Dr. Balasubramaniam, a physician, author, and founder of the Swami Vivekananda Youth Movement, discusses his latest book on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, leadership lessons from India, and the challenges facing the NGO sector.
The physician, author, and founder of the Swami Vivekananda Youth Movement discusses his latest book on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, leadership lessons from India, and the challenges facing the NGO sector.
Dr. Balasubramaniam or Dr. Balu, as he is known to most people, has journeyed on the path of social impact and community change for many decades. He is a trained physician who founded the Swami Vivekananda Youth Movement (SVYM) at a very early stage in his life. The next initiative he set up was the Grassroots Research And Advocacy Movement (GRAAM), a public policy think tank. As someone who serves as a full-time Member-HR in the Capacity Building Commission of the Government of India, he is passionate about leadership development and human capital. He is also Chairperson of the Social Stock Exchange Advisory Committee of the Securities & Exchange Board of India (SEBI). It is an understatement to say he cares deeply about everyone realizing their full potential and having a societal impact.
His recent book “Power Within: The Leadership Legacy of Narendra Modi” is already a national bestseller. During his recent book tour in the U.S., Dr. Balasubramaniam sat down with Venkatesh Raghavendra in Boston, Massachusetts, to discuss the book, his views on leadership, the current state of the NGO sector, the newly formed Social Stock Exchange in India and much more.
Venkatesh Raghavendra: It is said that your book Power Within offers a contrast between ‘being a leader’ and the ‘exercise of leadership’. Can you elaborate on the difference between the two?
Dr. Balasubramaniam: This book is about explaining to the world what the Indic appreciation of leadership is and how the West views it. Predominantly, the West appreciates the concept of ‘being a leader’. Its more about the person and his identity. This identity would come only when one has followers. It’s always very popularly mentioned in the West that you are a leader only when you have followers behind you. But in India is not about the ‘person’. It’s not about the ‘identity’ of being a leader but the actions of exercising leadership. It’s about the acts of leadership one engages in. Here in the West, it’s about ‘me and what I do’. It’s about me being at the center of the work. Whereas Indic way of thinking is that it’s not about me doing the work, it’s about the work getting done. And that’s the reason I wanted to bring it out as a book.
Why did you choose Prime Minister Modi as the protagonist for this narrative?
I chose Prime Minister Modi because I realized that we usually tend to worship the extraordinary to avoid emulating them. We write about them, talk about them, and we think the best way to live their lives is by not living it, but by worshipping it. We make them a hero, put them on a pedestal, create a Jayanti (celebrations) around it, worship them, put a garland and say, ‘I’ve done my job.’ So, it’s a proxy for not living their message, whether it is Mahatma Gandhi or Sardar Patel or Ambedkar, we think we can’t emulate them and it is easier to just worship them. They are very powerful characters in the context of leadership, Krishna, Arjuna to Ramana Maharishi, to Aurobindo, to Vivekananda, to Narendra Modi. I chose Narendra Modi consciously because all the others are in the past.
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I wanted a living life and blood example, whom we can relate to in everyday life. A man who was selling tea as a young person on the platform of a railway station, negotiates the complexities of the world of politics and people. The world of politics in India has possibly got the highest barriers to entry, negotiating at every stage without sacrificing on his conviction of seva (service), but keeping it as a consistent theme. I think that story deserves to be told, and that’s why I made him the exemplar for this book.
You had a unique vantage point observing Prime Minister Modi in action. What stood out for you?
Kautilya, 600 years ago, said only two things matter for a ruler — yoga kshema and lokasangraha. The ruler’s job is the welfare of citizens to protect the securities earned by the citizens. And he said for that the ruler can only do his duty if he is an indriya vijayi. That’s the “power within” I speak about. The control of senses – the senses of the human nature. Craving for name and fame come in the way of leadership. But Kautilya is very clear: if you have to deliver on this to your citizens, what is generally missing in public leadership today is indriya vijayi or indriya nigraha. And that is what stood out for me in Prime Minister Modi. I had the privilege of observing indriya nigraha in action, which the public never sees.
The titles of your two globally acclaimed books ‘Voices from the Grassroots’ and ‘I, the citizen’ reflect your approach & philosophy as a development practitioner. On the contrary, in the present world of philanthropy and social impact, we see too much of a top-down approach to change. What is your advice to those who think they have the answers instead of asking the community what they need?
I think most of our success stories in the world of business or corporate India, or anywhere in the world, is they think acquisition of capital gives them the competence to do anything else in life. It’s a myth. They think social service or understanding communities and working with them is not a specialized science. What people need is to start from the bottom, learn, and go live with people and listen to them, and learn from them, then plan with them. Social problems are complex; people have the wisdom but may not have the resources to solve it. What we need is to understand that we need to be in this together. The moment you’re prescriptive, and the person writing the text says, ‘I have solutions,’, you’re giving them solutions for the problem that you see through your eyes. I point out in my books how I failed because I went in with that attitude. You do not need competence; you need humility.
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To learn to operate from zones of incompetence, go with the appreciation that you don’t have the competence to understand this community you’re living with. When you go to the next community, go with the attitude that the competence you gained elsewhere may not help there. So, we should know that experience cannot and should not influence us, but experience should only inform us. Thinking that this worked in Africa, in Mozambique and so it will work in Agra or Heggadadevanakote is a myth. There is nothing called the best practice except the practice of visiting communities to understand the problem with them and co-generate the solution with them. I would say philanthropy needs to appreciate that we can do without them, but they cannot do without the community.
Can you elaborate on the notions of civilizational pride and civilizational ethos in the context of ideas, values and thought-leadership that have emerged and continue to emerge from India? And what can we do to take pride in celebrating them?
