Leadership for future: Ramesh Shrestha

Global achievements

We just entered the last year of the first quarter of the 21st century. The economic development and technological advancement during this quarter has been phenomenal. The world GDP was $32.7 trillion in 1999 which grew to $104 trillion (expected) by 2024. In 1999 people living in poverty was estimated at 11.8 per cent which has been estimated to be reduced to 8.5 per cent in 2024, despite the fact that some 2 billion people have been born since 1999. The Infant mortality rate in 1999 was 54.97/1000, which has been reportedly reduced to 25.52/1000 in 2024. In 1999 there were 150 million internet users, which reached a whooping figure of 5.5 billion by mid 2024. In 1999 there were about 300 million mobile phone subscribers; in mid 2024 there were 5.7 billion smartphone subscribers with 17.7 billion other mobile devices in use such as tablets, surface, iPads, etc. These figures are global average and do not show disparities within countries nevertheless these are impressive achievements during two and half decades of the 21st century.

A curious question for the global policy makers, leaders, politicians, scientists and the statesman is - can we maintain the same trajectory of development across all fields during the remaining 75 years of the 21st century? It may sound like a hypothetical question but looking at the social, economic and environment surrounding us we really need to think about what is at stake for the future generations. The globalisation of the economy has probably reached its pinnacle, which contentedly marginalised sociocultural traditions and values especially of the mid and low-income countries as everything has been mercilessly monetised. The intensifying skirmishes in geopolitics and trade imbalances between countries have created serious threats to global peace and security.

Known knowns

The leaders always comfort their public with a win-win situation scenario. It is not. The future generations will carry a debt on their head since birth. The new generations will have to endure the consequences of the serious damage to the environment. These are the nastiest byproducts of the miracle mentioned at the opening of this writeup. The damage to the environment is not just warming of the atmosphere but it's other impacts such as crop failure, depletion of fresh water, spread of previously unknown viruses, conflicts between man and wildlife due to loss of forests, etc. These are not easily understood by many or perhaps wilfully ignored. There are no signs of slowing down the current path of development driven by greed rather than humanism. The world needs new kinds of leadership to address these existential threats to human civilisation while meeting the basic needs of people worldwide. It is sufficiently clear that the current style of leadership will not be able to solve this mammoth problem beyond speeches and false promises.

Leadership problem

There has been a lot of talk about emotional intelligence in recent decades. This is exactly what appears to be missing among our leaders. This quality is possibly the most important aspect of intelligence among our leaders at a time when our social structures are being disseminated. The diminishing social bonds in our communities and weakening family ties are becoming visible in many societies under the influence of personalised technology. There are irreversible changes in the global economy affecting all countries due to deregulation. No one seems accountable for the negative impacts of these changes; instead, the benefactors, the billionaires, do not mind showing off their spoils. Are our leaders simply oblivious or actually have become accomplice to this global disorder? There is complete lack of relevance in the electoral process as the candidates are chosen not based on their competency on leadership and management skill but based on their support for private investors everywhere. Even the media has become accomplice.

The rise of oligarchs and birth of new technologies in the last two decades has become the wrecking ball in demolishing humanity, peace and security. The road ahead is arduous. The governments and people have dedicated too much confidence on technology to solve humane and social problems. The tech experts are suggesting that people's loneliness can be solved with AI designed apps to stimulate natural conversations with robots. In technological terms, yes, it is an achievement but where is the heart and soul? Why are we not searching and addressing the root cause of loneliness in the first place? Is it because there is more profit to be made with new app? Of course, yes.

What is needed

The world needs people-oriented leaders and managers. Public services and public institutions have become subservient to the whims of profit oriented private institutions. The two most important components to build human resources for nation building - education system and health care services have been degenerating for decades. Of course, the basic education is free but higher education is essential to improve the caliber of human resources. There is a need to unlearn a number of basic things by the young generation to prepare for the future. There is a massive task to learn about the ethics, psychosocial and economic impacts of current economic models, social communications and the negative impacts of climate change.

Degeneration of civic responsibilities is one the biggest problems which needs to be corrected for the sake of humanity's future. The launching of public-private partnership and corporate social responsibility with great fanfare have simply become a façade as it has become largely a one-way affair with the private sector exploiting the public institutions. It may seem like a contradiction to what is being mentioned in the opening paragraph. The difference is that the achievements listed above have their foundations laid during previous decades. We must pay our gratitude to all those who made these achievements possible but it has now reached the end and began to be destructive. The technological and economic agendas of the past two decades appear to be heading against humanism.

Tasks for the future leaders

The world is facing multiple crises with imperfections surrounding us everywhere in every field from basic education of children to global geopolitics. The flawed education system with total dependence on technology is producing new generation zombies with limited knowledge of how human society functions. It is not an exaggeration to suggest that younger generations are becoming indifference to issues that do not personally affect them. If you look around leadership development courses offered by universities, they are all based on market shares and profits with the aim of producing business savvy leaders. Business savvy leaders who have no empathy but over confident in their abilities cannot solve the range of social problems societies are facing. The politicians, leaders and managers trained in these institutes operated by failed diplomats and technocrats see everything as a zero-sum game. Totally wrong; it should not be.

Our leaders are the problems and obstacles, not the solutions to the problem humanity is facing. We are living in an age where people can watch live broadcasts of genocides and children dying of man-made starvations. Application of international law has become selective. Our leaders have auctioned their ethics and moral principles to the best bidders. The current generation of leaders are mentally and emotionally incapable of understanding the pains of ordinary people as they have become hostage to their ego. They have the power to incinerate anything they see as a threat but lack awareness to see the reality of the world and the environment that they are leaving behind for future generations. It is up to the psychoanalysts to diagnose if the current generation of leaders are uneducated or ignorant or sociopaths or all of the above. What can the future generation learn from the current breed of leadership? Zero!