‘An average Indian wants to see a new face, energy, resolve and transparency, which have been lacking’

: Well I think there’s a lot of responsibility…a very strong sense of responsibility. But I think with a lot of younger people getting into politics this time, a lot of younger people elected MPs, like Sachin, myself, across all parties…

• Rahul Gandhi to begin with.

: Certainly, across all parties. I think that’s a great boon, and if together all of us can work, we can learn from the experience of the elders, bring in the energy of the youth, then we have a lot going for us.

• Sachin, how does it feel?

: Well, for me personally, it’s a very humbling experience. I think at this age, to be given such a huge responsibility, it’s a great feeling but at the same time, I feel that you know, we have a lot to prove, we have a lot to work hard for. And I think in Indian politics, it’s like you said, you know there’s so much experience and age, but also there’s diversity. Look at the people from various backgrounds that have come into Parliament, and age being just one of the factors, and I believe that in the time to come, for the long-term quality of the country, it’s a good sign that some young people, some educated people, some people with a different perspective have come into Parliament.

• Sachin, do you think a generational shift is now taking place? The last time we saw a generational renewal was maybe in 1980, when Mrs Gandhi brought in a lot of young people…including your late father.

: I think this Election 2004 has been a very special election. And like you rightly said, it has now marked a change in Indian politics…We have so many young people, mostly from the Congress, and also from other parties who have been elected to Parliament. And when I say elected, means they’ve actually got the mandate of the country’s population…The average Indian wants to see a new face, a young face, some energy, some enthusiasm, some self-determination, and some positive transparency, I think which has been lacking in the system.

Milind: I think there are two parts to it. One is, I’d like to add what Sachin said, that we have to remember that almost a large majority of the population of the voters in this country falls under the age of 35. I don’t sometimes feel that they discriminate on the basis of age. Yes it’s true that every young candidate across all parties has won…But they really look for, like the right expression in Hindi is, Jis ke vichar parivartansheel hain. Someone who has views that are capable of change.

• That are evolving or changing…

: Certainly that are evolving, that are dynamic, that are flexible.

• So age itself is not a problem as long as you are evolving, not frozen in time.

: Certainly. And there are a lot of MPs, in the past, even today, who are maybe in their 60s and 50s but who are very dynamic and have evolving ideologies.

• But do you also see that amongst people of your age group? You know, say up to mid-30s, even up to 40s. There’s a special bond or relationship or equation, irrespective of what party you come from.

: I think that’s very obvious you know, when you have people of somewhat the same age group. You think alike, you have you know pretty much the same background in terms of when you’ve grown up, what era you’ve grown up on. But I believe, it’s not about just the number of years that you’ve logged in on this earth, it’s important to look at people’s mindset. The President of India, he’s an oldish gentleman, I respect him so much. But the way he’s thinking…

• He’s very popular with children.

: He’s very popular, and look at the way he thinks. He’s very positive, very, you know, futuristic. Manmohan Singhji, he liberalised the economy in 1991. He wasn’t very young at that time, but again he was thinking ahead. So I think a fresher perspective in mindset is also as important as, you know, how young you look and how young you appear.

Milind: But regarding parties, I think it’s fair to say that yes, age is a binding force, that it’s a binding factor that unites us all. But I hope that’s true really, because I hope we leave party politics outside of Parliament because today we are in the government. So today our responsibility is beyond the party. And I hope we can all unite together, work together.

Sachin: And I think people expect that you know, when they elect a young person…they want people to cooperate, at least inside Parliament.

• Bill Clinton retired at 52 as a two-term president, right? Tony Blair has till recently been producing babies. Koizumi has been falling in love. And then you see our leaders…our politics looks very old.

: I don’t think it’s consistent throughout. I mean when Mr Rajiv Gandhi became prime minister, it was a great sense of young people getting in. And when he made the voting age 18, he tried to bring in youth into politics. And one is, you can do it by increasing voter participation, two is, by actually luring people to enter politics. So that was done, but overall, yes there is a sense, especially if you meet the younger population. You know we have to remember that 70 per cent of our population is under the age of 35, so 70 crore people under the age of 35, and for them there is a big disconnect with politics.

• But the average age of our Cabinet is above 60. And that too because it’s brought back by the three DMK youngsters.

: But again, I’ll tell you, running a government is a very serious business. And given the fact that this is a coalition government, I think we have produced this Cabinet having considered all things, and the talent and the experience that is available to us is there. So it’s wrong to say that because the country is so young, the ministers should be so young as well. You know you have to have the experience, you have to have the knowledge base, you have to have the talent to really run the administration.

• I presume that many of you will now be working in party organisation.

: Well, even if you’re 50 and you’ve become an MP for the first time, you still have to go through the learning curve…Now I think it’s the prerogative of the Congress to decide where to use each one’s talent and I think everyone is being used depending on the utility and keeping the best interests of the Congress in mind…

• Let me ask the two of you two questions each. 1) Coming in from outside into Parliament, tell me what is the one thing that you have zero tolerance for. Dowry, lack of punctuality…?

: Well personally, I believe in giving other people respect and with a lot of humility. But I don’t think I really agree with too much of sycophancy and giving, you know, public display of someone’s respect…Going overboard with that is something I don’t find acceptable.

• That’s a good thing, if you start out disliking sycophancy. You, Milind?

