Are we a "Half Smart" People?

Indians must easily rank amongst the smartest "thinkers" and "talkers" in the world (or so we at least seem to believe). We seem to think that we can move the world by just using our brains and tongues. Present even the most complex of problems to most Indians and we seem to be able to deliver a "strategy" and talk about it with aplomb. This can be done by almost everyone from entry level engineers, junior managers to CEOs and politicians. With these skills, we seem to believe that hard work and "getting it done" is somebody else's job. Everyone seems to be the high caste brahmin or babu/manager who wont do any physical work. Physical work for Indians is not just conventional manual labour. Work that involves any other part of our body other than our brains and tongue is considered to be "manual labour". This includes even tasks which are normally considered to be part of the "whole job" such as documentation, showing employees how things are done, following up with people on the phone to get things done, packaging a product, doing a spell check on our documents or just getting a job "executed" by following up on the strategy.

Why are things always half done in India?
Many foreigners who visit India, have this question. Incomplete jobs are to be seen in every sector, although we ourselves seem to think that its only true of the government sector or our city municipality babus. We are often seen as a people who pay no attention to detail or even complete anything. An European I once took on a trip to Halebid/Belur was visibly impressed with the attention to detail of our ancient arts. Hailing from Naples/Rome in Europe he went on to marvel at the attention to detail and execution as compared to the simpler art of Renaissance Italy. He wondered however as to what has happened to India since then, when we dont seem to even complete the simplest of jobs anymore.

Here are a few theories, as to why we may have sunk into this state over the years:

• Emulating the British officers/Mughlai/Maharajas - In their quest to becoming babus by emulating their rulers, the generation of the 30s-70s took to being "managers" often emulating their well off rulers, oblivious to the fact that the rulers had the means to get things done or themselves worked hard in their own countries or environments.
• Only duds do "physical" labour - The brahminical disdain for detailed work that was promoted by the initial bureaucracy and politicians. The emphasis was on how "bright" somebody was and how quickly he/she could deliver discourses on the solutions. This combined with no incentives for actually getting anything done, drove the middle class to take this easy route.
• Only our servants do this? - Our caste/class system was conveniently used by the middle class to distance themselves from many of the DIY tasks even though it might have been faster to do things themselves rather than wait for servants to do it. This soon afflicted the servants, always aspiring to be the middle class themselves.
• Hard Work - for the duds? - Our school systems with their emphasis on rote learning and passing written examinations with absolutely no emphasis on practical projects, teamwork and getting anything done to its logical conclusion, produced dis-incentives for any kids who would otherwise have been interested in "doing" things. The peer pressure has always been on being "smart" which means not doing any physical tasks.
• Whats a "whole job" ? - Soon the concept of what the "whole job" is, was itself lost on our workers, managers and bureaucrats. Ask any workers or managers what their plan to complete some piece of work is, its amazing to see how little they think about all the steps to complete the job including cleaning up/debrief after the job.
• Corruption - Any incentives or need to get the whole job done was completely killed by this all pervasive malaise. It was smart to leave things half done and yet make a profit by bribing officials rather than do anything honestly and well.

Its a leadership issue!!
While we would all like to blame this on levels lower than ourselves and think that good work ethic has been lost on the "labour class" or "young engineers/graduates" its clearly a leadership issue. And at all levels. (Un)willingness by leaders or managers to lead by examples of action rather than commands, suggests to the people assigned to the job, that its OK to have it half done or not at all. The earlier we as the managing class realize this the better it would be to build a nation that delivers.

Its this malaise of thinking & talking rather than DOING, that makes us HALF SMART people. We seem to know what the solution to anything is and are able to talk about it, but never get it DONE. Hopefully, the economic gains of liberalization and the perceived golden pot at the end of the rainbow will help change us into a nation of DOERS.