called " The White Man's Burden" by William Easterly. It very smoothly argues on how planners(like me as you see below) have never got around to achieve their plans in development. He argues quite pertinently about the need for "Searchers" - people who know the pulse of every opportunity and know what to do about it. A good comparision of my change in mindset would be to read this post and the post on my ideal organization. I am myself amazed at the 180 degree turn in a month!

 

Someone once said, "Leadership is about turning a private dream into public reality"

 

 

 

I am privileged and fortunate to have friends like you who shaped the person that I am. So when I say that I have a dream, I do essentially mean that the dream is dedicated to all of you who shaped the person that I am and supported me wholeheartedly. I use WE later in the blog. I hope that you will own it by the time you reach there.

 

Two major recent incidents/experiences have shaped the dream. One my Vipassana meditation (which in an earlier mail I have urged you to try) and second the demise of Sri Sathya Sai Baba(My family have been devotees of him. My grandmother's sister has stayed there for almost a 2 decades now). My learnings from these experiences were the following:

•  My self realization comes through serving others selflessly - not expecting anything on material front, affiliation front, esteem front and self actualizatio front. I have learnt this lesson with all the heart I put into my kids over the last two years. Like Will Smith says at the end of the movie Pursuit of Happyness choking with emotion - This little part in my life is called Happyness!! I have had countless moments like that at school and outside it. I realised that it all came from selfless service. 

• For whatever is the scepticism for Sri Sathya Sai Baba(I am still an agnostic moving a little towards faith. I defnitely believe in a supreme force beyond human comprehension), I believe that he was a great soul. To my definition of leadership, he has excelled. He defnitely is a paragon of human achievement. If people call him God, that is their faith and I do not have anything against it. I realised how much he could accomplish in a lifetime. Puttaparthi is a really small town devoid of any natural resources as well. It now has visitors from across the world, world class health and education institutions which provide service for free and drinking water!

• As a bureacrat, you are chained. As a politician, you make compromises. You are truly free in service only if you are a sage!

I understand that you might be put off by the length of the blog already. So I will switch quickly to my dreams. I did put a lot of thought and contemplation into this. I can write to anyone of you seperately on my motivations and why I believe that these are the best development solution models.

• My vision is simple.  I want to put Vijayawada on the world map for being the happiest place in the world. Economists have now started to collect data for a GDP equivalent - Gross national happiness(GNP). We will benchmark Vijayawada against the best country in the world and will do everything to get our city there.

• How will we do it? I believe we need to eradicate poverty, give access to healthcare, education, employement and all of that. I agree to all of that. But if you can't give happiness and art of living a life where is the end to greed, corruption and moral debasement in society. In short, we must build a society with values of morality, self awareness and selfless service.

• For the above, we will need to build strong institutions. We will build the following things to realize our ultimate goal

1. A Spiritual centre which will give people the tools to be happy and practice moral and self aware living.

2. A World Class Educational Institution
(A Global village which will teach everything) 

3. A World Class Health centre

(We already have a benchmark in Whitefield and Puttaparthi) 

 

I bet that the 3 projects will take less than 1000 crores in total for setting up cost. The operational cost for the first one is going to be through voluntary donations. The operational cost for second one will once again be on voluntary donations from people who make use of the service and research done by in house faculty. The operational cost for the third one will be through research.

 

Just to put it in perspective, the budget is about 10 days of spending for AP goverment. I am not accounting for the corruption that prevails.(Recollect how much Raja and his team lost the nation - 1 lakh crore conservatively). I am asking for just 1%.

I think I personally want to dabble in bureaucracy, politics and spirituality to make this happen. I realise how all three are important in the world we live in. Dr. JPN has the first two. But he can't cut through ice because his intellect is too sharp for common people. For service to reach people, you need what Satya Sai Baba had - metaphysical powers to attract talent from across the world and make things happen. It is said that the hospital took less than an year from foundation to operation. All instruments from across the world were lifted by Air India for free and not a single day delay came from the Government. That's power of execution for you. I was on a team which built an ice cream factory worth 15 crores. It is really small compared to the hospital in size and complexity of the project(1% maybe). We took 1 year to do the same. I was with the best organization in the country. We had all the money in the world. We had world class reputation. But we did it with a lot of infights, overtime and unhappiness. So, thats my point of why I want to dabble in all the three. And Vipassana has given me the confidence that I can reach a stage in personal spiritual growth, where if my will is pure and selfless, the world will give it to me. My scholarships worth a crore for my Masters education is a case in this point. I never wanted them to come to me. I just did selfless service for 2 years and spoke about it in my essays and interviews. That is all that was needed.

 

I think the Universe has the resources. It just needs a group of committed people to tap it selflessly. It will respond if our intention is pure and selfless. If you have persisted and read this far, I am pleading you to be part of this private dream. Let's dream together like in INCEPTION and turn our hometown into what Tagore described in his poem " Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high. Where the world is not fragmented by narrow domestic walls. Into that heaven, take me O Lord"