saturday writer

New age Zamindars in Corporates

2012-02-06T10:01:00.000+05:30

Till recently, zamindarism was very prevalent in the villages, where a family with large land holdings had certain aura and behaved liked lords. They were aggressive, paternalistic towards some, exploit the masses and splurge money on self. They are ruthless when it comes acquiring land or dealing with people who challenge their dominance. For ages and generations, they would have exploited laborers but for the loyal ones, they were seen as benevolent. Interestingly, they themselves will never work on the farms; they are no more agriculturists or farmers. They don’t even want to visit the farms, all they want is to pass orders and collect the produce.

They want laborers to toil their life for them, work in the farmland and dedicate all the farm produce to them. In the end, they will give some part of the produce as if they are giving it out of mercy or as a favor. Laborers / small farmers have to beg with zamindars for money (paltry sum) in case of emergency or any event (marriages). Most often, they would not have been able to service the high interest charges and finally, they would surrender their lands. Over the generations, many small farmers would have become laborers in their own farms working for the zamindars.

Continuous acquisition of farmlands and keeping people eternally indebted (seeking some or the other help) to them were the key strategies of zamindars to keep their clout in the villages. With agriculture sector in doldrums, allure to live in the cities becoming a norm and sibling rivalry, many zamindars have reduced to holding smaller parcels of the land. Adding to this, labourers are no more dependent on the zamindars for help, they move to cities and earn their livelihood. Several developments like these have reduced the power and clout of zamindars in the villages.

It was always thought, zamindarism exists because of the money and land one owns, I guess it is more to do with the attitude towards life. Even in professional life, one can see that attitude in most of the managers who are well established in large companies. Lots of people would have worked for several years to grow the company, but few guys with their instincts, would have grown by acquiring and consolidating different groups, and created a fiefdom. Their loyalty is to their fiefdoms, neither to the company nor to their foot soldiers.

In large companies, many business leaders (especially the non-customer facing ones) would live in ivory towers, manage large groups of people through a coterie of lieutenants, they will not know the pulse of the foot soldiers. They will only talk about the times they were engineers developing software and managing projects.

As they build fiefdoms, at one level they will be vulnerable to their insecurity and generous to their lieutenants. For people (foot soldiers) beyond the reach of their arms’ length, message is clear – work in the limits (lands) I specify, help me grow (farm produce), make me successful (rich), I will take care (small help) of you and don’t challenge me.

Another similarity is, they will have two personalities, one for the lieutenants and another for foot soldiers.

Initially, they will be smart and greedy to create a fiefdom and after that, their insecurity will consume them.

As in farms, here too these leaders would not get their hands dirty even in the times of work or the crisis; they only want to manage it through their lieutenants. They want their ego in safe custody.

They prefer servitude over human potential. Isn’t it a zamindarism?

Lokayukta Marriage Bureau

2012-02-06T09:59:00.003+05:30

You all might be wondering - what’s Lokayukta got to do with the marriage? That’s the mystery, read on.

Lokayukta is highly respected function, who is into the business of finding (not punishing) out the corrupt in the government and publishing their financial details to the public. In the media, they present minute financial details of the corrupt including Immovable assets, cars, gold, bank lockers and benami accounts. Whenever they raid the corrupt officials, it is ‘Breaking News’ for electronic media and for the general public it is fodder to chat.

This reminds me a dialogue from one of my friend

“Mediocre people talk about people,

Average people talk about events and

Intelligent people talk about ideas”

If you have observed, after the raids, everywhere in the parks, restaurants it is the same topic – corruption, illegal money.

Mediocre people talk about the officials who are caught and their money. While Average people talk about the government system, its corrupt practices, process of raid and so on.

While the intelligent will be hashing innovate ideas around these raids and people. That’s where this marriage idea kicks off. What do parents want for their children of marriageable age; marry a-girl-from or into a family which is financially sound and well-to-do. When so many brides / grooms are getting disillusioned with the financial strength of their in-laws soon after the marriage and live in misery post that.

What better way to get to know the financial strength of a family than a raid from Lokayukta. Lokayukta doesn’t catch a small fish anyway. It is a known thing that officials who are caught by Lokayukta are so intelligent that what lokayukta sees is less than 1/10^th of their true worth. So, it’s just a back of the envelope calculation for parents to quickly arrive at the true value of the financial assets of that official.

There is an opportunity for a financial elite marriage bureau where one can register and elicit the financial and family details of the families of the official raided by Lokayukta. One can charge super premium for alliances or one can go with outcome based revenue sharing model also.

Office fun

2012-02-06T09:58:00.004+05:30

FAQs

One of my colleagues had developed a software tool and was rolling it out in the company. it was expected that lot of people would start using it; hence will have lot of questions in understanding the tool in right sense. So, I advised this guy to visualize the typical questions the users will have while using it and create a list of FAQs ( frequently asked questions), so that he won’t get bombarded with questions. He got really wild – how can I create FAQs, before someone actually asking the questions? His logic is – only after people ask questions, they can be classified as FAQs.

Single slide presentation

At IIMB, one of my colleagues had to present his assignment to the whole class. He put a powerpoint presentation on the projector; had a project title and his name in the first slide, he said - Any questions? He repeated – Any questions?

I was bewildered – whether to ask question on the project title or his name?

After the class, I asked him about this. As a matter of fact, nonchalantly he said- he had no other slides but for that one slide, he wanted people to ask questions, so that he can dynamically answer and complete his presentation.

Long shirt presentation

While preparing slides, out of his sheer excitement had created couple of text boxes in a slide. With lot of content in them and both overlapping on each other, I was unable to read what was there in the second textbox and I asked what’s there in that 2^nd one. He said, you move the first one up, you will see what’s there in the 2^nd.

It reminded me this -most often kids will have their shirts hanging quite below, just to check whether the kid is wearing shorts, his shirt has to be lifted up. Normally, young kids get longer shirts than their size because as they grow faster in the early age, their mothers would want to waste money on changing clothes too frequently.

Speed up in the line of sight

One of my classmates used to be late for the first hour every day; everybody use to pull his legs. He became smart – he used to walk faster as he approached classroom looking at his watch, which was always 10 minutes behind.

Snake and Ladder

While preparing slides for a high profile meeting, we had to show the journey we traversed and the road ahead. This colleague was finding it difficult to put a right image; I tried telling him about an image with the tarred road with the directions and miles to go and put the milestones accordingly. He didn’t get it even after several attempts. To drive the point, I said road should be like a snake crawling as the journey will never be straight. To make it lighter, I casually said snake and ladder.

After few hours, he sent me the ppts, I went through the slides casually, I was shell shocked to see a green (polka dots) snake with its tongue protruding out crawling up a ladder and milestones written at each step of the ladder.

Life work balance

Everyone thinks folks in software companies work very hard and breaking their grey matter to solve million dollar problems. Everyone talks about work life balance, but there are folks in several companies who are masters of life work balance; who have worked hardly for years, work is casual for them; they gym and shop during office years, some folks go home in between for cooking and taking a nap.

Giver of something, hoarder of something else

2012-02-06T09:58:00.000+05:30

There is a general myth that only the one who is rich will give something, but I feel all of us want to help others, like to give something to others,–

· Some are keen to feed the poor with the food

· Some give away the money to the needy, especially the ones who need money for healthcare or education

· Some prefer giving their time in the form of labor

· Some are so confident of their knowledge, they are keen on sharing their knowledge with anyone and everyone.

· Another set of people want to help people who belong to their community or place and so on.

· Some find humans are not so trust worthy; so they will be generous to animals

· Some think any living creature is unmanageable; they will contribute generously to the temples.

· If not anything tangible, some prefer giving free advice.

Like this, everyone wants to go something; motives may be completely different, while some have been brought up in that environment, some have it in genes, some do it to boost their ego, some do it cleanse their guilt and so on. Whatever may be the motive, any form of giving is a noble thing.

But now the really question is, people while they are comfortable in giving at certain level, are they comfortable in giving at some other level. If the needs of this world are represented as a pyramid, basic physical needs will come right at the bottom of pyramid; efforts will come above, then money, information and knowledge. We all have slotted ourselves at some level in the pyramid, afraid of moving up the levels as it will make us insecure.

For a long time, I had an issue in giving, not clear of why I am giving and still not being satisfied. Recently, in Tiruvannamalai, got clarity on this issue - How guilt and ego were playing tantrums on me?

IIT sperm bank

2012-02-06T09:56:00.002+05:30

Recently, one Chennai family had placed an advertisement in the leading newspapers soliciting for the sperms from young and super intelligent IITian. Ideologically, people are debating whether that couple was crazy or justified with their intention. Going by the general mood in the market, people want only two things for their children – kids to be super brainy and once they grow up, they have to be super rich. IITians have proved it time and again; they have differentiated brains, which they leverage to make huge money. So, it is natural for people to aspire for their kids to get educated in IIT.

With people making their children, machines of achievements and trying to realize their aspirations through them, this trend of seeking IITian sperms will only continue and grow big.

If one can develop a complex algorithm and analyzer tool that profiles the sperms on various parameters like Intelligence, creativity, emotional and aspirations, there is a huge business opportunity in setting up a sperm bank in India.

With India becoming a capital for surrogate mothers, who knows India, can also become Capital for Sperms.

Marathon of Sprints

2012-01-14T09:27:00.000+05:30

Did you notice, it is 201^st post, from being a reluctant writer, have come long way. Used writing therapy to vent out and empty my brains, it has really worked. In the initial phase, having vented out all my ideas and views on things that I had no connection with, slowly started feeling and expressing things that are at arm’s length. Journey has to continue.

· At times, when I was about to lose interest, some of you prodded me for the blogs.

· Some are so nice, appreciate a post without even reading it, for sometime I found it difficult to understand these guys, slowly got to know their viewpoint.

· Some have taken these posts in the right spirit, have used in their analysis.

· Some felt I was hypocrite, I agree with them

· Many expected me to write about business, entrepreneurship and economy, but I drifted towards agriculture, so some disappointments are always there.

Because of education and profession, conditioned to look out for the things out in the far world, but some made me realize life is inwards.

Do share which posts you liked and the ones you disliked and add your views.

Since I am writing only for offloading thoughts, I go with the flow, but for you, am sure there will be an element of incoherence while reading.

THANK YOU.

Life is a marathon; it is a long haul, it is all about your attitude, no short cuts.

Education system is like running Sprints; assignments after assignments, tests after tests, exams after exams. Mentally, don’t get breather to reflect.

And, Professional life is a marathon of sprints, full of milestones, medium term goals and long term vision.

· You have to run fast else you will be nudged out,

· Have to run long, else will you will get outdated.

Let’s not become machines of achievements; have realized beauty is in finding the FLOW and enjoying those small moments.

Tasting the food, Expression of Love and connectedness

2012-01-13T22:13:00.000+05:30

Have you ever wondered everyone likes the food cooked by their mothers though one would have eaten for significant part of their life? When humans want change in everything, how come they like food cooked by mothers? More often than they, it will be of couple of generations older style? When you get bored to eat twice in the same restaurant, how come you can eat food at home every day?

I have not done any research on this nor do I have any expertise in cooking, for some reason I feel understanding why each of us like food prepared by some and not by all. The degree might wary,

· some might like food cooked by only one or two people,

· some like just eating, don’t care on who cooks it

· some may like to eat food cooked by themselves,

· some find good taste in food cooked by anybody, but can’t eat for long

· some like to eat only certain type of food when cooked by some people

There are many theories on cooking; how state of mind and thoughts while cooking impact the taste of the food. But, like the saying goes, the beauty is in the eyes of the beholder; here too, the thoughts and frame of mind of the eater while eating and more so, the feelings they have for each other, make all the difference.

Have you ever come across a situation where you love the other person but you just can’t eat the food prepared by that person? I don’t think so. Whereas, you would have come across a situation, one savors the food and the same food is not savored by the next person. Probably, it is because each of you have different connection at the substratum level at that moment with the person who has cooked the food. Also, there are many instances where you would have had food to fill your stomach without any enjoyment.

While when cooked by some people, everyone around you (may or may not have blood relationship) but consistently like the food. Its probably because that person might be sharing lot of love through the food.

Some don’t like the food cooked by themselves, may be they have lot of internal conflicts which manifests in the disliking. Some deliberately don’t want to eat the food cooked by one person, want variety regularly – is it because they don’t want have vastness in them to accept deeper love from one person, want love from different people.

Some eat anything and everything, never cease to eat, at physical level they may be glutton but at another level they may want lot of love and affection from all possible sources.

If you savor food, you know you are connected to that person beyond blood and relationships. Similarly, if you see people comment and find one or the other lapses in the taste or the quality of the food, you know how well they can receive the love - very particular.

To disprove this theory, you may ask what to infer from a person who eats food that’s prepared by the cook or bought from outside – have not been able to understand these situations.

Also, This theory doesn’t hold good for people who eat mindlessly without being involved in eating or multitasking; watching TV or reading or taking – focused on saving time than the food.

Why are you so mad, why are you behaving like this?

2012-01-12T20:28:00.002+05:30

Recently, got a chance to watch a Kannada play in Mysoe Rangayana, Yen huchchuri, Yake hingadthira (Why are you so mad, why are you behaving like this) , adopted from English play, Burjuva the gentleman by well known theater director, Prasanna ( multi-faceted personality, theatre personality, writer, lives a simple life in Heggadu, running Charaka, social venture – creating income generation opportunities for rural women in Malnad region, front end for them in Desi, famous shop started near South end in Jayanagar, now have many shops in Bangalore and Mysore) . Having read his books, wanted to watch his plays for a long time. Similarly, having criss-crossed Rangayana for two decades now, wanted to watch a play there. So, got to realize both the wishes at the same time.

