Where are Today's Great, Heroic, Inspirational World Leaders?

Bangalore: We have entered the second decade of the 21st century and have witnessed the rise and fall of several bad guys like Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosevic. But what we really need is some big, bold, gutsy leaders, something the world does not have right now.
The problem of leadership deficit is not restricted to one single nation; it has become really difficult to point out at least one person in the whole world who is great, heroic, inspirational and transformational. Just have a look at the one hundred and ninety-three countries represented at the United Nations and try to find out just one leader with all the above mentioned qualities. The result will be really disappointing!

One can find handful of leaders like Myanmar's Aung San Suu Kyi, who stands out in the crowd with her inspiring leadership qualities. But authorized leaders leading the nations and bringing out changes are difficult to find. The world once had some of the great leaders like Lenin, Stalin and Churchill, whom we won’t get back and on the contrary today’s leaders lack the required talent to deal with the problems and challenges lying before us in an effective way.

Now, the question arises whether the greatest nations of the world have the right kind of leaders.  Let’s see the five permanent members of U.N. Security Council, as people expect their great leaders should come from great powers.  But, the deficiency of greatness still exists in them who are leading these greatest nations, like Barack Obama, David Cameron, François Hollande, Hu Jintao and Vladimir Putin.
Although these leaders are talented, well-spoken, who know to tackle various kinds of economic and political challenges, yet they are not given the credit of great leaders.
Is the scenario same for other important powers like Germany, India and Brazil? Surprisingly, despite the resilient and politically skilled nature, Angela Merkel who is a survivor in German politics has failed to show the leadership status on broader European issues, especially during economic crises. Similarly, the Prime Minister of India, Manmohan Singh is also a skilled politician and a popular technocrat, but he too knotted in political intrigue and corruption charges and failed to climb the ranks of Nehru and Gandhi. The circumstance in Brazil is also the same as above two.

If this is the current state of the world in leadership, then where do the Arab and Muslim stand? Undoubtedly, the Arab leaders like Saddams, the Assads, Gadhafi –who were known as extractive figures, failed to join the ranks of great leaders.  Then the next generation of leaders came in, like- Mubarak, Ben Ali, and Abdullah Saleh, who are bit better than the previous leaders. Whereas, in the Middle East, with the passing of leaders like Ben Gurions, Sadats, Begins, King Husseins and Rabins, a younger generation has moved into the leadership platform, such as Netanyahu, Barak, Olmert.

The picture of finding consequential leaders beyond Egypt is worse than the above places. Libya, Syria, and Yemen are in quest for responsible and effective leaders. Although the Arab Kings are respected by many Saudis, yet they are not fitted in the place of great leadership.
With that said why is the modern era running out of great leaders? Well to be precise, the fact that ‘Greatness is rare’ is the perfect answer to this question. So how is a leader renowned as great? Leaders are often praised great with their endless compassion in overcoming a distress that forever changes the landscape of the whole nation. But still the fact must be admitted that a successful nation will never ever again pass its foregone trial because their respected leaders have already answered the needed questions.

So what follows is a handful of next-gen leaders whose challenges are more of less important as they are forced to follow a systematic way which is far more complex than it seems. Not to mention the influence of media in today’s world. Leaders often use media for expressing their feelings and dislikes towards other nations. With more and more influence of media in a commoner’s day to day life, a new group of people known as activists has popped from nowhere as this has forced leaders to come out of their closed environment to interact with their citizens often. U.S President Obama’s Twitter conference is the best example.

Along with that nowadays a leader’s political ability is also measured by his country’s economic growth, as it seems that they both are linked together. The best example is the recent meltdown seen in both Greece and Thailand. According to experts the failure of a nation is mainly because of its lack of comprehensive institutions, as this has transformed the public thoughts that they still are waiting for ‘the one’ to be rescued.

Even though the world has seen the downfall of many bad guys, people are still proud to pick out some good, down-to-earth leaders from the mix like Charles De Gaulle, Konrad Adenauer, Anwar Sadat, Mikhail Gorbachev and Nelson Mandela. With that said, the reality still remains that the world is truly facing shortfall of gutsy, big and bold leaders that can lead out from the front.