We live in exceedingly difficult times today, and from the context of India, there is a resurgence about Indic thinking and Bharatiya thought. That is particularly good, but the danger I see is that we take extreme positions. We are either dismissive of everything Indian because we think it’s all in the past and it’s all useless because we have isolated anecdotal examples of what is useless, or we are so enamored by it that we think everything about India is great. I would like a balanced view taken based on evidence and not emotion. In one example, I’ll try to capture the whole thing. To try to track civilizational India, we have the Mahabharata which is a very contextual even today in the terms of conflicts, petty jealousies, and challenges between people and communities. I can bring in every modern problem in public administration, public leadership and situate it in the way Mahabharata addresses it.
Swami Vivekananda seems to have an enormous influence on you. What is it about Swami Vivekananda that inspires you so much?
What inspired me to start my journey were two powerful quotes of his. The first quote says: “I call every young man a traitor who having been educated at people’s expense pays not the least heed to them.” It hit me because all my education was in public schools, and I studied in government-aided schools. Without public support, I couldn’t be what I am. I feel that I have an obligation to my nation, and I don’t want to be a traitor. When Vivekananda’s words hit me, I thought I cannot afford to be a traitor. This is what is real nationalism. Nationalism is not waving the national flag or hating somebody else or bursting a cracker when you win a cricket match. It is about serving your country with the spirit of giving back to my society. The second statement he said was, ‘I do not believe in a God or religion which cannot wipe away the widow’s tears or bring a piece of bread to the orphan’s mouth.’ Vivekananda, a sanyasi who is supposed to be a great Hindu monk is talking about not having belief in God or religion other than this. This is the God I want; this is the religion I want. So, I felt that my discovery of religion should be through service. That’s why Vivekananda is such an important aspect in my life.
And how are Swami Vivekananda’s values and teachings relevant today? Describe to us his pragmatic side as you have understood it.
Swami Vivekananda has spoken so much about a range of topics – from geography to anthropology to architecture to neuroscience. My development theory comes from Swamiji’s thinking. He said the purpose of mankind is inner evolution. But he also wondered about the point of sitting in the Himalayas and meditating if you are not useful to society on everyday basis. He powerfully articulated that and gave us the concept that your evolution is important, but it has to be manifested; it should manifest itself as service to outsiders. He said, build the human capacity. Though we credit Amartya Sen for the capability approach in development, the man who first spoke about building the heart, body, mind, and soul of people for development is Vivekananda. I believe in building human and social capital as development– expansion of the physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual capabilities of man. He said, ‘You need a people, society; you need a system; you need a community; you need people.’ And for that, you need social capital. He gave us practical Vedanta, not something which is dry and difficult. All this to me is what makes him special, and so I cannot but live in awe of the man and message.
As someone who has seen the evolution of the NGO Sector for the last 4 decades, how should the sector deal with the current scenario of the credibility challenge on one hand, extreme competition for resources/funding and lack of talent in this space?
I think we, the NGO sector, are suffering from a challenge of identity itself. Most of us started because we thought that we had to find solutions to social problems, and we realized that the state may be inadequate at it. Some of us even had the audacity to feel that the state is useless and inefficient and therefore should be removed from the scene. I was also a subscriber to that view many decades ago where I thought I can supplant the state. Today I can say, honestly, we can only supplement the state. And that’s what we should do. We should hold the state accountable for its role, but we have a role too. And our role is to be very clearly facilitating, co-creating solutions with communities, responding to their needs, but being an honest torchbearer of their articulations to the state, getting states’ inputs flowing back into the citizens where it rightfully, deservedly belongs. We are today having a credibility challenge because we hold ourselves not accountable to success the way we want to hold the government accountable to success.
What specific steps can the NGO Sector take to strengthen its credibility?
We blame the government saying it only operates at 85% overhead. How much is the overhead of NGOs? Do we have the courage to declare it? Can we measure it? Beyond just flashy reports on PowerPoints, can we have the integrity to say to the communities we serve, ‘I brought 100 rupees to serve you and build a toilet. I spent 92 rupees on you, 8 rupees on myself. And that is incredible because four of your people are getting paid. They are getting employed and doing it for you.’ Can we hold ourselves to such high standards? Then our credibility will go up. We should be bold enough to publicly disclose our failures. Now NGOS, are competing because we don’t even trust each other.
Can you share your thoughts about the need for greater collaboration within the NGO Sector?
We want government services to converge. We want government departments to collaborate. But how many of us in the NGO space want to collaborate? We are so threatened by each other that we are always pulling the other down. Can we admit that we are good in self-help groups, and that you are good in healthcare, and that we should come together? Let’s work together. Let’s use each other. Today the world talks about mergers and acquisitions. And Maruti makes its cars and co-badges it with Toyota. Toyota makes its cars and co-badges it with Maruti. Can’t we learn from the automobile world how they are doing it? NGOs have to increasingly work together like this.
You are the Chair the Social Stock Exchange. How can the Social Stock Exchange be an enabler and how can the sector take advantage of this platform?
Today what is missing is our credibility as a sector. We are missing out on transparency. We are missing out on trust in people who must place faith in us, both as a donor and as a community to work with us. Social Stock Exchange provides the solutions by publicly disclosing the deliverables, the process, the timeline and the measures of success. This ensures greater accountability. We all want to say we are doing good but we don’t want to measure our impact. Here an external assessor will come and measure it for us and make it public. And the Social Stock Exchange can provide that. Instead of criticizing and blaming and saying there are too many compliance procedures etc., can we self-regulate ourselves? Resources are scarce but how do I efficiently, effectively deploy it and tell the world how I am using it? The Social Stock Exchange provides an opportunity for self-regulation, grow the trust of the community and nurture collaboration. I think the sector needs a boost of all this.
(Aishwarya Singh contributed to this story.)