When we look at the Doing Business ranking of India at a lowly 142, we all blame the government saying it’s doing nothing. We assume that it is the government which is at fault and that we will improve our ranking when the government gets its act together.

There is one crucial area, however, that we need to work on. That is being honest and fulfilling our contractual obligations.

Of all the elements India is lowest on enforcing contracts (186 out of 189). Surely it reflects that our legal system needs improvement but if we all were honest and fulfilled our contractual obligations, we would not need to turn to the legal system.

Manipulation is valorised

One of the issues with our society is what we teach our children; that possibly is at the core of why we are not honest in our dealings and are fond of jugaads and short cuts.

Typical casual conversations in a corporate ambience centre around bunking classes, ragging teachers, not studying, scraping through. You will rarely find anyone happily saying he was a studious, hardworking and sincere student.

We tend to say that we don’t prepare or plan well for our task but know we can do it by studying last minute and somehow managing it (the jugaad trait).

We are corrupt and generally not sincere in our work. If we ask a hypothetical Chinese or Western worker to come and bang a table with a hammer 100 times every day and go, they would do it and go. The Indian will do it for 2 days and then try 99 and see if anyone notices, then 98 and will probably keep doing it till he is caught. Then he will trot out an explanations about being tired, unable to count, temporary problems, it was only today, and so on.

These traits are all fairly ingrained in our psyche and we do not realise that this takes us away from achieving our full potential. Is it to do with our culture, our milieu, our past economic policy which was characterised by shortages, an innate desire to hoard?

The blame must lie in how all of us react to our children and what we train them and tell them. These are obviously generalisations and there are a lot of exceptions.

We are proud when our children achieve something, and even more so if he has done it the smart way rather than the hard way. We praise them and say this guy will be successful. We worry if our child is straightforward and honest and fret that he will not be successful in this society.

We constantly drill into our children’s head, ‘don’t worry about the teacher, your principal is a fool if he insists on discipline’. And, we make fun of teachers and others who insist on children being disciplined. We praise other children who are “smart” and make our children who are sincere and honest feel inferior. Our jokes depict sincere and hardworking people as stupid and good for nothing whilst the smart people are the ones who achieve maximum with minimal effort and through shortcuts. Bollywood also reflects the same.

Sahi Bharat campaign

So along with the Swachh Bharat to improve our Doing Business Ranking, I would suggest that Prime Minister Modi launch a ‘Sahi Bharat’ campaign promoting honesty, rewarding those who achieve with the right means and introduce this programme at the school level — that Being Straightforward, Honest and Sincere is a great thing.

The writer is Partner, India Leadership Team, Grant Thornton India. Views are personal

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