 So before I start, I'd like to thank the University of Cambridge. I studied here and it gave me a lot in terms of knowledge, in terms of understanding. So it's quite a big deal for me to be standing here. I've sat there. I'd like to thank the George Business School, the Dean, the faculty and students. And I'd especially like to thank Professor Rao for having me here. I thought I would speak a little bit about India, about what is going on in India. And that's the Bharat Joro bit. And then I would talk about two divergent perspectives on the planet. The American view of things, the Chinese view of things and how those two are playing out. And then I'd conclude by giving, placing some ideas on the table about how we can think about these two divergent objective forces. The thread, the central thread is about listening. And it's about listening at the individual level, but also listening politically at scale. So not just one person, but listening to millions and millions of people and understanding how they're feeling and how they're responding. And then also listening to different cultures, which you're not maybe used to or I'm not used to, and trying to get a sense of how they're seeing the world and trying to piece together where they're coming from. So the broad idea is one of listening. Different cultures listen differently. There's a very specific way in which the Indian culture listens. And so I'll be talking more about that. I see a friend of mine, a Sikh friend of mine. You'll sort of get a sense of what I'm talking about. And it's also about what is going on at the international level and the risks that are potentially in front of us. So we can start with the Bharat Juro. Everybody knows, and it's been in the news a lot, that Indian democracy is under pressure, is under attack. I'm an opposition leader in India, and we are navigating that space. What's happening? The institutional framework, which is required for a democracy, a parliament, a free press, the judiciary, just the idea of mobilization, just the idea of moving around, these are all getting constrained. So we are facing an attack on the basic structure of Indian democracy. In the constitution, India is described as a union of states. And that union requires a negotiation, requires a conversation. So it's slightly different than other countries. You can think about it much more at the scale of Europe. Multiple different states, much, much bigger than Europe, requiring a conversation and a negotiation to actually move forward. And it's that negotiation that is actually coming under attack and under threat. Here you can see that picture. That picture is taken in front of parliament house, and that's where a whole bunch of opposition members of parliament were just standing there talking about certain issues, and we were just locked up and put in jail. And that's happened three or four times, and it's happened relatively violently. That's just an example. And you've also heard of the attack on minorities, the attack on the press. So you get a sense of what is going on. Now the one way I like to think about it is that Indian democracy is a public good, because it is by far the biggest democracy. At least 50% of people who live in a democratic space live in India. And so preserving and defending Indian democracy is more than just about India. It's actually about defending the democratic structure and the democratic system on the planet. Can we do the next slide? So that's what I described. Capture and control of media and the judiciary, surveillance and intimidation. I myself had Pegasus on my phone. A large number of politicians have Pegasus on their phone. I've been called by intelligence officers who tell me, listen please be careful what you're saying on the phone, because we are sort of recording this stuff. So this is a constant pressure that we feel. Cases on opposition. Number of criminal libel cases for things that should under no circumstances be criminal libel cases. But that's the story. And that's what we are trying to defend. What we found as the opposition was that it's very difficult to communicate with people when you have this type of an assault on the media, on the democratic architecture. Can you go to the next slide? And so we decided to go back into Indian history and Indian culture. And we decided to use a very powerful tool that has been used in Indian history called the Yatra. And that's Mahatma Gandhi doing a Yatra against the British, which actually broke the back of the British Empire. It's called the Dandi Yatra. My Indian friends here will know about it. It was a Yatra that raised the issue of assault tax. It was about 450 kilometers. The idea of a Yatra is not just a journey. It's a journey. It's a conversation. It's listening to people. But at its heart, it's the idea of annihilating yourself. So at the heart of a Yatra is the idea that you attack yourself. When you attack yourself by the distance that you walk, by the pressure you put yourself under, and that's the basic philosophy of a Yatra. And the idea is that if you attack yourself and you shut yourself down, you shut your ideas down, then when someone speaks to you, you will be able to listen to him or her more effectively. That's the broad philosophical idea behind it. And it's there in a number of religious systems as well as an idea. The idea of attacking yourself, of annihilating yourself, to understand, to observe, to listen. And it also has to have a sense of perseverance. It can't be that you just do it for five days. It's got to hurt you. It's got to be long. It's got to take time. And so that's the Yatra that we started. It started from Kanyakumari in the south, and it went all the way to Srinagar. Five months, well actually four and a half