Play is about neo-rich, how the new found money, name and fame will dominate and dictate their thinking and behavior; especially, the ones who have made the wealth without any hard work, I.e., by exploiting the nature (natural resources) or the culture. Though the original was set in 17^th Century in Europe, it is very relevant today in India. It takes potshots at Bellary brothers and depicts on how these neo-rich treat people, blindly ape foreign culture and thinking, ignoring the native stuff - language, culture, people.

The play revolves around a rustic and semi-literate neo-rich man in his 50s who is trying to change his lifestyle, wants to be seen as upmarket and trendy. There are lot of funny incidents when he engages multiple teachers to teach him singing, dancing and martial arts, even gets a teacher to teach him some intellectual stuff – philosophy. As usual, everyone wants to be in good books of rich and powerful people, so they show off their prowess and even fight amongst each other. He wants to wear clothes designed by fashion designer, who gives him a funny dress (her ignorance becomes a new style)

As usual, with any rich man, he wants the company of beautiful women, so uses all his brains to keep it as a secret from his family. Though he has a daughter of marriageable age, he is only focused on his own desires and fantasies. His wife wants a simple, local guy who can love and take care of their daughter, whereas this hero wants a groom from a well to do and socially elite family who will enhances his status in the society.

The climax is all about how wife and daughter plan to fool this guy at his own game. Though it is funny and hilarious, core message is very thought provoking.

Play was superb in all the departments, especially the costumes and lighting -there were many scenes that were just magnificently done - whenever the whole group is singing, especially with all the household materials in gold. That main character Mr.Kane was simply superb with his acting, mannerism and dialogue delivery (use of English).

Very good one Sir.

On a side note, if you guys are interested in watching good plays, then head out to Mysore this weekend, there is an annual theatre fest – Bahuroopi, from 14^th Jan to 19^th Jan at Rangayana.

Osho Ashram – Meditations, Awareness, Freedom and luxury

2012-01-11T19:28:00.002+05:30

Had a chance to go to Pune, so thought of extending my stay and visit Osho Ashram. Though I have not read Osho or followed his talks, was curious to see his ashram. It is not called Ashram, it is OSHO MEDITATIONAL RESORT, truly a resort with centralized air conditioning and swanky restaurants. Having morning chai in Zorba the Buddha is the best way to kick start the day.

From 6 AM till 8:30 PM there are meditations happening in different auditoriums. With a 15 minutes break in between and breaks for food, there are different meditations for an hour each focusing on different ways of increasing the awareness of body and mind. Starting from dynamic meditation, throughout the day, there are various meditations - vipassana, whirling, silent, nadabhrama, Kundalini and day ends with evening meditation.

Morning starts with dynamic meditation at 6 AM in Buddha auditorium – manly meditation with chaotic breathing and catharsis to improve the awareness and making you witness the energy flow.

Silent meditation near the Samadhi (Chuang Tzu) of Osho is a very powerful one. Kundalini is a feminine meditation with more of free movements and expressions. Evening meditation is the climax and fitting end for the day long meditations with dance and listening to his audio talks.

Osho considers himself as an avatar of Buddha, influenced by Sufi. He wants everyone to live in the moment, neither in the past nor the future. So, he makes it interesting to be in the moment in any work done through day and night. Through his active meditations, he sensitizes all the faculties of the mind and parts of the body.

He has promoted eastern way of managing life as well as therapies. Ashram has lot of free courses on marital arts like Tai-Chi, which was my dream for a decade now, wanted to do it once, did it here, it is all about mind-body balance, managing energy in the body and increasing the awareness of each part of the body. It is soothing, especially done in the midst of lot of greenery and loads of fresh air.

At multiversity, one can join any course by paying some fees ( it is exorbitant, even though Indians pay one third what foreigners pay) to learn anything in the creative space, undergo meditational therapies and know one’s future talking to tarot card readers. People book them much in advance, they run packed houses.

Ashram is a well maintained one with

· A stringent dress code – maroon robe for day meditations and white robe for evening meditations.

· In silent and evening meditations, one can’t make any sort of sound – cough, sneeze, fart, yawn; if made someone will ask you to leave.

· You are expected to take showers in the morning and evening, and be fresh

Everything including entry into the ashram costs money, infact quite a lot of money but justified for the infrastructure they have created and maintenance of the same. Being a strong believer of community living, usage of cash is minimal, it is through coupons that one has to buy in the office.

To get an entry into the ashram, they will interview you to understand your motive to visit and Interesting and funny thing is, you have to undergo AIDS test. Only after you attend their introductory tour and lecture, where they tell you how to do each of the meditations, you will get a identity card, which is must for moving around freely in the campus.

There are over 400 books to his credit, interesting aspect is, all his books are basically his audio discourses converted into books. God knows, he was able to speak on such a diverse set of topics consistently for so long.

With the limited talks that I have listened, found them to be very powerful, hypnotizing, logical and hilarious. He has opinion about everything under the sun from religions to ism to sages to money to marriage to politics. With his deep knowledge, contrarian logic and powerful vocabulary, he can swing debate in any way he wants. First time, I heard someone finding serious flaws in Gandhi, am not keen to know the veracity of arguments as past is all about the perception, which are unreal as always.

More than his rebellious nature, philosophy of life, talks and views, beautiful thing is, he has operationalized the meditations for the common man – seeker.

Sports, a way of life

2012-01-10T20:48:00.000+05:30

Everyone wants to engage in some sports or the other, some want to focus on individual and some wants to focus on team sports. If we go deeper into different sports, there are interesting patterns that emerge. To do well in any form of the sports, one has to have perseverance, passion, determination, work hard and discipline.

Generally, individual games require physical and mental strength in a greater degree. On one extreme, in chess, one need lot of brain power, on other extreme, to do well in games like Tennis, one need lot of physical strength plus mental strength. Interestingly in all these sports, you need to understand the opponents’ strength and weaknesses, and play it to your advantage. Along with building strength in self, one has to be very clear about the opponents’ game and then decide strategies. Practice makes man perfect, no doubt, but while playing, real time strategy is required to beat the opponent, else failure is guaranteed at one stage or the other.

How about Athletics, you need all the qualities you need for exceling in any form of individual game, but there is no real time dealing with the opponents. If you can clock good timing in your practice, you are bound to clock the same time (with some margin). It may require additional dope of will power in case of challenge, but you don’t have to study every move of the competitors while running. If one is clear about one’s strengths, it is fairly straight forward.

Group sports especially football, hockey are more closer to the life, you have to be fit and good at the game, have special skill, be part of a good team, have strategy, coordinate real time, be aware and have all senses working in full throttle. Only then, you can excel, you need to win as an individual as well as unitedly as a team.

This again proves that I will be a theoretician, instead of playing any sports, I sit and analyze.

Still hopeful of doing agriculture

2012-01-10T18:08:00.001+05:30

After walking out of a farm land deal in Tiptur in March last year, I have lost count of farms that I have seen since then. It speaks a lot on my indecisiveness; I have not still bought a farm. Having quit a job to do full time agriculture, am unable to buy. Not that I didn’t like any farm, I liked 4-5 of them, they quoted exorbitant prices or records were not proper. In the process of look out, I got to know the rural economy better.

Though not much of the land is used for agriculture, navigating through the string of brokers and middlemen is difficult in the villages. While buying land in the cities, where as there is a range for the market value and owner’s expectation. If it n your range, you will go and negotiate or walk out. Whereas in the villages, it is very difficult to gauge the market value as you will get a different rate depending upon your state – buyer or seller. Invariably, there will be a huge gap between what they quote.

Another dimension to the problem is, the land records. Most of the farmers will not have proper land records. Either because they never felt for the need of those or out of ignorance, they would not have prepared. In such case, getting those signature from the extended family or previous owners is a big task and a risk. Buying land from certain sections (caste) is also legally no-no.

Some of these politicians would have encroached forest land or panchyat land, if local villagers go and fight, he will say – I am getting a tarred road laid upto my land, which will pass along your lands as well and it will increase the market value of your lands, do you want the road or want to fight? You know the answer and cooperation post that. These farmers will quote phenomenal rates once the black road is visible in their vicinity.

Since it is for agriculture purposes, my logic is, land has to be bought a modest price ( couple of lakhs per acre) considering the additional investment required to make it fertile and prepare the soil, as well as the returns from the produce. When I say I am buying it for agriculture, most of them think I am just lying, while the rest laugh it. They think it is for investment, hence quote exorbitant prices, their logic is like management students – farm land will be sparse going forwards and irrespective of direction of growth in economy – land prices can go only north.

I guess, one way of buying land is you must have lots of money, go and pay the price they are quoting and buy. After Posco fiasco, Government has raised the compensation 5 times, which has made it irresistible for farmers, who are volunteering to give away their land for national cause – SEZs. Hence there is huge increase in the price. Inspite of the price rise, there are three categories of people from Bangalore who have gone and increased the price of the farmlands manifold.

1. People with lot of black money who have no way can stash their money in lockers wont mind any price for land – easy way for government employees

2. People who have sold a small piece of land in Bangalore, made tons of money – arithmetic always will be in their side.

3. Guys who convert their paper money overnight, find farmland is a good investment at any price – infy guys flood the market with their paper

I can’t be stingy, have to have more cash, pay them what they want and I can buy it. I am hopeful. Too much of theoterical knowledge, high time to start doing it on the ground..

What I take is quantifiable but what they get from me is invaluable – professional con-man

2012-01-10T18:06:00.000+05:30

I have always wondered how a con-man can fool people and escape uncaught. More so, how are they able to sleep every night – how does their conscience allow them? Recently, I met one gentleman who said he is a prosperous businessman. When we happened to meet him second time, he said he has diversified into services providing his intelligence and knowledge in the market between 9 AM to 4 PM daily. I was not sure of this kind of services, but didn’t persist. Then he said there are 100s of customers of his who can be categorized into either being rationale or emotional. Then I got curious and asked him what. He didn’t say much then.

When we happened to meet in a hotel, I offered him a coffee. Then I quizzed him about his business. He had a wild guffaw and said, he only use his brain to relieve people of their intelligence (foolishness) or of emotions (pains). I asked him how? He then narrated couple of incidents where he has fooled people and exploited them (basically taken money). Couple of funny ones he shared made me laugh for a long time.

Once he went to withdraw money from an ATM in his hometown, it was around lunch time. Servicing personnel came in to replenish the ATM and put the ATM- out of service for 30 minutes. This guy made up a face and told the service guy, how can you do it at this hour, it is lunch time, he is already hungry. For this, service guy felt touched and offered him money to buy lunch. This guy said ok, service guy looked into his pocket, found only 500 Rs note, offered him the money. After that this guy has gone to hotel and had sumptuous meal. After a week or so, service guy has asked him for money ( 500 Rs), for which this guy has said – did you give money expecting me to return? I thought you gave me out of love and concern, it is not registered in my brain that I had to return, what do I do?

He befriended one police officer, been very nice to him. After sometime, that police officer felt very confident in this guy and has offered to keep his black money, which this guy has conveniently exploited.

This guy seems to be very confident and intelligent, has always taken money at professional level or in black money. He says if people want to get fooled, it is not his problem. Conning people is just another profession.

What will he do if he gets caught? – He does not harm anyone physically and he does it at professional level and not at personal level. In fact according to him – people once fooled would not want to tell others about their foolishness.

Doesn’t he feel bad about conning others? – he said – you are very narrow minded, only concerned about the money I take, whereas you are ignoring the help I offer them in making them shed their emotion pain or showing them their true place of the intelligence, hitting a nail on the coffin – what I take is quantifiable but they get from me is invaluable.

There seems to be no difference for him between poor and rich, young and old, men and women, family and friends, intelligent and dull. He treats all of them equally and executes his plan. This is his profession for his livelihood, so he has fooled people for few rupees to few lakhs.

For the time he was around me, I was cautious of my wallet, he noticed it and asked me not to worry as I had bought him a meal and couple of coffees already. He is very clear, he is doing it as a profession, he doesn’t rob people or stolen anything. His definition of his profession is – with people he engages in a dialogue, helps them share their intelligence and emotions for a fee.

What a character he is, first time I met such a person.

Happy New Year

2011-12-31T21:13:00.000+05:30

Wishing you and your family a very Happy New Year 2012..

On the eight features of Happy people, Our Mysore Guru. Dr.Ranganath says -----

Happy people have some good habits to treat themselves well
they value compassion and practice it as a ritual
They have learned abilities to solve their problems, being responsible
They are ever ready to savour simple pleasures of play, fun and work
they keep some personal time for themselves
they go into 'FLow', forgetting themselves in the work they love
they have personal ethics and morals, and a goal to work
they have a good social support group of their own

Celebrate life, Have fun and keep laughing...

Regards,

CM Reddy

Idle man’s mind is a devil’s workshop

2011-12-23T22:11:00.001+05:30

Its been a while since I blogged, many of you have asked me. I do get some ideas but I feel they are superficial, writing those will look very shallow. I have lost interest in forming views (expressing them is even farther) on current affairs – economy, corruption, Anna phenomenon and so on. In fact I am trying hard to stop reading newspapers but have not been successful as it is one of those habits I picked up at very young age.

Sometimes I think I must write thoughts and tribulations that churn out incessantly in my mind, but unless it is managed it well, there is high chance of washing the dirty linen in public, so have not written about it as well. To add to that, being miser in thoughts as well as materialistically, right from the beginning, I have not been forthcoming about myself, for the fear of being ridiculed.

