By V. Srinivas
How is enlightened citizenship different from political citizenship?
What is the value of citizenship in the lives of people?
If one looks at the two great models of living that have impacted western civilization, one has been the ‘Roman Empire’ and the other has been the ‘Greek civilization’.
In the Greek civilization, the notion of Citizenship was invented because they had citizen states. In the citizen states, everybody had a view, and they were dedicated to “human excellence”.
The Roman world was built on a model in which Rome was central and all powerful. From the centre they controlled all of Europe. The Roman civilization was powerful because it expanded, conquered, strengthened itself and was able to feed on the resources of those whom it conquered.
In the Roman Empire only a few people needed to be smart, and the rest could be ‘dumb’ (outside-in). On the other hand, the Greek civilization stressed the living of the ‘inside-out’ ideal of human excellence. The Western civilization was shaped at a cultural/knowledge level, by Greek thought; but, it was shaped at a physical level by Roman thought.
If we look at ourselves as employees of our national institutions, we realize that we are living in both the worlds. On one side, if we do not operate like a Roman Empire, we will not be able to compete on economies of scale. We need to be able to drive down costs, to have huge buying and borrowing power. We need to have access. If we want to contribute and make a difference to our people we need to be in every small place touching them. We need to have speed, ruthlessness and efficiency. All these are Roman qualities.
Yet, as individuals we need the Greek qualities of personal excellence. We want to flower, be individualized, and have personal freedom. The Greek model is very fundamental to us as employees of large national institutions because unless we are free, what purpose do we have to go to work? We want ourselves to have intrinsic joy in work, find intrinsic meaning in being a national enabler.
Hence, we want a driving purpose as individuals, and yet, the benefits of scale, reach and functional excellence are mandatory for our success as an institution. How do we achieve these two together?
This is the challenge in front of every national institution of our country today.
Resolving the challenge – making the ‘and’ choice
To resolve this dichotomy we have to give up being reactive and resorting to acts of choicelessness. Rather, we have to jump one level and make the higher positive choice of wanting a synthesis of both Greek and Roman models.
When we start demanding both – human freedom with economies of scale, we have to talk a new language. This is the language of Enlightened Citizenship.
So, Enlightened Citizenship is not a ‘nice to have’ thing, it is not about telling people to ‘improve their attitudes’ a little. It is about seeing a future in which it seems foolish not to be a citizen.
The choice to become a citizen should be obvious to one and all.
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