months of continuous walking, 4,000 kilometers, 14 states, 136 days, nine languages, multiple religions. Next slide. And so we started on this. We decided, okay, we're going to do this. We got 125 core people, and we said, okay, we start to walk. And we had no idea, frankly, what we were getting ourselves into. Okay, because I'm a runner. So for me, I thought to myself, look, okay, we're walking 30 kilometers a day. I run 10 easily, so 30 can't be that difficult. Right, a little bit of arrogance. So I was like, this is not going to be a big deal. And so we started. And immediately we realized what we had got ourselves into. Okay, because this was not actually about the distance at all. The distance was almost irrelevant. It was about the energy that was embedded in this thing. Right, and the number of people, the scale of the thing, spiraled completely out of control. So in our imagination, it was 120 people walking with, you know, 3,000, 2,000 people coming. Sometimes this became 50,000 people. And when you get 50,000 people next to you, it's not easy, because you were just thrown around. Right, and the forces are very, very big. To give you an idea, six people died. Okay, walking this thing. Multiple people broke their legs, arms. And that was the type of energy that was released. What I did early on, I thought to myself, okay, so what is my responsibility in this? What do I have to do? And I came out with the concept, which was that when we're walking and there's this massive group of people and this pressure, I have to ensure that the space in front of me is safe. Right, whether it's a woman who comes, whether it's a young kid who comes, whether it's a handicapped person, whoever comes, that person's got to feel that I'm comfortable. And in this huge, energetic system, I'm safe. That was my first idea. And the second idea was, which I told the guys working with us, I said, look, whoever comes into this space must feel that they've come home. They should not feel that this is a political rally. They should feel that they've come to see their... I mean, there were many of us, so they've come to see their brother, or they've come to see their sister, or they've come to see their mother. And they should feel very comfortable over there. And then when they leave, they should have a feeling that I just left home. So we try to make it a personal, emotional connect with people. That was just an idea. And that's the idea here of creating this listening space. Can we do the next one? And that's what the thing looks like. And that's... So you can see the space around me there, and there's others who are walking with me over there. There you can't really see it. And so there's massive pressure coming into that space. And these people are walking, and then we're inviting them into the space, and we're having these conversations. Which interestingly, the moment we come up with the idea of making it a home, they stop being political discussions. So what was a political idea suddenly became a personal idea. And we started getting people who started talking to us about things that we never imagined that they would speak about. Just completely... As a politician, we used to say, okay, let's talk about employment. Let's talk about these type of things. And suddenly we were getting this emotional outburst of people, telling us the most personal things. You know, when you meet somebody, especially when you're a politician, the first thing you're trying to do is you're trying to tell them that you understand their situation. Even in business, that's the first thing you're trying to say. Look, I know what your problem is. I know how to solve your problem. That's the starting point. So when I began, that was my idea. Somebody had come to me and I'm a farmer. Oh yeah, your problem is with the seeds, and your problem is the fact that you're not getting your insurance money, et cetera, these type of things. And very quickly that just stopped, because the number of people that I was dealing with, the number of people that I was dealing with was just too much. And then what also started to happen was my knees started to give me trouble. I had an old injury in college which had gone away, and then suddenly that thing started up. So in my mind I was like, okay, I got to make sure that this is under control, and frankly there's no much I can say now. And I just got to listen to everybody. And so what slowly started to happen is that my desire to speak just started to die. One, because I couldn't speak to so many people. And two, because I was in pain and I was just like, okay, I got to cruise through this thing. I'd get up in the morning. I mean, you can imagine it, you have knee pain, and you're like, okay, so how many kilometers do I got to go? 3,500. I mean, how do you even come to terms with that? You're like, my God. So this is, as I was dealing with this, I started to sort of go silent. And so I would speak to somebody. It would be as if I was like a dark lake. I'd just be sitting there and silently, and the person would be speaking to me. And slowly I started to feel many things that I could not feel before. So for example, a farmer would come, he'd grab my hand, and immediately when I grabbed his hand, I could tell the suffering that he's been through, the pain that he's been through, the difficulty he's been through. So you started to hear, not just with your ears. You started to hear with your hands. You started to hear, listen with your eyes. You started to look, you know, you're walking with somebody and you can see that he's struggling. So you start to get a sense of what this person is and where he's coming from. Very deep sense of that. I'll give you the most shocking example of this. And I said that these discussions