I For India: How To Contribute To Nation-Building In Our Own Silent Way

Every time we excel at work; every time we do our work diligently, howsoever menial the task may be, we are contributing to nation-building.

Thus, the alert soldier on the border and the good doctor in our neighbourhood; the teacher who inspires; the journalist who unveils the truth and the cobbler who brings a smile to our face with his good work, are all contributing to nation-building.

The converse is also true: when people with power — such as politicians and bureaucrats — fail in their duties and responsibilities towards nation-building, they are in effect being dishonest. Therefore, when our politicians and bureaucrats, in spite of wielding enormous power, fail to address basic issues in healthcare, education, civic administration and public transportation, they have failed the nation.

We Indians have some of the best brains in the world and that is why our scientists and software engineers, doctors, nurses, academicians and students are sought after in developed nations.

Born to Indian immigrants, Rishi Sunak became the Prime Minister of UK. Likewise, Kamala Harris may well become the first woman president of the United States. There are innumerable other examples from the Indian diaspora where ethnic Indians are heading top institutions and multinationals and where Indian engineers have achieved breakthroughs in space exploration and IT.

Their adopted nations have been able to provide them with a merit-driven society, a law-and-order system which won’t spare the rich and the powerful; decent public infrastructure, good public transportation; health, hygiene and sanitation.

Take the case of the enormous loss to the nation over the decades because our politicians and bureaucrats failed to provide mass transportation in our expanding cities. Till the 1970s, Pune was famous as the Bicycle Capital of India as thousands of people — children and adults, men and women — cycled to schools, colleges and offices.

In the next two decades as the city’s economy grew, Pune expanded and became a major hub for IT exports, manufacturing, education and services. People now needed to commute faster to their places of education and work, and thus, this district headquarters emerged as the ‘Two-wheeler Capital of India’ with the highest number of motorised two-wheelers in any Indian city.

Our city planners, politicians and bureaucrats in the state and national governments, failed miserably to plan for the future needs of Pune with a robust multi-modal mass transport system. The nation could not afford a metro rail system in the previous decades and city activists such as the late Sujit Patwardhan, Chandmal Parmar (who lost his daughter to a road accident) and Maj Gen SCN Jatar (Nagrik Chetna Manch) were crying hoarse for an expansion of the bus fleet in Pune.

In 2004, Sujit invited Enriqué Peñelosa, former mayor of Bogota and pioneer of the Bus Rapid Transport System (BRTS) to speak at the Pune Traffic and Transportation Forum (PTTF). That is how, bowing to public pressure, India’s first BRTS was launched in Pune in 2006. Unfortunately, the BRTS was poorly implemented and all the effort and investments went down the drain as the politicians latched on to their next fad.

Politicians like Sharad Pawar and Suresh Kalmadi could have made a success of the BRTS, but they were busy pursuing big political dreams at the national level.

Today, traffic woes in Pune have worsened as an average middle class family with a working couple and college-going child needs at least three vehicles—two scooters/mobikes and a car or two cars and one two-wheeler. Consequently, there’s heavy congestion on the roads, especially during peak hours, further compounded by metro rail construction in prominent junctions such as Pune University Chowk.

Most offices operate from 9 am to 5 pm or 10 am to 6 pm and as people rush to satisfy the discipline of their reporting time, they spend at least an extra hour in traffic jams. There is not only a colossal wastage of petrol and diesel as fuel-guzzling vehicles are stranded in daily traffic jams, but there is also loss of national productivity due to the stress, frustration and pollution that commuters suffer on account of traffic congestion.

This is the story in all major cities across India so factor in the colossal loss in terms of wasted fuel, wasted man-hours and adverse impact of vehicular pollution and daily stress due to traffic jams.

What is the way out?

Some organisations have smartly changed their office hours to non-peak hours. Work-from-Home (WFH) during the Covid pandemic of 2020-22 brought enormous relief as people didn’t need to commute to work. Today, our organisations need to devise a combination of WFH and office attendance as a routine. This is already happening in the IT industry without any loss of productivity.

Most significantly, employee productivity should be measured not on 9 to 5 office presence but on parameters such as results delivered and tasks accomplished. Going further, employees should be given the flexibility of reporting to work full-day or half-day on Sundays and other holidays when traffic is extremely thin on the roads.

A number of organisations are already implementing many of these innovations and a study will most likely show that employee engagement and happiness-at-work index is higher in such organisations as compared to those insisting on a pre-Covid work ethic.

For our own benefit, wherever and whenever possible, we must walk, cycle and use the stairs for at least a few floors, rather than wait for the elevator.

Try out some of these suggestions and contribute your mite to nation-building.

The author is a journalist and works for a policy research think tank. He tweets at @abhay_vaidya