The Mumbai tragedy, the financial crisis and the energy problem highlight one fundamental. The criticality of ensuring that the captains of our ship of state do not continue to give short shrift to the ‘truly important’ task of reaching the shores of a prosperous, equitable and sustainable society in their pursuit of the ‘seemingly urgent’ objectives of political survival and personal self aggrandizement. The consequences of letting the ‘seemingly urgent’ take precedence over the ‘truly important’ can be enormous. The Maharashtra government, I am sure, has an emergency response system. It would be egregious if they did not given the number of times Mumbai has been attacked. But the system, clearly, is not effective. Could it be that the government created the system but then ignored the ‘truly important’ task of testing it because of other ‘seemingly urgent’ preoccupations? The Central government is under pressure to reduce the price of domestic fuels. This despite the fact that the oil companies are still in the red and the subsidy mechanism is known to be faulty. The captains of our energy policy may of course achieve the ‘seemingly urgent’ objective of gaining political brownie points but the price of enhancing the likelihood of triggering further storms in the shape of rising sea levels, extremes of weather and price volatility.

The challenge of the future is to secure a better balance between the ‘seemingly urgent’ and the ‘truly important’. If the latest tragedy is anything to go by, this will not be met if the task is left entirely to our elected representatives. All hands must come on deck — corporates, NGOs, academics, the media etc. This will not be easy. Our political framework does not offer space to anyone other than the ‘elected’ on to the captain’s deck. It is not however insuperable. The soft power of public opinion should not be underestimated. Were eminent citizens like Ratan Tata, N.R.Narayana Murthy, Dr Abdul Kalam, Dr. R.K. Pachauri to come together on a common platform, the weight of public opinion could well prise open the captain’s door.

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