started becoming very personal. So we're walking and suddenly these two, and how you can hear in an individual, right? The voice of millions of people. That's what as a politician I think about. How do I take what you're saying and say, okay, how do I now take it from there to what a million ladies are saying, a million women are saying? Or what you're feeling, how do I translate it to what a million or 500,000 women are saying? So I'm walking and suddenly these two girls come, one of them grabs my hand on this side and the other one grabs my hand on this side. And when they grab my hand, I feel something I've never felt before, right? In the hand. This is strange. The way they're holding my hand, there's something strange in it, right? It's almost like a desperate way of holding my hand. So I look at the girl and I say, tell me, what's happened? How are you doing? And she looks at me and she says, well, my sister and me, that's the sister, were gang rape of five guys. So this is not something, this is not a personal conversation that you have with somebody you've just met. So I'm like, look, let's call the cops, right? That's my first reaction. I'm like, that's the real problem. Let's call the cops. And they're like, no, please don't call the cops. You can't call the cops. So I can't call the cops. And they're like, well, if you call the cops, we'll be shamed. And then the girl says, and I'll never be able to get married. So I say, what do you want me to do? They don't call the cops. So I'm like, OK, so then what do I do? If I don't call the cops, how do I help you? They're like, no, we just wanted our brother to know what has happened to us. And I said, yeah, you've told your brother what's happened to you, but now what do I do? And then there's nothing you can do. And then they walked away. So now you extrapolate that. And you can see thousands of women who have faced something like that. And you can see the pain that is there hidden. You can see the difficulty that they're dealing with. The other thing they said, the other thing I thought when they walked away, I was like, my God, so these girls have dealt with this, and now they're going to deal with it for the rest of their life, and they're never going to tell anybody. And I thought, that's crazy. But that's it. So these are the type of things that started to happen. And they started to change as a politician the way I look at people and the way I think about people and the way I react to people. Almost like a silence in me that is just, say what you have to say and I'm quiet. And there's nothing I'm going to say. And tell me everything you have to say. And then once you've told me, I'm not telling anybody. Which is trust. So that's what this Yatra started to do. And it started to happen with kids. I mean, I'm walking on this. I'm walking and just to give you a flavor of India, I'm walking and there are these little beggars who come, little kids. And they come and they hug me and stuff. So I'm fooling around with them. And another man comes and says, don't do that. So don't do what? He's like, don't touch them. He says they're dirty. So I said, no, you and me are dirtier than them. Right? So you can see then these ideas that are floating around that suddenly you never heard them before. You never heard. Or you didn't get the granularity of it anyway. And then, can we go to the next? Yeah, so that's a seek mechanic. You can see his hand there. And this is a girl whose house has been broken, whose house I think has been smashed. Anyway, next. Now this is where the thing gets really interesting. So we are going through all the states. And Kashmir is a state which is insurgency prone. Right? There's a lot of violence. There has been quite a lot of violence for many years. In fact, that picture there is me putting flowers on the spot where almost 40 soldiers were killed by a car bomb some years back. So we arrive in Kashmir. And Kashmir is this so-called violent place. And as I'm entering Kashmir, the security guys come to me and say, listen, we need to talk to you. So what do you need to say? And they say, well, look, the thing is, you can't walk in Kashmir. Right? It's not a good idea. We're walking three days and we walk in three days in the roughest districts. So you can't walk in Kashmir. It's a bad idea. So I'm like, why can't I walk in Kashmir? And they're like, well, because you'll get hand grenades thrown in you. So now I'm responsible for 120 people I'm walking with. Right? So I'm like, look, let me go and have a little word with them. And so I go and have a little word with them and say, look, they're telling us they're going to get hand grenades thrown at us. And they're like, OK. And I was like, frankly, I want to walk. I mean, if we get hand grenades, we get hand grenades. So they're like, yeah, we should all walk. And so we decide if we're going to walk. And we start to walk. And suddenly what starts to happen is these Indian flags start coming everywhere. Right? Everywhere they just start coming out. Right? The first day we were told about 2,000 people are going to show up and 40,000 people show up. Right? And that thing over there where I'm sitting on that jeep is because the police and security system just been overloaded. And it's collapsed. Right? Because they just can't, they can't manage, they can't manage the crowd. And if you look carefully, you'll see the panic on the security people's faces. Anyway, they pull us out of that and say, this just doesn't work. We can't go through this in this manner. And then the next day they set it up properly. And then we go through. That's us entering Kashmir where the mountains are. That's on the first day. And then the really interesting thing happens. So we've been told we're going to be