If you have noticed, I am not a creative person, I only write (often exaggerate) my experiences. These days I am not exploring life as much as I used to earlier and even I feel bored of the experiences that I had, so even on that front, I am not able to get ideas. Also, my experiences are mine, it may not hold any value to anyone and everyone has to have their own experience.

Another big area I used to focus is on the behavior; identifying patterns, connecting the dots and generalizing. Off late, I feel everyone is right in behaving the way they are behaving so there is nothing to analyze and generalize.

I used to be compulsive talker, so most of my ideas used to originate while speaking to some of you, which I used to build, expand and write a post. Now, building up intense conversation has also been tough, so pipeline from that front has also dried up.

Used to deride crony capitalism, now I feel I did that in the past only because I didn’t benefit from it. Now, if someone is benefiting from it, it is their choice and fate.

Used to take pride in analyzing external manifestations – what is obvious and visible, but now I feel there is nothing more superficial than analyzing it. On the other hand, I have no competence in going deeper beyond the surface, so tap is dry there too.

Writing about social cause is waste of time, if not pursued to the logical closure, so no point in writing them in big, bold letters. I feel shallow of writing something that I don’t stand for.

Akshayakalpa is going for 2nd round of funding.

2011-11-08T09:53:00.002+05:30

Akshyakalpa (click here) – venture to produce organic milk and milk products through creating entrepreneurship among the youth in the rural Karnataka. Akshyakalpa is raising 2^nd round of funding.

Ex-Wipro gang (click here) has joined hands with Dr.GNS Reddy to start this venture.

They have started 16 satellite farms with all the farms, technology and cow shelter in place. Now, they are set to launch the milk in the market. They have tied up with Niligiris dairy for milk processing. On distribution front, they have tied up with several organic outlets who will manage the stock and door delivery.

Their plan is to start the milk sales in Bangalore from Jan 1^st2012. Plan is to add 20 farms every month and reach to their peak capacity of 300 satellite farms by the end of next year.

Now, they are setting up Veterinary services to support the farms. For which, they are raising funds of Rupees 1.5 Crores.

If you are interested to invest in the venture, for details and discussions please contact Shashi Kumar – shashi.kumar@akshayakalpa.org and Dr.Reddy – gns.reddy@akshayakalpa.org

Jakkalamadagu – Mini Cauvery in the making in our own backyard

2011-11-07T08:23:00.004+05:30

Watr situation in both Doddaballapura(D) and Chickballapura(C) is very bad. There is no water for drinking and they get domestic water once in fortnight. They are dependent on canned water for drinking and tankers for domestic purposes. They have no idea from where they are getting these cans, just that they get it in cans.

In D, couple of nonprofit organizations is reviving the wells and lakes around the city. But as usual, real estate mafia has encroached wells and lakes, and municipality is using a large lake for channelizing city sewage. It is an herculean task by any standards. Fortunately, some middle aged socially conscious civilians have been tirelessly working in cleaning up the water bodies.

Someone has done a series of paintings on the stones laid on the boundary of a revived well, depicting the evolution of man’s relation with the various types of water bodies, how man exploit the water and nature for his own nemesis. Very beautifully painted and hits you very hard.

Same group has worked with young (people between 12 to 70 years) to clean up Nagarakere (Snake Lake), so that water can be contained there and used for domestic purposes. It is heartening to see the lake full of water.

The purpose of this trip was to study the water crisis in these areas and the conflict between these two cities. Sri.M.Visvesvaraya, had constructed a water reservoir – Jakkalamadagu in 50s – to supply drinking water to C. What a foresight he had?

Few years back, politicians to serve their vote banks and swindle public money, have got a big project approved to raise the height of this reservoir to supply water project has been kicked off several years back, but in reality, they have demolished the old barrage and that’s it. People are falsely promised that they will get water soon. Long way to go to drink the first drop of water from the reservoir.

Situation is even worse in C where they have completely dependent on the tankers and cans. They are sure that the reservoir is meant for their use as it has been for the last 5 decades

Where is the conflict?

People in C don’t see a point in sharing water with Doddaballapura. Whereas people in D are thinking they have a finite share of water as the catchment is in their area. Both the sides are clear about their stands. What gives them such confidence? Politicians have adopted divide and rule policy – HDK, former chief minister, while in office has advised people in C to use the water to their content and share the excess. For D, local politicians have given assurance.

Is there anything written and agreed between the right authorities in two cities? - Big NO.

When contacted, local politicians see this as mini-Cauvery in the making, in fact are looking forward to it, so that they can exploit the public sentiment.

Couple of observations that may be of interest –

1. It is evident that these two cities will have to live with less or no water for the rest of their lives, but shocker is – there are huge industrial townships and SEZs are coming up next to these cities and uninterrupted supply of Water to them is one of the basic conditions they have set for starting the work. God only can save these two cities going forward.

2. Our study was only limited to the urban water crisis and conflicts, I am sure the situation with the farming community will be disastrous. I believe they want to water to be brought in channels from Western Ghats to irrigate the lands here. Another billion dollar project in the making.

3. One old gentleman showed us some tests on the drinking water in C, within 30 seconds of doing some test ( I guess it is reverse osmosis), thick black layer of waste / minerals ( Nitrates, Fluoride) particles started moving up in the water cup. Another test suggested that local water has 1500 ppm of unwanted minerals whereas for potable, allowed is less than 15 ppm.

4. Bore wells in both the cities are dug deeper than 1500 feet with a low success rate, not sure how deep can current technology dig.

5. People in C want water from Cauvery River to be given. Nobody wants to talk about reviving the lakes and rivers around them, but want water from far off places. I guess there is some prestige in getting Cauvery water and money involved in getting it.

6. You may be surprised to hear that rivers in D were feeding the drinking water to Bangalore for a long time as recently as 90s. It is strategically located at higher altitudes, so rivers can flow naturally towards Bangalore. There are many good rivers including the famed Arkavathy originate from one of the innumerable mountains. How can they grow up from being water surplus to water poverty in one generation?

After this trip, i have become more sensitive to the water and environment issues.

Translator job is tough

2011-11-06T21:21:00.003+05:30

In Japan we used to have some of our colleagues be translators between our clients and us, I used to wonder how can they be so fast in translating our words, ideas and management jargons, even if it is word-to-word translation it is difficult. In the business discussions they were expected to translate the intent of the words and sometimes they even used to speak out our thoughts because some sentences they were not translating – they were saying it was already been translated and communicated. It was fun watching them translate. So, for the kick of it, I thought let me go as translator.

Recently I got a chance to accompany (as a translator) PhD student, Lancy to Chkkaballapura and Doddaballapura to study water problems there. This student is from America - studying the causes and consequences of Water conflicts in India.

I was expected to be the bridge between this student and local people there, but in the first instance itself it become evident that translating every sentence will break their (speakers) thoughts and assimilation will become tougher for the listener. So, if a local person knows English, will converse directly and if not, I will interview and translate / summarize it in the end.

On a different note, Jaga had done a wonderful job in translating Belagere Krishna Shastry’s Kannada book – “Yegadegalla aithe” into English – “Its all there in Yoga”. It’s on his experience with Mukundur swamy– more of spiritual book in common man’s language. I still remember how Jaga was working on translating the intent, not just the content.

Brown bottle and Non Veg

2011-11-06T14:27:00.001+05:30

Engineering friends’ gang is quite close-knit, even after 16 years of college, still meet and bond well as individuals as well as along with families. Normally, practice is to meet in the evening for a dinner and drinks. If some of our classmates are visiting India, all will meet for lunch.

Most often, after the quick status updates on the current state of affairs, team will quickly get into the nostalgic mode – reminiscing college days, same old jokes and trivia about everyone. The gang remembers every bit of the college life – both glamor and unglamorous, less of technical and more of social stuff.Though everyone knows it by heart, the team wholeheartedly enjoy the incidents. Since most of the team has retained their core trait from the college days, it will be fun listening to the old stories. Among our age group gangs, this team is very vibrant thanks to some good souls as organizers and some fabulous star performers.

Though all of us go for a morning walk, cubbon park and lalbagh have their own charm. For quite some time, team is trying for a morning walk at cubbon park or lalbagh, followed by a sumptuous breakfast. Even after several attempts it is not working out. One of the factor may be, some guys are not early raisers. But, more importantly, green / brown Bottle and non-Veg are making all the difference. I meant unavailability of both for the morning breakfast.

Fall of a role model

2011-11-01T12:09:00.000+05:30

While growing up as a college student, phenomena called liberalization was the hot topic and Manmohan Singh was the cynosure. As chief architect of reforms, he was embodiment of all the qualities that middle class society considered as virtues - commitment, competence and integrity. For educated people, it was Manmohan Singh who ushered into reforms, but for political analysts it was then Prime Minister, P.V.Narasihma Rao, the brain behind the reforms. Like any other middle class student, I was also inspired by Manmohan Singh and his work, he was my role model. Though there is an eternal debate on the pros and cons of the liberalization, I want to focus on role models and the role they play.

Cutting across the political party lines, businessmen and socio-economic classes, most felt what he did at that time was the best for India. The popular sentiment of educated class was – probably it was long overdue, but it will change the direction.

If you remember at the peak of Harshad Mehta’s stock market scam, owing moral responsibility for not preventing it, Manmohan Singh had offered to resign from his post as the Finance Minister. There was public outcry in his support, his boss – P.V.Narasimha Rao was his best supporter and even opposition wanted him to continue. That was his stature then, the whole country except die hard Marxists were supporting him.

From being the reforms man, when he got transformational role as Prime Minister on a platter, expectations were high – Version 2 of reforms beyond Financial markets were expected from him. With his detached, inaccessible and holier than thou personality, he was seen as the reluctant captain in his first tenure. Against to his brand of capitalistic theory of economics, he was forced to launch political blockbusters schemes like NREGA , his that were putting money directly into the hands of the under privileged.

With his adamant position on nuclear treaty with America, his conveniently bad work of buying votes to his Madam’s man Fridays. When the left broke out of the UPA-1, it was positioned like Manmohan vs. opponents-to-Nuclear-bill.

With comfortable mandate under his stewardship, his true personality started to come out of the beautifully constructed façade. There are innumerable scams tumbling upon on a daily basis, it is certainly a blot in Indian brand of Governance. Because of economic oppression, poverty and austerity for more than a century, with exposure to luxuries of rich and sudden inflow of money inflow, evolution of this kind of mass corruption culture was natural. But, the shocking factor is to see this man who built his government career based on the integrity and responsibility, and being the head of the government is washing his hands off. He even goes to the extent of finding faults in opponents’ deeds. He even ridicules the opposition for pointing fingers at him and his government. He won’t mind people pointing fingers at his government but not at him. He will become very touchy.

He doesn’t want to act on issues, he wants a crisis to be created and then he will act. This is because he wants to be seen as Mr. Right from everyone – his boss, partners and subjects. He wants people to understand his limitations and constraints in which he is running the government.

If a role model falls apart and crumbles in front of your own eyes, it will be very disappointing.

Aarohan ; hope for parents of children with special learning needs...

2011-10-30T08:28:00.001+05:30

Amongst us, we see families having kids with learning disabilities, struggling to find a good mentor to guide them as well as the kid. There is a hope for them.

One of the families i know, Vani and Nagaraj have helped their own son ( with learning difficulty) at all levels, now he is doing his 1st BCom. He is an amazing and brilliant boy Recently, while searching for college to join for BCom, our man has done relative scoring of colleges on various attributes; it is as good as any management professional's analysis.

Over the last twenty years or so, they have done lots of experiments and have learnt lots of tricks hardway, while helping their son to pick up basic logical as well as social skills. Now, she has set up a centre to put her learning to best use; to help needy parents to develop confidence as well as competence to manage the kids better.
It will be more of day to day practcal tips and worksheets than just conceptual gyan.
Pl forward this to your friends who are looking for such coaches.

Kiran Bedi's overinvoicing of travel expenses

2011-10-23T11:55:00.000+05:30

my friend, Kiran Jagannath had forwared a news item on this, he wanted everyone's opinion.

http://www.firstpost.com/politics/if-auto-drivers-who-over-charge-are-cheats-so-is-kiran-bedi-112375.html

here are my opinion at two different levels.

opinion 1

To be rich or to be seen as doer-of-good is essentially one and the same, but the objects are different – want to be perceived as possessor of some extraordinary thing – money, concern, power. So desire for all these leads to the same end, you see people travelling in different paths – materialistic, social service, spiritualistic, often end up reaching similar destinations in life.

For social reformers, there are two guiding principles that mean same in the inner space, but manifests in different forms externally.

· Bhagavad Gita – “Fight a war if it is to save dharma and righteousness”

· Gandhi’s famous saying – “Be the change you want to see in the world”

There are no global agreed standards on what is dharma, righteousness and change. So, everyone is the best jdudge of their intentions on why they are acting in certain ways. As outsiders, at best we can only be the observers of the tamasha that is going on.

Whatever is good, will become bad one day. Why desire for being good.

Every human thinks he / she is the most intelligent and the righteous person, while some continuously look for situation to exploit for monetary gains, some look for wrongs to prove themselves right. From times immemorial, Irrespective of the size and magnitude, attachment to material possession will result into corruption.
Gandhi had to shed all his possessions to mobilize the society towards a common goal.

