We are not yet at the professional entrepreneurial stage

Can second generation infrastructure projects sustain the spirited start that the sectors got because of visionary leadership? Dr Pronab Sen, Principal Advisor, Planning Commission, tells Shashidhar Nanjundaiah

What are your thoughts on the influence of personal and organisational leadership on the growth of infrastructure in our country? Do you think the role of leadership has an impact or influence on development?Would this be applicable across the sectors?
If you really look at infrastructure story, it all begins with highways. That was a pure leadership driven thing because when the government started [awarding infrastructure projects], we did not have private sector capacity at that time for large scale construction. That was completely leadership driven and mission driven. It was not something that was driven by what was readily achievable at that stage. I still remember that there were just four companies that technically qualified, and even those four companies lamented at the 100 km stretches because their financials were not capable of handling those volumes. Anyway, once that process got started, we have had a huge increase in the number companies who have grown up on the highway programme, but went well beyond it.

Many of these companies are leadership driven. Today, we have companies who themselves in certain ways are becoming visionaries. To build large-scale infrastructure projects, particularly those at a national level, we need visionary leadership; the small inter¡connecting roads and little [power] distribution com¡panies and the like, perhaps not pressingly so. Similarly, a gas pipeline is not necessarily visionary. However, a gas grid is certainly a visionary project.

I am presuming most of the big ticket projects are more on the innovative side because they have to go beyond the immediate brief and task.
Yes. Companies are actually looking ahead and asking themselves what is it that we need to do? The leader may not execute the nitty gritty, but set the process in motion, and then little bits and pieces are done by journeymen, and finally you have a project.

Do you see a difference between government bureaucratic leadership versus private sector leadership?
There is almost never bureaucratic leadership except at a very micro level. Bureaucrats are not meant to be leaders. Leadership is not even expected of bureaucrats. But political leadership is very important.

What you are saying is actually leading me to the obvious observation today that some sectors have done better than the other sectors.
That is right.

What do you believe is the rider or differentiator?
It is not just that some sectors have done better than others. Some sectors which have done well under particular kinds of leadership have not done well even with much greater advantages because initial teething problems have been taken care of have actually been slipped back.

Could you give me an example?
Highways. It was a showpiece. And in last two years highways have not done much.

Do you believe, therefore, that there is a lacuna in the leadership today?
In the end, leadership is very much characteristic of an individual. It is not something that a system necessarily throws up.

And therefore, is leadership sustainable as a solution to building infrastructure in our country?
These things happen in fits and starts. Now the point is other alternative is the dictatorship model where you have the leader who leads right through till the end till you kick the guy out. Korea’s real development took place under dictatorship. They had a visionary. Singapore had a visionary too. It would be interesting to look at is what is going to happen with Delhi Metro now that Dr E Sreedharan has retired from that corporation. Will that kind of visionary behaviour continue? Has it been embedded in the system? It would be interesting to observe.

What do you expect? As a start up…
My sense of all of this is that visionaries never choose another visionary to replace them. They would actually, that is how Parkinson’s law operates. They will take a guy who is very good at implementing and then put him in a leadership position. I suspect we will have to go through cycles of this.

Does it need successive leaders like that? After Dr Sreedharan, do you need a leader?
Perhaps you do not for Delhi. But today Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) is the primary consultant to all the metro systems in the country.

Hyderabad Metro may disagree with that.
True. Some of them can perhaps get away with [not following the DMRC model].

Have our industries made the right moves in terms of leadership? Do you see the same difference in our industries? Have the leadership-led ones have done better than the process ones?
I have always been of the view that at least for the initial stages of development, private sector is almost always leadership driven because it is entrepreneurial. So, except for a few companies like General Electric (GE), that too at a very late stage, became truly professionally managed. But by and large industry is entrepreneurial which is essentially leadership driven. Just to give you an example, look at Reliance. It was hugely different when Dhirubhai Ambani was at the helm. Therefore, the clear differentiator is in transiting from entrepreneur-led business to professional entrepreneurialism. That is a process, but I am not sure if we are there yet.

Where are we?
We are still in a position where people treat private sector jobs as a job rather than as a route to becoming an entrepreneur. You look for the direction from somebody.

At the end of the day whether you call it vision or not it is essentially that and you have to be driven.

Let me cite the example of infrastructure, the vision to be able to see both commercial and developmental angles. Or is it in fact the two sides of PPP need to look at those different sides and figure out their way.
I think the commercial part of it is more means to an end rather than the end itself.

How do you say that?
What drives truly great entrepreneurs is not the money but the creation. There is an element of the artist. The artist does not paint because it is going to get him a million dollars but because that is what he wants to do.

By the same token, we can talk about viability. Should a leader not be sure that something created for commercial or developmental purposes with a larger vision in mind must also be viable?
Yes, unlike painting once you have finished will stay there. When you are creating a business and empire for it to continue it must be able to replicate itself. It is a different way of looking at the same issue.