Mind Chow

Considering an MBA in US? Read this first!

2011-11-06T19:46:00.007+05:30

There have been a number of times when I've been asked by people (in India) considering an MBA abroad and specifically in the US. My own views on this topic have changed a lot as I have been in different steps of the journey - first as an applicant, then as a student and now as a graduate.

I have been wanting to put together things that I should have known/could have known but didn't know (and at times didn't completely understand I needed to know) about the MBA process. So here it is, finally seeing the light of day. This has been written keeping in mind a target audience of someone in India who's considering an MBA in the US. Some of the points could be generic but the situation of candidates in India is something I am most familiar with and thought that I could do justice to.

As with all advice, please use your own judgement and discard anything that doesn't make sense to you.

As an MBA applicant in India, I faced a ton of chatter about what I should be considering, what I should be doing and how I should be preparing for US bschools. Not knowing anyone else in my direct circles who had been through the process before me - I was on my own to do the groundwork and collect information.

MBA forums like Pagalguy are useful for certain things - like connecting with current students, logistical questions, co-ordinating with your would-be cohort, etc. However, a lot of the "advice", is written by your fellow MBA aspirants who have clearly not been through the process or visited the schools and therefore at times are irrelevant (or worse, plain wrong).

What I've tried to do below is provide you with a sequence of steps and that will give you things to think about and be aware of in the MBA application process. There are a number of things that aren't stressed enough in India and candidates could do themselves a favour by being better aware.

Step 1: The first thing I'd like to suggest you do is to try and think of why you want your MBA from US. There are a number of reasons and depending on where you stand, you will tend to make choices accordingly

1. I am tired of my current job
2. I want to move to USA
3. I want to work in US and come back to India working in the functional domain of my choice
4. I am not sure right now but US MBA looks like a better choice than many of the no-name bschools in India
5. Other plus some of the above...
6. I don't know

Step 2: If you've made up your mind on coming to US for your MBA, you will need to start planning for when you want to do so. Bschools sessions start around August (Fall) every year and applications for each academic year begin almost a year in advance. Many schools will have their early application deadlines as early as November. If you're serious about getting good scholarships, you must aim to apply by the early application/ 1st round deadlines (typically before December)

Step 3: Once you have the timeline set for when you're applying, work backwards on getting the basics in order. You need a good GMAT score, you need strong applications et al. As a rough thumb rule, I would target having a great GMAT score 3-4 months in advance of your application timelines.
Additional Note: Many schools have begun to accept GRE as a score for MBAs. While this wasn't the case when I was applying, think of what this means for you. Although as someone who's given both GRE and GMAT (and done fairly well at both), I found GRE's fixation with word lists stupid but maybe that's just me.

Step 4: If you know by when you want your GMAT score, book your appointment! Having a fixed target makes it easier to prepare well and not slack off. This is especially true when you're working. A good target to work on would be something upwards of 700, and while the higher the better, it isn't always a linear relationship.

Step 5: While preparing for GMAT itself, start researching schools you want to apply to. While this is commonly anathema to most bschools, a good starting point would be the different MBA rankings. There are a bunch of them - BusinessWeek, US News, Economist, FT - read as many as you can but also understand what they're measuring the schools on. More important than the final number they attach will be the information and insights they will provide about the MBA program in question.

Some schools have a track record of generous scholarships to students who have the pleasure of having their currency valued at 1/50th the US Dollar. :)

There are some others that have really strong MBA programs and great non-cosigner loan option (Go WashU!) to help international students get loans in the US by acting as their guarantor. And there are schools where the placements are so awesome and assured that you don't mind the risk of taking out a loan on your own in India to finance the education (although I am yet to see too many of these since the financial crisis).

Many Indian students tend to stop here with their research about schools. My suggestion is to dig deeper. When you have a basket of schools you're considering, start exploring more about each school. Read up their website. Check out their geographical location - see companies in the area, check how the local economy is doing. Geography matters and matters a lot. Find current students (Indian or otherwise) on Linkedin and reach out to them. Ask them for 10-15 minutes of their time and talk to them about their experience. Not only will it help you make a better choice, it will help you write more convincing application essays should you choose to apply.

Step 6: Assuming you now have your GMAT score, school list sorted out - work well on your application essays. Every school as a different character which you will realize as you speak to current students. You may decide to play up some parts of your profile more than others for each school.

Also, do not try to have generic essays for every school (@IT professionals: code re-usability rarely works well in MBA essays). If you can build a compelling narrative about why you're interested in that specific school and what you've done to learn more about them (beyond the school website), it will give your application an edge over others. Besides, if you are clear about your goals post MBA and can articulate them in detail, you will be recognized as a person who knows where he/she is going.

Step 7: There are a few MBA fairs that happen across major cities in India and quite a few US schools that show up there. Keep track of the fairs and see if you can meet some of the school reps at the fairs. Not only does it give you more information, it gets you face time and an additional data point to demonstrate interest in the school. Besides, you may also get to meet alums working in India who'd be great people to talk to for their experience.

Step 8: Get your applications in early and hope for the best. Be your normal self in interviews and usually you'll do fine. Be prepared to talk about yourself (a lot!). Many students are not comfortable talking so much about themselves.

Step 9: Hopefully you have admits from your top choices by now. If you're not completely pleased with your options, considering applying for 2nd round applications of some bschools that may be easier to get into.

Step 10: Choose among your choices. Whatever you do, don't base it on bschool rankings! Compare multiple things including net cost, geography, cultural fit of the school (cut-throat, collaborative, at al), strength in the industry/functional area you're interested in etc. and make a good informed choice.

Other notes about the admission process:
(This is entirely my own understanding talking to fellow students at bschools around the country and this may not entirely be true for all schools)

The job of adcom is like assembling a fruit basket. There is no "single" trait they're looking for. They have a number of sub-goals that they have to achieve. They might pick a fruit for the color, another for the flavor and yet another for the texture and finally one more for how well it complements everything else you've picked already. (@Engineers - think of it like maximising the value of a multi-variable expression) There are number of "good" things adcom wants in an incoming student batch - great average GMAT scores; diversity in race, work experience, gender; post-MBA aspirations, quantity and quality of work experience, level of interest in the school etc. etc.

The "ideal" candidate allows them to check off boxes for all of these goals and needless to say, such a candidate rarely exists. Hence admissions process is an exercise in tradeoffs so that you choose different candidates for different things they can contribute for the overall pool.

The more things you can contribute, the better your chances are. So if you're a girl from Iraq who spent her undergrad years doing community service and then went on to work for Goldman Sachs for a few years and now have a GMAT score of 800, you will find the admission process kind-of easy!

On the contrary, if you're an Indian-IT-Male - IIM as it's called on many MBA forums, you're like the Tata Nano of the automotive industry - a dime a dozen. There are hordes of other smart, academically brilliant, maybe bored-from-their-job applicants out there and the incremental value of you over others is something you will have to create and demonstrate.

Typically, many of us have done great things which we tend not to think much of. So think about your life and career experiences so far and see if you can find anything people may be interested in - community service experiences, leadership initiatives, going beyond what is required, etc etc. Other things you can do to make yourself an attractive candidate are getting a good GMAT score, being engaged with the school in question through multiple contact points, demonstrating genuine interest, researching your career goals and being well prepared, etc.

Here is where your application essays will be crucial. A good essay requires a lot of introspection and I truly believe it is a great byproduct of the process. Make your application essay your spokesperson - be genuine, be clear and be direct. The poor soul who's reading the essays already has a tough task reading tonnes of material - much of which is not very well written. Be good to them and you're already getting a strong lead over the masses who've just made "one more application".

Hope some of this has been useful. Good luck!

So is Sachin "God"?

2011-04-17T09:54:00.004+05:30

Sachin Tendulkar stirs quite a lot of passion in our country and while I may not be particularly interested in the debate that's currently on about his legacy and his "god" status, it is easy to see what motivates people debating such "issues".

Perhaps the only heartening aspect of the debate has been the attempt use data to make one's point. We tend to skim on data in our debates in India and I'm glad to see data being sliced in different ways.

Having said this, it is important to know what you're looking to test before you use data. I will resist the temptation to show jazzy charts and percentages but will build three tests that anyone could run. Once you know what you're testing and why you're testing it, the rest is just details.

1. Sachin scores 100 but India loses (classic vanilla version)
If Sachin scores 100 but India loses. Does that say more about him or the quality of the team he has played in?

Some recent arguments seem to compare among different batsmen the percentage of times their teams win when they've scored a 100 in an ODI. In my humble opinion, this statistic is quite meaningless because we're comparing apples to oranges. Not only does it assume all oppositions are equal, it also assumes the skills and abilities of the remaining 10 players of the team are roughly comparable. Anyone who knows enough to distinguish cricket-the-game from cricket-the-insect will know that both assumptions don't hold in real life.

Maybe the only thing that we can compare with this statistic is the quality of the team. So if (Team India minus Sachin) got 'n' instances where they were provided with a Hundred from Sachin, how many did they convert to wins? And similarly for Ponting's team etc. To refine that analysis a little more, you could plot this data on a yearly basis to account for changes that happen in teams over the years.

The function
Number of wins given Sachin has scored 100 runs / Number of times Sachin scored a 100 runs
plotted for every year for the past 10 years could either tell us that the Indian team has grown stronger/ weaker/ remained about the same over the years.

2. Sachin scores 100 but India loses. (sinister version)
Sachin may be scoring 100s for his team but it loses anyway. Or he is selfish.

How can use data to test this? As any student of stats will know, we should test the negative hypothesis.

Sinister Hypothesis: Sachin scores 100s only for himself (and his records) and doesn't care too much about the team.

How to test: Compute the sum of all the scores in excess of 100 scored by Sachin in all innings where he's scored more than 100 runs. So for example, if he's scored 141 and 155 in two innings, the sum of this function would be 41 + 55 = 96. Compute this function for all Sachin centuries till date and compute the average number of excess runs per century i.e. runs Sachin scored in excess of what was required to get a "century" recorded against his name.

Repeat this process for the top 30 ODI century-getters in international cricket and now you have a comparable set.

If Sachin's average is lower than the others by a statistically significant difference, it would mean Sachin scores for himself only and is selfish and we can prove the hypothesis above to be true. Else the hypothesis can be considered disproved.

3. Sachin scores 100 but India loses (sinister version #2)

If Sachin scores hundreds but India loses, could it be that the man scored slowly deliberately to secure a personal landmark thereby jeopardizing the run rate of the team?

Again, one must test the negative hypothesis.

Sinister Hypothesis #2: Sachin plays slow for a century and causes India to lose

Now there are many ways, albeit none perfect to test this. Here's the one with the least faults.

How to test: Check the Sachin's strike rate for all innings when he's scored a 100 and compare it to his strike rate for all innings where he has not scored a 100.

If the former is lower by a statistically significant difference than the latter, we can prove the hypothesis. Else, the hypothesis is disproved.

A possible refinement could be to limit the non-100 pool of innings to occassions when he has scored atleast 10 runs. Otherwise if he hit a four on the first ball and got out on the second, his strike rate would be 200 but we can easily understand why innings like these will only obscure our data comparison.

Final Notes:
"Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts" ~ Albert Einstein

To paraphrase one of the truer things I've heard in this regard, calling Sachin India's greatest batsman would be like calling Gandhi India's greatest politician. They are both much more than just that.

To measure impact of Sachin, you will need to measure the impact he's had on cricketers that came after him idolizing him. For example, Sehwag has openly claimed Sachin was his original inspiration. If it were not for Sachin would we have had the Sehwags of today?

You will have to quantify the confidence he instilled in not just budding cricketers but an entire nation desperately seeking a current symbol to be proud of.

You will need to quantify the aggression he instilled in an entire generation which truly began to believe India could compete hard with the best in the world and win - not just in cricket but in whatever we chose to pursue.

And you will need to measure the humility he's displayed despite being the biggest achiever of his generation by far. We live in an age where "reality television" throws up a new "star" everyday. But for so many years now - Sachin has been the ultimate icon - who taught us how to compete, how to win and most importantly, how to be humble in success.

I don't know if I'd call Sachin "God" but I do know one thing, God was in a particularly benevolent mood when we got Sachin.

If you don't agree, try to imagine growing up in an India without Sachin? I rest my case.

P.S.: Special thanks to Rohith Acharya and Santosh Chavan for providing the motivation for writing this piece!

News from Friends - Reimagining Facebook

2011-03-09T07:32:00.000+05:30

If you're among the people who check Facebook on a regular basis to see your "News Feed" and see what's the latest your friends have to say or share, read on - you should find this thought exercise interesting.

Imagine how a newspaper would be if all the news stories were lined up in a sequential basis, one below the other as per time of the news report with no prioritization. There would be no headlines. News stories about Justin Beiber (or Rakhi Sawant for that matter) would be displayed above, say, the upheaval in Egypt. And more importantly, at any time, you could see only one story in a line - much like the structure of this blog. If you're still unsure of what I mean, see TechCrunch (a popular technology blog) which displays one story below another.

Doesn't feel like an attractive proposition to have a newspaper this way, does it? For one, it'd take forever to go through each story until you reach something of interest. And the other, with no sense of priority, you wouldn't see the news most important if all you did was a glance at the news.

Now think of your Facebook "News Feed". All the "news" about your "friends" is lined up in chronological order one below the other. It works okay when you have a few connections but makes for an informational overload when you have several hundred connections. When you have so many "friends" you may value some more than others. Perhaps posts from some friends should have "headline priority". Or perhaps major life events like a marriage from your friends could have a headline picture.

The only difference between reading a newspaper and Facebook's News Feed, is that in the latter case, the "News" is only about your friends (or the content they find interesting enough to share). If you could have all this "social" news arranged in a newspaper like format, wouldn't it become easier to manage all those news stories. More importantly, arranging posts like a newspaper opens up revenue opportunities like "front page ads" etc.

One can also imagine a custom-made digital newspaper that could mesh actual news stories from your topics of interest (say "International Politics", "Technology") as well as "social news" from your friends onto a single page. One of the bigger challenges that face the news media today is that people no longer expect to pay for news content. So much is available for free on the web. And that exactly could be the opportunity. There is so much available on the web in terms of news, it results into an information overload and requires effort to sort and assimilate. By collating real world news stories on the basis of user's preferences as well as that of his social connections (and perhaps some thought leaders), one could dish up news in a personalized format that no editor could match with a one-size-fits-all newspaper. Perhaps it could also have trailers of upcoming movies or perhaps albums of your favourite artists too making it a potent advertising medium that's engaging for the reader as well. Add "social news" about our friends and the humble old newspaper becomes a heady concoction that everyone can instantly relate to.

The newspaper paradigm makes the stream of updates we see on Facebook suddenly more manageable (and pleasurable to read) providing the user a richer, cleaner experience while also providing avenues for meaningful advertising.

Whatdya think? Would you like to read a Facebook newspaper?

Note: I was sure I wasn't the first person to think of Facebook as a "newspaper". In fact, the roots of this article lie in my search for an appliction that presents Facebook updates as "News". A little searching got me to an interesting application called PostPost. It is a great first version and gives you an idea of what's possible once you turn social updates into a newspaper-like format.

Down a slippery slope

2010-08-01T17:17:00.010+05:30

International politics is often a strange animal. It makes bedfellows out of the most antithetical entities. Almost anything can be justified with a sprinkling of strategic thinking.

Take one of the bigger headaches of our time - The Taliban. It was funded by US, UK and many other powers of the world at the height of the Cold War to oppose the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Strategically, it made sense then - your enemy's enemy was your friend. This was America's opportunity to create USSR's Vietnam. While they may not have necessarily agreed with the Taliban's world view, these countries supported the mujahideen and the local warlords in the interest of the "greater goal of defeating the communists".

But it's a slippery slope to tread, as they later found out. When you feed a monster even for something you believe is right, there is no telling what it may do once it has sufficient power. Within decades of repelling the Soviet forces, the same group had begun mass-manufacturing and supporting terrorists.

(Side Note: These miltia and suicide bombers were "freedom fighters" when directed towards India. A few bombings, some plane hijackings, some assassinations - were all part of their "freedom" struggle. Until they did the same to US and UK. And then, all of a sudden, "terrorism" was born.)

Circa 2010, US and its allies are losing billions of dollars and more importantly, precious lives while they try and clean up the monster they had once created out of their own voliton. And it is not clear whether they will succeed (I hope they do).

So why do I labour this well-known and acknowledged point?

Because India stands at the edge of a similarly slippery slope with Burma (or Myanmar, if you will). It is both a moral and a strategic dilemma.

On one hand the country is of great strategic importance. Myanmar's location makes it a potential gateway from India to a big part of Southeast Asia (see map below). Further, a friendly Myanmar helps India tackle insurgency in its troubled North East. And of course, not playing ball with the Myanmar junta would be pushing them into the arms of a waiting China that has been trying its containment strategy by spreading its influence in all of India's neighbours. In simple words - economically and militarily - a friendly Myanmar holds a lot for India.

Equally, the military junta of Myanmar is not a natural ally for the world's largest democracy. The country that preaches the virtues of democracy cannot simply look the other way while partnering with a regime that's accussed of genocide, repression of democracy, among other things. Traditionally, India has been a vocal supporter of Burma's last known politically elected leader - Aung San Suu Kyi - who's been under house arrest for a better part of the last two decades. India has always prided itself in (or bragged about, depending on your world view) its moralist dimension to foreign policy. To do business with the ruling junta of Myanmar would be negate all of that.

It's a difficult decision and there are no easy choices. As it appears, the current Indian view is to favour realpolitik over moral and ethical considerations. Nothing has exemplified this choice more than the complete silence while hosting Burmese General Than Shwe in India.

I see where they are coming from but can't help feeling queasy about it. I hope that India does not end up creating its own monster in Burma. What else can one do?

Of Lemons and more

2010-03-20T08:43:00.005+05:30

Some weeks back, I learnt about a paper from Nobel Prize winning economist George Akerlof. It's called The Market for Lemons.

As they say, you've not truly learnt something unless you can explain in simple words. Today I am going to put myself to test.

In simple words, the paper talks about how trade breaks down when there is no trust.

