Malini Goyal & Indulekha Aravind, ET Bureau Jul 12, 2015, 06.03AM IST
Nandan Nilekani opens up on the challenges of the transition to politics, the trauma of losing an election, whether he would reenter politics and what he has learnt, from being in the government yet outside it.
Edited excerpts:
Was the transition to becoming a politician difficult?
It was starker than the shift from running a company to heading Aadhaar. Politics involved being a much more public person. It's a high-contact activity and some people thrive on that, meeting hundreds of people and drawing energy from that. But for me that was quite challenging — you always have to be on call, you never have a moment to yourself to reflect. And then I realised my strength is not so much that as strategic problem-solving: to take a complex problem with many facets, and systematically address it over time very thoroughly. That's what Aadhaar was, and EkStep is also a classic example of this.
Does that mean you rule out returning to active politics?
There are two things. I feel I am better at getting into a complex problem and unravelling it over three to four years. Secondly, a lot of problem-solving can happen outside the system. This might be a better way to achieve my goal of getting things done.
How did you react to the electoral loss?
When you are contesting an election, you have to pump yourself up to win. You don't allow negative thoughts to enter because then you will lose the momentum. I didn't entertain any of that. Obviously, between the election and the result, one could sense there was something happening. Perhaps, I was on the wrong side of history. But still a loss is a loss, especially for someone like me who has managed to do many things successfully. In a way, it's a public repudiation, a public rejection.
Did it hurt?
I'm not used to losing, it's as simple as that. I asked other people and was told that losing elections can be psychologically traumatic. In my case, fortunately, even though I was traumatised for a few weeks, the fact that I found all these other things to do and ways to engage in which I could still have a meaningful impact without having a formal position helped... I think, now I am completely over all that.
Your lessons from working in the government yet outside it...
The need for building a consensus around whatever you want to do is very important. Being in public life is about dealing with a multiplicity of stakeholders.
Everyone is pulling in different directions and wants instant results. And it all has to be sorted before the evening news. You have to manage all these forces and relentlessly focus on achieving something.
And on consensus building?
The first thing I did when I joined the government was to reach out to everybody. I met all the ministers, the secretaries.
I went to every state and met the chief ministers, the media, the activists, the lawyers.
You also design the solution so that it's minimalistic. When people try to solve a problem in public space, they mostly go with a big solution with a lot of bells and whistles, but then each bell and each whistle becomes a point of contention for somebody else. And the aggregate negative coalition sinks the idea. So what you need is a lightweight idea with minimal opposition that you can rapidly insert it into the system and scale it up.
One thing I learnt while being in the government was the bigger the idea, the lesser the opposition.
In Delhi, it's a very stratified system which is very difficult to break. For instance, if I go and say, my car is x but I want car x + delta x, it causes perturbation.
But if I go and say I want to reform the entire subsidy system, they will say go ahead and do it. Partly because they think you are talking through your hat. The other thing is you are fine as long as you don't invade someone's turf.
Were you approached to rejoin Infosys?
When I was invited by the prime minister in 2009 to join the government, my co-founders (at Infosys) were very supportive because they realised it was a chance to contribute to public service. Obviously, there were occasions when there was talk of my coming back but I felt that things had to move forward rather than getting someone from the past. So that really didn't lead anywhere.
