‘Need to modernise ways to govern the country’

The managing director (MD) of Fabindia, William Nanda Bissell, has stressed on the need for changing the manner in which the country is being governed.

He was delivering a talk about his book, Making India Work, organised by BDB Book Club in the city on Wednesday evening.

The book, penned two years ago, aims to provide solutions to four major issues plaguing India — poverty, environmental degradation, rapid urbanisation and poor quality of services provided.

“The paradigms are changing and the old ways of governance would not work in coming years. In the wake of the recent, India Against Corruption movement, I was very surprised to see a crowd of 300 gather for a protest march within half an hour at a locality in Delhi. They managed this through SMSes,” he said. “In recent times, the government has really been caught unawares with the advent of SMSes and tweets. It needs to modernise itself for effective governance in these changing times,” said Nanda. Although he refused to comment on the Jan Lokpal Bill issue, he said, “All I can say is that there is a lot of anger and frustration amongst people.”

Dwelling at length about his book, the MD of Fabindia said that he has tried to provide solutions to change society without disrupting the existing structure.

“For example, instead of providing cash to poor families, I suggest giving them cash vouchers. Cash enters a household in a power structure and a cultural structure. Dematerialising cash by means of vouchers helps greater administration of it,” he opined.