: In political terms, really I think that the biggest problem is that politicians, and this is across parties, they see politics as a zero-sum game, which it shouldn’t be. And that shouldn’t be the case.

• How is it, how…?

: As in, we must understand that if I win, Sachin does not lose and if Sachin wins, Milind does not lose. It must be that Sachin and I both win together. People across parties must win together and that will enable the country to win.

• Illustrate it for me.

: In politics what happens is there’s such cut-throat competition that people are actually after each other’s throats. And nobody’s looking at the country. There’s one very important quote which I always quote, which Lyndon Johnson had said, not when he was president but when he was a senator. He said: ‘I’m a free man, an American, a United states senator and a Democrat, in that order.’ I think that’s the kind of focus our politicians need to have.

• I’m surprised that you’ve quoted an American politician. Both of you are exposed to what’s happening in the developed world. Do you sometimes feel that India’s been unfair to itself in having been left so far behind, that we lost time?

: I don’t think so. You see we are a democracy and in the true sense of the word, democracy in our system is so deeply embedded.

• So is most of the Western world.

: I agree, but we are a new democracy. And I think we have sometimes taken liberty of that, and you know we may have…

• Been unfair to ourselves.

: Sometimes, but I think in the overall perspective if you look at it, I think the actual Indian today is feeling empowered. That’s a real victory for democracy.

• And what is the way to catch up? Is it to catch up through our old socialistic methods, or we should now actually reform?

: Well, I think both, a mix of both, and I think what this coalition government intends to do, what they’ve always said, Dr Manmohan Singh has always said, that it’s reforms with a human face, and that’s very important. It’s not looking at the Left or the Right. We should not look at ideologies in terms of…

• But if you look at our airports, you suddenly find that there’s a huge gap. When you see a highway, there’s a huge gap. Don’t you think that we need a degree of impatience now?

: Well certainly, I come from Mumbai and I see the Mumbai airport. When one arrives in Mumbai at the international airport, it’s like the hub of investments in India, and when people arrive, we need to definitely change focus on investments. I think really, the problem is that a lot of us are focusing on the difference between the public sector and private sector and that has created a battle and we shouldn’t look at it that way. Because now a new trend is emerging globally, which is actually public-private partnerships, where you work together.

• Where the Government actually becomes like a venture capitalist. It invests in projects and them moves forward and invests in more projects.

: They provide the infrastructure…

Sachin: The role of the Government really is to provide a regulatory environment, a mechanism where things function, where there is healthy competition. Let it be a public limited company or a private limited company, but the Government’s job really should be to give that environment and encourage and regulate.

• Now each one of you tell me one new great idea that you have. Even if it’s not implementable right now.

: Well, actually I have two ideas. One is to do with our democracy. I think there are some countries where voting is compulsory. In India, sometimes, we take our democracy for granted. So in some sense I would like to make it compulsory to vote I think. And second thing that I really want to focus on in the years to come is to give agriculture and farming the same status as industry has in India.

• And to do that you have to take education to our villages…

: It takes a whole lot of work, and I’m just saying at macro-level, this is something very close to my heart.

• Milind?

: I think fundamentally, at a very high level, I think the root cause of a lot of India’s problems, whether we like it or not, like to admit it or not, is population. And I think keeping a tab on population, controlling that, is definitely a big area that we should focus on, and I think the way to do that is through education.

• But you have a new idea of how to address it?

: Well certainly through education. The problem is that we need to address it and really focus on that. We need to make it a key, key issue. And that’s not happening. The problem is education. For example in the last five years, it wasn’t given its due. So we need to focus on that, increase the budget as percentage of GDP, actually look at primary education.

• Both of you are the post-Emergency generation, born much after the Shimla Accord, the last war with Pakistan. What’s your reference point to India’s history? Is it Rajiv Gandhi in 1984? What?

: Certainly I think our major breakthrough in politics was definitely when Rajiv Gandhi entered politics. But if you’re talking about really issues that shape the nation and that drive one to change, you’re right. Your generation may talk about even Independence. I think that today, even in 2004, until as recently as 2002, when we see communal riots, that’s a major problem and if as we go ahead, we talk about bringing India into the globalised world, globalised arena, if we still have communal ideologies, we still have regressive ideologies, we’re taking India back 100 or 200 years.

• You must have seen them in Bombay as a teenager in 1992-93.

: Certainly, definitely. So these have a lasting impact on me.

• Sachin, what is your reference point?

: I think in the years that I have grown up, you know, I have seen a dichotomy. I have seen the lives people live in Delhi…and I’ve also grown up the same time in a parallel world where there is a village—there’s no sanitation, no education, no healthcare, nothing in those areas. And I’ve seen them both growing and developing, but in cities, we’ve taken such a leapfrog jump. You know we’ve got from one colour television in 1982 to today 100-channel networks. To mobile phone technologies. So it’s a leapfrog in technology, in development, in economic growth. But at the same time I’ve seen those villages haven’t really gone that far ahead…the difference is still there.

• But for them to catch up they will also need technology, because technology is the greatest force one can have.

Fair enough. But it must penetrate that level. You know the technology must percolate down to that level, which needs the help of the Government and of society. So those are the people we need to target, I think, no matter who is in government. Those are the people that we need to focus on, put our priorities on.