killed. We're walking. And people are coming. And then one guy looks at me and he says, call me. So I'm like, come. And the security people have said, listen, please don't do this. Please don't call people. Like we walk. Here, don't call people. Because this is putting everybody at risk. So the guy says, call me. I say, come. So he comes. So he comes, starts walking next to me. And he says, Mr. Gandhi, you've come here to listen to us. So I'm like, yes. So he's like, that's interesting. He's like, you really come here to listen to us. And I'm like, yes. So he's like, good. And then he says, you see those guys over there? And we're walking. And he says, you see those guys over there? And I'm like, yes. Who? He's like those boys over there? I'm like, yeah. He's like the militants. Right? Now, militants should normally kill me. In that environment, militants should kill me. And he says, they're there. And they're looking at you. So I look at them. And they give me this sort of, I'm serious. They give me this sort of look. And I'm like, OK, I'm now in trouble. Because these guys just told me this. They give me this look. And I give them this look back. And then we carry on. Nothing happens. And why I'm telling you this is because they actually couldn't do anything. They actually didn't have the power to do anything, even if they wanted to. Because I had come into that environment listening. And I'd come into that environment completely with no violence in me at all. And the vast number of people there were seeing that. Right? So that, to me, was an indicator of the power of listening and nonviolence. Now, what did we hear in India? The main thing. We heard that, and this you don't hear in the media. In the media, you have a completely different discourse going on. You have Bollywood. You have Cricket. You have all sorts of other stuff. What we heard in India is that the main thing we heard is unemployment. That India is simply not producing the jobs its youngsters need, period at the end. And that's everybody, all the young people. So I want you to, I want to leave you with that. Let's go to the next. So now, let's move to the two divergent ideas that are, that are, there are many ideas, but the two that are big and the two that are powerful and playing out, the idea of the United States and the idea of China. And we know that the United States is the dominant superpower, global superpower. And it's had a record since the 1940s of enabling large amount of prosperity and growth. Okay. And it's done that, it's done that in a democratic environment. It's, it's, it used to produce and it used to produce in a democratic framework. And that's quite an important thing in my view. The history of the United States everybody knows people went from Europe, people went from England because they were persecuted. So the idea of individual freedoms very, very deep in America. And the Americans at least with their citizens will protect that idea very firmly and very strongly. And the other idea that's, that's central to America is the idea of openness, the idea that anybody can come into America and anybody can dream the American dream. I was educated there and I remember being surprised at how open it was. I'll give you an anecdote. My father just died and I had been killed and I was in America in college and I was a bit upset. So my, my guardian told me to come from Boston to Atlanta. And I remember three or four in the morning I got up, took the cab to Logan Airport. And there there was a Haitian, Haitian taxi driver. And I started talking to him and he said, you know, America's given me my life. America's given me everything I have. I had nothing in Haiti. And I came here and they treat me, love me and they treat me with respect. And I'm part of the American dream. And then I walked out on the curb and as I was walking and I pulled my suitcase out and there was a guy standing there and he had these suitcases in front of him. So he said, which airline are you flying? And I was a bit suspicious. I was like, why is this stranger asking me which airline am I flying? And I, anyway I hesitated and I told him and he said, oh, you can do curbside check in. And I was like, what's that? And he's like, well, you can just leave your bags here. Now for me, this was just like a mind blowing idea, right? I'm like, I leave my bags here, okay? So I was like, no. He's like, no, no, you can leave your bags here. So I was like, okay, so who are you? And so he pulls out his airline idea. And I'm like, okay, that's interesting. And I leave the bags. And then I walk off and I walk off, I remember, I remember asking myself, when are these guys going to check my ID? I had a passport and my college ID and when are they going to check my ID? And they didn't check my ID. They didn't check my ID right into the plane. This was pre-911, so maybe a lot of you guys, a lot of you guys don't remember this, haven't felt this, but I was like, what's going on, right? And why are these guys not checking this ID? In my own country, they check my ID. They'll ask me for the passport immediately. And here they're not. What is going on? And I remember sitting on the plane saying, my God, this is an amazing place. I've come here a few months ago. And they've let me through the airport. They're not checking me. And they trust me. They believe in me, right? And to me, those two ideas are the core of the idea of America. They will make you feel comfortable and they will protect you, okay? In America. In America. Not outside America often. Outside America, they can do bad things to you sometimes, but in America, they will protect you, okay? And to me, that's the central idea of the United States. And it's a very powerful idea and it's been successful. And it's