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We must cultivate values of ‘We/Ours’ rather than ‘Me/Mine’ – in conversation with Arun Maira, author, ‘Reimagining India's Economy’ >
by Madanmohan Rao [September 15, 2025]
This Saturday, on September 20, the 11th edition of the BizLitFest Bangalore is kicking off at WeWork Galaxy. Benedict Paramanand, co-founder of this business literature festival series, also launched the inaugural Hyderabad edition on August 2.
In our first preview article on BLFB 2025, we featured an exclusive interview with Ganesh Krishnan, author of Mastering Disruption: A Practical Guide to Understanding New-Age Business Models. In our second preview article, we featured an interview with Nitin Seth, author of Human Edge in the AI Age: Eight Timeless Mantras for Success.
In our third preview article, we interview Arun Maira, author, Reimagining India's Economy: The Road to a More Equitable Society. He has written over a dozen books, including Shaping the Future: A Guide for Systems Leaders; Remaking India: One Country, One Destiny; Solutions Factory: A Consultant's Handbook for Problem-Solving; and The Learning Factory: How the Leaders of Tata Became Nation Builders.
Arun worked with the Tata Group in India for 25 years in many leadership and board-level positions. He was CEO of Innovation Associates in the US and Chairman of the Boston Consulting Group in India. Arun Maira has been Chairman of the Quality Council of India, Save the Children India, and the Axis Bank Foundation.
His latest 300-page book is a blend of storytelling, business history, and thought-provoking ideas for equitable growth. “India is at a fork in the road. We must discover who we are and agree on who we want to be. India’s society and ecosystem are in a crisis,” Arun begins in his book.
The three sections in the book span India’s aspirations, systems and future. The author describes four archetypes of complex systems: rigid complex, complex adaptive, complex self-adaptive, and complex chaotic. He also creatively describes four leadership scenarios as wallowing buffaloes, strutting peacocks, growling tigers, and rising fireflies!
Arun flags four divisions that are straining India’s demographic fabric: religion, caste, economic disparity, and a youth-age divide. He calls for a more caring society, and a shift towards more sustainable growth via a rethink on metrics beyond GDP, limits on unbridled marketisation, and more emphasis on public IP.
In this wide-ranging interview, Arun delves deeper into metrics of economic growth, effective practices in inclusion, the role of transformative technologies like GenAI, sustainability strategies, the evolution of his book series, and much more. Sign up here to register for BLFB 2025 and listen to more insights from this bestselling author!
Madan: What were some of the pleasures of writing your book – and the challenges?
Arun: A pleasure of writing this book was that it was an introspective book: a reflection of what has shaped me, and my ideas, since I was a child.
The challenge was to prevent it from becoming too autobiographical, and also from becoming too ‘academic’. The challenge was to write it as an ‘accessible’ story of the evolution of ideas of societal governance and economics. And to explain why those ideas are useful for carrying forward India’s journey—its evolution—to its ‘tryst with destiny’.
Madan: How does this book fit into your series of books already published? And what’s your next book about?
Arun: This is my 14th or 15th book—I am losing count. I had never intended to be a writer of books. I was persuaded, by the consulting company in the US that I was working with in the 1990s, to write a book on the ‘human side of the enterprise’, for which they found an international publisher. The company wanted to use the book to market itself as a great company to assist their clients. That book was The Accelerating Organisation: The Human Face of Change.
I was asked to write my second book by the Boston Consulting Group, when I became their Chairman in India in 2000, for which they found an international publisher entering the Indian market wanting to build its business in India with books by Indian management leaders. That book was Shaping the Future: Aspirational Leadership in India and Beyond.
And then another publisher invited me, and then another. I got into the groove of writing books, while writing regularly in the Indian business media. I also began to read books about how to write to improve the ways I could communicate to readers in different structures—short articles, longer essays, and books. I began to enjoy writing!
Having written, and enjoyed this ‘autobiographical’ book, when I am 82 years old, I feel I don’t want to write yet another book. It could be the last. However, my granddaughter, Layla, who is 14 now, and has been my best friend ever since she was two years old, has proposed that IF I were to write another book, its title should be Layla and Me—a story of our times together. Maybe?
