The White House has announced that Mr. Ajay Banga, former CEO of Mastercard is to appointed as the next President of the World Bank. The news can be found at:
Assuming he
gets the job, Mr. Banga is going to be making history on several fronts. The
most obvious point is that Mr. Banga will be the first Sikh and first person born
and raised outside Europe or America to head an international development
organisation. Mr. Banga is an American citizen, thus he fits the traditional understanding
that President of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is always a European while
the President of the World Bank is always an American. However, Mr. Banga was
born in India and educated in India (he is an alumni of IIM Ahmedabad and St
Stephen’s College in Delhi), thus he brings the experiences of the “recipient”
experiences of development aid to the table.
These are the
superficial reasons to celebrate the nomination of Mr. Banga to the World Bank
Presidency. The first reason to celebrate his rise have to do with the
objections to Mr. Banga’s nomination. The main complaint against Mr. Banga’s
appointment is the fact that he’s a Wall Street Insider. Any complaints about his
skin tone have been absent.
The second
point about Mr. Banga’s appointment is the fact that his story is the story international
talent. Mr. Banga was born and educated in India. However, he chose to make his
remarkable career in the USA. Mr. Banga, like Ms. Indra Nooyi, former CEO of
Pepsico, is part of a trend of Indian educated people who have found greater
opportunities elsewhere and moved and settled in the places where the opportunities
are.
Copyright – Brunswick
If you look at the
story of the likes and Mr. Banga and Ms. Nooyi, you’ll understand that the
debate about “stayers” and “quitters” is, to put it mildly, a silly one. As noble
as patriotic sentiments of building your nation may sound, nobody is going to
hang around if they believe that they are not getting anywhere nor can you
expect them to stay if someone or somewhere else offers them greater prospects
in life. We may complain about our expat population being filled with people
who couldn’t make it in their native lands. However, we forget that whilst they
may not have made it in their home lands, they found places where they could
make it.
The lesson here
is that you need to create opportunities for people to grow if you want them to
stay. There’s no point is telling them that you gave them education and
therefore they need to stay if they believe that they’re not going to advance
where you are.
It’s not that
Mr. Banga and Ms. Nooyi have abandoned India. At the 2013 IIMPact symposium (As
a matter of disclosure, I worked on the publicity for the event – my last great
working achievement) that was hosted in Singapore, Mr. Banga, made a point to
tell his fellow IIM Alumni that they needed to do something for India. Mr.
Banga is an active member of the America India Foundation (AIF), which works to
better the lives of India’s multitude of underprivileged.
Countries that
want to grow need to produce people like Mr. Banga. They need to allow people
like him to have opportunities to grow if they want them to stay and they also
need to provide emotional connections so that if they leave but succeed
elsewhere, they will be willing to contribute to you.
In the modern
world, you need to accept that people will move around. Gone are the days when
people were expected to stay forever out of gratitude. The skill that countries
and corporations need to master is relationship building with their people –
give them reasons and opportunities to grow and when they leave, give them a reason
to find ways to continue contributing to your wellbeing.
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