Usefulness politics 101124

Will Biden step down to make Kamala the first woman President? Maybe, for just 2 months. Of course, for all practical purposes, now she is already almost acting as the President. 

India’s education systems’ scale is humungous. 250M children; 1.4M schools; 9.5M teachers. Infrastructure needs improvement to ensure all children have equal opportunities to learn and thrive. Teachers need development, agency. Many children may need scholarships, stipends. Curriculums need changes, localization, and customization too. Movements, missions are needed for all this to happen for all. Let us give our bit in this.

Does diversity in our teams help? Yes, if we are doing complex tasks, creative tasks. Diversity among equals is more helpful. Age diversity does not matter much. Educational, experiential, and ability diversity matters more. Duration – no impact. Diversity works better where it is valued. It improves inclusion.

And there are not many jobs. 1000M in working age. 600M are employed, mostly self-employed and only 150M have jobs in organized, private, and government sectors. This is 15% of the working age India. 15M are in Governments, States and Union. 1.5% of working age India. The average income per month is not more than Rs.10,000 per month at the entry level. This is less than 50% of the entry-level government job. No job security, mostly, as against secure government jobs. This is about 60% of the per capita income today. Indicating unusual inequity in incomes. This is also lower than the minimum wages for a skilled worker. 

Executive, management, and leadership positions. Not more than 5% of Indian jobholders, but critical. Various surveys conclude: Half the people would like to quit their jobs. More high performers. For no appreciation, recognition; no growth; no growth opportunities; inefficiency, decision; layers of approvals to do the work, to get the work done; red tape; overload without support; weak, non-supporting leaders, leadership, management; negative culture; not-so-open communication, doubt, mistrust; toxic, unkind managers. What do we do? 

Down below, the situation might be far worse. Hand-to-mouth existence. It might be improving at 10% growth rate. This may not be enough. What can be done? We need to go self-employment way with skills, tools, and appropriate tech. Local enterprises help. We need to go the self-help way. Collectivization, collective action helps. Agency of the poor-vulnerable-marginalized helps. Agency of women can lead this. Paradigms need to be shifted. We need to get into Galileo, Gandhian paradigms. Replacing leaders may not be sufficient. We may have to change leaders’ minds and hearts. We need to be on N-way all the way. In the next 20 years. 

Politics, over the last 50 years. Politics for public service, civic-citizen action, poor-vulnerable-marginalized, women, children, elders, disabled, youth, internally displaced persons. It is in the blood. Grandfather. Father. Brother. In school, college. In the workplace. At stay. Local, district, state. Societies, unions, committees, coaching, teams of animators-volunteers, campaigns. Directly, in the background. Milk, multiple farm commodities, fish, poultry, eggs, livestock, handlooms, wool et al. Chenetha-craftspersons, farmers, fishers, farmworkers, artisanal communities, nomadic-dalit-tribal communities. Surveys, polls, projections/estimates. Can we have planning, supporting, and tracking? 

Yes, we can. If we coexist, keep flowing, for-with PVM. In N? neethiyoga for 7L.

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