It is not often that I get to meet a living legend, especially one that has made a mark on the study of humankind’s roots. While to me, the name of Dr. Richard Leakey has previously called to mind his discoveries in paleoanthropology, his recent talk at the Nairobi office of Dalberg, a global developing consulting firm where my husband is employed, focused on Dr. Leakey’s experiences in politics and conservation.
Louis and Mary Leakey (Richard’s parents) discovered the first hominid fossils in 1959 in Olduvai Gorge in the Serengeti, and Louis Leakey has also virtually founded the modern science of primatology, sending Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey and Birute Galdikas into the field to study how the behavior of chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans, respectively, can give us clues about our common ancestors and ourselves. Richard Leakey, who followed in his parents’ footsteps, is acclaimed for discoveries by Lake Turkana in Kenya between 1969 and 1978. His most famous finds included a Homo Erectus skull and a Homo Habilis skull, now gracing the National Museum in Nairobi.
In the field of conservation, Dr. Leakey served as the first chairman of the Kenya Wildlife Society (KWS), considerably cutting down poaching in his tenure and managing what was widely seen as one of the most efficient and progressive wildlife and parks services in the developing world. He is currently Professor of Anthropology at Stony Brook University in New York, and is the founder and chairman of Wildlife Direct, a Kenya-based charitable organization that provides support to conservationists in Africa.
In politics, Dr. Leakey helped form the center-left Safina party in 1995 and served as the Kenyan Cabinet Secretary and head of the civil service from 1999 to 2001, at the tail end of the repressive regime of Daniel Arap Moi. In 2007, Dr. Leakey was appointed interim chairman of Transparency International’s Kenya branch.
Last Friday the Dalberg employees were an attentive audience—Kenyans in general are very interested in politics—during Dr. Leakey’s discussion of the challenges to Kenya’s development. After a contested presidential election in 2007, which was followed by tribal violence, some power-sharing has happened between the President, Mwai Kibaki, and the Prime Minister, Raila Odinga, and a new constitution promulgated a year ago has brought some political stability. However, corruption is rife and economic growth at 5% a year cannot keep up with the growing and underemployed population. Kibaki, while credited with reviving the country’s economy and being less autocratic than other African strongmen, has done little for corruption reform or to shift the fraught status quo of tribal politics in Kenya.
Dr. Leakey’s views on what can take his countrymen out of their present political doldrums present both interesting parallels to and differences from the Indian experience. He spoke of the need for a highly educated elite and the importance of drawing top talent in the civil service—the latter a particularly salient concern for India. Dr. Leakey’s other lament was about the absence of truly independent politicians. He sees even those who are competent and well-meaning as being so tied up with various special interests (largely tribal), that by the time they get to power it is nearly impossible for them to battle the status quo. Aside from the tribal element, this situation also arguably has its parallels in the Indian political scene where the ability of more independent and technocratic policy-makers to affect change is heavily circumscribed in the morass of party machine politics.
Dr. Leakey’s ideal model is clearly the politics of the elite, as seen in his claim that a handful of corruption-free independent politicians in key governmental positions could run Kenya well.
While the challenges in Kenya and India have some surface similarities, Dr. Leakey’s prescription would be out of place in India’s consensus-driven public sphere (though, I imagine, such elite-driven solution would likely meet sotto voce approval behind closed doors at the IAS and with large elements of India Inc.). Yet, some of Dr. Leakey’s messages are instructive in the Indian context as well. These include, first and foremost, increased investment in education to produce the forward-looking technocratic middle class his country so badly needs. Second, the creation of more think tanks, with young constituencies and members, within and outside of political party structures to increase scrutiny of mainstream politicians and enhance the diversity of voices in the public sphere. Third, Dr. Leakey proposes increased reliance on social media to mobilize the younger generation against particularism and corruption and disintermediate retrograde tribal politics—a powerful lever as seen by the still evolving dynamics of the Arab Spring.
Although his views may be too exclusive for the Indian ethos, Dr. Leakey’s faith and focus on grooming a young, educated, and politically aware generation that will no longer stand for the divisive, corrupt politics of their elders is one that makes sense for any young, growing democracy.
Dr. Katherine Foshko is the Russia Studies Fellow at Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations, Mumbai.
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