Consider the used car market.

Imagine that cars of a certain make and certain age are for sale. Some cars are in better condition than others. Let's say the best one is valued at 100K which is in great condition and worst one at 50K which is in awful condition.

If you're a buyer and you have no way of inspecting or discerning the true condition of the car, you would most likely be willing to pay the mid-point of that (50K,100K) value i.e. 75K.

Given that you're willing to pay 75K, which buyers will be wanting to sell? The ones with cars of value less than 75K, right? And the guys who actually own the good cars will be sitting there unable to sell their car. It's called "bad driving out the good" of the market.

Repeat this experiment a number of times and the buyers will find that the cars they're buying are of bad quality. Eventually they'll stop buying the used cars being sold because of the bad quality.

And thus the trade breaks down. Now nobody buys any used cars from anyone just because there were some sellers selling some bad cars and there was no way to differentiate them from the good ones.

So why is this powerful? What this theory implies that for trade to prosper, trust is paramount. And trust comes with transparency and adequate information sharing. Moreover, it highlights the importance of regulation to ensure bad products in the market do not drive down the value of good products.

After this paper, the US federal government enacted "lemon laws" for the used car market that provided buyers some protection from unscrupulous sellers.

Think about a market in India where there is complete lack of transparency - Housing? You bet! No common standards in area calculation, variable construction quality, questionable reliability, fudged land records - you name it, they have it! A perfect case for some governmental regulation?

For once, the guvment is on the ball on this one - regulation is on its way. How effective it will be - that only time can tell.

Creating Value, Communicating Value, Capturing Value - Part 2

2010-03-04T06:48:00.007+05:30

In case you haven't read the prequel to this one, read it here.

So what does the concept of creating value, communicating value and capturing value have to do with career planning?

From what I can see and understand, lots.

Think of companies as shoppers. Your services are the product. Now, if you had to sell this product, what's the first thing you would think of? Making the product worthwhile? Looking out for potential buyers?

As it turns out, I've seen two extremes in people so far at business school.

One who believe that they must work relentlessly at creating value (acquiring skills) and hoping that someone out there will understand the value they offer. They point to the success of Google - the search engine that captured the online search market without having to ever place a single ad about itself.

And the other group that believes that they must spend most of their time communicating the value(real or imaginary) to potential buyers and believe that somehow, the creation of value(acquiring skills) will somehow happen on its own along the way. They usually point to the success of Coke or Pepsi which while being not a whole lot superior to their competition, outsold themselves to success through superior communication.

In a certain sense both analogies are somewhat pertinent, but not really comparable.

Google succeeded without advertising because of its superior search results but also because users could sample its quality at no cost. Ascertaining Google's search results was free and effortless. While hiring, companies do not have that comfort. A mis-hire costs, by some estimates, upto 300% of an employee's annual salary and people are usually rather risk averse.

Coke and Pepsi have may have outsold their competition but their actual product certainly delivered what people expected those products to do - refresh them, make them feel good about themselves, make their food taste better, etc. Communicating value without creating it may get the product sold for once, but if the product does not match up to its promise, it is certainly going to be disposed off pretty soon.

So where does this leave us?

Work as hard as you can to acquire skills and make yourself more valuable to future employers. Equally, put in a lot of work to communicate as much of the value to others as possible. Share information and reduce risk for employers. Help them make an informed decision to hire you. You will not create value for some companies and both of you are better off not dealing with each other. But there will be some for whom you create tremendous value. Your goal is to find them and educate them.

How's that for a plan?

Creating Value, Communicating Value, Capturing Value - Part 1

2010-02-18T10:10:00.005+05:30

One of the things I remember distinctly from my Marketing class was this statement:

"Marketing is all about creating value, communicating value and capturing value"

At first, this sounded like one of those lines of MBAspeak that are great to hear but have little use other than that. But it sure stuck. And I've been thinking about it off and on ever since.

What is creation of value?

Let's consider a plastic comb. Come to think of it, it is merely a piece of plastic moulded in a particular way.

What is the cost of making it?

Extremely small.

What's the cost of materials one needed to make it?

Close to nothing.

But what is its value?

Depends.

Value would be the amount of money people would be ready to part with to acquire it.

Consider a case if there was only one person on the face of this earth. If this person were bald, what amount of money would he/she be willing to pay for it? Pretty close to zero. In MBAspeak, the product "does not create any value for this customer"

Now if this person were a lady with pretty long hair. What's the value of a comb? It will have to be the money equivalent of the hassle of having tangled, uncombed hair.

In a certain sense, marketers grapple with finding such people for whom their product "creates most value".

The next step comes as communicating that value.

If I have to make you part with any amount of money, you must be convinced that this product will deliver a value (perhaps in terms of better managed hair) greater than the amount you've paid for it.

Last comes the most important part of capturing value. Now if the comb costed almost nothing to produce and has created a value of 5 bucks and both the seller and buyer agree on this value created.

What follows is negotiation on how to share this value. Both sides have some amount of bargaining power. The seller created the value but if the buyer does not buy it, nobody gets anything. One way would be that the value created be split equally. So the buyer pays 2.5 and then enjoys an additional 2.5 worth value while using the product.

But if there are 100 people who can buy and only one seller, the seller can capture very close to that 5 buck value. Conversely, if there are 100 sellers and only one buyer, in all probability, the buyer is going to pay close to nothing for the product.

Thus, any entity that can create value and communicate it but cannot capture it will deliver a great solution nevertheless but not profit from it.

"Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door"

Perhaps, but if you do not know how to capture value, that rush at your door might not pay you much for it.

It's something that my engineering brain took quite some time to appreciate but I guess it now makes sense.

Your thots?

P.S.: While this may sound elementary, this concept has tremendous implications for how we think of a number of things - including one that is at the top my mind these days - career planning. More to follow in the next post.

One year on...

2009-11-26T14:12:00.004+05:30

It's Thanksgiving Day here in Obamaland. When families come together to celebrate, to express gratitude for all they've enjoyed through the year.

On a day like today, my thoughts go back a year back in time, several thousand miles away. To a city I've called home forever. To a night that has been etched onto a nation's consciousness. A night when Mumbai was under siege. A night that brought the nation to standstill. A brazen attack that was aimed at inflicting maximum damage to a people's psyche. A night that was the beginning of 60 long hours through which brave men fought fearlessly and tirelessly. A night that saw several heroic young men choosing the put themselves in harm's way to protect our lives and our honour. A time when valour radiated through the streams of blood, as our brave soldiers and policemen laid down their lives so that we may live another day.

It is the first anniversary of the audacious Mumbai terror attacks that took place on 26th November 2008. For most of the city and the nation, life has returned to normal, perhaps with the exception of a memorial service or two. For some families though, this day of the year will never be the same again. For some, this day will bring back horrors of the havoc wrecked by those who revel in wanton killing of innocents.

Just one troubling thought - do we as a nation deserve our martyrs? I'm hardly in touch with the happenings back home but the more I read(link1,link2), the more I get the feeling that the city has moved on, almost to the extent that it doesn't care.

Let's spare a thought today for our brave martyrs and their families. Let's be thankful for their courage. And let us reflect on what we've done to make sure this never happens again.

Of Humans & Other Resources

2009-02-14T22:56:00.011+05:30

It's all around us. Tip toeing from foreign shores, it entered our consciousness and seems to be preparing for a long haul.

We're talking Layoffs here. Call them "Pink Slips" if you will. They're happening everywhere - some discreetly, some not so discreetly.

We watched silently on TV one international bank go kaput after another. We heard business leaders make mournful noises about a "painful slowdown" ahead. Many of us saw evil omens in the air. But not many imagined that it could become a real pain - and a tremendous one at that.

As the news of the layoffs becomes numbingly usual, it is hard not to feel the sense of loss. And in a certain sense - anger. How does it feel to be treated like a deadly tumor in the very organization for whom you've toiled so hard? How does it feel to be suddenly told one day, "THIS IS IT. Here's where you get off"?

In news filtering in, Sapient laid off 500 employees in India on Friday and Saturday with no prior intimation. One fine morning, they coolly put armed guards in place to prevent employees from entering office premises. Thoughtful, isn't it?

If layoffs are required for the survival of an organization, is it necessary that they be fashioned to hit the victims like a brick in the face? Why do we have to eject someone out with the urgency that one would apply to inoculate contagions?

Why do organizations have to ensure that maximum damage is done to the psyche of the person who's laid off? Does the person laid off necessarily have to fired on "performance grounds" and be ejected with immediate effect? And for those who've been spared the sword, how does that leave them feeling? Does the employee morale or the "culture" not go to the dogs?
Is it not a lot more humane to tell the person of how the organization is no longer strong enough to require their services and give them a fixed time frame to move-on.

I was never too fond of the practice of calling people "resources". It somehow felt as if human beings were being put at par with computers, electricity and other lifeless entities that form inputs for a business. And therefore, by extension of the same logic, like one can turn off some switches to reduce electricity consumption, one can simply throw out a few people to reduce "consumption" of human resources.

Should "humaneness" be a virtue that's reserved for the glossy brochures and jazzy websites of large organizations? Should each one of us start fending for ourselves and become a part of the dog-eat-dog world? Should we now become subservient to the powers that be so as to safeguard our interests?

As the slowdown deepens, a lot of individuals and organizations are going to face rather testing times. And I'm afraid not all of them are going to come out it smelling of roses.

Kahaani Hamari Raamayan Ki

2009-02-01T22:37:00.008+05:30

Rama, or Sri Ram Chandra ji, as most of India knows him - the man born on earth as an avatar of Vishnu, the man who comes across as an embodiment of virtues, the source of inspiration for Indians living across the world - must be so glad to find the upholders of dharma amongst his followers.

His followers are doing him proud. Ram Sene has proved itself to be the true protector of Indian culture by attacking evil women in Mangalore. And why not? Wasn't Ramayana not about shutting down pubs and malls all across Ayodhya? Wasn't it all about banning western influences. Wasn't it about molesting and attacking women unrepentantly for upholding one's "culture". Did Rama not attack the weak to uphold his sense of what was right?

Was this the Ramaayana we read or for that matter, saw on TV?
I don't know about these zealots, but my copy contained none of this non-sense. Ramaayana when I last read was about treading the path of righteousness, cleansing oneself of sin, putting truth and honour before one's convenience. It was about showing courage to stand by what one believes to be right - even if it goes against oneself. It was about Bharat's devotion and selflessness. It was about Laxmana's valour and spirit of sacrifice. It was about Jataayu, the king of eagles, who gave his life trying to protect Seeta from the clutches of the evil Raavana.

It was about knowing that a little bit of Ram and a little bit of Raavana lies within each of us. It is for us defeat our weaker selves and lead a good life.

Rama must be wondering how "Jai Sri Ram" has now become the clarion call for lumpen elements all over India. This is very much then, as they say, Kalyug.

So all that talk about the "pub culture" being against or within "Indian culture" is so much besides the point. The focus of introspection should be that will we allow vigilantes to take the law in their own hands as and when their sense of righteousness is violated? Do we want a gang of goons to enforce what's good and what's not?

Even if one were to accept for the sake of argument that "pub culture is evil", who is to cleanse me of evil? Why should it be someone else? I must cleanse myself of my own sins or accept the fruits of my karma. And I can live with that.

And now a note to our beloved politicians:

Mr. B S Yediyurappa, the honourable CM of the state that needed public outrage to arrest the goons of Mangalore, issued a statement that "he will not allow this pub culture invade Karnataka". And perfectly on cue, Mr. Ashok Gehlot, the honourable CM of Rajasthan declared "girls and boys moving hand in hand in malls" as one of the top problems for the state.

Politics is the second-oldest profession of the world and to paraphrase Ronald Reagan, is often similar to the oldest profession. The political class hasn't exactly covered itself with glory in their conduct in both personal and professional life over the years.

So gentlemen, get your act together first on what you're supposed to be working on - economy, security, healthcare and education. Leave the culture bit to us for now. We will ask you for help on the pernicious western influences once you've solved the other problems we face.

Till then, keep off.

Never Again

2008-11-27T23:59:00.005+05:30

So, we're under attack yet again - And it has got bigger and dirtier.

This time - let's leave behind our usual anger for the "ineffective government", "sleeping police" and "failed intelligence". Let’s move forward.

We're up against a faceless enemy; and a very smart one at that. An enemy that has its tentacles spread across the breadth of this country. Jaipur, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Delhi, and of course, Mumbai - all our major cities have witnessed the carnage unleashed by these zealots.

This time, let's not point fingers. Let's not play "Hindu terror" and "Muslim terror". Let's not play "secular" and "communal". Let's not blame the police. Let's not ask for the resignation of the ministers. Let’s ask for solutions.

The solutions to our problems are all within us. All the proposals to fight terror have been around us for quite a while:

Stronger Laws
Federal Anti-terror Agency
Modernization of Police forces
Special Anti-terror forces
Stricter vigil at our borders

But they’re forever lost in the realms of deliberations and never put into action.

Not this time. Never again.

Let's all sit together and discuss which of these can be done, and how we can get those done in the fastest possible fashion. Let's have an open forum where we can question our top leaders both in the govt. and the opposition on each of these issues.
Let us have everyone come clean on what they agree on. For instance both the BJP and the Congress at different times have accused each other of blocking the proposal for a Federal Anti-terror Agency.

Not this time. Never again.

Let us not forget that brave soldiers from the police, army and the NSG died trying to protect us from men who'd come to unleash terror. Their sacrifice must not go waste. We must learn our lessons - and learn them fast. Let's get our act together. Whatever it takes.

The terror attacks might not stop immediately. Our enemy is way too smart for that.
But let's raise the stakes for terror. Let's send out a message that we will not take things lying down. And that India is vigilant, not fearful.

The head is bloody, but still unbowed.

I'll be back

2008-10-27T11:38:00.002+05:30

Well, I know it has been ages since I posted on this blog.
This post is only to inform that the blog hasn't been abandoned yet. :)

I will be back in action very soon.

Reservation Confirmed. What next?

2008-04-13T22:23:00.007+05:30

The final word on the reservation debate is out. The Supreme Court has delivered, what appears to be a nuanced verdict, while upholding the principle of quotas, imposing a number of checks and balances on it.

It's been almost 2 years since this issue has re-surfaced onto the public consciousness. To be honest, my own position has not remained constant in this duration. From extreme outrage at the idea of reservation, to a sense of fatalism, to a sense of moving on, the past two years have shown that there are innumerable facets to this debate - so many that I'd never be able to do justice to all of them.

Yet there are a few things that have struck me in this debate on reservations. Foremost among them is the reality of caste in this country. We must be willing to admit that we are, in a large majority, a group of snobs. We snigger at people who aren't like us. What's unfortunate is that, it doesn't seem its going to change anytime soon. (Let's not get into the debate on whether reservations resurrect the caste system or whether they merely recognize it.)

Secondly, a lot of us are really peeved about "them" getting undue benefits. For every person who's doubting the efficacy of reservation, there are many who feel short changed personally. Many of us would have our opposition blunted in case we were made eligible for these very reservations.

It is useless debating the legality of reservation now that it has been ratified by the Supreme Court. Perhaps history will tell us whether it was the right thing to do. Perhaps, this would be seen as yet another product of the politics of symbolism that has become the mainstay of Indian politics. The kind of politics that made Mrs. Pratibha Patil* the President because "it'd be good to have a woman president", and the kind that requires beating up a few poor north-Indian migrants just because they are "outsiders".

How else can one fathom the logic of reserving a few thousand seats in some institutes when millions of Indians (of all castes) do not have access to primary education / professional education that can earn them a livelihood? I am too small a person to argue with facts and figures but I guess most people would agree that government schools are doing rather badly. Which is why most people with access to private schools try to avoid govt. schools as long they have the resources to do so.

For a large number of us, the feeling is of desperation. The sort of institutes to which this reservation is being applied are stuff dreams of. Students toil day and night to get into IITs and IIMs knowing fully well that less than 2% will get through. They're so good because they're so coveted. However, there aren't too many, if at all, private institutions of higher learning that are at par with these government institutes.

Would it not have helped if we would have done the dirty job of regulating and ensuring accountability in the the mushrooming cottage-industry of private colleges? Why are so many of our graduates labelled by industries as "un-employable"?
What is it about them that makes them unemployable?
More importantly, how are we addressing the systemic deficiencies that are leading these human-resource disasters?

For a moment, let's assume that all the arguments offered by in favour of these reservations are right. Yet, is "helping" some thousand of our teeming millions (of all castes) good enough?
What about the rest? Does anyone care?

*Disclaimer: I have nothing against the President of India. But show me one person who says that her gender was not a pivotal factor in the presidential selection process and I'll show you a liar.

Older posts on this issue:
Status Reserved
An Open Letter to President of India
Reservation and Cancellation

Shift + Delete

2008-02-11T22:25:00.000+05:30

There are times when you yearn for the "delete" button in your life. There are times when you wish you can select some people and banish them into the sea, preferably without a boat.

For the past week or so, we've seen the Outsider/Local debate unfold on our TV sets, and more disturbingly, on our streets. To see news of poor, helpless people being targeted by some lumpen elements just because they happen to be from a particular state has been disappointing. And that's a huge understatement.

There has been many a heated debate on what constitutes being a Mumbaikar, Marathi pride, Infrastructure issues, etc. etc. There's one question that continues to baffle me.
Why would a man, driven by desperate conditions in his home state to stay away from his home and family, owe his allegiance to politicians from his home state, who've pretty much caused his predicament?

The reason people migrate in droves from the cow belt to Mumbai is that their home states give them little opportunity to earn a living. Such has been the mis-administration in these states that people agree to live in sub-human conditions, in slums, beside drains, on footpaths, wherever they can manage in Mumbai simply because going back is not an option. Taxi drivers, plumbers, carpenters, peons, cooks, dhobis - the working underclass is formed largely of these migrants, often ready to work for a pittance in their desperation.

Shri Amar Singh, Shri Mulayam Singh and co. - How about doing something for people of UP who ARE IN UP before you think of those who've come to Mumbai? Keep people in your state happy and they wouldn't need the slums of Mumbai. How's that for an idea?

