Perhaps appropriately, my new year began with a failed experiment.

I took Christmas and January off to spend in India, and I intended to blog a picture diary every day. After a false start on Substack, I shifted over to WordPress, but only managed to post eight times across six weeks. So I have quite a few observations I need to get out.

Returning to the UK after a month and a half on the subcontinent is a jarring experience. You trade the chaos of Delhi, the sensory overload of Jaipur, and the energy of Goa for the grey predictability of the M6. But beyond the culture shock, I came back with a nagging anxiety.

The worlds most populous country has a vibe about it that contrasts starkly with the UK.

It’s not just vibes, there’s data to back it up. India currently sits near the top of the global optimism charts, with 69% – 81% of citizens stating the country is on the right track. Even with concerns about rural unemployment and inflation, 51% of Indians believe their personal standard of living will improve significantly this year. For the Indian public, the future isn’t something to worry about.

The UK is a different story. The right direction score places between 16% and 21%, with roughly 65% to 70% of the British public believing the country is on the ‘wrong track’, reflecting a nation that feels stuck in a stagnation trap.

The contrast in national optimism is rooted in a demographic divide: India is a nation of starters while the UK is a nation of maintainers. With a median age of roughly 30, India is powered by a massive, young workforce that views the future as a series of firsts—first jobs, first homes, and a first-hand role in a rising global power. Conversely, the UK’s median age of 41 reflects a mature society with creaking infrastructure preoccupied with the pressures of supporting both children and ageing parents. Unlike India’s ‘climbing the ladder’ energy, the UK is stuck in a ‘fixing the foundations’ phase, where the primary goal is simply to stop things from getting worse. It’s beyond a crisis, and more a permanent sense of entrenched helplessness.

Innovation performance though is still high in the UK, with us currently ranked 6th in the Global Innovation Index (GII) 2025, although slipping from our previous consistent 4th place. Meanwhile, India has rocketed from 48th to 38th in just five years.

One of the things that enables countries like India to surge forward is the lack of legacy, which gives you the ability to ‘leapfrog’ trends or technological innovations.

Leapfrogging occurs when a country skips over older, established technologies or practices and moves straight to the most advanced version. Because they don’t have to maintain expensive, outdated systems they can adopt modern solutions faster than so-called developed countries.

The poster child of India’s leapfrogging is its Digital Public Infrastructure, often referred to as the India Stack. While Western nations struggled to transition legacy banking systems into the mobile age, India skipped the credit card era. The Unified Payments Interface (UPI) , has become a global case study, processing billions of transactions monthly from high-end showrooms to rural roadside tea stalls, all by QR code on your phone.

This financial leapfrog has brought over 500 million people into the formal banking system in just over a decade, something that took centuries in Europe.

Telecommunications is where the leapfrog is most visible to the average person. India skipped the era of widespread desktop computing and dial-up internet, moving straight to a mobile-first society. With some of the lowest data costs globally, India transitioned from 4G to 5G at record speeds. This connectivity has enabled a secondary leapfrog in both education and telemedicine.

What makes India’s leapfrogging unique is that it is driven by necessity and scale. Unlike the UK, which must manage and retrofit centuries of legacy infrastructure, India is building on a relatively clean slate.

In the UK, we are often stuck in a kind of legacy lock-in. This occurs when past investments in old technology make it difficult and expensive to move to the new.

One of the problems is, we just aren’t thinking long term enough, therefore our ‘innovations’ are more like tactical initiatives.

India plans in 25-year cycles named “Amrit Kaal” (meaning Golden era/Immortal time). Decisions taken today on semiconductors, green hydrogen, and the India Stack are explicitly linked to where the country needs to be in 2047.

In the UK plans are largely dictated by a 5-year electoral cycle. Major long-term projects (like HS2 or social care reform) are frequently scaled back or kicked down the road to meet immediate fiscal targets or changing/abandoned election manifestos.

Most of our organisations do the same, with a series of tactical operational plans masquerading as strategy.

A country or organisation that relies on tactical fixes is essentially playing a permanent game of Whack-A-Mole. They spend all their energy, money, and time reacting to immediate crises.

In contrast, a long-term strategy allows you to move from fixing the past to building the future. Whilst I was away the Bromford Flagship LiveWest (BFL) merger was finalised , with us becoming one of the largest housing associations in the UK. Increased scale brings with it another set of challenges, so it’s now more important than ever that the organisation plays the long game.

What makes our ‘2042 and beyond’ strategy unique is that it moves away from the management by numbers style that has dominated the last three decades in the UK, and shifts toward longer term place-based thinking and working. It’s more ‘Amrit Kaal’ than short term tactics.

Long-term thinking turns innovation from a panic response (fixing a crisis) into a deliberate design (building a future). It allows you to leapfrog the inefficient management styles of the past by designing processes that will still be working in 20+ years.

Ultimately, the divide between India and the UK is all about the horizon and timeline. While the UK remains tethered to the legacy lock-in of its own history—patching up Victorian pipes and firefighting —India is playing a civilisational long game.

Our organisations, especially in the public sector, face exactly the same challenge. So what’s it to be?

A long term vision, with big bets?

Or a plan just focused on stopping things getting worse?