The starting point of economic liberalisation in 1991 with the country facing balance of payment crisis and the RBI pledging gold is seen by many as the lowest point of our economy, in the past two to three decades. We have come a long way since.

Today, GDP is trillion dollars-plus. Foreign exchange reserves don’t worry. But the mood isn’t upbeat, and it isn’t merely due to recession. I don’t recall us feeling lost in 1991. We bid goodbye to a regime of few possibilities, and by 1992 commenced a fresh chapter in our economics. There were hiccups. But the journey attracted; 2013 is that chapter stalling. The government is sensitive to the exigencies of global economics, but not its retail feel. Cost of living has gone up, people have lost jobs and generation of new jobs isn’t enough.

More than new jobs, there is a poverty of ideas; an overdose of market as intelligence at the expense of intellect and empathy for intellect. Belittling intellect is stylish. Flexible employment to tap the bored but creative, and the bored but experienced, isn’t happening. We are wasting human potential. Those employed full time enjoy high incomes basically as reward for enduring the rat race. New enterprise is difficult at street level. Real-estate cost hurts.

In direct proportion to the high population’s demand for income by any means, corruption thrives. Ideas have lost shades of why, when and where. It is all about how, the art of navigating our rat race. We dismantled controlled economy in 1991. We have other monsters to dismantle in 2013, most of them within us.

continuous playback of the old

An old set of forces are fading in India. The new is due. But its arrival is delayed, for the old train is not exiting the platform. The old includes an entourage of memories and parameters of success.

But the times have changed. Population, including what population does, is the biggest game changer. It is a rat race. Somebody bored is not somebody being irresponsible. It is somebody going waste for want of sufficiently engaging things around.

Only the young, free from fearing mortality, can imagine life. That’s what India needs desperately — a less insecure dispensation, not this frantic pursuit of God, religion and ritual.

Yet, most of our young leaders are young only by age. Their heads are full of inheritance. What’s the point in that? What’s the change in craving to be superpower so that we can be superhuman in a return of mythological greatness? The continuous playback of the old kills hope. It resembles travelling in circles. A new age requires new thought.

Leadership vacancy

There are no short cuts. The young must come in, but if they are to repeat the old, then it is simply not worth it. That’s when you yearn for genuine leadership — the sort that bothers to see the length and breadth of this country, understands its irreversible diversity, looks at it empathetically and boldly sets about making it the country it never became.

That’s when you notice to your horror and regret that you never trained anyone for such a job, neither in family nor at school. We’ve got a vacancy. It’s called leadership. Popularly, it is patriotism. India has plenty of such jingoism and warrior clans thirsting for battle till one actually occurs. India needs leadership. How do you explain leadership when intellect is liability? That’s the dilemma of 2013.

(The author is a freelance journalist based in Mumbai)

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