An empowered India is an India where every Indian can hold his or her head high. To be proud to be Indian, with a strong sense of belonging and identification with India. It is about an India that enables every man or woman to rise to full potential, irrespective of caste, creed or religion, or based on birth and domicile.
As Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has said ‘‘we need harmony rather than uniformity’’—the very diversity of India is our strength. We need to move from the zone of discrimination or favouritism to facilitation. That is, it is not just about creating quotas and reservations but enabling every person to be empowered to demand and realise rights.
It is about being heard—to have a voice. To use that voice to shape the future. Needless to say, we need governance structures and education to enable this.
Empowerment is about the ability to make choices. An India empowered must enable everyone to have a choice. To go beyond the drudgery of eking out a day-to-day existence, barely affording a day’s meal, to being able to save. Empowerment is about aspirations and also the ability to fulfill them. In this respect, I believe microfinance and entrepreneurship at the rural level are key.
I have seen the success of organisations such as SEWA in achieving this—the pride of the woman in the village who has dared social norms and has started earning for her family, supporting them and being able to make choices. To be able to choose what to eat, to wear, to send her children to school, to educate herself and not have to spend all her savings on health bills—60 per cent of the typical rural Indian family’s earnings are spent on health issues. We need more such success stories. More such people like Ela Bhatt who make a difference, who selflessly empower a million women in our villages.
I have been fortunate in having choices. In having an environment that allowed me to dream the dream, and empowered me at various critical stages to fulfill those dreams. Empowerment is about national pride. I love my country and I am here by choice because there is no other place I would rather be. I have travelled and have had the option of working anywhere in the world but have chosen to be here because this is where I belong. I am proud to be from a country which is identified with global and timeless leaders such as Mahatma Gandhi and Nobel Laureates such as Mother Teresa.
The future of the business and corporate world is going to be influenced greatly by stakeholder groups. These groups include customers, employees, investors, suppliers, as well as community groups, media, NGOs and regulators. We are going to increasingly see these groups demand better governance and, more importantly, ethical governance of corporations.
Stakeholder groups, as is already happening in many countries, are going to play a crucial role in ensuring corporations in India address the interests of their customers, employees and shareholders, and also the environment in which they operate. Fortunately, we already have excellent role models in India in companies such as Infosys and Wipro who have established the highest standards in the world and are great global benchmarks.
An empowered India is an India where every Indian can hold his or her head high. To be proud to be Indian, with a strong sense of belonging and identification with India. It is about an India that enables every man or woman to rise to full potential, irrespective of caste, creed or religion, or based on birth and domicile.