Dear Friends, one of my frequest frustrations when explaining the idea behind Freedom Team of India is getting people to udnerstand the need to “Leaders First“. As I mentioned in an email to Sanjeev recently:
One of the recurring discussions I keep having with youngsters involved in politics is re. our approach to focus on finding leaders first. It may not suprise you that may people…instinctively “rebel” against this idea and ask why are we not doing more things on the ground etc…

This topic cropped up again during my recent visit …

Just over two years ago, I took a step which felt dangerous, uncertain and hugely risky…As I wrote on my blog at the time (October 2008):
So what exactly do I plan to do?
First, I am reducing my hours of “paid employment”. Starting this December (2008), I will be working part-time on two or three different ideas/companies. Most of this work will have to do with innovation, entrepreneurship, venture capital…
…Second, I am setting aside at least two days a week to do things which I loosely combine under the …

Dear Friends: Thanks to your unstinted support and encouragement, what started as a simple newsletter almost six years ago has turned into a repository of 1200+ articles and 16000+ comments on subjects ranging from “An Indian Identity” to “Women in Hinduism and India“
In the process, some of the user-friendliness may have been lost. This brief primer is meant to help you make the most of my personal “knowledge management system”!
There are now 1200+ posts on this blog. You can rely on serendipity to …

More than 3 years ago, I published a brief review of one of the chapters in Sanjeev Sabhlok‘s book, “Breaking Free of Nehru” in which I wrote…
Sanjeev’s basic contention is “…our flawed electoral system (which forces 99% of our candidates to get huge amounts of black money and to liaise with the mafia while contesting elections) creates the incentives for corruption”…The kind of people our system attracts are power- and money-hungry individuals “who are not reflective on their use of power, unaware of the concept of freedom, …

From Sh S Gurumurthy‘s damning expose of missing millions, pay-offs and unaccounted wealth, “Zero tolerance, secret billions”, some excerpts (emphasis added):
…Following Rajiv and forgetting Indira, Sonia Gandhi proclaimed ‘zero tolerance’ to corruption at a party rally in Allahabad in November 2010. She repeated it at the Congress plenary in Delhi weeks later. Asking the cadre to take the corrupt head on, she said that her party was ‘prompt’ in acting against the corrupt; ‘never spared the corrupt’ because corruption impedes development’. This was almost how Rajiv Gandhi spoke in the …

Dear All, this is a lazy post – borrowing heavily from earlier posts by Atanu Dey and RealityCheck…In fact, it borrows from RC’s post to such an extent that this could have been a guest post by him (except that I have taken large chunks out to get to the main point). This matter is close to my heart and I am keen to have an extensive debate on this matter…Please do share your thoughts and ideas via the comments section below. But first, some extracts from “On the United …