Sam Pitroda

India and the Emerging New World Architecture

This is the edited transcript of the presentation of Sam Pitroda to Panel 1, “A Decoupling of the Two Systems or a New Paradigm for Humanity?” of the Schiller Institute’s June 18-19 Conference, “There Can Be No Peace Without the Bankruptcy Reorganization of the Dying Trans-Atlantic Financial System.” Mr. Pitroda is an innovator, entrepreneur, and policymaker. He has been a Cabinet Minister and advisor serving over the years seven Indian prime ministers.

Ladies and Gentlemen, greetings from Chicago!

I will begin by thanking the Schiller Institute, Helga, Dennis, David, and others for giving me this opportunity. It is indeed a special privilege and honor to be with these distinguished speakers. I come to you more as a global citizen, concerned about not just the present Ukraine crisis and potential impact on our peace, prosperity, food, energy, and economy, but also as someone who is very concerned about the future of humanity.

On one hand, we have great potential in the technologies of the future, especially IT, life sciences, and energy, to transform our world. Unfortunately, our focus is still on power and profits, and not on planet and people. I’m here to represent my own personal views, as an Indian who has lived in the U.S. for 58 years, and who admires democracy, freedom, justice, equality, diversity, human development, technology, and believes in truth, trust, and love.

When I look at the global geopolitical conversation that is going on in the world today, I worry about the fact that we are deciding on our future by looking at our past. It is unfortunate that we still worry about unipolar, bipolar world. We still want to dominate other countries, take advantage of poorer people, and really not focus on the potential that technology offers today, a potential to equalize the world, network people, collaborate, cooperate, and co-create. That is our potential, as opposed to our architecture today which is still predominantly designed for command and control. And this really worries me a lot.

I wrote a book recently, called Redesign the World. The main focus of that book is all about the potential of technology, especially hyper-connectivity. Hyper-connectivity is all about networking; it’s all about scaling back, connecting smaller enterprises. It is about non-hierarchy; it is about openness, accessibility, connectivity, democratization, decentralization. Unfortunately, we are not using a lot of these ideas to build a new world. New tools are being used to promote old world concepts, and not create a new world in which there is prosperity for all, there is dignity for mankind, and there is clear focus on planet and people.

Every activity today is all about power and profits. Markets go up and down because of some global conflict somewhere. And we have been witnessing that in the last few months because of crisis in Ukraine. On one hand, we can justify what’s going on. On the other hand, we realize that irrespective of justification, innocent people are being killed on both sides. Properties are being destroyed, for no reason. And there is no solution in sight, because it is almost like a Mexican standoff.

Now, we are beginning to see the impact of a lot of this on energy, food, and economy. The economic model that we created 70-80 years ago, based on strong dollar, IMF, World Bank, doesn’t seem to work anymore in a hyper-connected world.

We need a new economic order. And this is a big ask. We need an economic order which is more decentralized, which is more based on smaller enterprises to scale, which is based on local talent, local consideration, potential of local soil, local food, but at the same time, respect and promote globalization.

We tend to see world in black and white, in boxes. We need to learn to see world in grays. It is never about either globalization or localization. It is both at the same time. The key is to understand what to globalize and what not to globalize. You look at the fertilizer and how it affects local soil—microbes—and really destroys local food. In the name of technology, globalization, we are really creating a situation where local livelihood is affected. At the end of the day, employment, economy affect everybody. Every person doesn’t understand geopolitical balance. They look at what hurts them. And to them, economy and jobs, safety and security, peace and prosperity become very important. All our economic prosperity today is designed to come from top down, when we need bottom-up approach.

I was brought up in Gandhian environment, being born in 1942 in British Raj. After Independence, there was a great deal of excitement in India because of Gandhian thought, which essentially focussed on decentralization, human development, small is beautiful. It also focussed on nonviolence.

I think our world has forgotten to focus on nonviolence. Everywhere you look around, in every major urban area, there is huge amount of violence. In U.S., we hear it every day. Shooting going on in shopping centers, schools, colleges, workplaces. What is important is to really provide safety and security, jobs, employment, education, help to a large number of people who are at the bottom of the economic [inaudible —ed.]. And that’s where our focus ought to be. That’s where our new technology has to be used, and not AI for defense, and not big data and other things to control people.

I think we are going wrong in our approach to very fundamental values. And I worry about it. I worry about the fact that lies get propagated on social media which affect common citizens, their pockets, and the global balance of power. And huge amount of money is wasted on unnecessary conflicts.

Today, we spend $2 trillion on defense every year. And now, because of expansion of NATO, that number is going to go up. When we know that we can eliminate hunger for just about $200 billion a year. We have not been able to eliminate hunger, poverty, discrimination, inequality. I think those are the real challenges ahead of us.

So, the new economy is not about GDP, GNP, trade balance, per-capita income. It’s about fair distribution of wealth. Today we tend to judge a new economy based on how many billionaires we create, as opposed to how many people we lift out of poverty. Today, we judge economy based on stock markets, and not employment.

I am very worried about the global mindset. I think we need new conversation globally to take our democracy to inclusion, to take human rights to human needs, to take capitalism to new economy where wealth doesn’t get concentrated, where localization is given more importance, decentralization is at the core, and the focus is on bottom-up development as opposed to top-down. We want to begin to think of systemic conservation, as opposed to consumption. We need to use technologies to really improve productivity, efficiency, and reduce costs, but at the same time, make sure that we do not pollute our environment. Planet has to be at the core of our development.

And finally, based on my own personal background, I believe the key is to focus on creating a nonviolent world. We cannot go on building military hardware the way we have in the future, and expect violence in the world to go down. In America now, there are conversations on gun laws. Recently I heard that some 18-year-old boy went to buy cigarette and couldn’t buy. He went to buy tobacco, could not buy. Went to buy some beer; he could not buy because he was too young. But he went to buy a gun, and there was no problem. In that kind of a global system, how do we expect a secure environment for our children?

I think these are the problems; we know what the solutions are. But handful of people at the top have a different value system. They want to promote gun lobbies, they want to promote violence apparently, maybe unknowingly. They want concentration of wealth; they want environment to be polluted. And that really bothers me, because we are not listening. People at the top, people in power are not listening to the people at the bottom. They have lost a sense of humanity, and they are really concerned about power equation. They are concerned about prosperity of the few, and that has to change.

So, I think the new economy has to have very simple focus on lifting millions out of poverty; eliminating hunger, violence; providing enough food and nutrition, education, and health. And not really look at trade balance, GDP, GNP. It can be done; it’s not a very complicated thing to do, but we need to think of redesigning. The present design doesn’t work anymore.

In a hyper-connected world, we need a new design which doesn’t focus on profits and power, but focusses on planet and people. We know how to do it collectively, but we need to begin new conversation. I’m here to really request of all of us, to think about how we are going to use new tools and new technology to really lift humanity to the next level, as opposed to go on fighting, go on killing, go on hurting, and go on creating more billionaires. It is time to really get serious about redesigning the world.

Answers are here if enough of us come together and create global conversation on this, I’m sure we can begin to change things. The way things are today, I worry about the world; I’m worried about my own grandchildren. The world I inherited from my grandparents was simple, poor, but secure, and clean. And the world I’m delivering to my grandchildren is complex, polluted, full of conflicts, but rich. And I want all of us to come together, to not just talk about what is happening in Ukraine. It is just a small, little piece of the puzzle. But also talk about what is happening globally to humanity. Thank you.