Why taking initiative matters

How today's youth have found inspiration, and why taking initiative matters.

What I've Liked: Judging by the box office numbers, I guess most of you reading this would have either seen this movie, or at least read about it by now --yes, I'm referring to the much talked about Rang De Basanti.

The dire paucity of talkable, likeable ads has driven me to the big screen, so this fortnight I will talk about a movie instead. I do hope my television will start airing better ads soon; else I would be forced to become a film commentator!

Coming back to Rang De Basanti: it was a cinematically excellent film, and I thought it was a particularly brilliant strategy of the director's to run a parallel theme from history alongside the contemporary one. By swinging the story back and forth between the past and present, the stark contrast in the attitudes of the two generations is sharply highlighted and then somewhere along the way, the two become one. A good idea, bravely executed, is what I thought.

If during the 1940s, any 20-something-year-old was asked what his/her greatest desire was, it would have invariably been the same answer: a free India. It was a time when love for the country and the battle to regain your birthright governed the goals of the youth, regardless of caste and creed.

The cause was so strong that taking a stand for freedom -- why, even dying for it -- was the noblest thing you could hope to do. Sixty years on, as the story unfolds, the youth of today are fired yet again with a cause--rebelling against deep-rooted corruption.

As the story unfolds, we are drawn into the lives of these kids who refuse to view corruption as a part of life but take a stand against it with very much the same passion that our freedom fighting forefathers did. They stand up for this cause with so much conviction that they even give their lives for it.

I only wish their intensity of purpose seeped into our everyday lives, so that we too rise as one nation against this new form of tyranny -- the all-pervasive corruption that ironically ends up diluting the freedom for which our forefathers sacrificed their lives.

So here we are, six decades later, needing to fight for a new kind of freedom, all over again.

Now isn't that a worthy cause to fight for, if not to die for?

What I've Learned: If you know a better way, don't just sit there, show us.

This is a story that someone once recounted to me. It seems Rishi Prabhakar, the creator of the popular SSY ("Siddha Samadhi Yoga" programme) was once travelling to Mount Abu by bus. This incident happened on his way -- it had rained the previous night and the road was almost non-negotiable and hence the traffic jammed.

Instead of sitting around fretting and fuming, Rishi Prabhakar got out of the bus and started redirecting the traffic. Slowly the jam eased up and the road was clear in a matter of minutes.

Incidents like this happen a lot around us. Things go wrong. They often do. The other day I was at one of Hyderabad's largest music stores. It took me just 10 minutes to pick eight CDs. And then I went to pay the bill and discovered, to my dismay, a queue so long that I would need to wait for half an hour just to pay for a 10 minute purchase. There was only one cashier, even though they had counters for more.

Since this just did not make sense to me, I suggested they place one more person at the next counter. Sure enough, someone came and I got my bill cleared immediately.

When this happened I stared at the mute queue wonderingly. What was it that stopped all of them from doing the same? Was it laziness, or a sense of futility or just submissive acceptance of everything that happens to them? It might come as a surprise to many, but the people who run things actually listen to constructive feedback. In fact, they welcome suggestions that contribute towards friction-free performance.

It is pointless criticism that tends to annoy. I speak from experience – a lot of it actually. In the early days as chairman of Mudra, I had instituted cash prizes for those who came up with the best suggestion for the company. And it was not just your routine HR feel-good exercise.

We gave out quite a bit of cash. OK, so the real world might not give you a monetary reward, but you can save quite a bit of your time and money if you point out a better way. Remember, constructive feedback is not the same as complaining. The former offers a solution -- a solution that works.

Complaining, on the other hand, just points out what is obvious to everyone -- that things don't work. And nobody needs to be told that -- not your neighbourhood society, nor your boss at work, nor the government. They are pretty much aware when a system fails. What they do need are suggestions that can set things right. So the next time when systems fail, think about how it could be set right. If you can do it yourself, nothing like it. If not, tell someone about it. You'll be surprised at how easy it can be sometimes to set things right.

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