Non-politicians as national leaders

Balendra (Balen) Shah, Gen-Z's choice in Nepal.
Image courtesy: BBC

Politics is for politicians, right? They spend decades climbing the ladder; beginning as party workers, legislators and ministers before finally reaching the top.

But not always. Voters sometimes prefer non-politicians to lead their country.

The most recent example comes from Nepal, where rapper-turned-politician Balendra Shah is widely expected to become the country’s next prime minister after his party, the Rashtriya Swatantra Party, won the recent elections.

The 35-year-old rapper first became famous for songs criticising corruption and the political establishment. In 2022, he became the first independent candidate to be elected mayor of Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal.

He has a Bengaluru connection too. He did his M Tech in Structural Engineering from Nitte Meenakshi Institute of Technology in the city.

GEN-Z's CHOICE

This election must be one of the few where the Gen-Z have changed the political landscape of an entire nation through an election.

Many voters, particularly young people, are quite frustrated with traditional parties, which they feel have failed to address corruption, unemployment and poor governance. Shah’s popularity as a rapper helped him connect with this sentiment. 

His tenure as Kathmandu’s mayor only strengthened his image as an outsider willing to challenge the system, and that momentum seems to have carried him to national politics.

Actually, this is a familiar pattern across the world. When voters grow frustrated with traditional parties, they often look for fresh faces from outside politics.

COMEDY STAGE TO PRESIDENTIAL OFFICE

One of the most striking examples is Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine.

Before entering politics, he was a comedian, actor and television producer. In a curious twist of fate, he even played the role of a fictional president in a popular television series. In 2019, voters elected him president in real life.

What he has been dealing with since then, especially after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, is anything but funny.

Another television comedian who became president was Jimmy Morales of Guatemala, who was elected in 2015.  

INSTANCES ELSEWHERE

The United States has seen several leaders who began their careers outside politics.

Ronald Reagan, who became president in 1981, was a Hollywood actor who appeared in films during the 1940s and 1950s.

Then, decades later, came, Donald Trump, a real-estate businessman and television personality, whom most countries around the world, with a few exceptions, are finding difficult to deal with. 

Dwight D. Eisenhower was a five-star general during the Second World War before serving two terms as US president from 1953 to 1961.

Another Second World War general who later became a national leader was Charles de Gaulle of France. He served as president for ten years from 1959.

Woodrow Wilson, who held a PhD in history and political science from Johns Hopkins University, moved from academia into politics. He served as governor of New Jersey from 1911 to 1913 and then as US president from 1913 to 1921.

Britain had a leader who began his career in journalism. Boris Johnson, who served as mayor of London, foreign secretary and prime minister, earlier worked as a journalist with The Daily Telegraph and later became editor of The Spectator.

Playwright and dissident Václav Havel became president of Czechoslovakia in 1989. After the country split on 1 January 1993, he continued as president of the Czech Republic until 2003.

In Poland, shipyard electrician and trade-union leader Lech Wałęsa was elected president in 1990 after leading the Solidarity movement.

In the Philippines, hugely popular action-movie star Joseph Estrada was elected president in 1998.

Sport has also produced a national leader.

Former Pakistan cricket captain Imran Khan, who played at the international level from 1971 to 1992 and was hugely popular in India, served as Pakistan’s prime minister from 2018 to 2022.

INDIA'S EXAMPLES

India too has seen many public figures from outside politics entering public life.

Perhaps the most famous is M G Ramachandran, popularly known as MGR. A hugely successful film star in Tamil Nadu, he served as chief minister for a decade from 1977.

Jayalalithaa, another star from Tamil cinema, served as chief minister of Tamil Nadu for a total of 14 years between 1991 and 2016.

Yet another was N T Rama Rao, revered by cinema fans for portraying mythological characters on screen. He founded the Telugu Desam Party in 1982 and became chief minister of Andhra Pradesh the following year.

Economist and academic Manmohan Singh served as India’s prime minister from 2004 to 2014. But he was not directly elected by the people; he was a member of the Rajya Sabha, the Upper House of Parliament.

Arvind Kejriwal, a mechanical engineer who later joined the Indian Revenue Service, first became known as an anti-corruption activist before entering politics and becoming chief minister of Delhi in 2013. He faced allegations of, ironically, corruption and lost elections in February last year. But, a lower court, last month, acquitted him of all the charges.  

WHY VOTERS CHOOSE OUTSIDERS

There is usually a pattern behind these political surprises. Outsiders tend to succeed when:

• Public are frustrated with traditional politicians
  
  
• Established political parties appear too similar in policies and people want change
  
  
• Younger voters look for new ideas
  
  
• Leaders capitalise on a major social or economic issue, like price rise or corruption
  
  
• They get high visibility on media and social platforms and become popular

GOVERNANCE IS DIFFERENT

Whether non-politicians succeed in governing is altogether another question. Running a government is no easy task. It requires skills in areas like administration, team management, and resolving crises.

But one thing is sure. Over decades we have seen that voters are ready to take the risk, look out of the box, and experiement with leadership.

US/Israel-Iran: Peace was 'within reach'; so why the strike?