basically built a superpower. It's built an engine that has allowed people to come in. Huge amount of innovation. Huge amount of technological advancement. Many, many positive spillovers. But now, there's a problem. And in my view, there's two problems. One problem is that post-911, that idea that anybody could just walk into America has been challenged, questioned. Has been questioned directly by Bin Laden, by putting planes into the World Trade Center, by generating huge amount of anger and fear. And that has had a result. The Americans are absolutely correctly, they're concerned about people who come in, about what they might do. And you can see that with the whole homeland security, you know, the X-ray machines at the airport, all that going on, that's basically the idea that you can't just come into America like you used to. So that's one big change that's taking place. And the second really big change that's taking place is that what used to be the strength of the United States, the idea of production in America, the idea of manufacturing in America, has simply left. It's just gone away from America, it's gone somewhere else. Where's it gone? Can you read the next slide? Where's it gone? It's gone here, right? And it's gone to the aspiring global superpower, which today dominates production. Now, I've read quite a lot about the Chinese. I've studied them. I've spoken to senior leaders. I've spoken to people who think about China. I'm not an expert, but I have a decent understanding. So bear that in mind. Now, the way the Americans value individual liberty, the Chinese value harmony, individual liberty is not central to their idea. Their idea is much more about the society being in harmony because they've had massive tremors, right? They've had huge amounts of pain. They've had revolution. They've had civil war. They've had the cultural revolution. So what they don't want is that things go out of control, that things spiral out of control and disorder comes, which is legitimate. For them, it's as legitimate as individual liberty is for the United States, right? For them, one conversation that I had really struck me about China and it's shaped how I think about it, okay? And the conversation was with a senior gentleman of the Communist Party and I asked him, I said, tell me what is China, right? I said, is China a country? He says, yes. I said, okay, is China a nation? And he says, yes. I said, no, but give me a Chinese explanation of what you are. And so he says, look, Mr. Gandhi, I'll explain it to you. He says the Yellow River comes down from the Himalayas. It flows down. And it has unlimited power. It has unlimited energy in it. He says, if Chinese civilization orders itself and organizes itself effectively, which it does on the coast mostly, it can harness the power of the Yellow River. And when it harnesses the power of the Yellow River effectively, China rises. He says, sometimes what happens is the Yellow River comes with all its energy and China cannot organize itself to harness its energy and then there is disorder in China. And the energy then flows into the sea and is wasted. And I thought this was a completely different way of thinking about a country than anything I had heard from any Western politician. I had never heard anything of this type, right? If you ask American politicians what is America's land of the free, they don't start talking to you about the Mississippi River and that stuff. I never heard it. Maybe they do. But so China looks at energy. China looks at flow. China looks at processes. And China tries to shape them. Now if you use that metaphor, you can see some of their actions flowing out of this. You can understand now what the Belt and Road looks like and why it does what it does. Because Chinese, Chinese, the Yellow River flows this way. Chinese civilization harnesses the energy and then the energy flows right back into Asia. You can understand what the Three Gorges Dam is. And I get the sense, and maybe I'm wrong, but I get the sense that the infrastructure that you see in China, the railways, the airports, the dams, they're actually in the Chinese mind they're emerging from nature. They're emerging from the power of the river and they're, in a sense, China sees itself as a force of nature. And is embedded in nature. Whereas the West, America, does not see itself as embedded in nature. It sees itself as placed on top of nature. Now this completely changes how you think about things. And this explains, to me at least, why the Chinese would be so interested in harmony. And how they would think about it. There's another conversation that for me was absolutely fascinating. And I started, when I get into conversations, I tend to pester people, ask them silly questions and stuff. So I started asking this other gentleman about IP. And I said, look, what do you think about IP? And he's like, no, we completely agree with IP and IP makes sense, intellectual property is fundamental. And I asked him a couple of times. And then he made two very interesting observations. So he says to me, in the middle of the conversation, he says, Mr. Gandhi, people don't invent things. Things emerge. Completely different viewpoint. In the United States, Steve Jobs invents something. In China, things emerge, meaning processes happen and then out of those processes things come out. And he says, why should somebody who is anyway, he says, even if things are invented, why should someone who has invented something have perpetual rights on it? So what if he's invented it? Why should he have a monopoly on the benefits of that thing? To me, this was quite a profound statement. And I said to him, look, the logic is that you give him the right to give him an incentive so that he invents again. I said, how