Excellence is a word that is anathema to the Indian psyche. We revel in mediocrity and worse. If we see anything outstanding, we try to destroy its uniqueness; we have some of the world’s most beautiful monuments but instead of trying to preserve them, we revel in defacing them by writing inane messages on their walls. The same is true for Government offices which are often housed in the most beautiful buildings, but have the most ill-kept interiors.

Also, we cannot digest excellence of other people; many of us get pleasure in vilifying iconic figures like Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. No wonder few Indians try to achieve excellence; an Indian getting a medal at the Olympics is a rarity, while far smaller countries collect Olympic medals by the bucketful. The same holds true for Nobel prizes, probably because mediocrity informs all walks of our life.

Though we have one the largest number of technically qualified personnel in the world almost all our indigenous products are poor copies of Western ones. Even this trend is ebbing, rather, with liberalisation of the Indian economy, most of the goods in our markets are imports from China, including statues of our gods and goddesses. This trend continues even at a time when Atmanirbhar Bharat is the official policy and China is no longer a friendly country.

Our dogged pursuit of non-excellence has stood us in good stead so far; adaptations of branded Western products satiated the appetite of poor and middle-class people in India, while not-so-bright graduates from run-of-the-mill colleges provided a sufficiently literate work force for our emerging economy. However, with India joining the big league, the requirement now is more for quality than quantity.

The eclipse of once-popular brands like Premier Padmini or Tata Nano and the tepid response to our manufactured products in foreign markets demonstrates that poor quality products no longer sell ~ even at rock bottom prices.

So far as our human capital is concerned, the presence of a vast army of unemployed engineers, post-graduates and managers, while millions of jobs fitting these very skill-sets remain vacant, convince one that the present competitive environment requires only the best qualified young men and women.

Most Government initiatives come to nought because of shoddy implementation by Government employees, who give no thought to excellence and discharge their duties in the most superficial manner.

Just imagine the change if Government employees start working with a will: we would not have collapsing bridges, trains would run on time, crime would come under control, Air India would not need to be sold etc. Perhaps, if Government functioning improves significantly, India would soon join the ranks of the great powers, effortlessly achieving milestones like becoming a $5 trillion economy. Admittedly, excellence is difficult to foster. The easy way is to continue doing things as they were done earlier. Precedents, however flawed, are the holy cows of our mediocre officialdom.

The mantra in Government is: “Look back and move forward” which results in perpetuation of earlier mistakes. Lower staff in Government offices thrive on their knowledge of the contents of office files; with appropriate incentive subordinate staff would dig out some precedent either supporting or opposing some action.

Tailor-made, well-thought-out solutions that would really address the problem at hand are almost unheard of. Excellence in Government functioning would definitely enhance the quality of governance, affecting all citizens positively.

Presently, the anti-excellence exercise starts right from a child’s school days, aided by educational boards, like the CBSE, that rank millions of students as ‘excellent’ by doling out more than 90 per cent marks to them.

One may argue that such high marks are now being awarded because the standard of education has gone up phenomenally in recent times. But this is not the case; independent evaluation often punctures such extravagant claims.

For example, JEE-Advanced 2018, saw eligible candidates drop to their lowest level since 2012 ~ which was insufficient to fill the seats at the IITs, belying the stellar performance of lakhs of students who had bagged almost full marks in their Board examinations.

The Ministry of Human Resource Development soon came to the rescue of the beleaguered students by requesting the Joint Admission Board to lower the cut-off by 10 per cent, that had the effect of increasing the number of eligible candidates by more than 80 per cent. A relevant question that was never asked was: “If the examining Boards were not profligate in their evaluation, then how did JEE-Advanced 2018 see only 33,000 odd students qualifying, even with the liberalised cut-off, when lakhs had scored above 90 per cent in the Twelfth Board examinations?”

One can say that educational boards have murdered excellence by mis-labelling the mediocre as excellent. Most examining Boards have lost their credibility in other respects also; Bihar Board achieved widespread notoriety when photographs of parents scaling walls to “help” their wards were published.

This notoriety was reinforced when videos of Bihar toppers fumbling to answer basic questions went viral. The once respected UP Board did not lag behind; one sixth of the examinees dropped out when the UP Government decided to go tough with the copying mafias.

Excellence cannot be expected from students coming out from such a flawed education system that annually churns out a large number of educated but unemployable youth who are a problem for themselves as well as the society at large. The denouement of this sordid story is the unedifying spectacle of thousands of engineers, post-graduates and MBAs vying for menial Government jobs.

The practice of killing excellence by rating everyone as ‘outstanding,’ starting with schools, is continued right up to the higher levels of bureaucracy, where most employees, even the undeserving ones, get the ‘outstanding’ tag, resulting in bad eggs making it to the top echelons and damaging the venerable institutions which they serve.

We can achieve excellence only if we give up our love for quick-fix solutions, and embrace quality consciousness instead. Undoubtedly, a great effort would be required, because it is not easy to change a mindset developed over the years.

The Government that has till now fostered the culture of mediocrity has to lead the change which may mean motivating Government employees to give up their chalta hai attitude and their love for chai pani.

Then, we have to change our value system that promotes mediocrity. A corrupt politician is rated much above a competent civil servant, who counts for more than a top scientist, who, in turn, ranks above a successful businessman.

This inflexible hierarchy ensures that good engineers never work on the shop floor but get MBA degrees and join finance companies and the brightest students opt out of research and academics preferring to become second-rate administrators and business executives. In the result, both the academic world and governance lose out on excellence.

More than the result of some random actions, excellence is a state of mind, a habit to be cultivated. Most people fail to achieve excellence because they have little passion or commitment to the job they do.

Perfection is in the hands of God, but we can definitely achieve excellence by passion and commitment. As Martin Luther King Jr. had said: “If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as a Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry.

He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, ‘Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.’ ” (“Facing the Challenge of a New Age” speech at the Holt Street Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama in 1956).