Now about Raj Thackeray. There has been much said about how the Hindi and English media have been mis-representing and maligning him to keep some audiences happy.
To be honest, I've not seen too much of Hindi media. They're too loud/biased for my taste. And that's a general observation.
Considering the frenzy they can whip up for Saif Ali Khan getting a tattoo done for Kareena, it's not difficult imagine what they must be upto on this. Further, one can understand his irritation at politicians from UP/Bihar (I refuse to call them leaders) using sacred festivals as a proxy for a show of strength in Mumbai.

But who can take away from the fact that people from his party have beaten up taxi drivers and smashed their taxis just because of their north Indian origins?
Who can dispute the fact that Raj Thackeray has been instigating his goons to go on a rampage in his attempt to gain brownie points over the original band of goons aka Shiv Sena?
Who can doubt that had a man with a different surname dared to do anything similar, Mumbai police would have been allowed to not just put him behind bars but also give him a thrashing sound enough to infuse some much-needed sanity.

Let's spare a thought for the police. As the Mumbai Mirror's cover page captured brilliantly, each time some idiot decides to create trouble, they're out on the streets, on duty for bandhobast. Many are forced to have their leaves canceled. Worse, the timidity of their political masters ensures that they're fighting these elements with one hand tied behind their back.

Which brings us to the Government of Maharashtra.
How can a home minister, famous for acting tough on troublemakers, agree to look the other way time? How can a chief minister sit still while people in his capital are being terrorized in the name of Marathi pride. How can the government allow people to come into Mumbai and make inflammatory statements, adding fuel to the fire?

The people are watching. And this time, they'll remember - I hope...

Batti Bandh!

2007-12-16T14:09:00.000+05:30

This comes hours after Batti Bandh - Mumbai's first mass initiative about Global Warming.

First the good part. Congratulations to the people who first thought of this as an idea to raise awareness and also those who brought it to India and made it happen in Mumbai. I am sure, it has made a wonderful start and perhaps got a foot in the door for environmental activists around here.

Let's not go into how successful this event was in getting people to switch off their lights. I don't have stats but it'd be commonly agreeable that atleast 30-40% of Mumbaikars were aware of such an initiative. Of those, at least some fraction would have given a thought about what the fuss is all about - which is good.

The tougher part begins after that. What next? How can we move beyond these token gestures? How do you rein in global warming in a country where most of the visible forms of development in recent times have been working against nature?

The consumption boom driven by rising incomes, has set off an environmental time bomb that is very difficult to recognize in the first place, let alone defuse.
How do you explain even to the average middle class family that their latest jaunts to air conditioned Malls and Multiplexes have been adding to global warming?
Even if you succeed explaining things to them, how do you get them to alter their habits to mitigate the situation?

Let's take a recent phenomenon - Cars. With household incomes rising the average number of cars has risen(atleast in urban India). Where you had just member strutting around in his/her car, now you have 2 or 3.
A part of this shift has been due to the degradation of the urban mass transport system, under attack from an ever increasing migrant population. A larger role is of that of snobbery on the part of these people refusing to condescend to means of transport meant for "the masses". It's a status symbol.

Second case in point - Homes. A quick look around your neighbourhood will tell you that people are doing a lot more in their home interiors. Faux ceilings, split ACs, diffused lighting, you name it, they have it.
Of course, the scale may differ depending on whether you live on Peddar Road or Panvel. which basically means greater electricity consumption in households. A part of it has been offset by forced load-shedding in areas outside Mumbai.
(Side thought: For Mumbaikars who think they've done a lot by switching the lights off for an hour, please go to rural Maharashtra where they have 8+hrs of load shedding - EVERYDAY! Why don't they apply for Carbon Credits?)

So why do I labour upon these fairly obvious facts?
It is to drive home the social aspect of global warming that's often lost in the sea of stats that are thrown up by environmentalists. The social pressure to "have arrived" has been getting people to act against the environment. Any meaningful attempt to "Go Green" will first need to tackle this status based snobbery.

Which is why I love the attempts to glam up "Green activism".

The day I can skip that trip in my car, take public transport and then brag about being "Green", we would have made progress.
The day when I could limit my energy consumption patterns to save on my electricity bill and still brag about it being "my bit for mother nature", we would have made progress.

Perhaps we could smirk in collective devilry the day we can invent an inverse-snobbery that would outcast all displays of opulence that add to global warming saying "Aah, these noveau rich. Not a whiff of sense or class." :)

Any ideas for making "Green" uber-chic?

Run Mumbai Run

2007-12-02T17:06:00.000+05:30

It's that time of the year again. The annual Mumbai Marathon is around again. I have no access to stats, but if anecdotal evidence from what I see around me is a sign of things, the crowd this time shall be at least as great as last year, if not more.

Last year, I ran for the Dream run along with some friends from office. To be honest, I liked the experience. The idea of all of us friends having a nice day out had worked fine. The odd celeb spotting didn't hurt either.

But ever since, I've tried to reflect upon rationale behind the entire exercise. Out of plain ignorance or otherwise, I've struggled to make sense of the concept of running for a cause or for that matter, the marathon itself.

Sure, getting thousands of urban yuppies to run one fine Sunday morning and making them feel good about it is a commendable task in itself. Some fraction of the runners are serious runners - running the full marathon or half marathon. They train hard for months for this one day and in the process acquire enviable physiques if not anything else. That's a fringe benefit too..

For most of us, the masses, we're in, well, for the kicks(not literally). We go there all pumped up to show off our ephemeral athletic side. Mysteriously convinced, that this is a good and responsible thing to do. Don't bother asking us why we think so...not too many will have an answer.
Some answers I've heard include amazing one's like this
"All big cities have this marathon thing. So should Mumbai. That's why you should run for it."
To be fair, I've heard some reasonable ones too.
The ones that revolve around the amount of revenue generated, how little known NGOs get mindspace among people and how a fair bit of money is generated for charity. But that still doesn't explain kicking up such a storm about it.

What I find most irritating is the spectre of the corporate animal, doing its bit for CSR(Corporate Social Responsiblity, for the uninitiated) by sending hordes of employees in colour co-ordinated dresses, with the corporate logo emblazoned across their chests. Just what the PR ordered as far as brand building is concerned.

So much for "running for a cause". It's such a versatile concept. To borrow a line from a recent ad "anything goes down well with it..."

Perhaps I'm being a little too cynical of a harmless exercise. Perhaps I fail to see the genuine goodwill behind all this. Perhaps I'm a little unequipped for these things. Or perhaps not.

In case you know better, I'm all ears.

The Politics of Terror

2007-11-25T23:47:00.000+05:30

This comes in the wake of the blasts in UP. It's not the first time the Hindi heartland has been struck by terror. Yet the events of the past few days have been extremely intriguing.

Despite their proclamations about being an Indian group with no links to Pakistan, Bangladesh and like, we know better than to take their word for it. Of course, we'd like to believe that this like other groups, is one of the faceless forms of the ISI trying to wreck havoc in our country. I hate it when I see terror attacks in India, but thinking that they've been carried out by outsiders does make me feel a little less helpless. Atleast, there is a tangible enemy you are fighting against. Right?

But what if this were a truly Indian group? I am not saying that it is. But what if it were? Its not entirely improbable. Is it? So far, you've found Indians giving "logistical support" to terrorists. What makes you think there aren't enough lunatics to take the next logical step?
Would I have the courage to accept the faults in my nation for allowing such elements to dwell and develop? Would I have the courage to correct the wrongs of the past which not just fester the current but allow the wrong-doers of the past the license to continue with their business of hate?

I am not justifying any of these attacks.
But I am asking for the moral high ground to be restored. The one that allows us to speak about right and wrong at the global level knowing that we have the courage to accept and correct our mistakes, the compassion to take the weak along, to determination to enforce the rule of law without fear or favour.

Which is why the Tehelka expose made for gruesome reading.
Wherein all the BJP could do is try to discredit the messenger, trying to link it with the Congress, with no intent to the message. While we still don't know and might never know whether the timing of the expose had any politics behind it, what'd got the consensus among political pundits is that this will in fact, help the BJP which leaves the Congress with its brand of Hindutva Lite where they accept all the rejects and rebels from the BJP who, by a curious turn of events have turned secular overnight.

Which is why the political mud-slinging on the day of the UP blasts put me off.
Where the MoS, Home Ministry had the audacity to offer this as a reason -
"UP is such a large state. Some slipups are bound to happen."
Ms. Mayawati convenes a press conference hours after the blast to announce this event as a failure of the central govt's intelligence. Shri Amar Singh gets another axe to grind with his sworn enemies. (Does anyone remembers one gentleman from his govt. declaring a 51 crore award for the head of the Danish cartoonist?) And the BJP gets another case in point for its "Weak government" theory.
And life goes on...till another event. Some other place, some other time.

We all know that intelligence gathering is not a foolproof process, and there are times when the terrorists succeed. But there isn't a hint of remorse from anyone. Neither a ghost of a plan of doing anything about it.

And then there is the matter which the terrorists have used as one of the justifications for their actions - the treatment of suspects in the Rahul Gandhi kidnap case.
Some days ago, lawyers had not only refused the defend any of the suspects but also beaten them up in full media glare. These seem to be people without even a modicum of professional integrity. However heinous the crime, regardless of the public opinion, every suspect has the right to get the best legal defence. More so in a high profile case, which has every chance of being botched up by the police considering the high stakes involved.

We cried ourselves hoarse on how the Australian government was being racist by detaining Mohammad Haneef. We rejoiced when he was reunited with his family in India and revelled in our illusion of a perfect world in India. Credit to the Aussie justice system that fought a hawkish police and state and allowed the rule of law to prevail. Credit to the Aussie people, many not even Asian, who rallied for Haneef not to be made a scapegoat of the politics of terror.

Cut to India, 2007, we have people perhaps guilty of planning to kidnap Mr. Rahul Gandhi, or perhaps not. We still don't know. And we allow them to be beaten by lawyers in the confines of our courts. And we don't bat an eyelid. Ladies and Gentlemen, is this not a travesty of justice?
Is this the nation our forefathers fought for?

I am afraid we are fast losing the perch of morality which we foist ourselves upon using the Mahatma as a proxy. To borrow a quote from Shashi Tharoor, an India that denies itself to some of us could end up being denied to all of us.

Independence Day - The real celebration

2007-08-15T15:31:00.000+05:30

On this Independence Day, I will not bombard you with messages of a billion different Indias, her triumphs and tribulations. Neither will I gaze into the crystal ball to tell you how India can rule the world.

Instead, I am going to focus on the micro view - you and I – and how we can make a difference rather than being mute spectators...

Can we use this day as a milestone when we look ahead towards the goals we've set ourselves - as a people and do a self appraisal on the year gone by. Perhaps that'd be slightly more useful than merely wearing tri-coloured clothes and chanting "Mera Bharat Mahaan".

India can become Mahaan only if its citizens - you and I, run hard and attain success not just for ourselves but for our country. The fortunes of our nation are inextricably linked to her people.

They say good is the opposite of great. Do these words reflect the state of our lives? True, we've done reasonably well to get where we are, but are we ready to give up all hopes for greatness? And then perhaps sing parodies like "Sau main se ninyanve be-iman, phir bhi mera bharat mahaan.."

We are by what we define as must-achieve goals for ourselves.

Unfortunately, many among us will choose realistic, achievable goals that will not stretch them too much. Still worse, some will adopt a wait-and-watch policy towards their goals.

Nevertheless, there will be few among us who will set audacious goals for themselves which no one will give them a chance of achieving - except themselves.

These will be the people who will redefine the meaning of living a meaningful life. These will be the people who will challenge the status-quo of impossible. These will be the people who will, to paraphrase Robin Sharma, by setting goals and striving for them, live life by choice rather than do nothing and leave life to chance.

It is them who will make Mera Bharat Mahaan.

I am sure these people will be some among us...Will you be one of them??

Healthcare - Can we care better?

2007-06-29T22:01:00.000+05:30

India is home to some of the most finest healthcare services. We are aspiring to become the regional (or even global) hub for affordable healthcare. Scan through the papers and you'll find a hundred success stories of foreigners finding good healthcare at less than a tenth of the price.

Yet, a large majority of our nation has no access to formal healthcare, let alone quality health care. Whatever little we have in the form of public hospitals are rendered ineffective due to their minuscule small number. Simply put, the people away from the bigger cities and towns are pretty much on their own, or at the mercy of the zillion "hakims" that abound.

Commentators call it the India-Bharat divide. Urban yuppies simply look the other way as if the problem never existed. The man on the street who can barely afford his family two square meals a day doesn't have too much to say either.

Can we, with a little bit of initiative marry the two and create an inclusive avataar of health-care in India?
We can incentivise(with subsidized land or something) the setting up of "export-oriented" hospitals in rural/semi-urban areas.
Further, such hospitals could be promoted for medical tourism as a part of the Incredible India campaign.

In return, these hospitals could cater to the rural populace at subsidized rates apart from their usual clientele of foreigners.
Public-private partnership needn't be a buzz-word only for infrastructure projects.

This way, enterpreneurs get business conditions that make their hospital commercially viable despite being located off-prime cities.
Foreign/Indian patients get same(if not better) holistic healthcare.
The country earns foreign exchange. We retain good medical talent back in the country if there are enough good paying job opportunities. India becomes the true global hub for healthcare.
And the rural hinterland gets a world-class hospital at affordable rates.

And it can be a self-sustaining process. Existing biggies in healthcare could find the competition hotting up thanks to the lower operating costs of their counterparts setup in rural areas. They could in-turn "off-shore" some of their operations to low-cost rural and semi-urban areas themselves.

A classic case of cost-arbitrage where everyone wins...

Feasible or Fool-hardy? Your thoughts...

Additions:
I've figured after some more reading that a few things in this post need correction. Ignorance isn't always bliss.

Well, the govt. HAS given out land to hospitals in the past at subsidized rates in lieu of poor people getting free treatment. However, private players have not been honouring their commitments to this regard. Also, the genuinely poor are not aware of benefits available to them at private hospitals.

Nevertheless, the crux of the idea remains unchanged. Get private firms to set shop in rural/semi-urban areas by giving incentives. Get them revenues by promoting medical tourism. Ensure accountability by setting up a regulator to monitor the progress and quality of service of such hospitals. Better operating margins will ensure other players will also move towards rural/semi-urban areas. Locals will get better healthcare at affordable prices. Foreigners will get standardized, reliable healthcare and very competitive prices.

Poli-ticks in India

2007-05-13T11:19:00.000+05:30

What do we say when a group of politicians make a mockery of the egalitarian society we dream of?
What do we do when a bunch of maniacs powered by gun toting goons claim to represent our viewpoint and our interests?
What do we when some haughty men make the decisions as to what is good for us and what is not?

Can we be content to merely sit and grumble?

To see the BJP wrestle with the unrefined, communal ideas in its evolution to a mainstream party was one of my favourite pastimes. Favourite, because there was hope that reason would triumph and they could change with the times to become a modern group capable of leading India in the 21st century.
So when Mr. Vajpayee seeking re-election on the issue of 'India shining' instead of Ram mandir,etc. , I couldn't help but smile. Had he won, that would perhaps have been the beginning of the end of the politics of hate that has come to define the existence of the BJP and the Sangh Parivar. What happened after that is history.

Today, we see, the main opposition party, languish in self-doubt, searching for its identity in the long-forgotten past, raking up emotive issues that once got it to power. A party that is far from an effective opposition.

A party who's goons continue to go on rampage at the smallest hint of dissent. Who's politicians pride themselves in beating up innocent people in broad daylight.

Its government in Gujarat, not satisfied in becoming the facilitators of one of the bloodiest riots in recent history, has been actively engaged in pummeling anyone who they feel offends their sense of what is right.

The chief minister of Gujarat openly backs an officer who has killed people in fake-encounters and doesn't show the slightest of remorse for it.
A small-time BJP politician beats up an art student since his paintings happened to have nudes. Whats worse, they manage to get him arrested too.
Members of the "parivar" beat a professor to death in broad daylight in Madhya Pradesh, and the police even refuses to register a case. After media pressure, they do register a case, but no one ever hopes to get justice.

Is all this going to ever win anyone the hearts and minds of people?

Fundamentalists on both sides feed on each other, with the BJP and co. trying to cash in on the fear of being dominated by minorities, and the so-called secularists trying to capitalize on the fear among minorities of the violent ways of the right-wing fundamentalists.

The results of the UP elections show that this brand of politics has outlived its utility. Raking up emotive issues will no longer be a substitute for reason.

You and I may not be huge fans of Ms. Mayawati but it is in fact heartening that she has come to power not on politics of hate but that of reconciliation.

Being the firebrand leader of Dalits, it is great to see that she has gone out of her way to accommodate "upper-castes"(note the double quotes) and advocated for Dalit-Brahmin peace. While her intentions may have been purely political, the fact that she has reaped profits of bringing people together rather than setting them against each other rekindles my hope in the future of Indian polity.

Expecting the current lot of politicians to devote themselves to nation-building may be a little too much. But, if not anything else, I hope realpolitik guides them to accommodate everyone in the idea called India.

Think we have a chance of getting that?

In consumer interest?

2007-05-01T23:19:00.000+05:30

The past decade or so has seen the rise and rise of the idea called consumer. Never before has the consumer been given so much importance by the decision makers in the govt. and the industry.

Often, as we are finding out, the interests of the nation and those of its subset of consumers may not seem to converge.

Take for example the govt's policy towards big investment in retail. With biggies like Reliance and Bharti entering the fray, the retail backend is set to be transformed from a multi layered system to a single monolithic retailer.

Earlier, each player (we call them “middlemen”) - at the rural, wholesale, or urban retail level took his cut before the product reached the end user. Now, a single large retailer will take that that may do that, reducing some amount of the markup to please the consumer.

Me, the consumer, may be delighted at the prospect that all the middlemen and their "cuts" may be eliminated that may give me more bang for the buck. But me, the citizen should be concerned that all those middlemen would have been employing at least a dozen people each, if not for anything else then for loading/unloading of produce and keeping accounts.