do you think about incentives? So very simple. The person who runs fastest wins. We don't really care if he invented it. If he can run fast enough and other people can't catch up with him, that's good enough incentive for him. So here you see two completely different ideas. One, that they are a force of nature. And two, powerful ideas. As powerful as American ideas for them. And two, that people are not actually inventing things, processes, energy, things are emerging from processes and energy. And this makes their world view completely different. One last thing, the organizing principle of the United States and something that you are very, very intimately associated with is the corporation. Your lives will all be about corporations. Most of them will be about corporations and sales and marketing and elements of a corporation. And that's how America organizes itself. And I think embedded in this is the central innovation of the Chinese. Pre-collapse of the Soviet Union, there were two organizational systems on the planet, broadly. There was the American system, Western system with the corporation. And there was the Soviet system. And in those days, the Chinese system with the state. State did what the corporation does. And post the collapse of the Soviet Union, can we go ahead? No, I think they removed that quote. Post the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Chinese did something very innovative. And if you've heard the quote, you might have heard the quote by Deng Xiaoping saying that it doesn't matter the color of the cat as long as it can catch the mouse. Have you heard that quote? So I think what he was saying in that quote was that actually we will organize ourselves using the corporation, just like the West, right? But we will do one further thing. Inside the corporation, we will embed the Communist Party. So it's a hybrid. It is exactly like the United States as far as the corporation is concerned. And then it's got a magic trick in it, which is that inside the corporation is what they call the instrument of the people, what we call the Communist Party of China, right? And this does something fundamental. What it does is it allows the Communist Party of China to have a full monopoly on information in the country, which the government of the United States doesn't have, or the government of India doesn't have, or the government of most other countries doesn't have because there's a separation between the state and the corporation. And this gives them a huge advantage in artificial intelligence. It gives them a huge advantage in all sorts of, in cyber warfare, et cetera, et cetera. I'm just placing that on the table. So those are the two broad ideas. One is the maritime idea. The other is projecting right through Asia, the Belt and Road. And the contest is basically, is the planet going to be terrestrial? Is it going to remain maritime? What's going to be the balance? And China sees itself as dominating the terrestrial space and contesting the maritime space. That's how it's playing out. Now to the conclusion. So a couple of things are very clear. The first thing is that there's a huge communication gap between what people are saying and what the media-invested interests are saying. It's just completely divergent. And that's a huge problem because at least in our country, and I'm sure in the West, there's a disconnect between what people are actually feeling and what the media is saying they're feeling. That's a problem. Second thing, everybody knows that huge amount of inequality is being created, at least in the Western world and in India. A huge massive concentration of wealth, massive concentration of income in India unemployment. So the worst thing that can happen is these two ideas collide with each other because then everybody's in trouble. And that's something that is not in anybody's interest. These ideas have their place. They're not going away anytime soon. But if they collide, it's a huge catastrophe. So there are two things that to me are quite obvious. Number one, that with the technological advances that are taking place with the communication system, the fact that the world is getting hyper-connected, the planet is basically becoming like an organism, like a connected organism with a nervous system. And that means things will move very, very fast. I don't want to use a bad analogy, but cyanide kills you in seconds because it uses your nervous system. And it kills you with almost no energy. It requires very little energy to completely wipe you out. So that's the space we are heading where things will move very, very quickly and they will infect everything very fast. So the first thing we have to think about is the need for a global immune system that listens very fast to escalation that is uncontrolled. And Ukraine would be an example. We're sitting here. Ukraine just keeps escalating, keeps escalating. Nobody actually knows where it's going to end. So those in a hyper-connected world, that's a very dangerous thing. And you need institutions and you need thinking that says, okay, these are the type of things that we tamp down immediately. So that's one idea. And the second idea which I think is fundamental and goes back to the point I raised about India being a public good and being the biggest democracy in the world. We simply cannot afford a planet that doesn't produce under democratic conditions. Because if democracies do not start producing again, they will not survive. Because the tensions that will arise inside the democracy, the inequality that will arise, the anger that will arise will just collapse the democracy. So what is required is new thinking about how you start to produce in a democratic environment. Which is completely different than production in a