Difficult to shed our material posessions, so is eliminating corruption.

opinion 2

on the issue of kiran bedi's overinvoicing of travel bills, i feel its not right if she has not informed the donors. if she wanted to take money for other more relevant social causes she could have taken as 'appearence or management fees'.

whereas there is another running case on Arvind Kejriwal - he has taken a paid leave for 2 years to do higher studies with an agreement that he will come back and work with the organization for three years. But, the man is highly intelligent ( another chidamabaram and kapil sibal types) , he came back and reported to the office. then he went on a Loss of pay leave for three years, came back again and resigned from the services.

what b*#@s#%t is he talking? he misinterpreted the rule to his advantage. As a employee of the government administration, he has all the rights to avail the PAID LEAVE for higher studies. In return, whats expected of him, come back with enhanced education and contribute better to the department. whereas this man tries to prove that he was legally right
it is easier to be legally right and honest, but are they honest to themselves?

Forget about others trying to questioning them, when these self proclaimed guardians of righteousness stand in front of lakhs of people, don't they feel uncomfortable with their internal contradictions. Same rule doesn't apply to politicians ( irrespective of political allegiance) as they are meant to have those contradictions in them.

Coming to Anna, i fully agree with hsi views on rural transformation and anti-corruption, but i am afraid when he talks about waging a bloody war against Pakistan if required. No man can be at peace with himself if he thinks of waging a war against his worst enemy. And, i dont think Pakistanis are root cause of all of India's problems

Whats your opinion

The Chase - what would be your response

2011-10-08T10:11:00.002+05:30

In response to one of the forwarded mails, one of my close friends has this question for the group.

“What about something I call "the chase". All our life we are chasing something.

As a young teen, I remember myself chasing adulthood....wanting to grow up

In my late teens, I chased girls

As a young professional, I chased technical knowledge

In my early 30s, I chased money and professional growth

Now I don't know what I am chasing :)

You eventually get whatever you are chasing, but by then it ceases to be an object of desire.“

What would be your response to my friend?

BOTTOM OF THE PYRAMID

2011-10-08T10:07:00.003+05:30

Mysore based Swami Vivekananda Youth Movement is arranging an event in November to raise funds for providing basic necessities for children infected and affected by HIV/AIDS. They have been working with these kids for 3 years with some funding, but now they need to sustain this program on their own for another two years. They are doing commendable work in places around Mysore, for 4500 such kids, they are providing food, shelter, healthcare and education.

I am contributing; I have their bank account details, let me know if you want their bank details to make your contributions.

Incidentally, with my limited interactions with folks working in ngo sector, I feel they are highly optimistic –

· they will be working with very limited or no budget but they will still be very positive of pulling it off,

· even milestones will be fast approaching and even crossing it, they are not perturbed

We, from private sector

· Have always worked in environment that is conducive to work,

· Have personal agenda mapped to organization’s goals

· Race against time as if there is no tomorrow, so we get restless at their pace.

For them, having worked against odds at all levels and yet delivering results, their general confidence and optimism levels are high.

Though I was not good at scoring marks in the examinations, I thought I will share some of my mistakes with some of the government college students, I had been to a local college in Seshadripuram, took a session on preparing for the exams for 2^nd PU commerce class.

I spent around 75 minutes in the class of around 70 students. Very few are actually interested in studies there, one or two wants to excel, while most are not sure of why they are studying. We all are very fortunate to have the right upbringing, attend good schools and work in the interesting professions. Throughout the session, I was extoling them to have a decent goal, make right preparation and achieve what they want. I feel, the students are good, but don’t have enough socio-economic support to study and have lost interest in the education in the process. They need lot of teaching support as well as motivation to do well in their studies.

For me, the important lesson I learnt was – I was focusing on motivating them to get first class and distinction, but the college as well as Samvada ( NGO through whom I went there) told me – we have to focus on making them PASS the exams because most of them struggle to even pass.
Our minds are corrupted, want to help people to excel who are already good. Whereas they focus on people who are really in the BOTTOM OF THE PYRAMID.

Silent assessors of personality through observation of various physical actions

2011-09-17T10:57:00.001+05:30

Everyone knows that there are experts who assess and analyze your personality through your handwriting. Some years back, I had read about a lady who assess based on the patterns in the bottom of the tea cup after you finish drinking tea.
But everyone has their own way of assessing and analyzing others’ personality. It might sound funny, but they are experts in their own way.
There are experts who assess people based on every step involved in eating – quantity, filling, style, speed, spilling, wasting and washing.
Innumerable theories on body language and related personality traits, there are experts who observe your walking style, running style and just the standing posture; will remind your traits which you might have not noticed.
Dressing - Dress sense, accessories and choice of colors is one of the standard ways to study the personality.
Way of conducting oneself in a business meeting is another way
Greeting style is another subtle way of understanding a person – some just raise their eyebrows while greeting the other person, no handshakes.
There is lot of literature on assessing the personality based on sitting postures, but there are experts who have the uncanny ability to gauge people on the way one tries to sit on the floor, duration, posture of sitting and way one gets up. You will get to know the complete list of your traits.
Driving is one of the standard practices to study the personality; there was this CEO of Bangalore based Anti-Virus software (Mid 90s) company used to give a driving test to his prospective employees and assess their personality, making hiring decisions based on that. But have you come across people assessing the personality of the passengers based on his comments and directions.
Too much of observations and measurements, people use to assess personality. Not really required, let people live the way they want why find meaning in everything.

Are we not beggars?

2011-09-17T09:28:00.001+05:30

When I used to visit temple towns, I always used to wonder why so many people or beggars or swamis beg, many of them seem to be fit, why they can’t workkeep and, we I used to find it difficult to comprehend their attitude towards life. It is very intriguing to understand their approach, as in any profession here also there is lot of diversity. Persons in ochre robes, plain clothes and torn clothes keep begging; some with bowl and some with their hands; some will be desperate and some will be dignified; some seem to be completely illiterates and some seem to be highly qualified; some will be singing devotional music and some will be blabbering something; some look depressing while some will be composed; some seem to be content with themselves while some will be bothered about the external world; some will feel bad if you don’t offer them while some will be unconcerned; while some do it like any other profession, others do it for their sustenance. Though they may have different reasons for begging – from spirituality to helplessness to mere laziness, one thing they do it is to take care of their hunger and to an extent – basic necessities.
I feel all of us are beggars of some sort; only difference is, they beg to annihilate their ego or to satisfy their physical hunger, while we all beg to boost our ego or to satisfy the intangible mental hunger. One can see all sorts of begging –for more increments, promotions, better assignments. It is common to see people asking for all these on regular basis. Like in the normal begging, here too people will have different styles from raw aggression on one extreme to Suave manipulation on the other extreme. Most often, we beg so much for something but at the end we want it be given as if no one else deserved it more than us. On daily basis, every one of us seeks our share of attention, recognition and appreciation – else, our ego will be hurt and we will be insecure.
I would not want to delve into people’s prayers and purpose to visit temples. On any given day, the quantum of begging people would have asked from the gods, collectively it will be much more than the economy of a state or painless life of the gods themselves.
Even advertisements taunt people – if they don’t possess their product, they are lacking something – kind of hunger.
Overall, everyone is beggar; some beg for food and basic necessities, while most beg for their ego and lifestyle.

Outer world is true reflection of inner self

2011-09-07T17:51:00.001+05:30

One day, while doing morning walk, I walked for much longer time than usual. May be I was not feeling well, while returning, I was feeling very tired, I took a shortcut – had to cross a slum. At one stage, I thought it would be good if I get to drink water. Very next moment one guy from the slum popped out of his house and asked me if I want drinking water. He looked at me, he said I will get you water wait a second. He went in, brought me a bottle of water.
Another day, I was helping one of my friend to clean up his backyard – he had arranged a dinner for his friends in his home garden as it was a full moon day then. While cleaning, he showed me a big granite wash basin lying on the ground, wanted my help to put it on a concrete support which he has got constructed recently. Even to see, that wash basin was heavy. I told him we can’t do it, we need lot of people or some machine to lift it. If it slips and falls on anybody’s hand or leg, be sure to get crushed underneath. He went around, got three guys from the garage next door. When they tried to move it (forget about lifting), it just didn’t move. It was my friend’s idea as well as desperation to fix it otherwise it will be difficult in the evening. My friend then brought lot of support materials – Iron Rod, Cement bags filled rod with sand. His plan was iron rod to lift the basin on one side and slide the basin towards its destination. Stack sand bags next to the concrete block and move the basin up on the bags. Five of them started moving the basin. Though I was doing all the cleaning and washing, I didn’t like this idea of granite wash basin; steel basin would have served the purpose. Since my friend was already tired, I didn’t say anything, but I was just thinking for myself. After a great struggle for 15 minutes, they moved it by 2 foot, was trying to move it on the sand bags. Till then I was silently cursing about his idea, I gave a supporting hand to lift it on the bag. I gave my supporting hand all for 10 seconds; they decided to drop the idea of fixing it. My friend asked everyone to withdraw and he dropped the iron rod, without realizing that my hand was under the basin. I screamed and withdrew my hand in a spur of moment, even then two of my fingers were crushed and skin was torn. It was intolerable pain, breathing out hot air and feeling giddy. As usual, in case of crisis, I sat quietly (without cribbing or cursing). To my surprise, torn skin got stitched together without any wound in a day.
Recently I had to go a temple town, normally I book accommodation before starting, but this time I went with an open mind. This place is quite notorious for overflowing with the travellers, devotees and tourists. Without bothering, after alighting from the bus, I went to the first guest house, that manager was so courteous (though I am going there for the first time), didn’t show his bossism and gave me a very good room.
Same place, though I take prasadam at one ashram there, this time I was not too comfortable, was not keen to take and generally I was bit agitated that day, but still stood in the queue to have prasadam. When I was about to enter, the person in charge there stopped me as I am not staying there and I am only visitor. I was dumb struck, I was caught red-handed, I knew beggars have no rights. I stepped back and stood outside, trying to relate what had happened just then. I learnt my lesson that you get what you think, I was about to leave the place. Then someone whom I had met earlier, called me and said I can have my prasadam.
World is what you think.

Farmers are also happy and prosperous

2011-09-07T17:50:00.002+05:30

Recently, I had an opportunity to visit couple of farms in Karnataka. For a change, all these are very prosperous and happy farmers, unlike the usual image of pensive and poor face associated with the farmers. Each of them is progressive in their own way. Everyone has a similar attitude – farming is the only thing they know, so do it with pride. They have common problem – not getting labor, so solution is – be hands on, involve the family members. They have adopted different strategies to prosper – organic, dairy farming, cash crops.
One of them – Nagendra was a car driver in Bangalore till last year, went back to his native village near KR Pet. It is not a hasty decision, well thought of – pros and cons of both the options – working in Bangalore and farming in native village. His analysis is no less than of a professional consultant. Though he didn’t have too much of landholding, has taken a foresighted decision to return. His planning and execution in the farm is also very interesting. He has a small dairy farm - three cows, give him livelihood. For annual savings he grows sugarcane. It requires very less labor and a good annual crop. Though Sugar mills make most of the money and are run by the political bigwigs, farmers get a moderate support price for their produce and have fewer headaches in harvesting. He has confidently invested money in getting access to the ground water. He has acquired more pieces of lands around his farm, is expanding already. He makes decent money for himself. More importantly, he is happy, confident and leading a less stressful life.
Another farmer is Nataraj, near Tiptur, very positive farmer with seemingly a happy and supportive family. He has been doing organic farming for more than a decade now, invested in latest technology for his dairy farm ( his farm is one of the pilots of Akshaya kalpa project = For people who want to know about milk, cows, milk processing and what does organic milk mean? – you must listen to Dr.GNS Reddy). Along with his coconut orchards, he has constructed a beautiful shed with Bulk Milk coolers, Milking parlors and wireless technology. Incidentally, he has been featured in some TV programmer, so has a steady stream of visitors / farmers to his farm, taking away all his bandwidth for demonstration and explanation.
Close to Bangalore, visited farm of Jayaram (leading Organic retailer and Eco-hotelier – Greenpath on new BEL Road). It is his dream to convert this huge farm into organic farm with lot of forestation. It is a modern day farm with artistic intentions, has an amphitheater (till last year, they have celebrated full moon festival there), has couple of manmade lakes. He is planning to set up an organic farming training center there. This man seems to be willing to talk any number of miles for making organic food and preserving ecology.
Met some farmers at Jayaram’s farm, many of them are well educated, have done lot of experiments and prospered well as farmers. Also, they speak so well, for few hours, I was only listening to them and their experiences.