Screengrab from an 11-second video -- titled
'Dismantlement of a headquarters of
the Iranian terror regime" -- released by the IDF
yesterday showing plumes of smoke
after the bombing by US-Israeli forces.
The Iranian Supreme Leader and many other
top civilian andmilitary leaders are suspected
to have been killed in this attack. 
Source: X/IDF 

So, finally, what the US and Israel have wanted to achieve for close to 40 years has been accomplished.

The killing of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on Saturday (28 Feb) morning occurred while US-Iran negotiations regarding Iran’s nuclear programme were very much underway.

Just hours before the US and Israel launched the attack, the Omani Foreign Minister, Badr bin Hamad Albusaidi, -- one of the key mediators in the US-Iran talks -- had given broad indications in an interview with Margaret Brennan on CBS’s Face the Nation that Iran was coming around to accepting the demands of the US.

‘PEACE DEAL WITHIN REACH’

Watch the full interview here.

These are excerpts from what he said during the interview:

"In my assessment of the way the talks are going... I can see that the peace deal is within our reach." [00:41]

"If the ultimate objective is to ensure forever that Iran cannot have a nuclear bomb, I think we have cracked that problem through these negotiations by agreeing a very important breakthrough that has never been achieved any time before." [01:36]

"The single most important achievement, I believe, is the agreement that Iran will never, ever have a nuclear material that will create a bomb. This is, I think, a big achievement." [02:14]

"We are talking about zero stockpiling. And that is very, very important, because if you cannot stockpile material that is enriched then there is no way you can actually create a bomb, whether you enrich or don't enrich." [03:00]

"If there is a deal, an agreed deal, there will be full access (for UN inspectors)." [05:15]

"I'm not really in a position to go into the details of this, but the big picture is that a deal is in our hand, if we are only allowed the negotiators, and I believe both sides have been dead serious, very creative, very imaginative, to really reach where we have reached so far." [07:37]

"If we can agree tomorrow on this deal, and it can be agreed very fast, then there will be the access given to all the experts to go and assess what we have there. We will have the access diplomatically without having to go to war." [11:05]

"The big main issues, components, that really are the main areas of concern, I think that can be agreed tomorrow. The technicalities will take some time to work it out with the agency, the IAEA." [16:54]

Read the full text of the interview here.

MANY UNANSWERED QUESTIONS

If a “peace deal” was so close to being achieved, as the Omani Foreign Minister indicated, then I wonder: why did the US and Israel launch the attack?

Is it because America feared that if the deal was finalised, Ali Khamenei would stay in power and the US and Israel would have to continue dealing with him? Perhaps the stated goal of regime change would not have been successful otherwise.

So, was it a deal that US the never really wanted? 

Or was the whole deal really not about the nuclear issue at all?

Or was the "peace deal within reach" only in the minds of the mediators and not really something that the US or Iran really believed in.

Only on Friday (a day before the launch of the war), Trump said he wasn't happy with the way the talks were going. And in Iran, a fews ago, the Supreme Leader had charted out a chain of command in case the worst happened.

So, it looks like the writing was very much on the wall. 

It was also surprising that the first wave of attacks happened on Saturday morning. Such strikes rarely occur in broad daylight. Was the timing intended to take the Iranian leadership by surprise?

WHAT IF THE WAR PROLONGS?

With the removal of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the general hope is that the war will end soon.

However, there is no sign of that happening yet. More than 24 hours after the death of the Supreme Leader, Iran is continuing to launch missiles at targets across the Middle East.

Dubai was a particularly surprising target, especially its civilian airport — the busiest in the world — along with a hotel and a mall. The airport has been closed since yesterday, and its impact is already being felt globally.

If Iran’s military capabilities have been dented considerably, how are they managing to hold out? Incidentally, both Russia and China have condemned the US attack and the killing of Ali Khamenei.

If Iran manages to overtly or covertly reinforce its arsenal and the war prolongs, the impact on global supply chains and their cascading effects will be unimaginably severe. 

Oil is once again centrestage. Nearly a quarter of the global oil supply passes through the narrow, 50-km wide Strait of Hormuz, which is under Iran’s control.

WHEN WILL IT ALL END?

The war will surely end one day. But I don’t see an immediate end to the hatred and animosity that both sides have harboured for decades, the very feelings at the root of everything we are seeing now in the Middle East. If anything, those flames have likely been fanned exponentially.

India AI Impact Summit: Goals and reality

The big news in India last week was the India AI Impact Summit 2026 held from 16 to 21 February in New  Delhi. Originally slated as a five-day affair, it was extended by a day in view of the rush of visitors. 

I am a tech enthusiast, especially when it comes to cutting-edge tools that actually touch the lives of ordinary people like us. So, I was keenly following the proceedings. There was live streaming on YouTube and maximim coverage in newspapers.

No doubt this was a blockbuster event that showcased India as the emerging force in the new Artificial Intelligence era.

BIG NAMES AND NUMBERS

There was a fair amount of hype and publicity, no doubt. That was natural considering around 100 nations participated and there were over 250,000 visitors. 