coercive environment. In a coercive environment, what you're basically doing is a factory, a production unit has a huge amount of socio-political energy inside it. And what you're doing is you're forcing it closed inside the structure. You can't do that in a democracy. So that conversation between labor and capital has to happen, has to be a negotiation. And I think that's where a lot of the thinking has to happen. How do we start to produce again in a democratic environment? And how do we manage the negotiation between the structures in the factory so that they can happen in a democratic structure? Otherwise, in my view, democracies are in trouble, in big trouble. And the good news there is, of course, technology will help you, decentralization will help you, decentralization of power will help you. So I think things can be done now that couldn't have been done 10, 20, 30 years ago in terms of technology, in terms of decentralized manufacturing, in terms of the structures that you need for that negotiation. But I think that's where a lot of the conversation has to happen. And finally, for me as a politician, the idea of listening, observing and doing it persistently, quietly is very powerful. And I think these ideas, divergent ideas, they need to also spend some time listening to each other. One mustn't say that, oh, this is wrong and that is right. Everybody has his own way of doing things. But I think one must give space to the other and say, okay, what is that other person doing? And that requires a little bit of the idea that I mentioned at the beginning, this idea of annihilating the self. Right? I'm going to keep quiet. I'm going to curb my desires. I'm going to curb my imagination. And I'm going to listen to the person in front of me with compassion, with affection and see what he's trying to say. And listen deeply to what he's trying to say. I think that would be very, very good for the planet. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, I mean, I think we are still thinking about the ideas that you have thrown at us. Could we have any time for questions? Did I overshoot? No, yeah. Yes, okay, all right. Thank you. Up and over. Questions? No, we've got some questions from the audience already. Yeah, it looks like it, it looks like it. So, so when you, when you, when you look at these things seriously, you have to go past, you have to go past the idea of the right wing and you have to go into what are the forces behind that structure. Right. So what is, what is causing, what is causing that sort of change? Number one, massive concentration of wealth in few people's hands. Number two, complete control of the media as a result of the concentration of wealth. And number three, the lack of production in India. Right. So if you have people working in factories, right, they can organize themselves politically. And if you can organize yourself politically, you can get a counter force to right wing mobilization. The problem is the bulk of India's people are unorganized labor. So it's very difficult for them to organize. They want to organize. They understand the need to organize. But because they're completely separate, they can't. Right. So that's, that's really how to think about it. The next question is from Naikul. How do you hear what is a highly divisive and polarized India? What would you say to the voters of the opposing party to help bridge differences? Opposing party, you mean the people in power? I mean, I can say a lot, they don't listen. I mean, I can keep saying it, they don't listen. So, I think, can you show me that picture of the large crowd there? Not that one. That's a different type of crowd. That's a different type of crowd. I think it's, yeah, this one. So this is mass mobilization. Right. And this is actually how you fight politically. Now, in a world where the media doesn't work, the way you fight is by mobilizing large numbers of people. It's difficult. It's tedious. It takes time. But that's the only way. You have to go through the street. Right. And there's a lot that can be done using that system. I'm, in fact, surprised that it's not used more in other countries. I wonder about it. Because it's actually quite a simple thing to walk across India. It's not a complicated thing. And it's a very, very powerful thing. So it's about allowing people to express themselves. Right. How do you heal? I think this is healing. I think this really heals because when somebody comes out and says, look, I had the opportunity to say what's in my heart. By the way, I had BJP guys coming here. I had BJP people coming up to me and saying, what you're doing is good. What you're doing is good for the country. Right. Large numbers of them. Right. Even they understand, at least the sensible one, understand the risks that they're sort of pushing. Because in a hyper-connected world, you sort of create too much polarization. You get a massive backlash and it can be very bad. The next question is, can you tell a few good policies implemented by Narendra Modi that you think are good for India in the long run? This is quite a popular question. No, see, the problem is that if you fundamentally disagree with the foundation of something. Right. I mean, I could think about it and say, yeah, okay, maybe that policy that he's done is not a bad policy. Maybe giving ladies gas cylinders or giving people bank accounts is not a bad thing. It's a good thing. But that sort of misses the point. Right. Because in my view, Narendra Modi is destroying the architecture of India. So I'm not too bothered about two or three good policies that he's doing if he's blowing my country to smithereens or our country to smithereens. Right. And I think that's what he's doing. He is imposing an idea in India that India cannot