It’s time to bridge information gap between India & Bharat, says author Subroto Bagchi

Rajkumari Sharma Tankha

Subroto Bagchi’s memoir The Day the Chariot Moved (Penguin Publishers) is nothing if not inspiring. As one of India’s leading business minds and philanthropists, the author has inspired a new India, guided businesses in the nation, motivated its talent. This book is about the transformation of Odisha. It challenges us to look at government machinery with a clear mind free of preconceived notions, most of which are negative. But at its core, the book is about ordinary people – with their struggles & strengths. Subroto Bagchi has written about the stories of real people behind the policies. It is these people that drive change, and it is their identity that matters.

In an email conversation with Life & More, Bagchi tells us more about the book, his work and his life:

What was the idea behind writing this book? When did you think of writing it and how much time did you take to complete it?
The idea germinated in my mind when Milee Ashwarya, Publisher of Penguin’s Adult Literature division dropped into my office in Bhubaneswar one day. She said, write a book for us. I was sceptical because I felt that people do not read books anymore, far less, non-fiction. She told me it was a misconception. Yes, publishing did go through upheavals but now the industry is doing well. People are buying books and despite the attention deficit brought in by fragmenting digital content, people are reading books. Then she took out a book from her bag and gave it to me. It was Ashok Alexander’s book, How The Light Gets In. When I read that book, something happened. It stirred me to write this book. I felt it would be a worthwhile endeavour. A few months after meeting Milee, my work in Odisha ended. It was June 2024. It was the right time for me to start the project and I completed it over the next one year. All my books have always taken a year to complete.

How challenging it was changing the face of Odisha, governance, individual dignity, and collective development.
It wasn’t more challenging than running Mindtree. That is because, I had the agency. The Chief Minister himself had a formidable popular mandate, the authority and personal credibility. He was, at that time, the fourth-term chief minister. When a sponsor has all that,  a change agent’s job becomes easier. That said, I needed to make the bureaucracy feel comfortable with me. I knew I would need to get accepted and had decided I would make all the effort and not wait for the system to extend the hand. I would respect them; I would work with them. I needed to convey, I wasn’t here to show the way, I was there to walk the path. But the tidal wave of transformation had to be on the ground with ordinary people. These were the hitherto neglected ones, those with little recognition and poor self-esteem. My job was to lift them up. It is amazing how a fallow land responds when you start tilling. The people on the ground responded with energy. Once awakened, there was no stopping. These were the people, the skill trainees, the skill institutions, trainers, employers – they all took it upon themselves to raise the bar. My purpose gave me the power.

You have written about Muni Tigga, a Railway Loco Pilot in Bhubaneswar, Sumati Nayak, a manager at Westside Bengaluru, both of who rewrote their histories against all odds. But, you must have come across scores of examples like these two women, how did you pick and choose the ones you published.
You do not choose the stars. They simply appear when look for them. You look at the dark sky, you gaze at it and see nothing. Then you squint, you focus. The first one appears. Then the second quickly dozens. The first one quickly leads you to the next and the next. Over time, the number of stars swelled. I spent time with them. I built personal relationship with many of them. Over the course of years, they showed me their human side. I took extensive notes. I preserved those, not knowing one day I would write a book. I chose those where the story makes the reader think. Break stereotypes and mental models we have about India that is Bharat, about how government works.

The way you explain complex subjects clearly and easily, intrigues me. How do you manage to do that?
In most cases, there are no complex subjects and issues. There are only complex ways of looking at them. Throughout my life in the corporate sector, I realised that complexity is the enemy of progress. A leader’s first task is to do three things: look at the root cause of things, not the apparent knots on the surface. Next, look at the larger system in which they nest; see the interconnectedness of issues. Then, humanize the issues. Put a name to the faces. It is then that the solutions present themselves in an organic and not synthetic ways. As leaders, often we choose sophistication over simplicity. Sophisticated models and expressions can be impressive for a while, but they do not become memorable. Thus, to your question, I choose to explain things simply as a matter of craft. I have honed it over a lifetime of writing. I like it that way.

How did you manage to erase the societal stigma associated with institutions like ITI?
I can not say, I erased it. I showed that trying to erase, itself is a worthwhile thing to do. When I tried, people took notice. Change started to happen. Small successes led to some big ones.

You, along with your wife actively support public health, cancer care, and palliative services across India. That’s having too much on your plate. How do you manage such diverse and voluminous work?
We do not have a trust or a foundation, nor do we have any staff helping us in our work in the areas we have chosen to engage with. We do everything ourselves and equally share the burden. That said, our way of engagement is not to do project implementation on our own. The approach we take is to find the most competent organisations that have credibility in their own field. Then we look for four critical things: knowledge of the domain, shared vision, ability to scale and governance. Once all that is ticked right, we help with the planning and the resources and then step aside. We do not sit on their board or trust and keep an arm’s length. This is important because, we do not want to get attached to the money. We see ourselves as enablers. We help those who are helping others. So far, it has worked and we have been able to manage the work involved.