Organised retail, of course, will streamline processes and reduce the number of people hired thereby giving better prices to the customer; but this also means that so many other people who form the "inefficiency" are then losing their employment.

It is not my case that the interests of the consumer should not be given importance. In fact, it is the domestic consumer that must be nurtured; else we will become a mere manufacturing hub like selling most our produce to other affluent countries. This will help us fare better if and when the developed world faces a recession that reduces their appetite for our goods.

We need to strike a balance between the two. Take another recent case - the proposed amendment to the Indian Post Office Act of 1898.

India Post, a state-owned and controlled entity has a service obligation to cover the remotest areas of India. Of course, a large amount of these services are not financially viable.

But India Post is more than a business - it is a social responsibility - towards each citizen of the Indian state, whether he/she be in Mumbai or a small village in rural Bihar.

Which is why, we need to make up for this loss that India Post undertakes willingly to operate in remote areas. To achieve this end, the govt. has recently disclosed its plans to kill all private courier services from the lucrative sub 150 gm segment by making it mandatory for them to charge 2.5 times more than Speed Post.

It is a proposal that makes a mockery of consumer interests.

Where is the healthy competition that the consumer can choose from? The reason that private courier services have become such cash-cows is because they have provided the consumer superior service and enhanced reliability as compared to the postal service. Hence, despite being at a premium over the postal services, private couriers - small and big have mushroomed across all corners of urban India.

Needless to add, not too many of them have too much of a presence in the poorer rural India. Perhaps asking all large operators to pay a nominal Universal Service Obligation surcharge would not have been a bad idea had the govt. not redefined the parameters of "nominal".

Why couldn’t the babudom at the Department of Posts take a leaf of the telecom sector? Here the state-owned BSNL, MTNL are getting their acts together and giving the private players some strong competition in both rural and urban areas. The private players, thanks to some aggressive pricing are penetrating markets to reach the benefits of telephony to a growing section of society. Of course all the private players in telecom pay a USO fee for each minute of calls that goes to the state operators from providing rural telephony. But these USO charges are nominal and have been consistently dropping thanks to the increasing volumes of calls being made through private players.

I am not convinced that the interests of the consumer and the nation always have to be mutually exclusive. So far, we have had policies vacillating between the two.

As always, there lies a middle path, waiting to be explored...

Bored of Control of Cricket in India!

2007-04-09T23:57:00.000+05:30

I write this post with the backdrop of the recent BCCI directive taking "corrective" measures to supposedly rescue Team India's dwindling fortunes.

The Indian team returned in an unprecendented atmosphere of public anger and media scrutiny. Media commentators (most, not all!) have played the righteous, all-knowing sages directing the players to press the proverbial "delete" button on themselves.

For me, one Mr. Rahul(a very regular host on Aaj Tak) stood out in this madness. The malevolence in his speech needed to be heard to be believed. If only we had such scrutiny all around the year for our elected representatives, China would have been to us what Canada is to USA.

A lot has been said on how cricketers should be banned from doing endorsements, on how they concentrate more on doing endorsements than playing cricket, on how they deserve to be paupers for their performance.

I hope I can, in this post, try and set the record straight.
The average career span of a cricketer is about 5-7 years. Only spectacular players like Sachin, Dravid (I refuse to downgrade them!) enjoy a longer career span. Most cricketers fade away once they retire/are dropped for good. Domestic cricket hardly has any money. Many of them either settle down to coaching academies or to completely unrelated businesses.

Why is it wrong if a cricketer tries to secure his financial future through endorsements? After all, he is representing the national team of a game that has crores and crores of (very!) passionate followers.
And by the way, each time you see a cricketer in an ad does not mean he is currently out there to shoot that ad. These ads are recorded and are played out over and over again.
Indians play more cricket than any other team in the world. The hectic schedule leaves them with little time to spend with their family let alone waste time elsewhere. Endorsements are a time-effective way to supplement your income while the going is good and secure your and your family's financial future.

Lets shift our focus a little away and look at global sport. Do you have any idea how much Tiger Woods earns(USD 75 million)? Or Schumacher used to(USD 60 million)? Or Sharapova(USD 18 million)?

Have commercial considerations stopped them from performing well? In fact, commercial considerations should get you to give your very best and maintain your brand value.

Ask Sehwag for one. Why do you think he lost out on Mayur suitings as a sponsor?

After all, like Ganguly discovered, sponsors are there with you only till the going is good. After that you're on your own. Each cricketer knows fully well that all sponsors have powerful exit clauses that allow them to dump celebrities at any sign of trouble. It is in the players' best interests, commercial or otherwise to play as well as they can.

By restricting player endorsements, the BCCI is trying to browbeat them into become slaves who's job is to earn more and more money for the BCCI(not India!).
FYI, the BCCI's official stand in the courts has been that this team is not India's team, it is the BCCI team!

Already, the stretched players play series after series coz there are big bucks involved for their masters. Not playing is not and option since there is bound to be so much insecurity about giving up your place in the side. You may very well never be picked for a long long time.

We condone a coach, oops, ex-coach, leaking comments to the media clandestinely, leaking details of the dressing room to all and sundry, casting aspersions on some of our best players. We have board officials shouting off their roof tops whatever they want "in personal capacity" and no one even blinks. A gentleman from the board even came on camera and vouched for how he'd seen players loiter around till 2 AM before important matches.
What business do you have talking to the media about this?

So when the BCCI raps its players for doing something as basic as giving vent to their pent up frustrations; it looks strange.

Mr. Pawar, the stench of the rot in Indian cricket that suffocates us is emanating from the very core of the system. Using an air-freshener on the team will not stem the rot. Please get your puppets to look within.

You've shown commendable courage and open-mindedness in the decisions that have been taken recently, most notably the dismantling of the zonal selection process.

If you pursue this path to demonetization of crikcet, I am afraid, the game will then slowly go down hockey's path wherein a mangnanimous sponsor will take it upon him to "support" the team. Mr. Pawar, you don't want to be remembered as Indian cricket's KPS Gill.
Do you?

Lessons from India's multiplex boom

2007-04-01T23:21:00.001+05:30

I really don't need to describe the mutiplex boom to any of you. Those lush seats. Those sparkling corridors. And yes, those sinfully expensive seats!!

Yet, in more ways than one, the multiplex boom offers lessons to all entrepreneurs out there to forecast the needs of tomorrow and provide home-grown solutions to them. And that before anyone else does. In India, though the technology and the concept of multiplexes may have been imported, the companies that have set them up are very much Indian - Adlabs, Shringar, PVR, Essel group, etc.

These companies have seen ahead of their times and catered to the latent aspirations of the people. I am sure, if they hadn't done it, sooner or later, one of the western behemoths in the field would have come to India and done it. And the traditional cinema owners would have the victim's role perfectly for public consumption. You would have heard a million platitudes on the ill-effects of globalization.

Of course, now that our fellow Indians took initiative, the story is lot different.

There are multiplexes catering to those who want luxury in their movie viewing experience. And also the plain-vanilla theatres to cater to the masses.

Can we import these lessons to our offerings in higher education?

With rising middle-class incomes and aspirations, greater and greater students are going abroad paying exorbitant fees for higher education. The popularity of these institutes can be seen by the growing response to fairs, sessions about foreign education.

Can we not, as entrepreneurs, set up institutions of excellence that may charge a premium over other institutions in India but give education that's definitely world class if not better that the best. Admittedly, such institutes take a long time to establish. It is also true that centres of excellence are not made by simply sinking money.

But a start, an attempt needs to be made. Look at the benefits from a pure economic perspective. For all the talk about the "new-age knowledge" economy, India still earns most of its revenue in IT, ITeS doing petty outsourcing work for its western clients. In textiles too, our success is largely due to cost arbitrage.

If we can apply the advantage of lower costs to education, imagine the kind of scale for revenues we are talking about. If we are able to attract talented students from not just India but around the world to our temples of learning, we can turn the entire brain-drain story on its head. We can become the world's favourite school.

Many of our smart graduates find themselves stuck in jobs that pay them decently but utilize their technical skills and aptitude insufficiently. A still larger percentage of our graduates find themselves unemployable for positions that justify the years(and money) they've spent on education. All this could change.

We talk about building SEZs for industry. How about building SEZs for education?

Can we not see education as a business opportunity waiting to be exploited?

India cannot truthfully claim to be a knowledge economy without investing in education. It is useless resisting the winds of globalization. It is an idea that has been irreversibly set into motion. Instead of blocking entry of foreign players into education, let’s pull the rug under their feet by capturing the huge untapped market for higher education in Asia and beyond.

If we manage to get this going, our next generation might soon no longer aim to fly off to the US to get that coveted MS/MBA degree. Instead, they could find their peers from all across the world competing to study at their college in India.

Is this too audacious a dream?

An open letter to Team India

2007-03-24T22:08:00.000+05:30

I am short of words to describe how disappointed we are with your performance in this world cup. We hoped to see an encore of 2003 where you got to the finals in style.
You shocked the world by first losing to Bangladesh. You raised our hopes to see a comeback by the way you played against Bermuda. We hoped and prayed that you'll bounce back against Sri Lanka and move to the next round. We were told by experts that India will find it very difficult to beat Lankans in the form they were. We perhaps knew they were right but shooed them anyway and gave precedence to hope over reason.

We stayed up all night, many of us, till the last ball was bowled - hoping against hope, that someone among you will get us home. Cricket may be just a game and winning and losing is a part of it but the spineless display was a real pain to watch.

I am sure you'd be only too aware of the anger back home. I am also sure that you must be acutely aware as to how fickle public opinion can be in India. Expectedly, the opinion today is strongly against all of you. I am sure all of you tried hard,very hard. I am sure that a lot of preparation went for this great tournament. Each time any of you peep out of one of those zillion advertisements, fingers are pointed as to how cricketers are interested only in the money and they hardly deserve all this. None of those people pointing fingers would have ever cared to see the long hours you spent in practice and the longer hours you spent thinking about the game.

There might have been some mistakes made in the past couple of years which were easy to point in retrospect. That is the nature of change - when you don't get it right you'll have millions 'I-told-you-so's. When you went for 7 batsmen for the first time for the Champions trophy in England there were these so-called experts shouting out of their rooftops "If 6 batsmen won't do it, the 7th one certainly won't!". You proved them wrong when your number 6 and number 7 got you home in the finals when no one gave us a chance in hell of winning at Lords.

Today, we see on TV effigies being burnt. The ticker on most news channels has people mocking your numerous ads. Some smart men even took out a mock funeral procession of the Indian team. Its hard to say what is more shocking - your poor showing at the cup, or the despicable reaction it has triggered here. It is in times like these that our teams need the most support. When things are not going for you no matter what you do is when you need your people to stand behind you and say "Its ok. Its just a game."

Not all of us have forgotten the image of Anil Kumble coming out to bowl with his entire face in bandages. Nor have we forgotten the image of Sachin playing at the Chennai test with immense back pain to get us so close and only to agonizingly(and with tear filled eyes) watch the tailenders squander it all away.

A few strategic changes may need to be made as to how we groom our team. Perhaps we'll need to increase our bench strength. But keep all that aside for now.

We are proud that you tried to do your best. Its sad that it wasn't good enough this time.
Tomorrow will be another day. Lets all look forward to it.

- An Indian SUPPORTER

A tale called Retail

2007-03-12T01:04:00.000+05:30

Has the implosion on organised retail changed the way we live and think?

If you are in urban India, or even the tier two towns, I am sure, the answer would be yes.(the magnitude may differ).

Has it changed for the better or the worse? I don't have a clear answer to that one..I don't think I'll have one in some time to come as well. I am waiting to find out if a few thousand crores and zillions of "deals" are able to able to alter the middle class Indian psyche to make them consumption monsters.

Rest assured this isn't one of those holier-than-thou kind of a post on the perils of consumerism. Most people have figured out that spending behaviour by the middle class and upper class creates millions of job opportunities for those who have been so far at the wrong of side of economic reforms and liberalization.

Yet, as a distant observer of the great American spending miracle, I can't help but wonder if ordinary Indians like you an I will be any different. Consider this, the average American household saving rate was zero till very recently (now it is marginally -0.7%!!). I don't know how much you save but you can rest assured that the Indian household saving rate is much, much more.

I see tiny tots around me who know their Swatch from their Tag Heuer (I had to google this to be sure about the spelling!). Many of them ever have strict preferences for the brands of clothes, juices, snacks that they(rather their parents) buy. Of course, I am referring to the parents who have afford to indulge their kids(or atleast think so..)
For the rest, it is an infinite journey trying to convince their little ones as to how having those "special" 4K-plus shoes isn't really a necessity. Or that Real (sugary) fruit juice isn't actually the most important thing to have in your tiffin daily.
I wonder what today's genY will be like once they grow up.

Quite a few of us are using the power of money to buy us temporary relief. Its scary to hear this statements like "I am a huge fan of retail therapy. It helps me beat those Monday morning blues.." Is it a sign of the underlying malaise or is this the cause of it?

Is "I-consume-therefore-I-am" the new reality? I hope not.
I am waiting to figure out if Indian ethos can stand the relentless onslaught of consumerism.

The Retail juggernaut

2007-03-03T11:49:00.000+05:30

When we were kids (a few ~~months~~ years ago..) we were taught never to waste any food. We were always told about the value we should give to our food and be grateful for it.

It's a shame that in a nation where million of kids go hungry everyday, where rural men and women often die not because of any disease but starvation, we waste as much as 40% of our agricultural produce. This happens because of non-existent storage facilities, inefficient management and the dirty politics that defines procurement of produce from farmers. Anyone who follows the sugarcane politics in UP, Maharastra, etc. would know what I talking about.

Our farmers never make enough money from their produce. If they have a bumper crop, the lack of storage facilities means that they have to sell their produce at throw-away rates. (I can distinctly remember tomatoes being sold by farmers at 2 bucks a kg one year due to bumper crop) When the crop fails, they anyways don't have too much to sell. And the govt. orders an import to meet the shortfall.

The media is abuzz with stories of how large retail firms (mainly Reliance) are changing the way we manage our agricultural produce. Very soon (if not already), if all goes according to plan, buying your Gobi and Aaloo will take you to an outlet of a large retail firm.

Our concept of Bhaaji mandi is going to undergo a sea change to its new, slick avtaar. With the large players entering the arena, we're sure, they're gonna give the traditional wholesale markets and their middlemen a hard time. Especially with the reputation Reliance has, expect them to spare no effort to squeeze the hell out of others!

What is good is we might not have a single large player to be at the mercy of. With Bharti's impending foray in retail, Reliance can rest assured of some quality competition, and we - of competitive prices.

This link between India's booming urban economy and stagnant rural economy has been severed for too long. Here’s hoping that some of that “India Poised” reaches rural India too…

Aai Tee!!!

2007-02-24T22:01:00.000+05:30

Today, if one were to day that it is India's IT and ITeS industry that has catalyzed a feeling of pride among the middle class masses we wouldn't be far from the truth.

So what's new about that? Not much; and that's the problem - its been a success story for too long. Kudos to the visionaries who not just saw opportunity in cost arbitrage in IT services but built companies reputed for their systems that promote quality as well as values hitherto unknown to India industry - open environment, dignity of labour, treating employees as resources and not servants..it's a rather long list.

But if we continue at the current rate of growth of wages (yes wages!, I refuse to call it anything else) , in 10-15 years from now, our cost advantages over the west would have largely reduced if not disappeared. No longer will large western companies find it cheap to outsource small tasks to a bunch of geeks sitting half-a-globe away. Atleast not in India. Expectedly, a new regions might emerge (perhaps Africa, or eastern Europe, or even Russia) with similar advantages that India offered some years ago.

Do we sit back and enjoy the good times for now? And perhaps hold demonstrations a decade or so later decrying globalization? Do we wait for the day when we are forced to join the chorus against outsourcing?

Or do we start looking for opportunities right away? I am going to stick my neck out and say that somewhere around the next Narayana Murthy/Azim Premji is looking out for a business opportunity that he/she can exploit and sell superior goods/services at competitive (if not outright throw-away) rates. Or have they begun working at it already?

Can we afford to sit back and relax enjoying the good times? We do the most brainless of tasks for our western "clients" who in turn throw some dollars/pounds/whatever at us which is huge in terms of rupees. Of course we do the job damn well. Which explains why so many Indian companies beat their competitors from other developing countries so regularly.

But the bottomline remains the same - we are doing very little that others cannot do. The question we need to ask ourselves - what can we do to not be easily replaceable?

All major IT companies in India realized this threat about 3-4 years ago. What will seperate the great companies from the good companies is the way they are able to devise strategies to beat this threat. A lot of them are currently hiring freshers in droves to keep average costs in check. Some of them have also, for the past two years or so begun attempts at getting into activities where they are paid better and more importantly, difficult to replace (they call it moving up the value chain).

So where does it leave common people like you and me? Like everyone else, I am looking for answers myself...

Dreaming Aloud

2007-02-19T23:50:00.000+05:30

Its that time of the year again. Every one who has any interest in money(who doesn't?) is glued to business channels, pink papers and everything else that can help them get an idea of what lies in store for them in the upcoming budget.

If we come to look at it, its a small minority that is paying tax for this huge nation to run. A lot of our countrymen are still in the throes of poverty. It is somehow a very comforting thought that for all the boom and prosperity that we seem to be proud about, it holds true for only about 200-300 million of us.
What about the rest? I just can't wait to see what'll happen when the rest contribute meaningful progress of the nation rather than staying unemployed and living a life of deprivation.

There is something I never understood about employment guarantee schemes by various governments - why does it take such a huge sum of money to make people work? Why can they not be put to some work where they actually create profits?
True we'd need capital to begin business and some amount of money to train them for working in industries but these should be looked like businesses - aiming to create profit. Else we cannot meaningfully give employment to our teeming millions.

My way of looking at the entire unemployment problem is this. What can I make millions of young Indians do where they can make profits for me? Given that we have a large number of graduates who are unemployed, is there a way that we can gainfuly use their skills?

Instead of drowning thousands of crores for employment guarantee, I'd rather have a corpus which lends money to enterprenuers who tap market opportunites and build organisations to employ such people. Perhaps only as an incentive, we could offer them loans at concessional rates. Assuming that a good number will not succeed, we'd still be better off getting repayments from the ones who will !