absorb. Right. India, as I said, is a union of states. It's a negotiation. And if you try to force one idea on a union, it'll react. Right. I mean, I've got a Sikh gentleman sitting here. Right. He's from the Sikh religion. He comes from India. He comes from India. Right. We've got Muslims in India. We've got Christians in India. We've got different languages in India. Right. They're all India. Mr. Narendra Modi says he's not. Mr. Narendra Modi says he's a second class citizen in India. Right. I don't agree with him. Now, if your disagreement is so fundamental, then really talking about three policies that you agree with, I think misses the point. How do I understand what India's place in the world is? How do I understand what India's place in the world is? Somebody once told one of India's leaders, do you lean left or do you lean right? And she said, we stand straight. Right. India's place in the world is when India is successfully expressing herself. Right. Not himself, herself. Because I believe that India has a feminine essence, a feminine quality. And when India is expressing herself freely and all the people of India are expressing themselves freely, then naturally what India does is correct. How do you reconcile the burden and responsibility of being part of such a famous political family, making your work connected but still retain a sense of self? No, I come from a philosophy in India that aims at destroying the self. So that's just the political philosophy I come from. I mean, that's a sort of more nuanced point and sort of nuanced question. I fight for an idea, right? And I'm not too bothered about where I come from, who I am, who my father is grandmother. I don't care. I think that there are certain ideas that need defending and I defend them. And I try to think deeply about what is happening. I try to be compassionate. I try to understand other people's perspectives. But then I defend the ideas I believe in. Siddharth asks, India has always experienced brain drain and lost great talent to the West. How does it provide opportunities for corporate business, etc.? I think that in the 21st century, the idea of brain drain is outdated. Because would Bangalore have happened if brain drain didn't happen? I don't think so. Because the people who created Bangalore first left India and went to America and then went back to Bangalore. So the question is not about brain drain. The question is, are you able to create the conditions in India that brings people back? And this is something I think Americans used to do very, very well. People don't just go to America because it's a nice place. People go to America because it allows you to fulfill your dreams, included you, embraced you. So those are the type of values that make people go to places. And if India does that, and if India is open to people and is easy to work in, people go back. I mean, I do believe that it's very important that Indians go out and learn about the rest of the world. I think it would be a disaster if India suddenly said, look, we don't want to go out at all. And we don't want to learn anything. We just want to learn back home. I think it would be a disaster. So I think the idea, I mean, what you're doing is a very powerful thing. You're going to see a different culture. You're meeting other people who have completely different ideas. And then you'll take some of these home. So I think that's a good thing. I think this is the last question. So how aren't they asked, how aren't they come from Punjab, which is facing rapidly dropping groundwater levels and high employment? What's your vision of tackling these issues? On groundwater. I mean, that takes us back to the idea of production in a democratic environment. And production in a democratic environment is much more complex than production in a coercive environment. Because essentially in the coercive environment, you're not allowing the negotiation. You're shutting the negotiation down. I mean, with all due respect, the PLA takes care of the negotiation in China. Of the social pressure of the factory. The social pressure of the factory is taken care of by the PLA. Now, if you have such a force that takes care of the production negotiation, that force is going to control your government. So if any country decides that, look, what we're going to do is we're going to coercively control manufacturing, well, it won't be a democracy. Because the people who will coercively control it will take over the country. So production in a democratic environment is difficult. It's not easy. It's been done. The Germans do it very well. Other countries, the Koreans do it. The Japanese used to do it. America used to do it very well. But it needs a new imagination. You get many benefits from democracy that you don't get from coercive sort of manufacturing. Now, can we construct a system where you can actually manage that negotiation effectively and have large-scale production, maybe decentralized in the democratic world? I think you can do it. And I think, frankly, one of the reasons I'm saying this is I think India is the prime place to do it. It is the best place on the planet to attempt it. There are many different models possible in India. There are 30 different states. I think it can be done there successfully. Punjab, the water problem is an agricultural problem. And it's because of essentially too much wheat and rice being grown there. You have to change the agricultural cropping pattern, which is very complicated because it's sort of linked to something called the MSP, which is a technical thing. And we don't want to go there. I'm afraid that's all we're planning for. But there is a reception. But thank you very much. Thank you. It was an absolute great listening. Thank you. Thank you very much.