The summit was a "who’s who" of global power, featuring Heads of State or Government from France, the Netherlands, Swiss Confederation, Spain, Finland, Serbia, Estonia, Mauritius, Brazil, Kazakhstan, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, and UN Secretary-General, besides of course India’s Prime Minister who was the host.

Tech honchos were in full strength. Every big company was there: Google, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, OpenAI, Anthropic, TCS, Infosys, Wipro, Accenture, IBM, KPMG, Zoom, Ericsson, OpenUK, Salesforce, World  Economic forum, HCL, Qualcomm, Razorpay,  Cisco, NVIDIA, Biocon Group, Coursera … you name it. Many companies were represented by multiple people.

INNOVATIONS AND INVESTMENTS

There were so many interesting exhibits. Here are a few of them. 

BharatGen -- India's first government-funded, sovereign, multilingual, and multimodal Large Language Model (LLM) initiative. 

Bhashini 2.0 -- Another government initiative, which focuses on building advanced, secure, and scalable multilingual applications for Indian languages.

Then there were the Kaze Smartglasses from Bengaluru-based Sarvam AI, which allow users to interact with the world through AI. 

The most interesting was an AI-powered air taxi. It is a collaboration between The ePlane Company and IIT Madras. This electric vertical take-off and landing (e-VTOL) craft promises to turn a one hour traffic crawl into an eight-minute flight.

There were a slew of announcements. Google announced setting up of an AI hub in Visakhapatnam, which will house gigawatt-scale computers and a new international subsea gateway. 

There were many similar announcements -- by other big companies like OpenAI, NVIDIA, Microsoft, Anthropic, etc. -- of either major tie-ups with Indian companies or opening of India offices.

All this will open up massive opportunities for the huge number of tech professionals in India. Investments running into billions, which have been committed, will also add to India’s IT infrastructure.

EXECUTION IS EVERYTHING

The summit painted a beautiful picture of the future, but it is important to remember that we aren’t there yet. As the old idiom goes, “There's many a slip between the cup and the lip.”

Here is why I am saying that:

In Bengaluru, we’ve been hearing about a "Common Mobility Card" for the metro and buses for over a decade. It’s a standard feature in many cities around the world. Yet here, despite our world-class tech prowess, it remains a "work in progress". 

National Common Mobility Card (NCMC) is a government of India initiative launched in 2019. In 2023, the Bengaluru Metro Rail Corporation introduced the NCMC, but till today the authorities have not been able to make it available for the bus commuters!

It’s not a lack of technical skill; it’s definitely because of some "extraneous" reasons, I have no clue about. 

In the health sector, we have seen brilliant startups creating the technology for "portable" digital patient records. To be fair, there has been some progress. But the predominant reality on the ground is when you go to a different hospital or even the branch of the same hospital in another city, you start from scratch with a fresh set of expensive tests because the computer systems are not integrated. 

A third example is air taxi services between Bengaluru’s Kempegowda International Airport and the two big tech hubs in the city (Electronics City and IT Park) which are around at least two hours by car from the airport. There have been multiple attempts on this front by different companies. Quite possibly because of lack of economic viability, they haven't really taken off.

In the apartment I live, though I have a high-speed wi-fi network which enables me to get connected to anywhere in the world, the mobile phone and internet connectivity is so poor that the cellphone works like our good old fixed line telephone. The calls can be made and received only from certain spots close to the balcony!

DOWNSIDE OF THE AI SUMMIT

The AI summit had its fair share of cringe moments that sort of served as a reality check. The most infamous was the Galgotias University "robodog" bungle. 

The university spokesperson claimed that a Chinese Unitree robot was an "in-house innovation". The ever-vigilant netizens called it out immediately, and it became a global embarrassment. 

This incident shifted the whole focus from AI to the quality of education in India, especially higher education. It led to discussions on how commercialised education in India has become, and how college managements try to go for hype and publicity rather than focus on actual learning by students. Many were just hoping that various college and university managements would learn a lesson from what happened to Galgotias University.

Then there was the widely publicised crashing of Wi-Fi at the summit, how food stalls accepted only cash payments, long queues to get to the venue, valuables being stolen, etc. There were also complaints of widespread traffic chaos, with vehicular movement being held up for a very long time for VIPs to pass. All these pointed to something that is quite familiar here: organisational mismanagement. 

India's Minister for Electronics and IT apologised, and it looks like from day 2, it was a better experience. 

JOURNEY HAS ONLY BEGUN

No doubt, the India AI Impact Summit was undeniably a success at many levels, especialy in terms of intent and investment. The conclave highlighted that India is no longer the world's backoffice. Science and technology has made tremendous progress making a whole lot of difference to people's quality of life.

But it has to be remembered at the same time that the true "impact" of this AI summit is not in the number of visitors or the big names who graced the occasion or the amount of investments promised.

Succeess will be measured by whether that air taxi not only actually takes flight over Bengaluru but also becomes a regular transport service; and whether an AI model can finally help a small-town doctor save a life.

We’ve seen the pathway to the future. Now, it's time to walk it and reach the destination.