I am sure that by now you'd be sharpening your all-this-looks-good-on-paper arguement. I admit that the devil for this lies in the implementation. But if we can make an independent constitutional body to try and implement this first on a small scale and then take its learnings from the experience, I see more hope than use our world renowned(!) poverty alleviation methods.

I am convinced that for all that talk of social responsiblity, inclusive growth, blah, blah, the only thing that can guarantee development of the under priveleged is creating conditions where doing so make economic sense. The govt. itself has, so far, done a sloppy job of trying to do it all alone. The attempt now should be to get the private industry to do it.

Can we get private contractors to make available education to our rural areas? It's well-known that goverment employed teachers earn much more than their counterparts in the private sector. Can we make these teachers accountable by having their appraisals on an yearly basis? Can we make their salary atleast partially performance linked?
Alternatively, if can we create a token system where in a student can pursue his/her education from any public/private school? Can we create a financial incentive for private parties to create educational infrastructure in our villages and towns?

Our experience from PSUs tells us that the government is a horrible employer. It spends way more than the money it can make. Moreover, there is always the menace of political interference. Can we establish an arrangement where the government is merely the venture capitalist - allowing for private parties to manage the business, create employment, make money and get rid of all govt. debt within a gestation period of say 5-7 years?

We can't wait for other countries to implement systems of inclusive development for us to adopt them. We've got to develop and fine tune methods of our own.

We might fail in our attempts to do so, but not having tried would be the worst failure of them all..

Awaiting Reforms

2007-01-08T22:55:00.000+05:30

What does it take to shake up the collective slumber of our judicial system? Here we are, with a defunct law enforcement, an inefficient (though not impotent judiciary) and an insensitive polity. Till when do we have to put up with all this?

Yet again, our collective conscience is shaken up; this time by the gruesome brutalization and murder of innumerable children at Nithari . Perhaps what is most disturbing is the inertia displayed by the police and the local administration to take action. And what makes it worse is the fact that these standards of policing are the norm rather the exception. Our practice of judging the law and order situation by the number of FIRs registered have only raised the difficulties of victims trying to register a complaint. Thus we've left the weakest sections of our society with no one to turn to for help - an exception is when their plight is picked up the mainstream media and beamed across millions of living rooms across India.

Of late, we've seen unprecedented media activism, largely backed by the Indian middle class – baying for the blood of those it perceives to have manipulated to system to their advantage. The Jessica Lal case is one of them. The ferocious media attack along with a public uproar, unseen in recent times ensured that all concerned parties forced to appear accountable. The recent victories like the one in the Jessica Lal case have been popularly seen as proofs that the system can work.

In my opinion, it is exactly the opposite. These cases are emblematic of a decadent system that is being made to work under intense public scrutiny. Unfortunately, for every case that receives attention, there are hundreds, perhaps thousands that lie in obscurity.

Moreover, we are threatening to make TV studios the new courtrooms.

The inefficiencies of our justice system have left a void that is increasingly being filled by the fourth estate. The media today is unabashedly subjective and claim to be aiding the cause of truth by being so. While being subjective may aid the cause of the truth, whose truth are we talking about? Can we safely settle for the truth as perceived by the general public?

Is public opinion going to decide right from wrong? You might call me devil's advocate but are we today ready to accept the possibility that our version of events may not be entirely accurate? Are we ready to accept that the majority might not always be right?

The argument could well be termed as the anti-thesis of democracy but that fact remains that the public at large is not equipped well enough to decide on some things. Of course the public has every right to demand accountability from the concerned officials but that’s about it.

We need to set up institutional mechanisms to ensure accountability from each member of the judicial system. Here’s my suggestion - Have a single constitutional body on the lines of the Election Commission to look at staffing, administration etc. for each state's police force. Moreover, we need an ombudsman help citizens having trouble dealing with the police but also for helping members of the force. It is common knowledge that police officers even in the nation’s financial capital grapple with multiple issues like long working hours, unavailability of leaves, meagre pay, etc.

Judicial reforms have been a long talked about topic. The lesser said about them - the better. Perhaps this is one topic that has been in-vogue for debates for decades now.

We have a team of professional that have been credited for ushering in economic reforms in this country, hope they can do the same with our justice system. If they have come good on their claims, the time is now. India’s waiting…

Serving India's masses

2006-12-20T23:03:00.000+05:30

Recently, some work took me to one of India's most respected and largest private sector bank - A bank that prides itself for its customer service.

It's a rather crowded place especially on weekends like the one I had been there on. Cutting across the the chaos of the crowd, a loud, angry voice of a young woman emerged - almost like a teacher admonishing her student. Here was a banker, a lady, letting of her steam on a middle aged man to say "This is your fault, I can't help if you can't write a cheque right!"

To be frank, I as a little taken aback. To hear anything of this sort at any organization that exists to offer service to its customers was - at best - disappointing. I looked a little closer to figure out what was happening. I came to realize that the man had written a cheque in the name of M/s. XYZ instead of Ms. XYZ. He was at a loss to understand what the problem was and why the cheque had not been cleared. I am sorry for judging the man by his appearance but he certainly did not look like a sophisticated high-net worth individual such private banks clamour for. The banker had little to offer as an explanation to the man except that the cheque was incorrectly written and was a mistake entirely on his part. And that too in extremely harsh words. I wondered if they would have dared to speak like this to a well-off client.

Perhaps she may have been merely displaying what they might have been thinking all along while talking about customer satisfaction - some customers are more right than others. This isn't very surprising, is it? The unwritten rule in urban India is that you need have sufficient western sophistication pr truck loads of money to be given any respect. English may be the language of business but we seem to make it the great decider to determine one's station in society. How much more snobbish can we get?

To be hanged till death? (part 2)

2006-10-15T23:45:00.000+05:30

The arguements put forth in the previous post are only one side of the moral, legal and ethical dilemma that this country faces over Mohammad Afzal.

To argue that commuting his death sentence would be prudent given the charged atmosphere in the valley would not only be disrespectful but outright gross to the families of those martyrs who gave up their lives defending us.
Not only does it put serious question marks on the jursidiction of the highest court of the land but also raises a larger question pertaining to the perception of justice.
Our courts have come to known to deliver judgements where the society feels that justice has ben done. We have extensive precedents arguing for captial punishment to redeem the collective consience of a society.
However, if a section of the very society feels wronged by a particular decision, can we proclaim justice to be done?
Are we setting a bad precedent for the future?

Let us recollect another case, thoguh completely different, where the state used common sense rather than follow the rule of law. When Chotta Rajan was shot at Bangkok, the Indian state could have very easily got him extradited and prosecuted him for the various cases against him. However, having realized that he was our best bet to unofficially neutralize anti-India elements(read Dawood and co.), the central govt. feigned ignorance to his custody in Bangkok and let him escape.
How the smart the move proved in the long run is debatable, but few in the know would have argued against the move.

Today we face another situation where following the rule book is tougher than usual. In this complex situation, there is only one kind of people I am wary of - the ones who have a simple answer to this multi-faceted issue.
It will take a person no less than Dr. Kalam's stature to address it and take the nation along with him in whatever stand he takes.

To be hanged until death?

2006-10-15T15:49:00.000+05:30

The hotly contested debate on capital punishment has once again been re-opened with the death sentence ruling to Mohammed Afzal.
Human Rights activists have come out strongly against the judgement.
The arguement being held is that it an irrevocable punishment even if it found that at a later date that the earlier judement was on shaky grounds.

The hawks in the government and outside it are vehemently against any tinkering with the decision as they believe, perhaps not without reason, that it acts as an advertisement of our soft state status, incapable of bringing enemies of the state to justice. Needless to say, the BJP and its allies, struggling to find their feet ever since they were shocked into occupying the space of the opposition, have found perfect political fodder to fuel their political yatra. Joining the chorus are many media commentators who are rapidly influencing public opinion on the issue.

Adding another angle to this already muddled debate are the polity of J&K who perhaps are following the cue of the general public which is undoubtedly influenced largely by the local media rather than national mainstream media.
Either case, there exists atleast a perception that injustice is being done. And in matters involving the masses, the perception of truth rather than the truth itself is what matters.

While we need to look more carefully as to why the kashmiri public is given to doubting the intentions of the establishment at the centre, no one can deny the fact that the governments at the state and centre do think very differently despite being on the same side of the political divide.

My personal take is as follows.
Either the chap can be guilty or not guilty.
In case he's not guilty, there is no question of hanging.
Even is he is, what do we acheive out of making him a symbol of the strength of the Indian state for a section of her people and a martyr for another. A martyr,who, in the view of a lot of people from his state, was not even given a fair trial. A martyr, who, becomes the synbol of the inflexibility of the Indian state.
That is what perhaps what statesmanship is all about. it is taking the larger perspective and thinking long term rather that being bogged down by petty political considerations.

Will hanging of one man change the image of the Indian state from a state inefficient at battling terror to a non-soft state?
Moreover, will the impression (of how many ever choose to think so) persist in the unfortunate event of another terrorist attack?

Dr. Kalam, you are going to need all your tact to deal with this one.
My best wishes.

Kal Aaj aur Kal

2006-10-09T22:58:00.000+05:30

Too many of us are caught up in the daily grind to sit back and enjoy life.
They say that student years are the best part of one's life. They say that the friends we form here are the ones we stick with for life.

Pressing demands at the work place leave us with very little time and energy for our personal lives. Moreover, for a lot of us, jobs are this dreary ordeal that one has to go through to support our dreams and aspirations. Yet, success at workplace seems to define our success in life. Can we nurture a life apart from work? Of course, the challenge is tough to match up to. Or is it?

Too many of us are stuck with romanticizing the past to even acknowledge the existence let alone the excellence of the present. Too many of us are revelling in the wonderful memories of the past, however blurred or distorted they may be.
Too few are making new pleasant memories for the future.

Can we enjoy the journey to the destination as well rather than waiting for the destination only? You need to try and use the simple sense you used as a kid when you went for those lovely picnics. Instead of waiting for the picnic spot to arrive before you began enjoying, most of us will remember the fun we've had along the way. As Dr. Stephen Covey puts it, "Between stimulus and response, you have a choice." We can choose to create today better than yesterday while we are on the way to tomorrow.

Then why is it that we discuss school and college with that powerful sense of nostalgia but speak in lowly terms of our current?
Do we forget that our present is soon to become our past. And that we'd want to have our share of pleasant memories to think about?
Look around yourself, you meet atleast a hundred people every day. How many of them do you leave a pleasant memory? how many people around you today enjoy your company? Further, how many peoples' company do you enjoy?
Is it work that has to be dreary?
You are what you do NOW, not as you have been over the years.

I come back to our original inspiration - kids. Ever seen a bunch of kids interact? Do they first check up on each other's common interests? Or for that matter their Orkut profiles? As our brain develops to handle complexity, we begin creating complexity to keep our brains busy. The need of the hour is to simplify our relations.

Allow me to conclude by repeating the question - are we making new pleasant memories for the future?
Think about it..

Kidding?

2006-09-04T20:29:00.000+05:30

The latest directive over control of content broadcast on channels has once again opened the long standing debate between the freedom of expression and creative responsibility.

Expectedly, too many from the creative industry have come out to slam the authorities’ move as retrograde and a threat to the freedom of expression. Not surprisingly, they have their share of supporters who argue that the customer has the right of choice. Point well made. The mature viewer can always switch channels if he/she is offended by anything shown on TV.

In my humble opinion, this impasse is the result of the lack of methods to dispense content. Demographically speaking, we have a large percentage of the audience of television among the age group of below 12 or 15. I’m no psychologist but common sense tells us that access to adult content might not be suitable for kids in that age group.

By broadcasting such content indiscriminately, channels eventually pass the onus of control of content to the parents of these young children. I really wonder how many parents (esp. working parents) have the time and the energy to do so.

Under such a scenario, we need to make available to the customer the real power to choose. As it happens in many parts of the world, adult content is available on TV as a part of a subscription service. If you choose to access such content, you can pay for it – simple. However, and more importantly, if you choose not to access such content, there is no chance in hell of getting it on your connection. Ofcourse, we assume here that kids would not be given money to fool around with. However, that still is a bigger deterrent than pressing a button on your remote.

Status: Reserved!

2006-08-28T21:10:00.000+05:30

As I see the images of the Parliament on TV, I can’t help but wonder the vanity of the efforts and war cries of Indians(mostly young students) against the implementation of reservation in our institutes of higher education.

The mood of the anti-reservation brigade has gone from shock to outrage to defiance to (perhaps finally) helplessness. And yet, no one is surprised that the proposal will go through unopposed in the corridors of power. Seemingly, we have politicians who are willing to take decisions keeping their vote banks in mind. We’ve called them all sorts of names. What hasn’t helped is that no major politician has dared to air his views even if he/she personally is against the quota.

But is it not something that democracy stands for? Aren’t elected representatives supposed to take care of the interests of their constituencies? We may want to deny it but the fact that no major party is willing to be caught on record opposing reservations implies that there is a very large chunk of us that stands to (or atleast perceives to) benefit from the proposal.

Whether the move itself does good or harm is quite another question…

It is the sheer numbers that prevent government after government to take sound but unpopular decisions. Take the implementation of the 5^th pay commission - in lieu of increase in salary of govt. employees, the govt. was to abolish a large number of vacant posts (33K if my memory serves me right) to save money. However, a govt. enfeebled by popular opinion ensured that the burden of the increased salaries was not offset by any reduction in govt. jobs.

Similarly, you don’t need to be Amartya Sen to realise the immense fiscal loss the government bears by not taxing farm income. Opponents of the idea call it anti-poor conveniently forgetting the fact that the really poor would anyways be below the tax bracket..

It’s not said without reason that the majority needn’t always be right. We are all too aware of the excesses of an autocratic govt. What we witness today is an excess of the democratic form. Pt. Nehru is once supposed to have said he believes democracy if the best form of government because others are worse. Instead of blaming politics, we will do well to recognize that in a democratic setup, taking unpopular decisions comes with its share of problems. The key here is to accept that democracy as a form of governance is not flawless despite having far fewer flaws than others.

Living by default

2006-08-13T22:35:00.000+05:30

Of late I've had the privilege to be amongst the company of people much more experienced and perhaps knowledgeable than myself. The reason being I've joined a company as a trainee and travel by the company bus along with other employees, some more than double my age.

It’s a strange experience. The chatter and the effervescence of college is missing. The silence is deafening! It doesn’t (yet!) cease to amaze me as to how a group of people spending close to 3 hrs together(up-down travel) could be so detached from each other. In all probability, they sit at the same places day after day and yet, know little about each other.

As I step in, I see a bunch of startled faces, perhaps miffed at the intrusion in their silent zone. The only people I hear chatter are rookies like myself. Is it something about "work" that it has to be dull? Or is it merely a group of highly talented individuals taking their time off for themselves away from their demanding and often conflicting personal and professional lives?

As a colleague observed "I had never imagined that life would settle into such a routine."

In a sense, it said a lot about the life of the working class. I choose to call it living by default. So many seem to have settled into an unchanging pattern - get up, go to work, come back, do usual chores, catch up on TV/net/etc. ,go to sleep. We often accuse ordinary citizens to be ignorant, indifferent to issues that concern us as a nation. From whatever I've seen firsthand of the ordinary citizen, this might perhaps be a result of unwillingness to break out of a routine for something not directly affecting us. Through our personal and professional journeys, it takes effort to look at our paths and not just the goals. I still don't know whether to despise or sympathise with this class of citizens. Perhaps the answer, as usual, lies somewhere in between...

War on terror!

2006-07-22T23:38:00.000+05:30

Do you think India should adopt Israel's way of dealing with terrorists?
A good majority says yes. So say the TOI poll.

Increasingly, we hear voices, impatient with the Indian state's ineffectiveness in dealing with terror calling for decisive action.
On a recent NDTV show, people were asked the same question - should we go to war with Pak? Expectedly, in the aftermath of the recent attacks, the overwhelming mood was to go for it.
Ofcourse, not many cared to remember that we are yet to see full fledged war to be effective against the merchants of terror. In olden days when regimes used to go to war, the enemy was known and the targets were well defined - state installations, infrastructure, energy reserves, etc.
But in this case, whom do you attack? Do you attack the state which harbours these fanatics? Again, even if you are able to completely destroy the state mechanism, will the anarchy that will follow be in any way benificial?
Needless to say, the innumerable number of innocents that'll be killed on either side will make a post war reconciliation even more unlikely. The question is this - do we want a stable, lasting peace or a fleeting one brought about by temporarily weakening the adversary and perhaps making him even more determined?

One of the most mature and sensible voices emerging from our current class of politicians has been Raj Thackerery who hit the nail on the head when he said that after every attack we point fingers at Pak, which is quite easy. If we cannot strengthen internal security, we have no right to complain about terror.

We issue angry statements implicating the current Pak regime for all criminals being harboured there. But what are we doing to strengthen our internal security? How effective are we in monitoring/controlling let alone nabbing miscreants in our territory. We ask Musahrraf to ensure that none of the territory under his control be used for acts against the Indian state. Can we please ensure that for the territory under our control? I wish Mr. Home minister was listening. We could so with some "inner voice" calling for better internal security.

History will never blame those who tried and failed but will blame those who failed to try.

Blogs blocked!

2006-07-22T23:34:00.000+05:30

The barrage of articles in the papers and the net tell us as to how this impinges on free speech, democratic principles, etc. etc. Its a valid point.
But there's something that reminds us that this is a very stupid move apart from being a regressive one. I wonder that if terrorists were using it as a communication medium, should our intelligence mechanism get a freeze on the medium(however ineffective!) or rather tap into it without letting them know and extract information from it.
Already we have loads of trouble getting a strong intelligence gathering network going and when we do find a tapping point to understand their thoughts, plans, strategy we put the state might in shutting that point!

A lot of people have been advocating the adoption of Israeli tactics in the war against terror. They are in the process of creating a million new terrorists to avenge the actions of a few terrorists. I have no doubts about the Israeli military might and I hope and pray someone saves Israel from itself!