DK Bose’s role model is Yediyurappa

2011-07-30T21:59:00.002+05:30

Many of the politicians are Chanakyas of modern times – they are extremely good in strategy, moves and counter moves, but they all have operated in certain constraints. While most have bow down to the pressure from judiciary, many have bowed down to their high commands, some have bowed down to the pressure from the public and few have done it for their beliefs and value systems.
If one observes his governance, he has run his government with two faces, one is playing to the gallery – popular sentiment of the people and high command, while another face, focused on gaining the strength for cementing his position as chief minister and leader for the future including undermining his rivals both internal as well as external and amassing the wealth which will be key to win the elections. Whenever he is caught of being with the latter face, he has cried of martyrdom using the first face.
His acts of corruption are very similar to Ramalinga Raju (click here)of Satyam, leveraged every trick in the game as well as created new tricks to conveniently loot the system. There are lots of similarities between the way Raju has jacked up the growth of his company and siphoning off money through various channels to Yediyurappa’s ways of using the development and winning the elections as his trump card and abused power for the benefit of his family. For Raju, there were lots of NGOs and social movements backing him till the last minute, even after he accepted his wrong doing, whereas everyone knows who is supporting Yediyurappa even now. Even on the competition front, Raju had to demonstrate good numbers to the market q-o-q as his larger rivals are the showing the impressive results. Whereas Yediyurappa has to withstand the onslaught of his rich party colleagues as well as belligerent Father-son combo on a regular basis.
Yediyurappa has always taken his high command for ride, infact he can go down in the history of Indian politics for breaking the fabric of National Parties. I am sure he along with his contemporaries – BJP CMs have set a precedence which is stitched a bit every time they have had run down with their party high command. Going by the trend, in months to come, I am sure this phenomenon will be pushed a limit and one chief minister of some state will certainly defy and revolt against the high command.
One interesting point on Yediyurappa and A.Raja` – they only tried to legalize the corruption by taking money in the cheques; else their predecessors are no different in taking money from industrialists for favors. If they had not taken money through cheques, do you think anyone would have pinned them down?
At times, he may sound arrogant when he is seen in the second face, give him a night to sleep, he will come back with his first face and impress you with his developmental agenda.
Over the last three days, the way he has used his strength to snub one of the greatest lawyer, strategist and political manager, Arun Jaitley is praiseworthy, infact looks like, many central leaders wanted to come down to Bangalore for choosing the new chief minister and building their own image as crusaders against corruption. But, when they saw Yediyurappa’s strength and aggression, I guess they decided to stay back in Delhi quietly giving the orders over the phone.
One may say, Yediyurappa also would have the same fate as Karunanidhi in the next elections, but they live the king’s life in wielding the power and arm twisting anyone who comes in their way. MK is Bishma Pitamaha of arm twisting in the modern India, now Yediyurappa has only showed couple of learnings he had learnt.
There is one more trait of Yediyurappa which is noblest – Sacrifice. He truly believes in sacrificing for the benefit of the people of Karnataka but only difference is he will sacrifice others.
His divine intervention seeking and temple hopping spree was another notable practice to follow.
For his sheer guts, never-leave-the-chair and keeping the right people in good humor, DK Bose has Yediyurappa as his role model. It is true even for the next generation and for all who values over means, Yediyurappa is the right role model to emulate. Isn’t it?

Management by inflicting guilt

2011-07-30T21:56:00.000+05:30

Management theories have professed the virtues of professional management styles like Management by Objectives, Proactive management and so on. But, many, deep within themselves tend to manage others by inflicting guilt in others. In the case of extreme, many have made it as part of their personality, most will use it selectively. Even in casual conversations, they will try to take the person into control by inflicting guilt.
You commonly hear professional managers saying that they did something keeping the other person in mind, now if the other person has changed the plan, the whole scenario will get into crisis. People who have habit of saying – only for you, only because of you, only if you agree – you can be assured that they will back to you to inflict guilt if you don’t toe their line. Most often, they would only have assumed the other person will listen to them or will be in their control, but when the other person tries to slip away, they inflict guilt.ou when they
Also, whoever glorifies the missed opportunities; you can safely expect them to control you through the same strategy.
Some of them have this trait in their blood, use this strategy involuntarily to take control of the other person always. Even in simple cases like, if someone doesn’t pick up their phone call, they will say, they called so many times and had some important thing with them. People who lack confidence or live in the past, will use this strategy very regularly.

What do you say?

2011-07-20T07:32:00.002+05:30

1. People, who speak less, normally will be more positive and less egoistic.
2. Optimistic people will have time under the control. They are very comfortable with the delays. While pessimistic people gets stressed out with delays.
3. For genuine positive people, if someone thinks negatively about an issue, they infact respect it as – getting into depth. Whereas people with negativity will find mistakes even in Gods.
4. Some have take it very cool when others around are tensed about something ( at home, like getting late to function). Same person becomes highly tensed in similar situation but without the ‘most tensed’ person being around
5. Person who speaks more, is naturally more egoistic, wants to show off with supposed to be superior possessions (knowledge, materialistic, concern).
6. People, who confess regularly of their wrong doings, are more vulnerable to do bigger atrocities.
7. People who are low in confidence, vent their frustration on (even shout at) people with perceptible inadequacies. Also, finds mistakes in others.
8. More the gossip, more the negativity a person will have with all the unprocessed information.
9. Once a person gets treated as chela from his leader, he has a great urge to treat someone as chela. Though it is commonly seen amongst politicians, if you look closely, it is same in every walk of life. In office, if one is good in buttering one’s superiors, same protocol is expected from people under.
10. Penny wise and pounds foolish – worry more about the cash outflows of small money, care less about the cash inflows, and Risk aversion to the core. More short term orientation than long term view. On the other side, person who is generous with his small money, will have mindset tuned to acquire bigger money.
11. As wise as the last person one meets or book one reads- Many are highly influencable, they think they are learning good things from others, but involuntarily they would have got their antennas for getting influenced. `
12. People who are interested in resolving things are good in managing ego, while if interested only in ego, then the result becomes secondary

Taking a high moral stand point.

2011-07-17T19:40:00.002+05:30

Many have a habit of taking a high moral stand point on every issue. Because of inspiring stories we have heard from childhood and moral classes in the school, it is ingrained in some that taking a moral stand point on every issue is a right thing to do. It has just stopped in taking the standpoint anud passing the judgments. It becomes highly preaching in every situation and most often it sounds hypocritical.
Initially, with all good intentions, one puts an effort to take a high moral stand point - I support right, I condemn wrong. Over a period of time, some will get over it and some will stick to it, and make it part of their personality. It becomes unbearable when on every issue they have control or not, they will start taking such standpoints and pass comments.
Commonly, people talking about corruption, traffic violations or even rituals, they talk as if they always stand for the right. Given a chance to benefit from the same violations or enjoy such priviiliges, I guess many would have done it naturally. So, only when things are not favorable to them individually, they take a moral high ground.
At individual level, they become very agitated and carry lot of negativity because of their accumulation of all the memories and experiences where others were wrong morally and ethically. Also, they create a internal pressure for themselves to be seen doing things right.
Because of this habit of taking high moral stand point, they become highly rigid on what they can do or can’t do. At times, they stop taking responsibility of resolving any crisis or set right things because they always believed what was done earlier was not right, hence they don’t want to resolve it.
Whereas for them, I guess it is a very ego boosting thing that makes them think – others are wrong, I AM right.

Men with a feminine voice.

2011-07-17T07:56:00.000+05:30

One thought came to me while I was watching one of the successful personalities on TV – he had a feminine voice – Does this feminine voice has no role in his brain development of a man. Initially it was just a funny thought, when I started around and thinking about, I felt actually there is a pattern. Every man will have different levels of feminine characteristics; it is only the degree that differs.
There are some successful and famous men who have a strong feminine voice, it may look it is purely coincidental, but if you look closer, they are very intelligent, highly aspirational and articulate. Also, they are all very pleasant looking. I have no idea of the biology behind such a phenomenon, but I feel they have something in them which is not there in most others. There are innumerable examples of men in the public domain who have feminine voice who are highly successful. For me more than their success, I admire their clarity of thinking and finesse with which they deal with others. Moreover, with all the rigmaroles of being or becoming successful, they are at peace with themselves. They are very comfortable on their journey and savior the results comfortably.
One level below this, many men would like to do household work – cook, cleaning taking care of the guests. It is not like helping their ladies in the inevitable situations; these men like and find comfort in doing these things. While most take to it as punishment to do the household work, whereas the men I am referring to are genuinely interested in these things. If you observe them closely, they are very contented with themselves. I guess their brain wiring would be such that, it gives them a perfect balance between the external world and internal world. Even at psychological level, I guess they get comfort from these chores.
Going below this level, men with penchant for too much of talking and gossip are bound to have miserable life. They inherit the wrong characteristics that create lots of negative energy in them.
Another small set of guys with husky voice, who I have not met anyone personally, but I feel they have completely different wiring of their brains.
Having superficially looked into men with feminine characteristics, next immediate question is – what about ladies with manly voice and other characteristics. I accept my complete ignorance on this subject; request others to comment on that if they have any observations and thoughts.

DK Bose’s view on the recent protest against Trees felling on Sankey Road.

2011-07-16T18:30:00.001+05:30

In the recent times, BBMP cutting down 17 trees for road widening on Sankey Road created a lot of headlines. It galvanized environmentalists and rich & famous citizens of Bangalore together to protest against the cutting. It is altogether a different topic on how BBMP went on chopping trees in the night, inspired by the recent evacuation of Baba Ramdev from Ramlila grounds; we will focus here on the protest. With concern towards greenery in Bangalore and socially conscious, felling of trees is obviously atrocious which has to condemned
Once in a while, It is better to shed the society conscious perspective and take a DK Bose perspective ( like the way Aamir khan risked to Incorporate a character called DK Bose in his latest movie ‘Delhi Belly’, which goes against his image of making socially relevant movies like TZP, Lagaan). So here is my DK Bose’s perspective.
Residents of aristocratic Sadashivanagar had for the first time came out of their Ivory towers to the streets when they realized they are losing lung space and beauty of their place for road widening and easing out the traffic. For them, personally it was definitely a loss, because even if they lose greenery, they don’t gain anything – it has no impact on their travelling time. They will hardly use to that stretch of the road (where trees are cut). This road widening will only help motorists from downstream areas. So, there was an every reason for them to protest. No doubt, their argument is socially relevant.
You can relate this to – advising person suffering from a serious disease with surgery being the only option to survive, to do yoga and undergo naturopathy instead of surgery, will you listen to such advice and are you sure of recovery? Instead whether it is good or bad, one has to go for a surgery if one wants to survive or leave to the God. It is same here, traffic is choking there and one has to undergo the surgery or or leave it to the god. I guess, here you can’t leave it to the god, only option is surgery. Like yoga and naturopathy work if practiced early in the life as well as for long time. Equally, greenery can be retained if the development plan is planned well in advance with a long term perspective.
Were they not aware that one day sankey road has to be widened with media drumbeating about growth in Bangalore economy, thousands of vehicles getting added every day and thousands of people migrating into Bangalore. This was bound to happen; Bangalore roads have no magic wand to take infinite numbers of vehicles on them. Every second house in the neighborhood has a high and mighty person connected with the government, why didn’t go and tell them years back about the Bangalore development model is skewed up, one day it is going to hit them also.
All these years, They would have exploited the situation, built layouts, sold cars to the many gullible people, now when it comes to their own backyard, they act as if they are ‘holier than the rest’.
Have they ever thought that their new and unlimited acquisitions of cars and houses will add to the congestion and pollution? Have they ever foregone slightest luxury? Have you ever set an example of using public transport? When hundreds of huge and old trees were getting cut elsewhere for METRO RAIL, did they go and fight? Now they are fighting because it is in their backyard and expects others to fight for them.
Have you not seen in movies – goondas groom chelas to strengthen their gang, but eventually their own chelas become their own nemesis. Here the smart exploited the opportunities, pumped up the economy and now the same ‘economy growth’ is becoming their nemesis.
All megapolies and metropolies in the west have gone through this killing of nature to enable the growth in economy. Some have been smart enough to artificially transport and plant the trees, to make the city beautiful. So, with the real estate prices making everyone rich, can afford to have pacemakers in their hearts as well as new set of transplanted trees on the roads once the landscape of the flyovers and underpasses gets ready.
Tree and Green lovers, I know DK Bose has hurt you.

One size fits all

2011-07-07T08:48:00.000+05:30

At some point of time in our lives, every one of us would have advised some one or the other. How many of us understand that other person’s situation, challenges on hand and his / her solutions. We look for a small thread in the problem that fits into our thinking and take off from there. If the themes are generic, we tend to try to fit them in every situation, whereas if the mind is running with a focused and pointed theme, I guess we would not like to talk about it outside. So, it is the generic theme that gets customized into solutions for every one’s challenge.
Even the reticent ones tend to speak without a break if they can find a thread to their dominant theme. One simple example is – if someone has reduced his / her weight, even to the unknown people, they will talk endlessly on how to reduce the weight, how they feel post that and so on. I wonder, everyone wants to talk, provided they are comfortable with the topic and sure of the audience.
When I reflect, I find that at any point of time, I will couple of dominant themes running in my mind. So, whoever I met during that time, these dominant themes in my mind will become the major tools for problem dissection and solutions.
Few years back before I started a company, for anybody’s professional aspiration, entrepreneurship was my solution. I have eaten up so many people heads on this entrepreneurial thing.
While running the company, it was all about approaching challenges – converting them into opportunities. Anybody who met me during that time, it was the same mantra.
For couple of years after I wound up my company, I was totally against starting a software company. I have dissuaded so many people from starting, quoting my experience. (I feel management theories are equally to be blamed, they say, to be successful one not only learn from one’s mistakes but also from others’ experiences). Now I can only laugh at myself and pity the people who listened to me.
For many years, for all the problems in the government and public policy areas, ‘Zero Corruption’ was the only solution I can think of.
Now, for every aspiration and misery, my only solution is spirituality for the people in misery, farming for the middle aged and writing for the youngsters.
Having said all this, these days I have realized that everyone has got his own life to lead so no external analysis or solution is required. Everybody is living their life in accordance to their own karma. If someone is highly corrupt – so be it, he is meant to be. Similarly if someone aspires to be an entrepreneur, better he explore.
Our analysis and solutions for the problems are merely reflection of our minds at that point of time. It is not complete and there is nothing right or wrong about it. Consciously one has to come out of this ‘One size fits all’ kind of mindset.

