R.K. Misra started the new-generation political party Nav-Bharat to encourage credible and capable leaders of society to enter and reform politics by fostering a candidate-centric polity rather than the present party-centric polity. He also launched the ‘Change India Initiative’ to engage educated youth, middle class and working professionals in electoral politics. In 2008, he won the ‘Lead India’ campaign conducted by The Times of India . Prior to his political life, Misra founded Tenet Telecomm (acquired by Flextronics) and Traveljini.

Where are you from?

I remember a cobra crawling into my suspenders. My father was a Village Development Officer in Uttar Pradesh, and in those days villages didn’t have rentable homes. The Pradhan (village head) would have an extra room in his mud house, where we’d sleep on our hay-stacked wooden planks. I woke up that night and saw the cobra and then my mother praying for the cobra to leave. After the cobra left, the remainder of the night was also spent in thanksgiving and prayer.

My father’s older brother was a farmer and had seven children. My father didn’t want any differences to be apparent between us and our cousins and, therefore, all of us would get our shirts made twice a year of the same cloth. My father felt that everybody should have access to the basics and this influenced our sense of purpose and equality.

In the mornings, we’d all go to the house of one of the villagers which doubled as our school. The teacher would come after working in the fields and I would manage the class until then.

In the evenings, my mother would lie on her charpai and doze off. I was expected to sit beside the charpai with a small kerosene lamp and study. Suddenly she’d wake up to find me also snoozing, but most of the time I had to study. I was the shining star pupil in the village and this put a lot of pressure on me.

By the time the UP Board exams came around, we had moved to a school in a Tehsil town. I topped the UP Boards for my school and thereafter entered IIT Kanpur. In the last 30 years, I’ve been the first and last to go to IIT from that school and town. The motto at home was, “Work hard, work straight, get educated, and life is made.” Ambitions were simple. If you were a parent, you worked to get your sons a good education and your daughters a good husband. My sister did her Master’s in Economics. The rule was, ‘If you’re an educated girl, you get an educated husband and if you have an educated husband, he’ll get a good-earning job’.

I remember running around desperately with my father to find a husband for my sister. It was like seeking venture capital for your company. I remember being told: “I’m getting twenty other rishtas (proposals). Why your sister?” The first question inevitably was, “ Baap kya karta hai (what does the father do)?” Initially we told prospective families that my father was a Rural Development Officer, but after I got into IIT my father would proudly say, “My son is in IIT”. Finally, we found my brother-in-law, whose family saw a future in ours.

What have you done?

While I was at IIT, the Japanese bought the Rockefeller Centre. Nine of the top ten banks were Japanese. People felt that the Japanese were going to take over the world. It was the Reagan era and the US was in a bad shape. After IIT, I decided to apply to Tokyo University. In Tokyo, I felt I was representing India and felt sad that the Japanese had a poor opinion of our polity, our infrastructure, our bureaucracy. After all, in 1945 Japan was bombed, and a few years later India became independent. Why had their economic trajectory been so different from those times of scarcity and suffering?

A few years later when I returned to India, the Japanese Prime Minister Yoshirô Mori visited the country and I started building relationships between Indian and Japanese businesses in IT and telecom.

I wanted the world to respect India, but respect doesn’t come from reminding people how great we were hundreds and thousands of years ago. A lot of our political parties talk about Maharana Pratap or Shivaji or Chanakya. They are intoxicating people with the opium of history. “I can’t give you a decent present. So let the past be great.” This signals a regressive society’s polity. Civilisations disappear.

In the decade after Tokyo University, I founded an IT and a telecom business in India, the US and Japan. I was also appointed adviser to the Karnataka and other State governments. Power circles don’t like straight-talkers but I was more than willing to take on the challenging tasks because the Chief Minister supported me. You can’t do anything without support from the political bosses. Being in the decision-making position is the most fundamental way to see change. There is no shortage of money in our public sector. If you’re engaged, you can ensure that the money is spent in the right manner, with tangible outcomes.

When I won ‘ The Times of India Lead India’ initiative, it was like being in a soap opera. I received over a crore messages of support. Politicians are smart. They spotted me. Either you kill the contender or you take him in. Initially I was met by the Congress scion to engage with the Youth Congress. I was also approached by the BJP to help rebrand it as the party of professionals. As elections approached, I saw that ticket distribution was not necessarily on merit. You couldn’t see how decisions were being made. But the feeling among the political class is that if you’re educated, you don’t know the “ground reality.” I would always say, “Don’t worry. I’m from UP. I’ve seen plenty of ground reality.”

When they took in the tainted leader of the Maya Raj, BSP minister Babu Singh Kushwaha, I had to cancel my campaign engagements. I realised that I was wasting my time. In any of these political parties, it’s not about who you are. It’s whose you are, and I was uncomfortable with the concept of a political godfather. I could feel the subtle hints, “ Are Misra ji , aate raha kijye . Milte raha kijye (Misraji, keep in touch).” Like the king’s durbar. You keep checking in your attendance and maybe one day, if the King is pleased, you will be given a fiefdom. That’s how Indian polity functions. That wasn’t for me.

Where are you going?

The current political parties are monolithic. They’re controlled by a family or some organisation. Gandhis control Congress. Mulayam Singh gave the crown to his son. The RSS controls the BJP. Politicians don’t want people with talent around and people with talent don’t want politicians around. Most parties look for the people who will first buy the party ticket and then buy the votes.

Since 2009, the Indian economy has been slowly losing lustre: job losses, internal and external debt, current account deficit, currency depreciation, clouds of corruption. We are a nation of the young. And what do young people do when they don’t get a job? The Anna movement caught fire because people are just so fed up. But change must be directed politically and systematically. We initiated Nav-Bharat to become a credible national political alternative — our mission is to identify and field capable and credible leaders of our society to become our elected representatives.

Nav-Bharat is present in eight States: UP, Haryana, Maharashtra, Goa, Kerala, Karnataka, Orissa and Jharkhand. We are fielding over 60 candidates for the Lok Sabha elections in 2014 and will participate in government formation. We’ve selected our constituencies strategically. If this 60 per cent who are disengaged voted, we would win immediately but then 65 years of cheating has made this group cynical. But we are steadily marching towards our goal.

Anya Gupta is the Editor of ‘The Captainship’.

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