I believe that these attributes, if practiced diligently, will help you and even me become worthy citizens of our country. The first attribute is our value system. Competence without values is like a car without a steering wheel—powerful, but dangerous. As value-driven citizens, our duties should come before our rights. Let's remember President Eisenhower's words that a people that values its privileges above its principles and duties soon will lose all the three. Let us guard our integrity in small moments, like a fudged result or an inflated claim, because reputations are built and destroyed there.
The second attribute is putting the interest of the community, the state, the nation, and the institution of which we are a part ahead of our own personal interests. This prevents dishonesty and corruption in handling public funds, public positions, and in building high-quality public good facilities. This is what a cultured nation strongly pursues.
The third attribute is meritocracy. Meritocracy is about choosing the most competent person for a job and providing that person the freedom to choose the best solution to your problem. Let the best idea win regardless of who proposed it or how junior that person is. That should be our action. Dr. Ambedkar put the underlying principle very simply by saying that cultivation of mind should be the ultimate aim of human existence. As we gain influence, we should fiercely protect merit. It is fragile and easily replaced by favoritism.
The fourth attribute is transparency. Transparency means open methods, honest disclosure of assumptions, and using data others can see and verify. In an organization, it means disclosing the reasoning behind decisions so that people can see it and not handing down decrees from a closed room. Louis Brandeis, the famous justice of the US Supreme Court, once said, and I quote him, "Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants." An institution that hides its reasoning eventually loses the trust it needs to function.
The fifth attribute is accountability. Transparency without accountability is just theater. When something goes wrong, like a model that fails or a project that misses its target, the mark of a good professional is owning it without excuses and fixing it without blame games. Let us follow the adage used by President Harry Truman, who kept a plaque on his desk that read, "The buck stops here." Let us own the responsibility for our actions rather than deflecting it. It is precisely how trust and authority are earned.
The sixth attribute is teamwork. You and I have spent years being individually evaluated during our student days and earning our course grades and the evaluation of our thesis. But almost nothing of consequence is built alone in the real world outside. Great reforms are the product of excellent teamwork. Great plays and great music result from an extraordinary teamwork. As Helen Keller once said, "Alone we can do so little, together we can do so much." Let us learn to work in a team by setting aside our ego and respecting others' opinions. India's development challenges need economists talking to engineers, researchers talking to bureaucrats, and technologists talking to farmers, just to name a few interactions.
The seventh attribute is discipline. Motivation is a spark. Discipline is the engine. It is discipline, not just inspiration, that helps us to achieve the plausibly impossible. As Robin Sharma once said, and I quote him, "The price of discipline is always less than the pain of regret."
The eighth attribute is excellence. Excellence is not a talent. It is a habit repeated until it becomes character. Aristotle once said, and I quote him, "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit." We should never let good enough be our standard. Let us suppress our ego, be open-minded, benchmark our responsibility against the best in the world, and improve constantly.
The ninth attribute is timeliness. A brilliant analysis developed after the decision has already been taken helps no one. India does not lack intelligent people. It sometimes lacks intelligent people who deliver on time. Let us adhere to deadlines as a mark of respect for the people depending on our work.
The 10th attribute is hard work. I have learned two truths from my own life. They are that hard work never killed anybody and nothing worthwhile is achieved without lots of hard work. My brother-in-law is a world-famous astrophysicist at Caltech. He has written 76 papers in *Nature*. In India, most people haven't written even 10 papers in *Nature*, and in the world, the highest before him was about somewhere around 20 or 25. And I asked him, "Friend, you are fantastic. What is it?" He said, "My friend, it is all about hard work. There are so many people as smart as I am, but if I want to go ahead of them, I have to work hard." Therefore, hard work is extremely important. Let's remember Thomas Alva Edison's line when he said, "Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration." This is what the best-known inventor in the world has said, and I believe that this remains true in every field. Every person we admire has underneath that polish a story of extraordinary, sustained, disciplined, and often invisible effort.
The final attribute is cost-effectiveness. India is a country of enormous need and finite means. Achieving more with less is what turns our idealism into impact. The professional who delivers rigorous, honest, and excellent work with modest resources will always outlast the one who needs unlimited budgets to produce modest results.
So as you leave IGIDR, carry these attributes with you. Let your values anchor every decision made, even when no one is watching. Putting society's interest ahead of your personal interest will compel you to be an honest and committed citizen. Insist on meritocracy even when it is inconvenient to you. Be transparent enough to be checked and be accountable enough to own your own mistakes. Remember that nothing enduring is built by one person alone; it needs teamwork. Choose discipline over fleeting motivation. Pursue excellence as a daily habit. Pursue timeliness as respect for others. Work harder than you think is necessary to achieve aspirational goals. And treat frugality not as a constraint on ambition, but as what makes your ambition useful to the country that has lots of poor people, but has yet invested so much in your education. India's story over the next 25 years will be written substantially by people like you. Remember Rabindranath Tagore's words, and I quote him: "You cannot cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water." So don't just stare at challenges. Go and build something. Go and solve something. Go and do something worthy of what you have learned here.
My father was a poor teacher, mostly in small towns in Karnataka, but he was a proud, aspirational, honest, and extremely hardworking Indian. More than 60 years ago, he would take us to his doctor friend's house who had a gramophone, and he would take us once a couple of weeks. We did not even have a radio at home because we couldn't afford it. Every time he would ask his friend to play the song "Insaaf Ki Dagar Pe" to influence us positively. The movie *Gunga Jumna* was released in 1961. Nobody on the dais was born then. Most of you, I think almost all of you, were not born then. But this movie, which was released in 1961, became a favorite of my father, and the song "Insaaf Ki Dagar Pe" became his absolutely number one song. Shakeel Badayuni Sahab wrote this song and Naushad Ali Sahab composed the music. It is a very inspirational song for every young Indian. It was sung by Hemant Kumar. May I now request the organizers to play that MP4?
Well, thank you very much. You know, I'm now 80 years of age. I completed my 80th year on 20th August, so I'm now running my 81st year. Therefore, I am not sure how many years I will live, but I'm very sure about one thing: that the class of 2026 from IGIDR will make our hopes and dreams of fulfilling the vision of our founding fathers a reality. Congratulations and my very best wishes to you for everything that lies ahead.
