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Friday, December 10, 2004
"Our two great strengths"
In a special issue of Newsweek on leadership, the magazine asked Nandan Nilekani, “You are committed to improving India’s public governance, but how do you change such a corrupt status quo?” Nilekani answered:
The interview with Nilekani isn't online on Newsweek's website, oddly, but there is an interview there of Aishwarya Rai. In it, she informs us that "the Hindi film industry offers wonderful, feel-good cinema". In the very next sentence, she cites Devdas as an example of one such "feel-good" film. Nice.
My feeling is, we are trying to tackle this at the wrong end of the stick. What are our two great strengths? Our democratic tradition and mastery over information processing. Marry these, and you can solve the problem. If you can bring in rigorous information processing and transparency and let the public use that information, governance will improve automatically.
The interview with Nilekani isn't online on Newsweek's website, oddly, but there is an interview there of Aishwarya Rai. In it, she informs us that "the Hindi film industry offers wonderful, feel-good cinema". In the very next sentence, she cites Devdas as an example of one such "feel-good" film. Nice.
