Unlearning to Lead: A First Step into Politics
2025-08-24. Published at https://varna.substack.com/p/unlearning-to-lead-a-first-step-into. This file is a generated copy; the Substack post is the original.
I have always believed that development is a science of solutions. My entire career has been built on models, data, and the quiet confidence that complex problems can be solved with the right analysis. This week, that confidence was gently, and necessarily, dismantled. I walked into the commencement of the Dr. Manmohan Singh Fellowship as a development economist. I walked out as something else entirely—an apprentice in the profound and humbling art of political change.
The atmosphere was charged not with political rhetoric, but with a sense of historical purpose. Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge framed our journey not as a career shift, but as an answer to a national call. He spoke of an India grappling with extreme inequality and unemployment, and he drew a direct line from the lawyers, economists, and doctors who built this nation to us, the fifty professionals in that room. He reminded us that the most enduring legacies, like those forged under Dr. Manmohan Singh’s leadership, are built on substance, not spectacle—on working more and talking less. For a moment, I saw my econometric models not as solutions, but as mere tools in a much larger, more human toolkit.
Then, the philosophers of our new journey took the stage. Dr. Salman Khurshid, with the grace of a man who has navigated the highest corridors of power, offered our first and most difficult lesson: the courage to unlearn. He gave us permission to let go of the arrogance of expertise, to shed the illusion that the clean logic of my spreadsheets could ever fully capture the beautiful chaos of society. His most liberating admission was that in the realm of global foreign policy today, “nobody quite understands what the hell is going on.” It was a stunning declaration that the old rulebooks are obsolete. Our task is not to have all the answers, but to help write new questions.
This intellectual humility was perfectly complemented by Sachin Rao’s structural clarity. He asked us to become “more political,” and in doing so, reframed politics itself for me. It is not a game of elections, but the very architecture of society—a force that shapes our common sense, a concept that would make Gramsci nod in recognition. As an economist, I think in systems and structures, but this was a reminder that the most important structures are made of power, relationships, and ideas, and that changing them requires more than a perfect policy prescription.
Finally, we heard from Ajoy Kumar who gave us our moral compass. In a room full of high-achievers, he spoke not of strategy, but of integrity. His mandate was to “stay real” and to always have the courage to speak up, especially from within. He defined a true liberal space not by agreement, but by the safety to dissent. It was the crucial final piece of the puzzle: Khurshid gave us the intellectual humility to see the world anew, Rao gave us the structural lens to understand its workings, and this charge from Ajoy Kumar gave us the ethical backbone to engage with it without losing our souls.
Sitting there as one of the only two economists in the cohort, I felt a familiar identity dissolve. My models are still my language, but they are no longer my destination. They are simply one dialect in a much richer conversation about power, society, and justice. This fellowship is not an extension of my career; it is a fundamental recalibration of my purpose. We are fifty individual streams of experience—a surgeon, a tech entrepreneur, a lawyer, me and so many more —now merging into a single current, tasked with the messy, magnificent work of helping to build a more thoughtful India.
The commencement is over. The real education has just begun.
Subscribe for more dispatches from the front lines of learning, unlearning, and the messy, magnificent work of building a political future.