In your opinion, what is the biggest misconception urban Indians have about rural India’s potential?
It may sound cliched but it is true that India and Bharat traverse parallel Universes. In that sense, to say, here is this “biggest misconception”, is to trivialise the size of the issue. For starters, we need to bridge the information gap and then the empathy gap, between the urban (read, affluent) Indians and those in the villages. Many of the urban, affluent Indians assume that the role of rural India is to keep on with the endless supply of maids, drivers, pizza delivery boys and that rural India’s job is to till the land, grow fresh food and shorten the distance between the farm and the table. If something needs to change in their lives, it is the job of the Government. After all, we have paid taxes, right? As a nation and a society, for those who are in a position of affluence, need to walk the extra mile, know the issues, build empathy and then, engage. In my book, I have written about myself.
Until I came to work with the Government, I had no idea what words like stunting and wasting mean. I did not know the difference between an ANM nurse and a GNM nurse. I did not know what does an ASHA didi do? Only after coming to work with the Government did I realise how little I knew about my own country.

Can you share a story from the book that personally moved you or changed your outlook?
There are so many. Every day I was there, I learnt stories of ordinary people who took destiny in their own hands and broke free from their circumstances. I met people who moved up but who sank back despite well-intentioned government and societal interventions. The book is replete with such stories that grip you, set you thinking and overall, leave you uplifted and inspired. From the many narratives in the book, let me share the story of an Adivasi girl whose name is Muni Tigga. She lived in a remote village and had a hard time coping with both poverty and social disapproval for going to high school because it meant travelling to another place every day, leaving pre-dawn with her cycle and returning late in the evening. By the time her schooling was over, her father died. She became a daily-wage earner. Villagers taunted her. It is at this time that someone told her about something called an ITI. She had no idea until then. She went to the Bargarh ITI and studied electronics for two years. Today, she is a locomotive engine pilot with the Indian Railways. In India, a metaphor for machismo is the Bullet motorcycle. A Bullet motor cycle’s engine capacity is between 20 and 47 HP. Muni Tigga hauls a WAP 7 diesel locomotive that has a 6125 HP engine. It hurtles at 140 kilometres an hour and pulls two dozen compartments with 1200 passengers who will never know, a girl is hauling their carriage. Muni Tigga is my epitome of what skill development can do. A girl skilled is power delivered to the Universe.

What role do local governance structures like Panchayats play in enabling or hindering development?
Panchayats today have become very powerful in politics and governance. There was a time when they were a sleeping partner in the political process. It is no longer the case. In a country where elections can be won or lost by a margin of a few thousand votes, the village panchayat has become very important to every political parties. What this is leading up to is, the idea of agency. They are a mobilising force. They can influence girls to enrol in an ITI. They can influence setting up of skill training initiatives in their neighbourhood. For this, they need to be educated on what is vocational training, what are the employment avenues. Just the same way, the Panchayats themselves get driven by Women Self-Help Groups (SHG) wherever such groups are active. The SHGs have agency and voice. Many of these are now moving up the value chain through economic activity that require skilling. When we think about policy and implementation, we need to keep the Panchayats in consideration, make them our upstream partners.

How can state and central policies better support grassroots innovations?
To begin with, whether it is the State or the Centre, we need to develop a maximalist mindset. Presently, our plans and policies that govern skill development, are minimalist. As a result, they deliver matching output. We have 14000 ITI in India. Most are rag-tag. They produce sub-par talent. Singapore has just one ITE, it is the ITI equivalent. ITE has only three campuses. Each has been built at a cost of one billion Singapore dollars. Their trainees are world-class. Ours students have a hard time finding a job.
That is why in Odisha, we set up the World Skill Center – just one establishment, 500,000 square feet, 18-storey, centrally air-conditioned facility. At an initial outlay of 1200 crores. This is what I call maximalist thinking. We need big platforms for big innovations. In ideas, in design, in pedagogy, in dispersal.

What do you hope young Indians — especially those from cities — take away from reading this book?
I want young leaders to know an India they do not know. I want them to know another face of government that defies stereotypes. I want them to engage with the system and make a difference. Finally, I want them to go through the lived-in experience of a crossover so that they can build scale, make transformational change happen, irrespective of the sector and the domain.

What projects are you currently busy with?
I am waiting for the phone to ring.