Madan: What are some common myths and misconceptions about economic growth that you still come across?
Arun: The most common myths are:
(1) that economic growth is the panacea for everything—'more GDP and we will be alright’
(2) that ‘economists’ understand the economy: actually, they don’t because their ‘science’ is fundamentally flawed.
This is the thesis of my previous (more ‘academic’) book, Shaping the Future: A Guide for Systems Leaders (published in 2023). It is a book about the science of systems. Its sub-title is, How to Be, Think, and Act in the New World.
Madan: In addition to GDP and jobs, what other metrics should be on our radar to track equitable growth?
Arun: The ‘economy’ is only one of four essential components for an equitable and sustainable system. The others are: the health of the ‘natural environment’; the health of ‘society’; and the quality of ‘governance’ of the whole system. All four are complex systems. Each requires metrics for the measurement of its own health.
A key point is that all of them must remain sufficiently healthy to support the rest. It is like the human body, which has several complex organs, all of which must function well to keep the human being healthy and alive—the heart, the lungs, the liver, the kidneys, the brain, and so on. Even if the rest are 100% healthy and one of them becomes too weak, the body will die.
Therefore, the health of a complex system should not be gauged by a single number of its overall health. Because how will one convert the value of the natural environment, or the value of human lives, into the same currency used to measure the health of the economy, which we must if we want a single, overall index?
For example, how does one compute the monetary value of a human life? Or the value of a ‘forest’ which is much more than the price of the ‘useful’ timber producing trees in it?
Madan: Which states in India are doing a better job of equitable growth? What can we learn from them?
Arun: Kerala is accepted internationally as a state from which the world can learn about equitable growth, with women’s empowerment, community-led governance, the accessibility and affordability of school education and public health. Another is Tamil Nadu, where the political inclusion of the ‘lower castes’ has made growth more inclusive.
Madan: Which countries are doing a better job of equitable growth? What can we learn from them?
Arun: On scale, the best country to learn from is perhaps China—the only country, other than India, with a billion plus population. China was as poor as India 40 years ago: now it is far ahead. Another is Vietnam, which was much poorer than India 20 years ago, and where per capita incomes are much higher now.
It is noteworthy that both these countries describe themselves as ‘socialist’ countries. This worries the ‘capitalists’ in the US who thought socialism as a way of developing a country had been put into the dustbin of history with the collapse of the Soviet Union (and ‘communism’) in 1991.
Madan: You have written briefly about AI and its impact. In recent years, how have you seen the rise of GenAI impacting the economy? What are the opportunities and serious threats from such digital transformation?
Arun: Capitalists don’t like ‘human’ resources. They want only an obedient pair of hands, not a whole human being in their organisations (Henry Ford’s lament). Therefore, capitalists would prefer to replace humans with machines in their organisations if they can, eg. automation of mechanical work replaced human labour. ‘Artificial’ intelligence is enabling them to substitute even human minds.
The existential threat to the economy (and society) from applying more AI is that human beings may no longer be required for ‘economic’ activities. So, how will they earn money to buy what they need and what the AI-run enterprises are producing for them?
Silicon Valley technologists were amongst the first to realise the existential challenge to the economics of their enterprises and proposed a ‘universal basic income’ to be provided to all citizens by governments. However, they do not want to be taxed to provide governments with the resources to provide the basic income to all!
Madan: What are some ways of improving women’s participation in the economy, in addition to quotas and financial support? India seems to lag behind other countries significantly here.
Arun: My answer to this question is linked to the previous one. What is the future of ‘work’? If we define work as only that which is done for earning money, then how will human beings earn enough in a tech and AI driven world?
Economists say that there are not enough women in India doing ‘productive’ work—by which they mean work for which they are paid money, and the value of which can then be measured by the wages they are paid, which can be added into the GDP. But what about all the work women do outside the ‘formal’ economy?
Indian women, other than the very rich, are the most over-worked humans in India. In poorer homes, they wake before the men, make food for them and the children, go out to look after their animals, or work on their small plots of land, or go to richer people’s homes to earn some money, cleaning and cooking for them. Back at home, they are the last ones to go to sleep and awake first the next morning.