You are neither a leader nor a follower

2011-07-06T22:19:00.000+05:30

This is one of the comments I receive very frequently from one of the very senior persons I know. His point of view is, people belonging to both these category will lead life with clarity and most often achieve what they want.
On one side, leaders will be very clear about what their capabilities, have idea on what they want, how they want to approach the task at hand and know gaps that they need to fill to reach their goals. Once they are clear, their focus will be on the goal, they manage people around them appropriately and reach their goal.
On the other side, follower will also have very good clarity on his / her life, based on the aspirations, he will identify a right leader and align with the leader. The moment someone accepts a leader, lot of contradictions will get resolved automatically as it is the leader who decides. If you look closely, they are as smart as the leaders, because they have clear goals, know their strengths and weakness, and find a right guru. Initially they will question, but once they convinced out of reasoning or compulsion, they will follow the leader. Aren’t they smart?
If you observe, both these people will know very well on how to manage their egos as well as manage different personalities well. Also they will have smooth journey, for most part of their life. They may or may not reach their goals, but the journey will be smooth and for all practical purposes they are happy.
Though most want to be leaders and think they are leaders, it is their external façade, internally they want security of someone handholding them. Another cause is, today in professional world, everyone is called as a ‘Leader’ to motivate as well as to make them as followers. People would accept you very well if you call them as leaders but get very annoyed if they are called followers of somebody. Also, people who genuinely follow leaders out of compulsion would see nothing wrong in such position.
So, naturally people who don’t belong to both these category are bound to be unhappy and expected to be a failure. I guess it is what is seen externally, it feeds and tunes their ego appropriately. Over a period of time, both these people will suffer when they have no one as followers or no one to lead them.
On a different plane altogether, if a person is neither interested in leading nor following, will have less headaches to manage and few unresolved contradictions in life. Isn’t it?

Selling in an Exhibition

2011-07-06T16:23:00.000+05:30

Coupe of weeks back, One weekend I manned a stall in Handicrafts exhibition at Chitrakala Parishat. Someone wanted a volunteer to man the stall, spread good word about organic cotton and make some sales in the process. Organic cotton is really beautiful thing, I got to know lot about the value chain in making a dress from cotton to yarn to fabric to dress, whereas technically from cotton to bailing to spinning to weaving to design to stitching. Significant portion of chemicals in the world seem to be put on textiles, Man is not just eating the chemicals and fertilizers, carrying on him /her every minute. Also, there are lot of unwanted steps are introduced in the making of textiles which are absolutely useless. I believe most of it is introduced because Britishers wanted to transport the cotton to factories that are centralized at faraway places. Some bit of knowledge on textiles I could get in those three days. Met some very interesting people from organic cotton growers and weavers community there, lot to learn. Regarding my experience of selling there, there are interesting observations about men and women on shopping.
Some people especially women are highly aware of Organic cotton, were keen to add more organic stuff to their wardrobe. Women do lot of shopping.
Normally, women like stuff that is attractive and colorful, since our stall had only cream colour ( natural colour without any dyeing) , many didn’t even go into the designs. It is display, crowd, colors , designs and price – in that order decides footfalls into a stall.
Women like to day dream, so allow them to hold dresses on them, for few seconds they imagine how they would look in that dress, what will be the comments from the people that matter, then they make their decision.
Though our products were priced bit expensive because of the organic inputs and the design quotient, many working women didn’t even check the price before they made the decision. Because we had some interesting designs and having displayed them well, I could see a prospect in people by the way they were looking at our stall. Probably because of the quality of the products, our conversion success rate was high. Though Alessandra (Italian, leader of this NGO – weavers’ wheel) had advised us to spend more time on spreading the word about Organic cotton and the work done with the farmers and weavers. Tell me, how many shoppers will have time to know about the work, they are all in a hurry to maximize the ‘returns’ (I mean more buys) for the time they are spending at the exhibition. Very few had ear for our stories.
Women, if they are with their friends or family, they do lot of discussion, but they buy at the end of it. If the group is in jovial mood, you can expect competitive sales.
Decision to buy the first one takes time, once they are convinced, the following purchases take a fraction of time. It is only accumulation thereafter.
College going girls are good for window-shopping, if not accompanied by their parents, better not to spend time on them.
Old men like lot of stuff, they like their wife and daughters to look beautiful but are very conservative.
Young men are the quick decision makers, they want to impress their ladies, so quite generous. Once they are late 30s, I guess stinginess is written all over them.
Many people especially the middle class men are very skeptical of anything ‘Organic’, they think it is new buzz word in the market, they feel it is essentially the same product that gets re-branded as ‘Organic’. I guess I have convinced few of them about the real organic and its merits.
Some funny incidents too –
One lady wanted to check out a dress – something like a salwar, she was not sure of the size. She was bold enough to try out one on her existing dress itself. Some ladies shopping in other stalls were curious to know what is so funny happening near our stall. They all came, just by looking at that dress on her, 4 of that dress were sold in a minute. In fact I offered her a deal – wear that dress and stand in front of our stall, we will sell all our stock and we will gift her one. Incidentally, got to know that she herself is a fashion designer,
One lady wanted to buy an expensive dress for her daughter, she wanted to buy ‘S’ size, whereas her husband was not interested in buying (of course because it was expensive), since wife was clear, he wanted to go for ‘M’ since their daughter may outgrow ‘S’ soon. But the Home minister snubbed him so badly and bought ‘S’. That guy was really looking like a bhakra. I think he is paying up for some of his past mistakes.
One government official’s wife had an assistant following her. She was only picking up what she linked and he was paying and carrying her bags. Once in a while she was checking with him on the money he paid. Luxury of a different nature.

Signs of a good health

2011-07-06T16:21:00.000+05:30

This is the most common question that every one of us would have at any point of time. All of us are not sure whether we are keeping good health, how to get it checked and should we visit the doctor for checkups. Even if there is no physical pain anywhere in the body (which by itself is highly improbable these days), there is a tension in the mind about the health.
Here is a simple approach – if one has ‘Yes’ as the answers for all of the following, then only one can safely assume that health is good, body is ticking along well.
1. Undisturbed and deep sleep in the night, neither feeling sleepy throughout the day nor getting up hours before the alarm goes off. If one gets up consistently when the alarm rings ( and snoozing off) is a good sign of good sleep. One can know his state of deep sleep by self, because lot of people sleep long but get lots of nightmares in their sleep. It is precursor to the crisis in the coming days.
2. Good bowl movement in the morning – without any major inductive addictions, if one is able to pass the motion in the morning, it is a great achievement by itself. It is highly neglected trend that most miss out to follow. If one feels light after the bowel movement, general mood will be better for the rest of the day. You would have seen lot of people are addicted to different triggers like Coffee, tea, cigarettes and news paper reading to induce the pressure.
3. If one burps regularly, system is going wrong.

If none of these are the problem areas, one can be happy about their health.

Baba Ramdev and Rogue Jumbo.

2011-06-11T09:36:00.002+05:30

Week passed by, media was full of these two news – Baba Ramdev and Rogue Jumbo. Though I didn’t watch or read much about them. I see a lot of similarities between both the actions, maybe there is an interesting insight that is getting missed in the clamor.

On one side, Rogue jumbo is really frustrated that there is no freedom to live in the forests. Humans are converting forest space, cutting down the trees or encroaching in the name of agriculture or eco-tourism. Though elephants are pampered, brought down to cities or temples and artificially taken care as they have some religious value and entertain humans at large, some elephants might still want to live in the forests and on their own terms. Also, I guess they naturally want to eat something they want and not what is fed by the humans. With dwindling forest space, exploitation of natural resources and increasing human intervention, may be this jumbo is really frustrated, set out to hunt bamboos or food they wanted, and landed in Mysore. Once it landed with its small family, people irritated them by pelting stones and jeering, so they went berserk. It went all over Mysore, tried crossing tall compound wall and created fear.

Though I know Baba Ramdev’s yogasanas and positive impact it has had on the people, I don’t have much knowledge of his intentions and interests. Apparently, he is also frustrated that he and fellow Indians deserve better governance at all levels. He seems to have quietly burning with the corruption in the system especially at the high places. His prescription again is, living the life naturally without too much of consumerism, dependence on foreign nations and corruption. His well known logic is, if the money that is parked in tax heavens is brought back, all the development work can be done without any debts, India can be self sufficient and Indians can live happily. So, he set out to Delhi to look for his food which is snatched from him by the corrupt, started his fast with his small band of followers. He was very aggressive, spewing venom on the corrupt and literally created fear for the government.

In the end what happened? In Mysore, after a riot for one day, Rogue Jumbo was sedated, chained and taken back to his home – forest. In Delhi, Ramdev was too sedated with a different type of pill in the midnight and taken back to his home – Haridwar.

Because, Elephant is expressing its frustration in a rebellious way and causing disturbance to the humans, humans immediately called it is ROGUE. Baba Ramdev confronted the government on a very fundamental issue; government was quick to brand him as AGENT, and now X-Raying his life to find mistakes.

Rogue jumbo is expressing its frustration as well as of its fellow elephants in particular and forest animals in general – concern for off-balance in the nature, humans’ with their ability to think and exploit are overdoing it at the cost of the others. Animals are deprived of their place and freedom to live.

Similarly, Baba Ramdev is expressing his frustration as well as millions of Indians’ – corruption is tilting the balance towards powerful and rich, who are exploiting the rest. Common man is deprived of their rights.

thin lines between

2011-06-10T21:19:00.000+05:30

Continuing the ‘Grossly misused’ post, there are so many behaviors that share a thin line with others. Though
1. Assertiveness and Arrogance. Most of the management theories suggest that one has to be assertive in most of the situations, which people literally make it part of their personality. Over a period of time, they will unconsciously become Arrogant.
2. Straight forwardness shares a very thin line with Sadism – many people think it is divine gift and takes lot of guts be a straight forward, unless they are aware of when to be one, most often, it will be a façade for their sadism.
3. Innovative financial engineering and Fraud. Most of the scams actually start with the innovative financial engineering, will initial get lots of recognition and rewards. With some more ingenuity, it will become Fraud. Look at all the scamsters in the financial markets; they were darlings of the world till one day before their scam was made public. Kanimozhi of 2G, Ramlinga Raju of Satyam.
4. Self deprecation and depression – one of the notorious ways of being humble is to degrade self. If practiced it for some time, can’t make out a difference with the depression.
5. Openness and hurt ego – some people think being open is to vent out everything from frustration to personal to excitement with everyone. Many a times, even when they meet someone for the first time, they will wash their linen in the public as if its lifelong friend.

Call from a number starting with +37...

2011-06-04T09:39:00.002+05:30

Over the last one week, I have been regularly getting a call from this number, mainly at odd hours – around midnight or wee hours in the morning, early in the morning. I checked on the net, this code +37 is from some unknown country, Estonia. May be if I had the ISD facility on my cell, I would have called, but since I don’t have, I didn’t bother to call that number back. Once when the phone was in normal mode, ringing was very brief, may be 3 secs. Then I thought someone is deliberately giving me a brief missed call to call them back. Unlike my normal tendency, this time I neglected.

Same evening, one of my friend Mr.N called me, he said he is got trapped in a scam; I thought he is kidding as it is the seasons of scams all over the place. I thought he is talking about one of those scams or making fun of the characters involved there. Then he said, he has been getting calls from +37, I became alert. He is also been getting lot of missed calls from this number, again at around 3:30 AM – 4:30 AM. For 3 days, he is not taken them seriously, but 2 days back, while talking to his wife, he has mentioned about this. Casually, she has asked him to return the call and check what is the issue? Again yesterday, again he got a call at 4:30 AM, since he was given permission to return the call, he has called that number. In no time, someone has picked and greeted him, and surprisingly, the guy on the other side is an Indian, Rahul Sharma, he says he is in Mumbai.

Why that guy is trying to reach him? He says there is an offer from NOKIA for giving away some Mobile Phone to privilege callers. Why calling at unearthly odd hours? Because the scheme gets over by 6 AM Indian time. When Rahul asked him for his mobile no, being alert, Mr.N has asked him to check his call registry, but Rahul being the ringmaster, it would take time to find the number, since the offer is coming to close at 6AM, and he would want the details quickly. Mr.N meekly has given his number and postal address. Meanwhile, Mr.N has figured out the guy on the other side is operating out of a call centre as there was lot of activity around him.
Mr.N is a very smart cookie, voracious reader of English fiction and classic, after having his morning coffee, his regular brain started reflecting the incident, has checked his call register, and he has spoken for 9 minutes. He has gone on the net and tried tracing the number; no details are available except that it is from a service provider in Estonia. Now, his mind starts working, wondering why someone has called him to give him a NOKIA mobile phone, it has dawned on him - it is a SCAM.

Only consolation is, he has not shared any bank or card details. He is now wondering on how it could impact him.

1. Easy way, the call he returned can be a Paid call, which charges the caller exorbitantly, and pass on a cut to scamster.

2. Since he has shared his name and phone number, they may map and try to hack his online accounts

I know, I am making it look very funny, but he is quite angry with himself on how he being so aware of the technologies and tricks of these scamsters, can fall prey for one.

As I am writing this, I remember one incident in which one of my close friends had fallen prey for such spams. Couple of years back, one fine day, he received a mail from someone offering him a very good job in one of the British companies with a fat pay (really, it is mindblowing no). The sender was again a very intelligent fellow, in the mail he had mentioned that he has met this Mr.S in some conference, has evaluated him and found him suitable for the post. Mr.S wanted a break in his career; he exchanged some mails, even had a telephonic conversation and then decided to take the job. His plan was to go to UK alone, leaving his family back home. But, somehow I was not convinced with the mail and contents. My take was – how can a company offer such a huge salary without proper scrutiny. Since it was a very big move for him, I asked him to check their website, get their number and call the company directly. When he called, he got the shock of his life; there is no one with that name there.

It is tumultuous period for the guys who get struck in one.