The reason I mention Israel is that we could nodoubt learn a bit from their intelligence gathering mechanisms. We have policemen patrolling Mumbai having been told that there could be terrorist attacks! It sounds like intelligence specific enough to tell us that they are pretty damn sure that there is a needle somewhere in the haystack!

It is not for commoners like you and me to suggest what is to be done but we would certainly desire that internal security is given a wee bit more importance than now. We have a home minister who'd be best at his own home! And its not my anger at teh mumbai blasts. His list of (non)acheivements are too long - handling of the Manipur situation, handling of the Naxalite menace, dealing with Maoists...
Having a home minister as a person who is said to have got the job only because of his subservience to the Gandhi family certainly doesnt inspire confidence. While our much respected but increasingly isolated PM declares that Naxalism is the biggest threat internal security, we wonder what are we doing about it? The Naxals and Maoists are getting bolder with every passing day - the recent attack being a case in point.

And the strong opposition we have rarely pins the govt down on this front. We are rather too busy getting worked up on "office of profit" blah blah..
True Mr. Advani had taken out a nationwide yatra on internal security some months ago but it doesnt help that one Mr. Modi is brought to protest the terrorist strikes. Or that Samajwadi party that gives a clean chit to one of the organisations accussed of having terror links. We all know too well the cards being played.

I hope the growing public pressure for better internal security will force our leaders to act. I'd love to see the kind of unity we saw among our polity during the Kargil war. It may help us step out from our homes with a sense of confidence that there is someone doing his/her best to keep us safe and that terrorists will have to work very hard to hit at us. We on our part could do no harm by staying alert and informing the police on anything suspicious we may see/hear..

I witness

2006-07-12T17:47:00.001+05:30

Being in Mumbai on the day of the blasts was perhaps my first experience of a serious situation. A group of us friends had planned to meet up at this eatery in Sion roughly the same time the blasts took place. Within minutes, the news spread like fire. Cellphones, radio, TV, even blogs were harnessing the communication revolution we’ve witnessed over the past few years. Soon all phones came to grinding halt adding to the chaos.

However the perception, as we thought too, was that the police might have got the networks jammed to prevent communication among the terrorists. The FM radio channels once again came to the rescue doing a brilliant job of keeping the city informed and connected in this time of crisis.

In a sense, this was my first real taste of Mumbai. The tension was palpable on the streets. No one personified it more than the police force amply on display on the streets trying the stem the chaos. I guess each one of them would be fully aware of the censure they’re about to face.

”The intelligence is a failure”, “The police is one corrupt, lazy organization”, “The administration is sleeping”….

Just the previous night, I had been to the airport and saw extraordinary police presence on the street all through my way. Here were members of the force, alert, awake, manning the streets of Mumbai at 2 in the night. The scene hadn’t changed much on my journey back home at 4. This was the “lazy”, “sleeping” police out on the streets while most of us were asleep. My heart went out to each one of them and more, to their families.

Its been a tough week for us, its been tougher for them. Earlier, the water logging meant they were out on the streets braving the elements helping us out in our time of need.

Then it was the Sena menace. Ensuring law and order again meant these unsung heroes were deployed in the police bandhobust. And then again on the 11^th of July.

This is what I saw on the roads. I saw police, traffic police trying to clear traffic, helping bystanders get transport(trains stood still, buses were thinning out).

I saw a traffic policeman go out of his way to discipline an autodriver trying to charge a hefty sum from a hapless lady. As for the so called “scum-of-the-earth” political parties, I saw party workers on the roads helping bystanders get transport, help police manage traffic. The newspapers on the next day reported of a very similar picture in other parts of Mumbai.

As a friend put it while we were yet to reach home, “We may have to stay out in this time of trouble, the police HAS to stay out.” They’d have families too. But here they are, trying to manage the crisis the best they can.

And then was the cabbie who agreed to take us to Navi Mumbai from Sion. He’d been close to the scene of the blast at Matunga. He told us his account of the incident and how the police and ambulance had begun reaching there even before he’d realized what happened. The police immediately came in and asked him and others to empty the road for emergency services. He moved out from there but was still on the road, doing his job, earning his living.

His story was emblematic of countless other citizens of Mumbai who went about their jobs with an infectious calm in the face of adversity. Truly, adversity neither strengthens nor weakens you. It shows your true mettle. Salaam Mumbai!

Of India, Hindustan & Bharat

2006-06-21T21:29:00.000+05:30

Times are changing faster than ever before. While there are few who complain and yearn for the simplicity of olden days, most of us have welcomed the changes that are altering the way we live and think. I don’t want to go on and on about the new mall culture, CCD-IPOD-Levi’s generation etc. I think it’s done to death in our media.

Here is a generation of Indian’s enjoying the fruits of their efforts in a liberalised economy. We pride ourselves, and perhaps quite correctly in our success in the IT sector, pharma sector, telecom, auto sector, etc. Reading economic papers warning US and the rest of the developed world about the combined might of India and China gives us great pleasure. When Mukesh Ambani announces the world’s largest grassroot refinery project in India, the “world’s largest” rings a sweet bell to the millions of Indians who’ve dreamt of global competitiveness.

Yet, when a story of mass malnutrition emerges from our economic capital - Mumbai, it speaks volumes of our collective myopia. I can imagine the few standard responses the story might have generated

The govt. is corrupt and is hand in glove with those manipulating the PDS
These things do not happen/happen very less and is being blown out of proportion by the media
These things are nothing compared to the difficulties faced by the rural poor.
Turn the page – I’d rather read about world cup fever.

It’s the last kind of response that pains me the most. It’s said that one of the most shocking things of our times is that nothing seems to shock us anymore. The urban middle class, if you allow me to group them as a homogenous entity has been largely indifferent to such stories even though they have failed to make headlines.

In a column in HT, Karan Thapar raised the question – Do we really know enough of what we need to know? After reading the piece, to my disbelief, my personal answer to the question was a big NO. (Can’t locate the link on their site right now. If anyone’s interested, do let me know, I have the paged saved on my disk)

At times I wonder whether it’s always right the blame the ignorance of citizenry for the ills that plague our nation. After all, we are too busy working hard for ourselves to have the time or energy to care for such things. Aren’t we?

Are there any real solutions to this problem?

Our urban junta and rural populace live in entirely different worlds and the differences are becoming so stark that they can scarcely identify with each other’s needs and aspirations. Call it the India - Bharat divide or whatever – I really wonder what that unemployed youth from some far off village thinks of my neighbourhood mall..

Some thoughts..

2006-06-07T00:22:00.000+05:30

Some times the reactions an event triggers becomes more important than the event itself. As we look back at the events that have unfolded in the past few months - the Jessica Lall case and the move for reservations, etc. they will be remembered more for the widespread and perhaps unexpected public response they generated than for the controversies themselves.

The past few months have seen what can perhaps be termed as the resurgence of youth activism in this country. Just when our generation was being labelled the IPOD generation - disconnected from the realities of life, our current activism has sent a strong message to the powers that be. India’s youth are far from dumb, ignorant spectators.

The sheer public outrage over the Jessica Lall case surely would have taken a lot of us by surprise. So when TOI screamed out “No one killed Jessica”, the nation stood up and took notice. Hitherto, “the youth”, seen as a homogenous bunch of individuals too preoccupied with their worlds rarely had a strong opinion on an issue and rare were they seen asserting it. To be fair, I think most of us would agree, this wasn’t too far away from the truth.

Any doubts about this shift in behaviour were laid to rest by the resounding response given by the urban junta to the latest move for reservations dubbed as Mandal 2.

Take any youth media – Orkut, Yahoogroups, et al. All are filled with passionate cries against (or at times for) reservations. Recently, a presentation raising questions on the definition of secularism as preached by the Indian polity was doing the rounds on many college egroups. Then another mail exhorting people not to buy oil for a day in protest of unfair oil pricing by PSUs was doing the rounds. For groups known only for their capacity to keep stupid chain mails going, this was certainly an interesting first. Its quite another story that many of these mails were a judicious mix of truth and doctored truth.

But of significance was the fact that the student/youth community had begun openly thinking and sharing views on such issues.

How many among of us would have ever imagined even 4 years ago, that topics such as casteism, reservation, efficacy of judiciary, accountability of the administration could be or would be the talking points not just among retired citizens but also among guys and girls better known for their obsession for the “high-life”.

Suddenly, the “eeks” factor has gone out of such topics. Topics consciously eschewed perhaps to avoid the risk of being labelled “uncool” or not “chilled out” suddenly became the subject lines of chain mails.

While the increasing mindspace being awarded to relevant social issues is a very healthy sign, let us not get carried away by our new found idealist tendencies. It is far easier to come out and stage a dharna and perhaps burnt an effigy or two than to be involved in the long drawn process of finding solutions. It’ll be interesting to see how many of us have the interest and the conviction to follow up on issues once they are out of the media limelight. Note - I do not intend to belittle the efforts of the thousands of students who stood up for their beliefs in the form of hunger strikes, dharnas - many of whom took blows from the police. All I wish to point out is this – let us ensure that we do not let the cliché` “Public memory is very short” come true. Moreover, let us strive to ensure action on issues that do not affect us directly. It is our past neglect of such issues that has often come back to haunt us – most recently in issue of reservations.

In the entire din over merit vs. caste debate a lot of us have forgotten that what we face today are the consequences of our sins not only 2000years ago but also of the past 20-30 years.

We’ve let “public servants” get away with murder as government after government has neglected the state of primary education. The paucity of seats for higher education too is not a problem that has come-up overnight. Unfortunately, we’ve been content at looking the other way till our own interests have not been in jeopardy.

This perhaps is the greatness of a democracy. It forces you to think not just about your own rights and well being but also of the rights and the well being of your fellow citizens.

Our refusal to ensure that our less privileged brethren were given a fair deal by our rulers has created a class of disenchanted Indians that has become too large to be ignored by any political party. There are just too many who haven’t been made stake holders in the experiment called India.

It is this silent majority that is demanding its pound of flesh. Over time, they have become the mainstay of Indian politics by their sheer numbers. No political party can hope to survive without addressing their concerns – valid or not. And when change is allowed to be long overdue it ceases to be evolutionary – it becomes revolutionary. We are now the victims of this revolution.

Its too bad sitting in your living room complaining that the state of primary education is bad merely because of corrupt politicians. While we’ve had less than our fair share of honest politicians, it is also true that there is a real problem implementing good plans for primary education in rural India. There are real problems in procurement and retention of teaching talent. Most engg students would know only too well the shortage of good teachers faced by most colleges. Just imagine that if this is the case in urban India how difficult it would be to get teachers for primary schooling in rural India.

For a nation obsessed with degrees and medals, it’s a pity that we produce a fraction of the amount of doctors that we should to support health services for over a billion people. And many of these are from institutes which have been built with the sole objective to earn handsome profits for the powerful men who control these institutes. Repeatedly, we’ve heard calls from established doctors that the quality of doctors is going down in India. Has anyone paid attention?

Enamoured by the large pay packets of the IIM grads, we forget that ours is a country where there are over a lakh applications for a few thousand seats. Clearly, such mad rush is because of the shortage of good quality education. Today as we, the bourgeoisie debate the political connotations of the reservation issue, let us also discuss the merits and demerits of limiting the field of higher education to a few political barons who have maintained their stranglehold on the education system, who continue to provide substandard education at exorbitant rates, who help us produce thousands of graduates that are too poorly skilled to be hired by corporates even when they are desperate expansion drives. Let us weigh the pros and cons of allowing large foreign universities to set shop in India. If need be, we could have a strong regulator like the one for telecom sector to oversee foreign players in the education field.

These are complicated issues with no easy answers. We cannot absolve ourselves of all responsibility by merely electing governments. We need to be actively involved in the decision making process. Politicians are mere public servants. Do you leave your domestic help to work in your house without any supervision? Most of us don’t. Then how can we leave public servants on the loose in our own country?

In my opinion, a historic opportunity awaits us. This current lot of Indians is more aware, more active about real issues that any other in the past few decades. We have over 2 dozen news channels, over a dozen newspapers and thousands of websites to keep us informed of anything we may want to know. Let us harness the power of the media to bring the spotlight on real issues. We’ve spoken our mind loud and clear when the polity has tried to harm our interests. Let us do the same for those Indians who’ve been simply left out. Let us strive to make our country a better country but not just standing up for our rights but also for those among us who can’t. Its time we expanded our horizons and looked beyond our own well being.

As the nation looks for answers, let us ask ourselves this question -

What is the message we want to send out to the ruling class? Should it be “Don’t mess with us” or should it be “Don’t mess with our nation!”

It’s a decision each one of us has to make. Think about it…

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE PRESIDENT OF INDIA

2006-04-23T00:41:00.000+05:30

To,

The President of India

Subject: Appeal against quota system implementation

Dear Sir ,

We write to you in wake of the events that have unfolded in the past few days with quota system threatening to conquer what are perhaps, with the exception of the defence establishment, the last bastions of merit in India i.e. IITs and IIMs.

To say that we are pained, disappointed and agitated all at the same time would be a gross understatement. We strongly believe that a person of unparalleled merit like you will relate to the grievances of general class today that is being penalized in the name of social justice.

Despite advancement in a few fields, we are yet a society in the early stages of development. Large sections of India feel disenchanted with the system as they’ve got nothing from it. Perhaps the “reserved classes” are one of these. Surely if a class of India’s citizens have been historically under privileged and hence under skilled, we need to ease them into the social mainstream.

But then, is it right for us to ignore their lack of development of skills and promote them up the ladder rather than giving them a shot to develop those missing skills first?

If a student from a reserved quota gets through to a college where that standard of education is otherwise very high, are we not throwing the student into the sea without teaching him how to swim?

Instead of neglecting their lack of development merely because of their birth into a particular caste, why do not we first get them to be competent enough to enter the competitive world purely on basis of merit?

Should we not ensure that the sanctity of the criteria of merit is not held hostage to the caprice of a few old men in the corridors of power?

If the government is so serious about development of the “underprivileged” there is nothing that stops it from setting up new additional IITs / IIMs and ensure that the level of education maintained at par with the levels they are known for.

Moreover, it can provide preparatory education to deserving students so as to offset the under development of skills. We could hold talent competitions for school students from “reserved category” and select from among them students to be trained for JEE and other competitive entrance examinations free of cost.

Reservation for certain castes in institutes of higher education is similar to lowering the passing marks in school for “reserved category” students. While this makes the symptoms of under development less apparent, the underlying malaise is left untreated. Perhaps, in the long run, the only community it helps is the one that aspires to run the country – politicians.

The one aspect of reservations that most of us tend to ignore is the strong lines of distinction it draws amongst us. In my humble opinion, this move is against the interests of India, the nation, as it jeopardizes that task of nation building our forefathers had begun.

In one stroke, the caste system that we despise so much is resurrected not just in that remote village in U.P/Bihar but also in our cities and towns. Education was once branded as the perfect cure for the caste system. With better education, the masses will realize the vanity of the caste system – it was argued.

Today we’ve come a full circle. The caste system reigns supreme. My caste will determine whether I need 99.9 percentile or 60 percentile to get into that dream IIM seat.

Again, with the plans of the government to have such reservations in private companies, it is my caste and not my merit will determine whether I get that job or not.

Seemingly, “All Indians are equal” has become passé. Some are more equal than others.

Our forefathers certainly didn’t fight for freedom from foreign rule only to hand over the implementation of Divide and Rule principle to these modern day netas. In fact, our colonial rulers would’ve been amazed as to how their born-in-India successors are infinitely more efficient in creating strong divisions of US and THEM.

Sir, we now pin all our hopes on you. We hope you will not let these ill conceived ideas take the country down.

Thanking you.

Yours Sincerely,

An ordinary Indian.

Reservation and Cancellation

2006-04-13T00:31:00.000+05:30

For those who always find the posts here awfully long, rejoice! This one’s gonna be short but certainly not sweet.

To government has a plan to apply the tried and tested formula of reservations in IITs, IIMs among others. Spearheading the good work is one Mr. Arjun Singh – an old timer in the Congress who very well knows the caste dynamics as a potent force waiting to be unleashed esp. in the cow belt. Curiously, the timing goes well with the Congress and BSP getting all too cozy to miss.

My call – Absolute crap. No two minds about it. Sheer casteism. It’s a fitting example of the working of the Congress brand of “secularhood.” Seemingly the aam aadmi has vanished from the open category. So we see our society as strongly divided as ever - the Open category on one side, SC, ST, BC, OBC, etc. on the other. I’ve nothing against the latter. In fact, I really haven’t bothered to find out who among the people around me belongs to the second category.

But now, you might soon find the odd conversation at IMS/Time/Career Launcher happening – “Arre usko itna cutoff nahin chaahiye. He’s reserved category.”

Perfect example of nation building na? Correct me but I don’t see any national integration. I see a historical mistake in the making. You are getting casteism back with a vengeance. Only that the oppressor now is the oppressed. Which does not help coz getting them together was the original idea that got lost somewhere down the Mandal lane..

The BJP on its part is yet to take as stand on this issue. Even the BJP finds this issue to keep away from the Congress style secularism. This to me is indication enough that the BJP is quite some distance away from representing the real modern India expect in emotionally charged atmospheres. No party can take the moral high ground on this one..

I think this is the litmus test for Indian media to show its strength. I’d be really interested to find out how strong the media is getting the public to rally around the cause. Besides, it’ll be fun to watch how Prasar Bharti behaves. Will it find the guts to break out of its habit of toeing the govt. line? Or will it fly in autopilot mode. Though most will expect it to be silent or propagating the govt. agenda, I hope it’ll have the good senses to atleast acknowledge the feeling of discontent brewing. It must realize its accountability to the people above all concerns. Can’t help being the eternal optimist!

Your thoughts..

P.S.: (Do tell me how you found this speed post!!)

Rang de Lal (Jessica)

2006-03-04T23:41:00.000+05:30

The Jessica Lal case was probably one of the most high profile murder cases in the last decade. The accused finally got acquitted for lack of evidence.

