The Day the Chariot Moved: How India Moves at the Grassroots 
By Subroto Bagchi
Penguin, 408 pages, Rs 699

Not every revolution makes noise. In this rare and deeply personal account, well known entrepreneur Subroto Bagchi reveals how Odisha’s quiet skill movement gave its people more than just jobs, it gave them pride. What if 'Skilled in Odisha' carried the same weight as 'Made in Germany'?

This is not a story of policies or politics, but of real lives being transformed. Loco pilots, store managers, young men and women who found dignity, confidence and a future they could believe in. Drawing from his journey as both entrepreneur and nation-builder, Bagchi offers a powerful reminder: lasting change is not built on ambition alone, but on patience, purpose and faith in ordinary people.

Here is an excerpt from the book:
 
HOW FAR CAN WE SEE?

It is not enough for one individual leader to have the power of vision. The leader must uphold the vision for people so that a vision community is built around it and people begin to move towards the intended future with a meta-mind.

In the beginning, it may even appear unattainable. Sometimes, there is a mountain of inertia in everyone. The most cited reason for the inertia is paucity of resources. They have got the guns; we only have bows and arrows. We do not even have food for tomorrow, how can we walk a thousand miles? These refrains come packaged in different words every day when the voice of change makes itself heard—whether in the government, the corporate sector or elsewhere.

Even as the future may promise the people their true entitlement, they remain inert and unmotivated to pursue it. Stability and status quo sing a soothing lullaby.

As an example, the people of India knew that centuries of foreign subjugation were wrong, that colonial rule and servitude were wrong. Yet, they had to wait until a Gandhi arrived and he galvanized everyone with the idea of independence. It is the same with Nelson Mandela in South Africa fighting apartheid or Lee Kwan Yew building Singapore from nothing to becoming a leading first-world economy. What unites these leaders?

First and foremost, it is their unusually high comfort in departing from the past. However, the past can often be very alluring. Sometimes, it is like a chain around our feet. Sometimes, it is so dark and dangerous that we do not want to agitate it. However, the future requires a sharp point of departure. Like a boat needs that one decisive push to leave the shore to go someplace else. It is the leader who is required to untangle the rope from the jetty and give it that one decisive push for the boat to pull out and set sail.

In doing so, a critical need is for the leader to be comfortable with incomplete information. Long-haul human journeys do not come with a built-in GPS. No one can guarantee their point of arrival. The leader must have faith in the abiding outcome even as the course of the journey is not detailed. That is why leaders are called path creators.

In life, most people we see are path dependant. They can walk the path if you show them one. But a very small set, the leaders among people, are the ones who break new ground. They build new pathways where none exist. Along the way, failure is always a distinct possibility. But these leaders do not see failure as an option.

Even as a leader may create a new path, it is impossible to build one that truly is the shortest and a clear and comfortable bridge between where people are and where they are set out to go to. As a result, losing the way is a rite of passage. In those moments, when people following their leader do not see the road ahead or an imminent danger, it is the naysayers and the cynics who immediately stand up. They tell people, we told you so. Then, of course, there are the ones who are not visible and audible. They look committed but in reality, they are the ones who are there to subvert. A true leader budgets for all of it; that is the only way of not getting frustrated. The voice of the naysayers allows the leader the opportunity to restate and sometimes recast the narrative for the people. It creates new momentum.

But sometimes, it is not the naysayers and the ones doing subversive compliance. There is popular wisdom that comes in great dollops. Sometimes, it can halt the progress just before the tunnel bends to end. The popular wisdom says it is perhaps better to turn back. It is safer to be on the ground than the seas. Popular wisdom may say it is not too late to call it off. And sometimes, popular wisdom convincingly cites data as evidence. 

For taking people to the promised land, invariably, the visionary leader must deal with a larger-than-life adversary. Sometimes, it is a despot, sometimes it is an entity like a government system or a moribund corporation that has lost its way and, quite often, it is an entrenched idea like social discrimination. The leader does not see the size of the adversary as daunting. The larger the adversary, the greater the glory. 

Oftentimes, the monstrous size of the adversary is the guarantee of success. From Gandhi to Mandela to Lee Kwan Yew, the recurring theme of a David versus Goliath is a constant over centuries of civilization. 

Finally, when people follow a great vision, they move the mountains every day, they do not always see butterflies and rainbows along the way. In truth, everyday brings a new sorrow; there are many things to be deeply unhappy about. For a true leader, these are not reasons to question the vision. And certainly, there is no room for cynicism. A leader cannot be a cynical visionary. The two words are mutually exclusive. 

And what about great vision itself? 

To start with, great vision is often a child of troubled times. A recurring image of that in my mind is the part in the film by Richard Attenborough where a racist conductor throws Gandhi, hurls his luggage out of the train on to a desolate platform in the dead of the night. The train moves on. In that moment, in the apt representation of the idea of troubled times, Gandhi internalizes the pain of apartheid and servitude. 

Then, there is the idea of scale. Small departures do not need a vision; they ask for no strategic intent. If we study the history of the world, whether it is religious, political, economic, scientific or in the field of creative arts, we will notice that great vision is invariably about scale. Great vision entails hairy, audacious goals. This is for a good reason. Earlier, we spoke about building a vision community. In the journey into the unknown, it is the people that must sign up, come aboard, pull the oars, bite the wind and brace the darkness. For them to enlist, the cause has to be worthwhile and the destination something to yearn for. You can seldom excite popular imagination with a call to climb a molehill. People want to climb a mountain. 

Historically speaking, momentous, impactful vision invariably involves simple people with average tools. That combination is a truly powerful one. Sometimes, you set off with the vision to discover India but you land in the United States. That is okay. It is not a bad outcome at all. Similarly, sometimes you start with a large vision and return only partially fulfilled. Remember Mission 123? One gold, two silvers and three bronzes at World Skills Competition in Kazan? Well, we never got the silvers and bronzes. But no one remembers that. No one cares about it because we got India her first ever gold. How far we can see is truly about leadership and the power of vision. While people accept that, they often wonder if visionary leadership is an exceptional thing and people endowed with such capability are born, not made. In the process, they risk disenfranchising themselves. I am sure some leaders are extraordinarily talented, they may appear to be born with great abilities. But if we observe many around us over a period of time, we begin to realize, visioning is a function of how much we practise it. When we become aware of the idea, we appreciate its power and its nuances, we gain the ability to expand the size of the vision that we create, we feel comfortable in running with it over the long haul. Until it becomes one with us.

[The excerpt reproduced with the permission of the publishers.]

The image: Courtesy https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Subroto_Bagchi_in_his_office.jpg