Under the Richmond circle flyover

2011-06-04T09:38:00.000+05:30

Few months back, around 6PM on Friday, it had just then stopped raining, there was a cool breeze, I opened my car windows just to have some breeze. I was driving on double road, going towards Richmond circle. Traffic was ok, I had stopped in the signal. When the signal was about to change to green, I saw one guy carrying some files in his hands, walking towards my car, he was almost hitting mirror on the right side. I thought he was drunk, doesn’t have control on himself. In fact his hand hit my back door, files and papers fell over the ground. Signal turned green, people beyond me started honking, whereas I was concerned about his safety, so I was looking at him. I started moving, I crossed 20 meters, I just checked my left seat for my Nokia N63 phone, I didn’t find it.

I realized someone has flicked it from the window, when I recollected the sequence of events happened a minute back, I got it. He has done it deliberately to divert my attention and his accomplice has taken away the loot.

Immediately I rushed back to that junction, I tried alerting the policeman there, he was busy harassing an auto driver for a bribe. Policeman didn’t have any patience for me, his point lot of people move around there; he has no idea about such people. He was asking me if I can stand there, identify that person and then he will catch him. I said thanks and left the place.

Grossly misused

2011-06-04T09:36:00.002+05:30

Being Practical, Responsible, out-of-the-box-thinker, theoretical, strategic, honest, commitment, conscientious – we hear these words very frequently. Since everyone has heard these words, they are casually used to twist their arguments in their favor. For ex:-

if someone can’t stretch his / her brains to think a better solution to the problems in professional or personal life, they will say their way of doing things are ‘the practical’ way.

Another favorite escapade for people is ‘out of the box thinking’, their mind will not be able to focus on one thing especially issue on hand, they will start thinking on various things and keep dropping random ideas. Glorify themselves as ‘out of the box thinkers’.

Many don’t want to go deeper into the problem; it will be termed as theoretical. For genuine plagiarizers from books, their ideas are more sacrosanct than being theoretical.

For some, you being responsible is; doing things their way or cover up their mistakes.

For anything, everything or lack of it, people say it is a strategy.

If they can’t win any argument, they will use this as a final weapon – ask your conscience, do what it says.

There are so many of these words and phrases, which people use without any inhibitions, you can do nothing but laugh.

Life is like a bus stand - beautifully paradoxical

2011-05-29T12:29:00.001+05:30

I have heard this many times, I guess may be from the local films - life is like a bus stand. In central bus stands like majestic, every minute you will see buses arriving and departing, constant churn of people, every one carry their own baggage, some hiring coolies to carry the luggage, utter chaos yet things will move on, at times (morning) you may find people arriving, while in the evening, you may see more people depart

Same in life, isn’t it? At any given point of time, in our life, amongst people around us, we will see one set of people moving into one hypothesis, while another moving away from that hypothesis. Instead of analyzing, by observing, you will see life is like a bus stand – beautifully paradoxical

• Some want to live comparing themselves with others, while some want to live for themselves
• Some want to go behind others, while some want others to come behind
• Some judge others by their limitations, while some judge others by other’s limitations
• Some feed their ego by seeing misery elsewhere, while some secure their ego by not seeing misery
• Some women want to quit their jobs to take care of their family, while some want to get into a job for better future of their family.
• Some look everything from the caste system, while some want to go beyond it
• Some think world will survive with nuclear medicine, while some are averse to word – nuclear, in all aspects
• Some parents push kids because they think kids have lot of potential, while some push their kids because they are less capable.
• Some want to leverage their friends network, while some want to learn to be independent
• Some eternally want to go after greener pastures, while some don’t want to cross the shores
• Some want to work harder in their careers, while some want to take it very light
• Some see entrepreneurship as their moksha path, while some are desperate to get into a regular job

Isn’t it paradoxical, yet beautiful. Expecting the sum total of all the good things they hear in a person is a dangerous trend that will add lot of misery, else it is fun to observe and enjoy.

PS:-Though this article is more on the paradox of life, as I write, I remembered couple of very talented guys I know, who had a huge fascination towards the bus stands it seems. For several years, I believe they use to just go, sit in the bus stands for hours, watching people, movement, chaos and life in general. Now, I feel their experiences can provide enough material for a movie or a novel.

Recent Reading...

2011-05-25T17:48:00.003+05:30

Recently, I read few books, mainly autobiographies and teachings of rishis, yogis and gurus. Here are some of them.

books on a) Ramana Maharishi’s teachings, b) Reminisces of experiences with Ramana Maharishi c) The Path of Ramana 1 & 2, Sadhu Om – read couple of them cover to cover, some in parts. Teachings of Ramana Mahrishi is very straight forward – Path to self realization is Enquiring Self and understand ‘Who am I?’, go to the core of ‘I’, observe from where this thought ‘I’ arises and annihilate it there itself. Thanks to Bala, I get to learn new things about Ramana Maharishi’s teachings and experiences of his disciples. Sadhu Om’s books on maharishi’s teachings is very hard hitting, he will argue without end to explain why Maharishi’s teachings are accurate at every level as well as from different angles. With lot of meditation and maturity of the mind, one may get a glimpse of Maharishi’s teachings. Long way to go for me.

In quest of god, Papa Ramdas – very small book, man from north kerala / Mangalore area, with great devotion to lord Rama, goes around the country from kanyakumari to Himalayas to Belur Math to Dwarka to Pandaripur. Being a true believer in lord Rama, he travels length and breadth of the country ticketless and moneyless, his philosophy is – he knows only true love of Rama, nothing other than that.

Autobiography of a yogi, Paramhansa Yogananda – Normally, this book is read in the college days, around the same time one reads Ayn Rand to choose the grounding for their thought process and the value system, but I never had the confidence of reading such books in my college days. This is written for mainly western audience enticing them to pursue the path of self enquiry. Like other gurus’, his end goal of his teachings are knowing the truth and self realization. He has a great teacher of Kriya yoga, which was reestablished by Babaji, a process to mould the mind and body, and expedite the path to realization. He is from lineage of Babaji, Lahiri Mahasaya and tutelage of Yukteswar, from a well-to-do Bengali family, somehow inclined towards spirituality from the very young age, from the beginning gets support from his mother in his journey. Based on the wishes of his gurus, he dedicated himself to teach Kriya yoga in particular, eastern philosophy to the western world, which according to Babaji, have to learn a lot from eastern teachings. Though there is quite a bit of explanation on the miracles, I guess it is only to explain the natural powers of some of the great gurus, but not to get side tracked. Has a very good eye-opening explanation on physical, astral and causal bodies. His strong belief as well as learning is; Proper Guru is essential for spiritual journey.

Apprenticed to a Himalayan Master, Sri M – Interestingly, this is a autobiography of a living guru, Sri. Mumtaz Ali (M) from Trivandrum, apprenticed to Yogi Maheswaranath in Himalayas for 3 ½ years, now with his wife and children settled in Madanpalle (3 hours from Bangalore). I had heard of him 8 years back from a good friend of mine, Aditya and intermittently read about his teachings in the newspaper, but didn’t make any serious attempt to learn more. Like Paramhansa Yogananda, he was also initiated and guided by one of the direct disciples of Babaji. Though being a Muslim from birth, from his childhood, he seems to be interested in yoga, meditation and Indian scriptures. With strong conviction at the age of 19, he leaves home and travels to Himalayas to find his guru. One thing is for sure, it is very tempting to wander aimlessly in Himalayas. After initial wandering, he finds his guru in Himalayas, gets into an apprentice program for 3 ½ years under his guru. Looks like it is all predetermined, his guru meticulously plans his stay with him, teaches him about life, hindu scriptures and gets him to work under or meet gurus of various religion, Order, science to learn comprehensively about all facets of life and spirituality. His stay at Jiddu Krishnamurthi in Chennai is interesting to read. He was advised by his guru to live like a simple family man with worldly pressures and guide his students like the way he got apprenticed.

I have just started the journey, still crawling, I am sure to hit upon escape velocity or disillusionment few years down the line depending upon my sincerity and devotion.

Reading complete works of Swami Vivekananda, Have some books from Shri.Aurbindo, not matured to read yet. Keen to read some divergent thoughts from Jiddu.

Contradictions in thoughts, words and actions

2011-05-25T11:06:00.003+05:30

In this competitive world, in both professional and personal relationships,one has to sell (or most often oversell) the actions. it is obvious, since words precede actions, most often decisions or conclusions made based on teh words, people tend to focus more on words. it is not just in the 'sales', it is applicable to every day of our life.

There are several levels of contradictions between one’s thoughts, words and actions. Every one of us will have these contradictions, the difference is only the ‘degree of contradiction’. I guess this is mainly because of the individual self and the environment in the childhood days. Contradiction between word and action are easily visible to the external world as well as to the individual.

Many who are ignorant and less-smart, are careless about expressing their opinions and beliefs in certain way, and not backing up with their actions. Over a period of time, they get branded and their words will have less weightage. They will not be even aware of their habit of contradicting, as they are unconscious of it.

Whereas, some smart guys will ensure they will have different facades with different people, appropriately they try to manage their words and actions. Most often, they will seldom express their opinions in the public thinking that they will not get scrutinized for their actions or in-actions. They will have select few who they will be very comfortable with, they will show up their contradiction in their words and actions. They will be aware of their own contradictions, they will live with it because they all think it is required to survive and succeed in this competitive world.

But the dangerous lot is who have contradiction between their own thoughts and words. They are the smartest of all; they will have different thoughts but they will process it so much, by the time they speak, they will distort it completely. They will be the acting in one way or the other throughout their life. Over a period, they will condition themselves and get into the trap, it may not be externally visible and hence they will maintain their consistency with their words. Have you observed their body language? They will be behave in one way when they are alone and completely different when others are around. As they are very smart, they will manage their actions to match their words. Unlike the first two cases, these guys will have to manage the situation on their own without any constructive feedback.

Initially, they take up to this as a way to maintain certain image, but they get conditioned so much, they will become prisoner of their own tactics. They may perceive that their actions are in sync with the words, but internally they will be suffering from the inconsistency. Also, they will be very vulnerable to the thought of losing the façade.

Is it my experience or others’

2011-05-20T20:41:00.001+05:30

These days, when I say something on any issue or problem, I wonder whether it is from my own experience or borrowed it from others or read it in some books. As there are lots of people sharing their experiences available in the books, internet and else where, unknowingly there is a tendency to feel it is my own experience. When I am ‘aware’, I will moderate and put riders to what I am saying, but sometimes it slips and I start speaking as if it is my own experience. Another simple check I have for myself is, will I implement whatever I say? Am I confident of executing by myself, then it is clear, else I am just passing on secondary knowledge. At the end of the day, most of it is borrowed.

I thought this problem is more prevalent in today’s world of information overload, but looks like even our forefathers and great leaders too had such a problem. In one of the autobiographies I read, Leader meets one very intelligent young man who is well learned with lot of knowledge, After listening to him for couple of hours, he asks him point blank – are you saying all this from your experience or from your reading. That gentleman says 50:50. Then leader appreciates both his honesty as well as wisdom. Leader says - many become parasite on the secondary knowledge, foregoing the pleasures of experience. In all ages, all sorts of people will be there, may be proportions will differ.

People read travelogues; they like certain type of travelers, start following writers, they get so involved with the reading and starts imagining that they are actually visiting places. With hundreds of travelogue sites available on the net on every possible destination, people get carried away. All of us will have some interests or the other, and with the tons of information available on the same, we tend to depend on borrowed experiences. Though it is humanely impossible to explore everything first hand, but there has to be a fine balance between self-experience and acquired knowledge.

Also, most of us want to get the fully processed information (almost a decision on behalf of us). With so much information available with extreme and diverse views on anything, finally what matters is experience, mindset and attitude of the individual.

Personally, I have only read very little (almost nothing) that too only off-late, thanks to Bala, Navneet, Jaga and Raghu, and have gained a lot of insights on life.

On professional front, if reading is developed over the hard experience, it will do wonders in expanding the horizons - confidence, problem solving and cerebral capability. Often, we see a off-balance, some believe in their own experience, while others believe in only learning from secondary sources. Both extremes are very inefficient, a balanced approach will benefit.

Slow learners: challenging and commendable journey

2011-05-20T07:31:00.002+05:30

There are a bunch of slow learners in my family and friends’ circle whoare in different stages of their education from Montessori to primary school to high school to graduation. Each of them has their own challenges to perform in today’s competitive world of education. Their tensions also evolve over the phase of their education and increase in magnitude. It is ridiculous to generalize their behavior, but the kids I have seen closely have some common behavioral traits. One common thread they have is they don’t like to mix with too many people especially the so-called intelligent and bright students. In the beginning they will be very natural, express their limitations and interests openly. In this phase, they will be scared of many things. Over a period of time, they will become quite rebellious which manifests in physical aggression. Parents and few matured fellows from friends and family circle will keep motivate, but the society as a whole will be insensitive. This will make kids move into their own shell as they grow up.

I am sure the science and psychology behind the slow learner is very advanced and easily accessible. Also, films like Taare Zameen Par have done well in bringing the issues related to kids’ learning abilities to the forefront, and in the process have helped people accept such kids with open arms. Even with all the support and encouragement, I feel kids go through lot of pressure and humiliation.

When it comes to their parents, often it is very commendable – spending more time with the kids. Learning new ways of teaching, realigning their life to suite the kids needs and dealing with the over inquisitive society.

On one side, with all the knowledge available, parents are far more matured in handling such situations and providing them the right environment to learn at their own speed, but on the other hand, though they are willing to forego the pleasures and glory of success in the mainstream, most often they go through lot of stress in figuring out the interests of their kids as they are normally reticent.