If you are watching Indian media, you’d notice how the issue has been done to death by the 2 dozen news channels we now have. Each claiming to be more outraged than the other. Even page 3 celebs have woken from their slumber to protest the “death of the constitution.” Email fwds are being bandied about asking citizens to wear black, etc, etc..

Our media driven society needs something regularly to awaken their conscience.

Like the modern day Kumbakarana, our conscience wakes up when all media channels realize they have a juicy story on hand on which they can take the moral high ground.

Does Sarabjeet Singh ring a bell? Or maybe that Indian killed in Afghanistan? Or Manjunath? Or that Satendyra Dubey ? Or the Indian whose eye was under threat under the Shariat law?...Or the death of page 3’s trust in the police after the Marine Drive case….or to test your memory – Jayabala Ashar?

All these names sound oh-so-familiar. We sent millions of SMSs supporting their cause. We really felt the system was in pits, abused it, made passionate cries for the victim and moved on.. Ofcourse, this Kumbakarana wakes up when the “generation awakes..” and is all charged up to assassinate the defence minister(pity Pranab Mukherji!) or any politician perceived to be corrupt.

Our media plays an extremely responsible role. Stick out the cameras on the relative of the victim and ask “How are you feeling after this?” I really wonder whether they expect “I’m on the top of the world.” Better, they appeal to the citizens to SMS their support to the channels which they will take to the President or whoever. What is unsaid that it supports the channels more than anyone else. Wonder why I should pay 3 rupees only to increase count of SMSs showing that we care. If its only my thoughts and support that’s needed, why should we help the channel owner laugh all the way to the banks?

Although the argument that this helps channels gain revenue while doing a good job is an acceptable counter-point.

Those miniscule who have been reading this space would be surprised, if not offended by the apparent cynicism inherent in this post.

I am not being cynical or pessimistic. All I am saying is that this media fed generation gets too carried away at times. While this is any day better than the apathy shown by the previous generation, we could do better…

Its one thing to empathise with the victim’s family but shouting the death of the Indian constitution off your metaphorical roof tops(or blog posts for that matter) is something quite else..

May I remind the awake Indian masses that this same judiciary has convicted Salman Khan for allegedly shooting a black buck. More recently, this is the same judiciary that has given life terms to 9 accused in the Best Bakery case. Moreover, it has ordered for action against one of the key witnesses who infamously changed her statement repeatedly.

Why don’t we applaud the judicial system for its succeses? Its so uncool to applaud the systems’ achievements while crying your heart out for the cameras makes you such a sincere social reformer a la Rang De….

While our justice system faces serious questions of accountability and credibility we could do more than just crib. What we need is more focussed and persevering public pressure on burning issues. Often we get worked up for a cause till it’s in fashion , or to be more precise - till we get the next one. It’s this superficial nature that I loathe.

The time is ripe for public scrutiny of cases that have long fallen off the limelight. Moreover, we need to track closely the progress of the various committees that are set up by the powers that be to investigate once such an incident comes in the public eye..

One freaky idea, let the president’s office have their own SMS no. where we can message to express our outrage anytime something happens. Let the 3 bucks they pocket go to some kind of relief fund. It looks better there than on the balance sheet of TV Today or NDTV for that matter.

Till these ideas gain ground, bring on the colours – basanti or whatever makes you feel a more responsible citizen! Rang De….whatever, but don’t let it colour your vision.

Aam(not mango) aadmi ke saath

2006-02-10T23:36:00.001+05:30

The Indian Government has issued a directive to set up a tribunal to look into deportation of illegal immigrants. Till now, anyone could be picked up by the police and could be deported if he/she couldn’t show evidence of his/her India citizenship.

Many of the people who stay on the road have little documentation anyways...So if anyone is a Bengali Muslim or is from east India, they become an easy target for hafta by the police for not deporting them.

The opposition has gone out on an offensive calling the move coloured by politics in view of upcoming elections in Assam, etc. The newly launched CNN-IBN carried a report on this titled ‘Appeasing the immigrants.’ It’s amazing how coloured reporting can get…

We call ourselves as an emerging superpower in world politics. We call ourselves a dominant force in the subcontinent. Wonder when we'll start behaving like one. If you want to be big brother, you need to set an example. Deporting suspects without a hearing for their case makes a mockery of all those egalitarian principles we pride ourselves in.

It’s ironical that we criticize the ill treatment of foreigners (esp. from the subcontinent) in US and we act in a way to make them look infinitely more civilized.

It'd be naive to assume that the people in power decided to setup this tribunal to clean up India's image in these matters. The role of Congress and other secular (ha ha ha) parties hasn't been too great in such matters. With an eye on the elections, it makes political sense to sing "aam aadmi ke saath.."

Yet, we must look at the end result rather than the intent. They must be congratulated for doing the right thing irrespective of why they did it.

A Crisis of Trust

2006-02-04T23:24:00.000+05:30

“Mumbai’s women are safer than their counterparts in New York”, says the Mumbai police commissioner. He has stats to prove his point. In a day and age where its difficult to watch news without coming across crime, it’s a soothing thing to hear... But somehow, to me, the comment sounds disappointing

Let’s start by looking around us. If you are a guy, step into any bus, train or any public place and look at any woman around. What do you see? Trust? Respect? Confidence?

Not even a ghost of it. If you are a stranger, you are bound to be looked upon with suspicion, mistrust by any woman around you. How often do we see chivalrous men giving up their seat to women only to be refused and glanced with suspicion?

If you are a girl, you’d know better. What do you generally think of an stranger guy in 50 meters range? Would you trust him? No. Don’t worry, you aren’t alone. Moreover, why should you?

As most of us men would like to believe, it’s none of our fault. There are these wild, desperate men who’ve created a bad impression for all of us. The thought’s pretty comforting; I am absolved of all responsibility….

But is it really true? Can you say this from the bottom of your heart?

How many times do we see men staring from head to toe? We shrug it off calling it natural instincts.

We see all kinds of men behave like brutes in packed public transport. We call them provoked.

We see blatant abuse at workplaces. We call it harmless flirting.

Men, despite all their fantasies of a macho image, have failed in giving a sense of protection and safety to the average woman on the street. The welfare and safety of women isn’t solely the concern of the state. It is the responsibility of every member of a progressive society. A society does not become progressive by appreciating ‘Neal n Nikki’. If we cannot give all our citizens an equal environment to live in, we’ve failed. And horribly at that. If we cannot ensure that the lady walking on the street is not thinking about her safety all the time, we’ve failed.

Look around, there’s almost a breakdown of the relationship between the two sexes. Of course, all of us have friends of the opposite sex. But our behaviour to them is dramatically different compared to others. I am talking of our behaviour with people we don’t know. We somehow need to start rebuilding this relationship of trust and mutual respect.

India cannot progress with half her citizens suspicious of the other half.

When was the last time when you were chivalrous to a woman whom you didn’t know (excluding ones whom you’d want to know!)? What good have you done today to gain respect from people who don’t know you?

Which is why Mr. A.N. Roy’s comments are disappointing. India has since time immemorial shown the right path to the rest of the world. The home of Yoga and Vedas cannot allow this moral decadence to persist. We just cannot cover up our sins by pointing out mistakes of the west. Its time we set the record straight and set an example for others to follow. Its time we owned up responsibility.

The gift of hope - 2

2006-01-22T23:07:00.000+05:30

This is a sequel to the previous post - The gift of hope.

In the previous post, I was dwelling upon the way India’s under privileged are given a raw deal by politicians, media, industry – the system. True slums are an eye sore, but they exist because you do not pay enough to the cheap labour you employ. They exist because they know some local corporator will let them stay in there in lieu of votes. True rural unemployment is something that needs to be sorted out by the government. But can we shirk all responsibility? Should we not as educated, privileged (bloggers and their readers have the privilege of net access among other things) citizens demand accountability from govt policies? Moreover, its time we put our education to some good use.

Recently, India got an employment guarantee scheme whereby assures every person of 100 days of employment. Sounds good na? Not quite..read on to find out why..

Just think about this, we spend thousands of crores of taxpayers’ money so as to be distributed among the downtrodden in the name of employment. Are the citizens of this country such a useless lot that we need to spend money into a black hole just for them to be able to sustain themselves. Surely, there is something not right.

I remember the finance minister make a grand announcement of investing 1 lakh crores (gulp!) to build irrigation facilities during last year’s budget. Do we really need to encourage farming in India?

I mean, despite irrigation infrastructure, the fact remains that agriculture is a lousy business. Every other year we have drought/floods/unseasonal rainfall/pests etc which destroy the crops of farmers and see them fall further into the pit of poverty. And when the crop is good, we have so much produce that they hardly fetch decent prices.

This year farmers in Rajasthan were forced to sell tomatoes at less than 1 rupee a kg due to excess supply. Do you really think they’d have even recovered their costs?

If India has to grow a lot of rural India has o encouraged to shift away from agriculture per se and enter allied fields like agri processing, poultry or probably move towards industrial professions. This is something even the fin min acknowledges. But as they say, “Economics mein bhi politics hai.” Political compulsions keep us away from doing so.

We subsidise inputs(fuel, seeds etc..) for farmers. We give them compensations for farm losses. We give support prices for their produce. The state of our public distribution system is well. It is said that for every 20 rupees spent by the govt., only 1 rupee reaches the intended beneficiary. All this helps our fiscal deficit to keep growing unchecked.

Clearly, we are not following the age old wisdom of teaching a child how to catch fish on his own. The concept of welfare state is good but it giving handouts does not cure the malaise. It only suppresses its symptoms. Its time we got out of this defeatist strategy and look to truly empower our rural poor in a way that they are not dependent on the tax payer’s money..

There’s a potent solution around us, literally - Bangladesh. They are home to a concept that is changing the world looks at tackling poverty. – Microcredit.

Microcredit means very small-sized supervised loans without any collateral. The rural poor have long been excessively dependent on informal sources of finance. Cruel moneylenders charge them exorbitant rates throwing them into a bottomless pit of debt making them salves for life. Microcredit gives them access to cheap capital to start up their own small businesses and help themselves.

In Bangladesh, one man made a difference. Muhammad Yunus, was a teacher in US, when the Bangladesh’s war of independence was on. It lead to immense destruction and bloodshed. When Bangladesh finally got independence in 1971, he gave up his job and came back to his country to help build a better future.

What started with an informal structure of lending very very small amounts of money to poor villagers eventually led him to establish the Grameen Bank to have an institutional framework to give loans to poor Bangladeshis without any collaterals. He, almost single handedly, thus made Bangladesh one of the most convinving success st

Today, 5 million of the total of 9 million such borrowers are from Bangladesh. And what’s more, 96% of Grameen bank’s borrowers are women. In a nation where the purdah is still a very important part of society, that’s a huge achievement.

In my opinion, his biggest success is not reducing poverty. He has made a generation of rural Bangladeshis confident and able to sustain themselves independently. Most importantly he has given them hope and a realistic chance of a better tomorrow.

The gift of hope

2006-01-09T23:18:00.000+05:30

I’m sure you’ve heard this already – Bharat vs. India. There has been some talk of two India’s developing in our nation, living in very very different circumstances, having very different priorities.

One is the distinct urban Indian, getting used to the new found affluence, with marketers chasing him day and night trying to woo him/her. He’s in sync with the world and has begun to think global.

Then there this other India – a significant chunk of us(mind you its us not them ) The kind we rarely see. The kind who’ve seen no fruits of development. Whose only ambition is to secure a meal for his family(two meals if he’s lucky)

I cant recollect who said this but it’s a pertinent quote here

“Its difficult to think like an entrepreneur when you live your entire life one day away from starving to death.”

Its these kind of people that have been occupying my mindspace for sometime now. They’re hardly the target audience of any marketer worth his brand. With no influence, they face the ugly side of our system that’s subverted to extract the maximum juice from such species. And whats worse? They hardly raise their voice, coz even if they do, who’s listening?

Newspapers don’t fight for their rights because it doesn’t make business sense to do so. We, the bourgeoisie, are too busy figuring our the latest mall in the neighbourhood, or still worse, what Britney’s upto now-a-days..

They represent a forgotten section of the society who face ill-treatment from all in power and have no one they can look upto, no one who can give them hope.

Recently, prior to the MCD demolition drive in Delhi on middle class localities, they evicted thousands of slum dwellers and razed their illegal structures. Fair enough, you’d say. The very same politicians now crying out for people’s rights were silent then for the slum dwellers. These poor people kept visiting government offices to figure out what what the govt. had in plan for them. No official at any dept. was willing to give them any info. Local corporators feigned ignorance. They had no idea what hit them. In a few days, they were being chased by brokers to sell their identification docs(ration card etc.) for as low as 20K. Obviously they had been allotted land somewhere. But no one was willing to tell them about it. It’s a systematic denial of information. Obviously, all in power had teamed up for the act. And the trick seems to be working. Some families, under desperate conditions with no roof over their heads, have sold their docs for peanuts.

Did the media cover this? Did our “aam aadmi ke saath” politicians stand up for these people? Do they even count? Do we care?

The answer, I’m afraid is a resounding NO!

If you’re not convinced yet, answer these questions honestly.

Did you hear about the unrest in Manipur sometime back. If not, forget it, we’re not even on the same page. Do you have any idea of what their problems are? Or what is the status of Manipur now?
What do you know about the northeast? Why don’t happening in the northeast never make it to our mainstream news channels?

So when Big B asks questions on capitals of northeast states on KBC, you get a good idea how much we know about it.. We unwittingly call many of our northeast brethren Nepalis. I’m afraid this ignorance is anything but bliss.

I don’t want to spoil your day therefore will not give you more examples of the innumerable Indians who don’t seem to matter.

I am sure, this should force you to think of their plight. Its no use blaming the media for their neglect. You cannot transfer the blame to politicians alone.

I’ve said this before and I say it again. A society gets what it deserves. We’ve been lapping up the sleaze they call “crime shows” on most news channels. Unless we make an effort to reach out to these citizens of India, we are directly or indirectly supporting the process their alienation. The least we can give them is hope, of a better tomorrow.

P.S.: I know its no good to only criticize without sugesting solutions. But frankly, I haven't been able to figure out a way to help these people. Your thoughts?

Notes from the Rajdhani

2006-01-03T20:18:00.000+05:30

Will dedicate this post to my observations on Delhi, where I had been recently after a long time. By the way, Delhi is also my native place…

One thing that strikes you in Delhi right in the face is the massively altered landscape. Suddenly you see sprawling malls, flyovers and not to mention – the Delhi Metro.

The Delhi metro is truly Delhi’s pride (and Mumbai’s envy).

Not because it as an aesthete’s delight
Not because it provides world class facilities to passengers (shopping malls on metro stations, spanking clean washrooms, Mc. Donald’s at one station)
Not because it cuts travelling time for its users
Not because it does away with paper tickets and uses a smart ticketing system that operates on smart cards that can be reused..

For me, it stands out because of a very important reason. It offers dignity to users of public transport. For the first time Delhi has seen a hassle free, well lit, safe for all and convenient mode of transport. You are no longer held ransom to rude DTC bus operators who stuff their buses to the last inch (or centimetre for that matter).

For the uninitiated, Delhi traffic is one of the most unruly traffic (at least among all the cities I’ve seen). The average driver on the road operates on the principle “Rules are for fools”. And believe me, I’m not exaggerating…
Some of the worst offenders are two wheeler drivers, who, once the metro has been introduced, have switched to the metro thereby making traffic better, though by just a bit.

With the inauguration of new line of the Delhi Metro, its reach as just been increased tremendously. It surely has cost a bomb to the government but its been truly worth it.

Credit must be given, atleast in part, the their CM Ms. Sheila Dikshit ,who has transformed her party profile in the region despite petty politics from the opposition (notably Mr. Madanlal Khurana and co.) and many among her own party (Mr. Tytler among the rest).

With the CM taking a tough stand on the MCD demolitions, allowing the law to take its course, her stature in the eyes of the law abiding citizens of Delhi and visitors like myself has risen by quite a few notches. Its time the people in power put their foot down and put and end to the madness that has spread with the blessings of the DDA(Delhi Development Authority) and MCD.

But one doubt still persists in my mind. Are we not treating the symptoms rather than the disease itself? Illegal constructions have sprung up with the connivance of corrupt officials in the DDA and the MCD, not to forget local politicians. By destroying these structures we can remove the signs of this disease, but is there any guarantee that there will be no further violations by bribing all authorities concerned?

What action is being taken against those who allowed these constructions to spring up?
Will they be made to refund the “fees” they took from the people while sanctioning the illegal plans?

Also, it has been found in many cases that a fraud builder has bribed authorities to get clearances, sold off his flats/shops to unsuspecting citizens (or rather citizens who have no chance of finding out the truth). Finally, its these hapless victims who are served notices. Who is to blame for their predicament?

When so many products in the market have certifications like AGMARK, ISI, etc. why can we not have a nationwide authority that has the final word on the legality of property?
Had such a system been in place, we would not have faced similar problems at the now infamous Palm Beach constructions in Navi Mumbai.

These are tough questions that need to be answered. But there is a bigger question central to all these issues – Do we really care enough?

FDI in Retail

2006-01-01T14:45:00.000+05:30

Call me left-wing, right wing or whatever..Somehow I’m not entirely convinced about the idea of FDI in retail.

Over the past few months we’ve seen a sustained campaign in most of the English speaking media going on and on how it can transform India. And who better to lure the average reader than the “great, mighty” China.

Confused as I have been over the issue, I’ve tried to keep track of the various columns written in the papers and made an attempt to get the point…I honestly have.

But even today, I’m not impressed, there’s something amiss, and not too many who know the answers really care or vice versa..

Lets take the argument point by point.

FDI benefits farmers

· No middlemen

· Access to markets

· Better information

Are we barking at the wrong tree?? I certainly think so. Lets take our own experience over the past 2-3 years. We’ve seen a large number of malls open up in our neighbourhoods. You don’t need to read books on retail management to figure out that most of these malls get the required footfalls by giving atrocious offers on household items and personal care products.

I mean, discounting youth like us who mostly frequent these places as a place of timepass, what is the fraction of India’s burgeoning middle class goes to the neighbourhood mall to check out that new designer Kurta (or Kurti for that matter!!).