Economists project that while the need for humans in ‘productive’ work will reduce, needs for ‘caregiving’ will increase with ageing populations. Therefore, they are estimating the needs for ‘caregiving’ work in the future—looking after older people, younger people with emotional problems, children with both parents out to work earning money.
The question is who will pay for these caregiving services? Will women have to continue to go out to earn money to pay for the caregiving of their children and elders who they leave at home? Will they be able to earn enough to pay a decent wage to the caregivers in their homes?
Also, what about increasing the miserable wages being paid to the millions of Anganwadi workers and Asha workers? They are all women providing caregiving services in their communities.
The work of caregiving has little value in the economy, though it is the most valuable work for the sustainability of a society. Modern economics has cannibalised society to provide resources for the economy. It cannot carry on this way anymore.
Madan: You have written about Trump and tariffs – that situation has escalated alarmingly. What are some effective strategies India should be pursuing?
Arun: India is caught in the middle of a geo-political conflict between the US and China. It is ironic that India and China’s economies were similarly small and poor in the 1980s. India’s economic policymakers were persuaded by the IMF and Western economists in 1991 to abandon India’s own industrial development strategies and to open its economy to more imports. Also, to give up its ‘socialist’ orientation and become more ‘capitalist’.
The result is that, while India’s GDP has grown, China has become much stronger economically. China is perceived by the US as a threat to its hegemony, while India is caught in the middle of two great powers.
India must build its own economy from within—atmanirbhar. The government’s realisation that this must be India’s strategy has upset India’s US ideology-oriented economists. They have raised alarms that India is becoming ‘protectionist’ and going back to the pre-1991 ‘dark ages’. Though India was on the right path then, and strayed off it.
Indian economists must also change their ideological bias against the public sector. Education and healthcare, and effective control of public distribution systems, must be in the public sector, as they remain in China. Excessive, and too early, privatisation of education and healthcare, and erosion of the public distribution system for food, has disabled the Indian economy from providing affordable education, healthcare, and nutrition, equitably to all its citizens.
Madan: Economic growth should be in an equitable manner. But it should also be environmentally sustainable. What are some effective industrial policies here?
Arun: We must broaden the concept of ‘industrial’ policy. Any activity that produces a product or service is an ‘industry’. The conversion of any input to a useful output is a ‘manufacturing’ activity, whether it is done in a large factory, or in a small, informal organisation. The processing of the produce of the Earth around a farm is a ‘manufacturing’, and an ‘industrial’, activity.
These ‘manufacturing industries’ provide employment and incomes to millions of Indian citizens who do not own the land on which the agricultural product is grown. Though not ‘farmers’, they are ‘producers’ of food products. Therefore ‘industrial’ policies to increase the employment and earnings of Indian citizens must encompass all activities that provide employment, and not be restricted only to incentives for creating large factories.
Czech-Canadian environmental scientist Vaclav Smil has calculated that food production, packaging, and distribution is the largest contributor to global emissions, even larger than the transportation industry. He has also shown that the only ‘scientific’ way to reduce the hydro-carbon footprint of the food industry is to have more production, processing, and consumption of food products around small farms, in local webs, and more people employed in these, rather than in global supply chains.
India has more people in ‘rural’ areas employed in ‘agriculture’ than any other country in the world. So, instead of getting more people into ‘urban’ areas and out of ‘agriculture’, we should increase rural industrial activities, and small-scale farms, rather than industrial scale, mono-crop agriculture, which as Smil has calculated harms the environment too much. In fact, we have experienced this in India, with falling water tables, polluted streams, and soil degradation in Punjab and Haryana, food-providing states for the country.
We must ‘reimagine’ our economy on Gandhian lines (which is the theme of my book), instead of the large enterprises’ industrial path that both the capitalist US and communist Soviet Union followed, and we imitated.
It is a mistake to say that ‘Nehruvian’ industrial policies were influenced only by the Soviet Union. They were Western ideas. And the West is having a hard time accepting that its economic model has harmed environmental sustainability; and that ‘small is beautiful’—not scale.
Madan: How do you view the growth of India’s startup ecosystem – how can they contribute more to inclusive growth?
