Power & Influence: The Indian Connection

One of the interesting things about this book is the breadth of illustrations, that is, “power examples” for discussion and practical lessons learned. Buried deep in the middle of the book, Mr. Dilenschneider delves into the recent history of India’s Mahatma Gandhi and his protégé Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister after independence from Great Britain.

While one doesn’t normally associate Gandhi with “power,” one can easily picture him as INFLUENCING MILLIONS of people in his country and abroad. The author points out that Gandhi cleverly utilized the tools of power and influence to his advantage, while seizing the opportunities he spotted early on. They both ended up wielding power before much of today’s technological breakthroughs in communications, using stubbornness, sticking to principles and understanding the political scene.

To serve his cause, Gandhi utilized the telegraph and radio to get out his messages. In doing so, he managed to overthrow British colonial rule with a velvet glove, to the advantage of both. Nehru’s son carried on the tradition using many of today’s communications tools overlaying sound principles and knowledge of the political scene.

The analysis is most interesting and not one read about in any detail in most books. Of course, today, you can’t buy an electronic product without finding an Indian on the other end of your technology calls for support.

Your Blogster might add that a similar case might be made for the leadership of Singapore, in recent years, with their quantum leap into a computerized city environment and leveraging today’s software technologies to leap infrastructure shortcoming. In this case, the leadership maintained and grow their powers by creating an environment for computer training, learning and applications the world had never seen in such a short period of time, again, raising all boats proportionally.