It is a well established fact that a good part of the rush at the malls is there to take advantage of the various offers on daily use products. Of course, the phenomenon does not hold for the true blue rich, who’d rather have organic atta(wheat) at 60bucks a kg!!

If the malls are truly to provide “Kam se kam se kam daam”, much of the advantage on the returns to farmers gets washed off..

Moreover, as the e-choupal initiative of ITC has shown, better access and information to the markets can be ensured by using common sense with information technology. For the uninitiated, under this program, among other things, the farmer can access latest information of the markets, farming practices, etc. from terminals installed by ITC in their villages .In return, ITC gets to source its requirements from them directly eliminating middle-men.

Another argument

FDI pushes up exports
Better utilization of India’s farm produce
More value addition in terms of food processing.

Sorry to be repeating the expression, but its yet another case of barking at the wrong tree..

We read today that Amul is planning to target Japan and Sri Lanka as its next export destinations. It’s a sign of the coming of age that symbolizes the co-operative movement in the country. Here is a co-operative that has not only competed with MNCs like Nestle and Unilever and govt dairies that were once touted impossible to beat.

Did this leap have anything to do with FDI?

Did we need a new retail chain to come in and organize our mess.

I know these are very politically incorrect thoughts and I border on being painted along with the Red lobby…but surely, you cannot call this argument absurd.

Take another example, a relatively unknown firm – Crew Boss, which makes leather accessories among other things is exporting its produce to many major brands and chains in the world. FDI in retail?…never heard of it!

Kirana stores can co-exist with Wal-Mart

screams the headline in a leading daily. Often, such articles hinge upon one isolated case (easily available through google and co) to make a point. In this case, I was literally scanning for Mexico before even reading the article. To my delight, I was right. Mexico was the only stat that found relevant mention in the article. The only other mention was China which is not exactly known for its accurate statistics. In a curious co-incidence, the fact that in Mexico local stores have increased 2% after FDI in retail, was the only argument given by the Wal-Mart honcho that was in India sometime back. Co-incidences do happen!!

To be fair to the idea of FDI in retail, it certainly holds some merit. We’ve seen a number of hitherto unknown firms leap into producing pickles, squash, papads, you name it and supplying products as in house brands of retail chains. There are surely other advantages too. Like upgradation of infrastructure in agriculture, better food processing techniques, etc.

But FDI in retail cannot be expected to be the panacea of all our ills. We need to look ourselves hard in the mirror to figure out why, despite being a self sufficient country in food, so many die because of hunger and malnutrition.

A few thoughts...

2005-11-10T21:50:00.000+05:30

Haven’t written on the blog for quite sometime now. In fact, even though I’ve been itching to write about quite a few things, I haven’t had the time to do so. My apologies to those who might have checked the page for new posts.

Recently saw this forward comparing the situation in New Orleans and Mumbai which gorged about how India – a developing nation combated with a crisis better than the superpower did. Those who’d know me would know that I am not exactly a great admirer of the US. Yet there was something wrong, something amiss. The comparison was sad and cheap and said a great deal about its author.

In one email the author of the forward had adequately demonstrated his immaturity of all those who ferverently hit the fwd button. Why is it that India’s greatness has to be demonstrated by running down another? (and that too incorrectly!)

Those who observe Indian media would have found it difficult to miss the zest with which mainstream media try and glorify India’s achievements. To the uninitiated, if Brad Pitt’s cook had an India wife, don’t be surprised to see The Times of India have an article in one of its many tabloid sections how Brad Pitt has an Indian connection. It might be an exaggeration, but only a slight one at that.

While such behaviour can be understandable when a nation has little to show off, my country is certainly not such a case. You have Reliance setting up the world’s largest grass roots refinery at a single location, you have relatively unknown entities like Alok Exports, etc. clocking annual turnovers more than a 1000crores.
It’s a country still coming to terms with its success. Watch how our scribes pester any visiting dignitaries to comment on our country, or compare it with China, or still worse ask them what they think of Sania Mirza(!)
One question, would you go to any country and tell them that they really need to pull up their socks if they are to emerge truly as world beaters. I am sorry if I may sound pessimistic. When Lakshmi Mittal does really, my heart swells with pride. When Videocon takes over the manufacturing plant of Thomson, and goes on to pick up a stake in oil blocks in Cuba, I watch their moves with awe.

Surely a lot of real stuff seems to be happening that would make any Indian proud.
As the new Videocon ad says “Helping India realize its true position in the world”, we surely moving the right way but we haven’t got there yet. We’d do well to realize both.

And that is why the mail about New Orleans stinks. If there is one thing I hate abut my nation it is its reluctance to prepare for disasters. You can understand a nation of a billion plus caught unawares when hit by a Tsunami. After all, who would have thought that a Tsunami could actually hit India shores. But we lose just too many people every year because we fail to correct our mistakes. You have flooding every year in Bihar and neighbouring areas. You consistently have floods every year in atleast two/three states every year. Yet, we don’t have a flood relief executive – an authority which would have all equipment ready and the workforce to effect emergency evacuations. Till now our first and only disaster management plan has been – ‘call in the forces’ Its our armed forces that have to clean up our waste whether it’s a flood, earthquake or riots.

Pic: View from my house after the water had receeded!

As much as one may deride the US for its haughtiness, one has to accept the fact that we could learn a great deal in planning for disasters from them. We need to get rid of our this-will-not-happen-to-us notion. Only then can we rationally prepare ourselves suitably to meet adverse circumstances.

Thankfully, Mumbaiites, having borne the brunt of floods recently, have unprecedented awareness about civic issues. I am waiting to see if our brethren in the rest of India choose to learn from Mumbai or will wait to learn it the hard way.

Mumbai and its open spaces..

2005-08-21T23:33:00.000+05:30

The Maharashtra environment minister, Ganesh Naik has raised a storm by his suggestion that the govt should consider selling off open spaces in Mumbai to repay its debt(1.2 lakh crores and counting.) He estimates the govt can earn about 2 lakh crores from the process.

The suggestion (coming at a time when of heightened social awareness post 26/7) has elicited extremely acrimonious responses from the polity and media alike.

The idea merits a more thought out response than the ones being bandied about right now. One of the banes of Mumbai has been the overcrowding of public transport esp the local trains. Over the years, Mumbai has had haphazard growth, with offices mushrooming in certain selected areas with scarce residential property in nearby locations. Hence, unwillingly, people have been forced to move in to locations away from their place of work and travel upto 4hrs a side. Then there are some areas which have been commanding extremely high rates while others going for less than a tenth of it.

This is led to the formation of high density and low density regions. We have parts of Mumbai which are being used as tabelas, race courses, etc. Wonder how tabelas act as the lungs of the city….more abt tht later.

A large area of Mumbai has been occupied by slums. If we could rehabilitate them, we could free up huge tracts of land. Suffering the wrath of the floods in their makeshift apartments, slumdwellers would be a lot more receptive to rehabilitation plans. However, we need to devise a way to clear their skepticism about government plans due to past experiences.

If tabelas could be shifted out of the city along will slaughterhouses(legal and illegal), we could free up space for residential and commercial purposes. Further, if we could relocate race courses to an adjoining area say Navi Mumbai, it would benefit the economy of those regions too.

Besides, Mumbai would do well to take a leaf out of Delhi’s development. Delhi has expanded over the years thereby relatively insulating itself from density imbalances.

There are many areas around Mumbai which have decent infrastructure to allow for this expansion. These have hitherto been unpopular with buyers. For eg. Belapur. Built as an alternative to Nariman Point, it has been languishing for the past decade due to lack of demand.

I am not asking for the Borivali national park of the Aarey milk colony to be replaced by a concrete jungle. However, the vast tracts of land in Mumbai not being used for productive purposes nor enhancing the environment need to be utilized better.

The land freed up could be sold to bidders with a clause that they use a certain percentage of the area for greenery. I may not be among Shri. Naik’s greatest fans but innovation is something that I simply refuse to object to. Reject the idea if you wish to but don’t insult the process. With the state reeling under unprecendented debt, we need to look for innovative solutions to tackling the problem. And FAST!

The 26/7 Disaster - Can we start afresh?

2005-08-10T23:58:00.000+05:30

Mumbai is till coming to terms with the day that stopped Mumbai like never before 26/7.

Our state machinery collapsed. Not that it hasn’t happened ever before. Just that we’ve felt the pinch this time the most.

Our press is busy trying to investigate for the public what went went and why?

Public interest has never been this high in governance issues, environmental issues and other issues that have held back Mumbai back for so long. I believe, in adversity, we have struck gold. Isn’t this a great moment where everyone realizes what the real issues are and how it affects them.

I believe we are at this point of inflection. From here we can choose to be a more responsible society. Or we can return to our mediocrity and applause the media returning to “popular” subjects like someone’s private conversations or still worse that blob of crap called “Socialites.”

I am sure our slum dwellers will be most receptive to proposals of rehabilitation after the deluge. Of course, there the devil lies in the implementation.

To become a more responsible society means a change in ourself – not just the govt, the BMC, the middle class, neighbours etc. Change must begin with thy self. How many of us can lead by example?

We are blessed to be in a country where we have freedom of speech, free press, right to information. How many of us demand information from our local municipal authority about that un-repaired road or that open drain for that matter?

Its time we stood up and be counted. Social responsibility is not just something fashionable to be written about in blogs. Its something you and I will have to practice on a 24x7 basis.

As the saying goes

“If you aren’t a part of the solution, YOU ARE THE PROBLEM”

The billion dollar(or rupee for that matter) question is - Do we care???

Think about it….

Our media's DNA

2005-08-05T19:07:00.000+05:30

Newspapers in India have traditionally been looked upon as institutions entrusted with a guardian like role of society. During the emergency, when most of the media crawled when asked to bend, there were some like the IE who chose to take on authority in the interest of the public.

Over the years, newspapers are been increasingly seen as normal businesses. Papers are marketed as brands complete with brand endorsements, sleaze, page 3 and what not.

In their quest to be palatable to the urban reader, our mainstream media (esp TOI, HT) has begun to focus on issues they feel create more sensation (Britney’s escapades for eg.)

I think the time is ripe for us to demand more relevant content. We cannot sit insulated to the problems of our less fortunate brethren. Already, with the Naxalite problem growing in many parts of India, there is a section of India crying out for attention. We all saw the media focus on Manipur sometime ago after unprecedented tension there. Do any of our mainstream media today cover the problems of Manipur? People in Manipur are going thru harrowing times and the neglect by the mainstream media is not helping the efforts for reconciliation. But, DO WE CARE?

Finally, the much awaited newspaper DNA got launched in Mumbai .So after years of monopoly of TOI (not counting minnows like IE, Midday!!), the Mumbai reader has got options to choose from. It’ll be interesting to see how this media war pans out. With HT, TOI seemingly burying the hatchet, we should brace for some fireworks with DNA.

Hope atleast some of the media behemoths decide to cover real issues instead of SRK’s latest brand of perfume or the latest MMS scandal for that matter….
More thoughts on media later...

Administrative problems

2005-08-01T19:51:00.000+05:30

On Tuesday, the 26^th of July, as it rained as if rains were going out of fashion, millions were stranded out battling water as they had never done before.

Finally as Mumbai comes out of the calamity on 26/7 we’ve had a host of programming on air and kilometers in the press on how the administration was fiddling when Mumbai was fending off the floods on its own. They say, the administration did nothing. They say the police did nothing. They say nobody came for help.

Sure Mumbaikars faced a lot of hardhips. Sure many might have had forgettable experiences. But is it enough to fix the blame on the administration?

Does any of these members of the ‘Fourth Estate’ mouthing crap on air realize the enormity of the situation we are facing? Its so easy to say – ‘where was the govt. when this happened?’ ‘why did this happen?’ etc.

Time and again blame has been laid on the city’s cops who have consistently done a thankless job for the city. ‘Where were the cops?’ they ask. How on earth do u expect cops to reach places when no other living soul could commute on that unfortunate evening.

You see the newspapers flooding you with info on who didn’t do what, what went wrong, etc. One question – if its so easy to get things done, why didn’t a single newspaper reach the stands on Wednesday? Don’t these media behemoths have tremendous resources at their disposal? Don’t they have a responsibility to the public to bring out the news?

Their answer – very heavy rains. Great! u cant reach bundles of crap anywhere and you expect the police and other agencies to have flying carpets. Take that for hypocrisy!

Most of us conveniently forget that those who form the BMC, state govt, police, etc are also humans with families. A police officer is supposed to work in shifts. In reality how many of them get time with their loved ones? We hear of so many constables committing suicide because of the immense pressure 16-18 hour shifts puts on them. We’ve heard this before. But DO WE CARE?

Of course if the system is not working, it is because of that inefficient system, lack of co-ordination, lack of resources. And if any of these reasons fail to convince – the ‘Corrupt Politician’. The ‘corrupt politician’ is very conveniently responsible for all that wrong around us. He’s almost like the mouth of the river of all our woes.

A society gets what it deserves. It is our ignorance, indifference to issues that have led to the decay of this system. Toady when we sense the stink, we protest.

When citizens’ associations can be formed all over the world, why can’t the same be implemented in Mumbai to pressurize the ruling class to deliver. Why can’t there be public-police co-operation accompanied by accountability?

How many of us know the name of our local corporator? Ok lets make it easier - the political party to which he/she belongs? Did the corporator get re-elected or did he defeat someone? What were/are the issues of your locality?

How can authority be accountable to such ignorant public? Or rather why should it? Who cares?

We wake up only when some thing affects us. Ever wondered about the conditions in which a normal police constable lives in. The conditions in which they work. Don’t they have a family? How does it feel to leave from home when ur entire family is asleep and come back to find them sleeping? Ever wondered what salary these guys are paid?

And yet, it takes a single incident at Marine Drive for our ‘intellectuals’ to take out a dharna mourning the death of their faith in the police. Somewhere else, a cop tries to separate two women fighting and he is accused of molestation. Again, a media trial takes place and the public condemns the force. If I were a member of the police give me one reason why I should be committed to work – I am paid peanuts, I hardly get a life outside my job, there is widespread corruption around me, the people whom I serve don’t spare any occasion to foul mouth me….

We need to own up to the issues facing us. We’re passing the blame. Its our city. Its time we owned up! We condemn corruption in govt. offices but get a driving license made sitting at home through our neighborhood tout. Why? Its convenient!

Recently I saw this hoarding saying “Passport : Rs.1400”.

Obviously, the chap is doing roaring business. So corruption is OK when it suits us and not when it doesn’t? Do you see a contradiction?

I personally got my work done at the RTO and at the passport office without paying a single penny of bribe. Of course, going against the standard setup, it took me more time, but I got my work done indeed .And I am proud of it. Before you dismiss my case as an isolated one, I can vouch for friends who have done the same. Te question is how many of us are willing to break the vicious circle of corruption.

One of the officers who had asked for ‘chai paani’ while getting my passport made had to go through a ling series of arguments. Finally, even he admitted what he was doing is wrong. He got my work done without bribe. I later learnt from the chap that he is accumulating money for his sons admission into engineering. He says he can arrange for the fees but needs money for the hefty donation colleges ask for. How I wish I could blame our very own ‘corrupt politician’ for this.

It’s the system that stinking of neglect and apathy. We need to do something about it. And fast. Note: WE NEED TO DO SOMETHING. And not just the politician, the police, govt. etc…

Debut Post

2005-07-31T12:18:00.001+05:30

Hey,

Will post something very soon.
Hope you will find it interesting..

Neeraj

Individual - Up against society

2005-07-30T21:23:00.000+05:30

Individual - Up against society

Slowly but surely, we seem to be moving towards a open society, its hallmarks being freedom and liberty. For all the fundamentalists in our society, rest assured, the way the guys shoot themselves in the foot every now and then , we’ll emerge a society that could only be dreamt of some years back. I’m sure all the thinkers and the reformers of our society will rejoice at the uninhibited freedom the citizens of their country will enjoy.

But hold on for a second; is it really the way we want to go?

I am free to go the way I want, I am not bound to do anything, I have complete freedom of choice. It might sound good in the short term but is it really what we want? Is it really as good as it sounds?

“Man is a social animal” said the school textbooks .(wonder if either of Dr.MM Joshi or Arjun Singh would have a difference of opinion on that!!)

In all this talk of liberty and freedom, I find the slow but sure rise in stature of the individual. At times, it may be very good. The individual decides to live his life the way he/she deems right. Any kind of restrictions or barriers are seen to be regressive.

So, what’s so wrong about the idea??

For starters, ever wondered the state of social anarchy that would exist if each of purely went as per his/her caprice?

Ok, lets borrow a concept from Mechanics. Consider a simple system – say a block of some mass. The individual particles of the block make up the system. Now imagine, if each of these particles or components were to choose to travel randomly in different directions ,what would happen to the system – it would break down.

That’s exactly the point I trying to make. While its necessary to endow each being with freedom to lead his life, the individual must also be made aware of his responsibility to society.

Many of the questions facing 21^st century India boil down to this : What is the kind of relationship we want the individual to have with the society? Is it to be a give and take relationship, or should it be one sided? I think we are the point of inflection where we need to make the choice between the two.

Man needs a group of people around him, to care for him, of whom he can take care of, to satisfy his mental, physical and emotional needs. It doesn’t take rocket science to determine the benefits of man to society. Look at the institution of marriage. It has been rocked the world over by rosy thoughts of individualism. “I need to maintain my individual identity” Isn’t this an oft quoted line at break up? Sure one needs to maintain individuality but does it have to mean inflexibility? Does it have to be a tug-of-war on who bends first? Stephen Covey in his bestseller ‘Seven habits of highly effective people’ writes “Interdependence is greater than independence.”

Realizing one’s self is good but the realization is incomplete without knowing the potential of humans when they come together.

The question we need to answer is that what does man give back to the society? Is it give and take or only take and take?

As I write this I am reminded of this great film quote ; “With great power comes great responsibility” (spiderman)

Can you understanding the point I am trying to make? With the opening up of society, people will no doubt be empowered with freedom to live life devoid of any restrictions. Wonder how many of us have become more responsible with the freedom we get… though that’s another story.