Arun: A startup is created by an entrepreneur, who ‘stands up and starts up’ to use a popular slogan, and who is also expected to be ‘a job creator, not job seeker’. So, we should measure the contribution to the Indian economy of a start-up entrepreneur by the numbers of good jobs the enterprise creates, not by the stock-market valuations of the entrepreneur’s personal wealth.
We do not need more stock market ‘unicorns’; we need more enterprises that provide larger numbers of India’s less skilled citizens to become productive employees with better wages in their enterprises.
Madan: How do you view the growth of India’s diaspora – how can they contribute more to inclusive growth?
Arun: India already has the largest number of its citizens employed in other countries who remit their wages home. Most of them are unskilled or skilled labour. Their remittances home make a substantial contribution to the growth of the Indian economy.
Many Indian entrepreneurs abroad are investing their wealth in ‘social enterprises’, often in their own states in India, to improve health and education of poorer citizens. This is their contribution, specifically for inclusive growth within India.
My concern is however, with the Indian diaspora in the top echelons of US corporations, universities, and think tanks. They are looked up to, in India, for ideas about economics and policy.
What are the ideas they are propagating and supporting in India? They are the Western models of economic growth and corporate management, which are harming societies in the West. We must free ourselves from the continuing ‘colonising’ of our minds by the West through our own diaspora.
Madan: What are some ways for citizens to become more ethical and contribute to equitable growth in society?
Arun: “Ubuntu” is a native South African expression. It means, “I am because we are”. Each of us must realise that we exist because of others, and that our lives are sustained by others around us. We must cultivate internal values of “We/Ours”, rather than “Me/Mine”, for our societies to be sustainable.
Rather than demanding protection of our personal identities and property, we must become responsible for the sustainability of our local environments, and equitable and sustainable livelihoods of all in our local neighbourhoods.
We must learn to, and practice, listening to people ‘not like ourselves’ around us, rather than connecting with like-minded people elsewhere on our smartphones, which is what the algorithms of social media force us to do. We are spending too much of our time, and wasting too much of our lives, on connecting with others via technology.
We should put aside our smartphones, meet our neighbours, understand others’ aspirations and concerns, and together build, local, societally harmonious, and environmentally sustainable communities.
Madan: Overall, are you optimistic about the prospects of India’s economy? What are some promising trends you see?
Arun: Change of a paradigm begins with a vision of a new world, and with more conversations in which criticism of the prevailing paradigm is acceptable. Since the 1990s, with the victory of the “Washington Consensus”, it became taboo to suggest, even in India, that the Western economic model of global trade chains and more GDP with expectations of wealth trickle-down, was harmful for societies and the environment.
Anyone proposing a ‘Gandhian’ local systems model was dismissed as a romantic idealist, or someone taking India back into a dark past, and labelled a ‘socialist’, and shut out of the mainstream of policy discourse.
An ‘Overton Window’ [of acceptable discourse] has opened now to admit conversations of these ideas into the mainstream. This gives me hope. For example, we are having this conversation about ‘Gandhian’ economics in a ‘business’ literature festival in Bangalore—the city which has driven India’s technology development connected with the global economy.
This gives me hope that the tide will change, and take us onto a new path to our vision of an equitable society in an environmentally sustainable environment.
Madan: How has your book been received so far? What is your next book about?
Arun: I have had only a few occasions so far to discuss ideas of my book. It seems to resonate well in these discussions.
I have already answered what my next book may be about. It may be about family and intergenerational relations, and about re-learning the real nature of the world with the curiosity of a child.
Madan: What are your parting words of advice or messages to the audience?
Arun: Listen to your own mind. What are your beliefs. Why are these your beliefs? Also, listen to others. Understand why they believe what they do.
Because only by working together, despite our differences, will we make the world better for everyone’s children and grandchildren.
Madan: Any other comments or remarks you would like to make?
Arun: We need more ‘systems thinking’, and less, siloed, specialised knowledge. And more ‘systems acting’, with more cooperation, and less competition. And more humility to accept that we are small creatures of the universe, rather than a super species which, with its scientific ways can control ‘unruly Nature’, as Francis Bacon had declared at the advent of the European scientific enlightenment.
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