Once in a while we live through an event that makes us reflect on, and perhaps even question, our deeply-held views. Even rare is the event that makes us do this even though it may not touch us directly, and then we try and understand this phenomena and what it means for us individually and collectively. The Arvind Kejriwal-led AAP’s recent victory in Delhi is turning out to be such an event, and seems to have had a disproportionate impact beyond Delhi state-boundary where it was scripted. Like everyone, I was also trying to analyse the victory and what it meant for good governance, a promise by both prime minister Modi and Kejriwal. But unlike the poll experts who had a purely political lens and offered many reasons ranging from anti-Modi incumbency vote building up, to meltdown of Congress to Kejriwal’s ‘common man’ approach which endeared him the masses, my purpose was to draw lessons for my work as a management consultant to improve governance of large public programmes delivering services to the electorate who voted for both Modi and Kejriwal.
The reason I chose to do this is not just because these programmes cost our country a lot of money and impact the daily lives of the millions of people, but also because they are central to political manifestos. Delivering these efficiently and effectively can make it easier for a political leader to win the next elections, the objective of every politician as my friends among them keep on telling me (I remind them that they are better-off than many CEOs, who have to ‘win’ when announcing the next quarter’s results). Unfortunately, as we know, in India, despite spending a significant percentage of GDP on programmes like SSA (education), ICDS (women and child welfare), TPDS (food) and MGNREGS (employment), the learning levels in our state schools are stagnant or falling, we have the world’s largest number of under-nourished kids, our public health system is plagued by lack of doctors and non-functioning health centres, and we are plagued with job-less growth. The list is long.
So, where do lessons from Delhi elections come in? As an observer of leaders (and consultant to them) and their leadership philosophy and styles, I was trying to understand the leadership styles on ‘offer’ for voters to choose for transforming our governance, something which both Modi and Kejriwal promise. To my mind, the Delhi elections seems to have highlighted two very different leadership styles and philosophies. There is Modi’s ‘aspirational leadership’ approach which paid rich dividends in the landmark 2014 Lok Sabha elections and the state elections that followed versus Arvind Kejriwal’s ‘participative leadership’ philosophy that not only won him the Delhi elections but seems to have enthused so many aam aadmi in the country if we go by the media reports and started such an intense debate among our poll pundits. This is not surprising given our cultural DNA, which seems to make us heavily-biased by a ‘recency effect’ (ask our cricket captains, the latest marginal loss is far worse than past historical wins by the same team).
If we use management jargon to differentiate them, we can say that the Modi philosophy for transformation of governance, which won him so many elections in less than a year, is a top-down leadership model, which sets audacious goals and launches mega initiatives like Make-in-India or Swachh Bharat, and tries to build a top-down national (and international) momentum behind them through a combination of stakeholder events (e.g. Make-in-India Day), initiative ambassadors (e.g. Swachh Bharat), increased budgetary allocation or facilitating policies and regulations. As opposed to this very visible top-down leadership style, the Kejriwal philosophy of transformation, which has come up trumps in Delhi, seems to be a more bottom-up, people-centric approach to planning and decision-making that creates ownership of the change agenda among the key stakeholders; the change agenda will then be driven from the top.
Now, if someone were to ask me, “Please tell me, Mr. Consultant, which is the more effective leadership style transforming the governance of public services that touch the lives of all our voters?”, my answer would be that we are asking the wrong question, and this intense debate is not only redundant, it misses the wood for the trees.
Let me explain why this debate is redundant. Talk to any political leader on why election promises on governance of public services (power, water, roads, education, health, etc) are left unfulfilled, or even when policies are announced, they do not get implemented effectively, and they will tell you about the weak delivery system and capabilities on the ground. Probe this further and one of the main reasons seem to be the lack of ownership of the transformation agenda by either those who are delivering these promised services, starting right at the top and going down the chain, or by the recipients of these services demanding quality delivery. On the other hand, if you then talk to a senior bureaucrat on the topic of lack of ownership of the change, they will disagree with a comment like “we are a command-and-perform culture. If we tell the people what to do and they will do it…” and imply that lack of political will and clear goals is to blame. So, we continue with this blame-game while voters continue to suffer.
Thus we come back to the lesson I draw from the Delhi state elections. To me, the right question to ask is: What will improve the lives of our voters by transforming our public services? And the answer, based on our work in transforming both corporate and public organisations is clear. We need both leadership styles. We need Modi’s aspirational leadership which sets ambitious goals and plans, brands them to build public momentum behind the initiatives, and pushes public services delivery organisations out of their comfort zones. But we also need the participatory model of Arvind Kejriwal that builds local ownership of the team that deliver these services, and puts pressure on them by building ownership of the recipients in the transformation so that they can communicate their expectations transparently and evaluate how it is being delivered. As Deng Ziao-Ping used to say, “It does not matter if the cat is black or white as long as it catches the mouse.”
By Arindam Bhattacharya
The author is managing director, The Boston Consulting Group, India. Views are personal
