> educated technocrat class is too tiny
We (the Indian technocrat cohort) need to get into politics.
We (the Indian technocrat cohort) need to get into politics.
This could be lifted out of Plato's Republic and it would be exactly as relevant.
But the counter-point is that politicians run very close to their electorate's ideas (or selectorate's) - most politicians are not stupid people, so when you see them pushing stupid ideas, it is their commentary on the audience they are pandering to.
I met Sam Pitroda in the late 90s. His commentary on C-DOT was a complete wet blanket on my theories of how the world is changing through technology.
The theory is sort of the opposite of a "resource curse" - a "human resource curse" if you will. If what you end up exporting are humans, not things you dig out of the ground.
Could you expand on this? I am interested to know what were his opinions.
On other hand, I would say civil service in India is horrifically elitist, and values degrees, over competency, and real experience.
Part of my bear thesis on India is that no country can progress that venerates the bureaucracy.
This is apart from the fact that most elected representatives themselves cannot read/write, and even if they can they have little idea about how to run things. Even the good ones take a while to get a hang of things, and are not really trained to make policy decisions. Given most elected representatives are also more like 1 - 2 term politicians, they also can't think long term or anything beyond roads and drinking water.
When you have a set up like this you need a dedicated cadre of life long administrators who can defacto govern the country. For all practical purposes civil services are ruling elite of India. They are also treated as such. The only real problem is the process of selection is made to select trivia scholars and people with a knack for theatricality than real competence. There is also an assumption that people who make it after such a process will be competent life long. Both the process and assumptions are wrong.
The sheer small size(4500 people) of civil services cadres, far reaching powers, lack of accountability, assumption of static/growing competence, there is no concept of continuous learning or training. This creates a problem of scarcity. By that comes privilege, corruption, autocratic behaviour etc. Eventually these are like mini rulers of India.
This is a big reason why even in corporate sectors everybody wants to be managers, there is an assumption that these management/administration jobs have no work, and unlimited power and perks.
India's culture makes it look like a failure to work regular engineering jobs where you build things, take a salary and go home.