One dilemma they constantly face is, in every aspect of life, whether to force their own decisions or wait patiently to see kids come up with their interests. Lucky few, with few iterations of exploring different interests, kids will show some interest and latch on to one of the interests. In such cases, parents will wholeheartedly encourage their kids. But, quite many will go through this tension regularly, how much time should they give their kids to experiment before focusing on it or shifting to something else.

Also, one of the constant fears of the parents is, in this world of aggressive self marketing to even survive (mandatory to succeed); if their kids don’t speak up, will others not take advantage of them?

Though we keep hearing about the transformation of slow learners into very happy and confident adulthood, but for many parents it is a very challenging journey which requires lot of self-confidence, positive reinforcement and belief.

These days, there are quite a few good teachers around with lot of specialized skills and passion to train these kids. Some of the cases that I have heard about such teachers are really heartwarming.

As always, I have generously (out of ignorance??) given ideas and tips to the parents in managing such kids without having any firsthand experience. When I had a chance to deal with the kids, my true self of being impatient was wide open and failed miserably. It is one of those areas where I have now realized - theorists have no role in tackling the real issues (true for every area).

I would like to share a thought (I know it is out of my idealism) – since fear seems to be a dominant factor in these kids life. Is it possible to talk to them about what they get in their dream state during the sleep – dreams and nightmares? Words can fool, actions might hide, but dreams/nightmares in the sleep seldom mislead one’s true state. Any patterns? any insights?

Indraprastha – A.P.Chandrashekhar’s karmabhoomi and Unlimited Value additions

2011-05-01T20:26:00.001+05:30

When I started writing about Indraprastha, for the first time, choosing a title among the many apt ones was a challenge
• Learn from the nature, respect the nature – key to happy living and sustainable farming
• Malenadu in Mysore, green everywhere and all over.
• How can one make a successful and profitable farm?
• Appropriate technology is what required for the farming, not the mechanized technology

A.P.Chandrashekhar is synonym with organic farming in Mysore. I have heard a lot about him, his farm and his organic shop in Mysore - Nesara. Right at the entrance of the farm, they have put a notice of do’s and don’ts –
• preferably visit farm on Sundays and non-lunch hours (was looking for a desi lunch at a farmer’s place, but gave up the desire immediately after reading this)
• Don’t use mobile phone, don’t pluck, walk only on the path meant for walking, not to walk in between the plants,
• Discussion for process of learning is ok, but not for arguments and many more

Every inch of wall is used for extolling the virtues of nature in general and the benefits of organic farming in particular. There is organic life in every inch of farm. One thing that amazed me is - such a green, diverse farm is irrigated only for 150 hours a year.

Layout of the farm is designed very systematically. Out of total 13 acres, one piece of land of about 4 acres is like a dense forest with coconut, areca nut, banana and lot of wild plants are grown. Interestingly, this piece of land is not irrigated at all, it is rain fed. Here there is a lot of biomass, several layers with different composting ages, while some leaves may take compost in couple of months, coconut leaves may compost in 4 months, coconut tree buds may compost in 8-12 months and coconut shells may take couple of years to fully decompose. It is almost a jungle with several feet high of biomass all over the place, my friend, Amar had a valid question on how one can walk on such a rubble?. Also, there are so many wild weeds grown all over the place, later we learnt that there is commercial use of that too.
While walking around this piece, I was assaulted by the army of mosquitoes to no end, I guess having tasted the organic blood for long they were waiting for chemicalized blood, when they got it they were unable to get over it. For few seconds, after seeing mosquito bites all over my hand and face, I thought I will get chickengunya, but everything was fine after I used mosquito repellant – odomus.

Another piece of land where there lot of fruit trees, grains and vegetables, there is a sprinkler system which feeds water during the summer season (once a week) and rain fed. Here too, it is biomass and no-tilling that keeps it going. All over the farm there are tanks where they dump leaves and organic waste in cow-urine, dung and water to have constant source of organic insecticide.

Only in the small piece of land on the right, where paddy is grown is irrigated and tilled. Here it is flood irrigation. A small nursery where saplings are made for their own use as well as for commercial purposes.

His principle of farming is – Daily harvest, farmer has to harvest everyday throughout the year. His philosophy of life – have respect for the nature and pride in the journey.

They have more than 2500 different species of plants in their farm, He is amazingly logical and categorized plants in his farm from different angles.
1. Trees, plants, shrubs, bushes, tubers
2. Commercial crop, food crop, medicinal crop, ornamental crop, fragrance crop
3. Monsoon, winter crop, summer crop
4. Plants that require bright sunlight, can grow in a limited sunlight, can grow in a shade,
5. Crop that requires lot of water, Crop that requires no water
6. Sowed crop, self growing crop
7. Fence crop, inner crop
8. Agriculture, horticulture, forestry, animal husbandry, honey bee keeping
9. Crop in trenches, crop on mountains
10. Love crop, value crop
11. Crop that eats insects, crop that doesn’t eat insects

This is the first farm I have seen where volume(Length, Width and Height) of the land is considered for growing plants (some trees are tall, some have wide branches, some are grown in between the trees) – his logic is simple, humans have to make use the sunlight fully, only sunlight helps plants / laves in converting the light into food.

There is a kitchen cum store where they process their produce and prepare value added products. It is a full-fledged shop with over 100 items on the shelf. One thing I liked there is a notice – requesting people to pay the listed price considering the hard work and sweat that has gone in the farming to processing, and not resort to bargaining. This is probably because people may like the products but may bargain hard as prices are on the higher side compared to the prices in the regular shops.

There are products from every possible thing – there are standard medicinal products, soaps and toiletries, food grains, vegetables, fruits, jaggery, Jams, pickles, chutneys, juice concentrates, powders (sambar, rasam) and many more. Just to share the innovation of value addition – tidbits from orange and lemon pulp, sugar coated dried sapota, tamarind seeds and jackfruit seeds.

At Indraprastha, I could see multiple potent forces in action –
• 200% passion for agriculture – they’ve identified and grown lot of native plants and crops, at the same time has collected wide variety from far off places – we know 2-3 varieties of blueberrys, there are many different varieties including white and pink ones.
• Mechanical engineer - developed many appropriate tools and machines, using them to make the labor productive and self sustaining for both farming and processing. Rain water harvesting and green gober gas is leveraged well.
• Researcher and Scientist – has done lot of research (including from his homeland – South Kanara) on the value added products in general and food, medicines in particular. Also, developed lot of new products
• Artistic – with the selection of ornamental and medicinal plants, designing the landscape, and using the buds of the trees, branches and other material for designing the artifacts. Garden in front of his house can leave behind any designer garden in front of corporate office.
• teacher and writer – has written lot of books / articles on agriculture, food and health, has places for conducting training and workshops, quotes on the walls are truly thought provoking
• Last but most importantly, has an eye for consumers, market and economic value.

It is an amazing experience to see all these forces in action. Every force, if studied by a student pursuing specialization will get a fellowship. For me, collectively this is what a farmer must aspire for.

Though I am certain I will be making many more visits to Indraprastha, for the first time I felt handicapped without a camera, you all would have surely enjoyed and benefitted with the photos. The other way to look at it is - you all have to make a trip with your families to this farm - learn, enjoy and get mesmerized. Directions are simple – From Mysore, take H.D.Kote road, after around 10 kms, on the left you will see a resort – Chitravana, adjacent to it, take a left turn to Kalalavadi, it is a neat tarred road. Drive for 3 kms, will pass kalalavadi village, and keep going, you will see some heritage farm on the left. Further down, you will see a entrance to Indraprastha – Sustainable organic farm.

Ojas Nisarga - very good organic shop

2011-04-29T12:25:00.002+05:30

While running Pristine consulting, I got to know lot of interesting and talented people. One of them, Srinivas Aithal, head of product engineering at ADS technologies (promoted by the famous cricketer Brijesh patel and was famous for the ubiquitous coin phone booth that once was integral part of all of us). Though embedded software technology was his livelihood, his passion was always ayurveda, organic and khadi. Our team working at his office, myself and some of my friends had instant connection with Aithal and his team (Maiya).

Recently, I heard that they are pursuing their passion and made it as their life. I always knew that they would something in this direction, but seeing them do it full-fledged, is heartening. I was very keen to meet them and see their shop. Last evening, it was raining heavily, but I was quite keen to make it, when I was struggling to get the parking on the busy surveyors street (cross road in Gandhi Bazaar). I looked to my left, pleasantly surprised to see Ojas Nisarga (click here), this is the organic shop; Aithal and Maiya have set up with one of their friends, Subash.

It is a very beautiful and spacious organic shop with lot of fresh vegetables, greens, grains, processed food and some natural cosmetics. Though organic buyers insist on certification for the farmers to make sure that what they are buying is genuine. But, the real challenge would be, farmers who are already starving for funds will have to take extra debts to go for certification. So, these people have taken the tougher route, they regularly visit the farms of all their suppliers / farmers to make sure that they are not using any chemicals and fertilizers. Knowing Aithal’s passion for ayurveda, organic and khadi and active interest in Swadeshi movement, he and his team will ensure they sell genuine organic stuff.

Many of you have asked me where one can regularly buy the organic stuff. Here is a place all of you should visit once; I am sure after that you will visit frequently. Every Friday, they will get a bigger and fresh load of vegetables and greens. Also, you ask for one jaggery, it tastes like chocolate.

Impact of Evolution of Economy and related mindsets on the relationships

2011-04-24T21:38:00.001+05:30

In a simplistic sense, economy has over the centuries has evolved from being agrarian to industrialized to service economy. In between there might be several grey shades of these economies. Over the evolution, one can see the abundance of wealth (basically it is the perception) and change in the attitude towards money and life. If you closely observe, people belonging to each of these economies will have distinct mindsets, and mindset is also evolved along with the economy.

In agrarian economy, mindset is more physical, more closer to the nature, one works hard, does lots of physical work, doesn’t use much of the industrial products, value basic needs, money has little or no role, small community around them is everything for them, experience drives knowledge and respect one who does the job hands-on as well as meticulously

In industrialized economy, the dominant mindset is to make physical labor simpler, focus is leveraging the free time to acquire knowledge beyond experience, so good use tools and gadgets, value money and materials one can buy with the money, starts thinking that one has to exploit nature for man’s benefits, belongs to wider community and respect one who does the job faster.

In service economy, the dominant mindset is knowledge and intelligence oriented, physical labor is required as much as it is sufficient for the health, lord over others as well as the nature, value something intangible beyond physical labor and money, want to work on high value things, rest is good to be outsourced, belong to global community and respect one who has ideas as well as articulates

Each of these mindsets will have appropriate expectations from life as well as others. It is obvious that people belonging to the agrarian economy will like to do physical work and expect physical work, but will not appreciate borrowed knowledge or won’t like to buy too many electronic gadgets. Similarly, people in industrialized economy will value money more than the physical labor.
Though one would like to have iron cast these mindsets with the respective economies, it is not natural right? Also, in a fast growing economy like India and with the global exposure, it is natural to find people belonging to different economies with different mindsets and expectations.

Now coming to the human relationships level, in a given family, most often than not, one will find successive generations (parents / children) belonging to the successive economies. In some cases, because of the conditions and parents’ stranglehold on the family, even successive generations will belong to the same economy. But, it is natural to assume, successive generations will belong to the successive economies, hence with some fights life will go on. With the same logic, relationships between N and N+2 generations will be a bit challenging because of diverse mindsets and expectations; it will only work because of the human factor.

Coming to the relationships between people / families who are at different phases of evolution, will certainly have different mindsets. It is quite a challenge to have a harmonious relationship. Unless the people involved work towards harmonizing, it will be a crisis.

Schizophrenia and split personality disorder

2011-04-24T21:37:00.000+05:30

Because of today’s fast paced life, it is well known that people suffer physically and mentally. Competition is intense, aspirations are sky high, wants are multiplying and on top of it, one has to conserve, hence people are running at speeds which are not matched by the physical, mental and psychological capabilities. Mental ailments manifest very quickly as physical diseases. It is almost individual driven and individual suffers it. Greed, Fear and Insecurity in the minds, combined with sedentary lifestyle is manifesting into Blood pressures, diabetes, heart ailments, and back pain.

Whereas bigger problem one has to understand is psychological manifestation of the mental and physical ailments. Physical diseases are easy to feel as well as diagnose, it is different matter how they are analyzed for the causes. But, psychological disorders require lot of observations and patience. All of us are, to an extent, is Schizophrenic or have split personality disorder. It depends on the degree and clarity on the disorder. Unlike physical problems, here one will keep denying these disorders arguing that the god is cruel to them. Fundamentally, I guess one keeps avoiding the reality will have these behaviors.

Though the diagnosis for these disorders is more observational and pattern based, causes are mainly due to genes, and environment and conditioning during the childhood. For different people, they become dominant disorders in different conditions. Quite often, people mention one has these disorders very casually without much understanding and both of these are confused with each other. So, one has to be very careful while talking about these.

Understanding oneself and looking inwards will help in observing the patterns. Being conscious of them it will neutralize them.

I don’t do farming, I only do harvesting – V.S.Arunachalam of Erode

2011-04-24T21:34:00.002+05:30

Recently, I was planning to go to Madhya Pradesh to visit Deepak Suchde’s farms; he is one of the active farmers and trainer of Natueco farming, which was developed by Mathematics professor, Shripad Dabholkar. It is all about improving the soil fertility through green manure. Since getting train tickets to MP was tough during summer, Mr.Suchde suggested that I visit Arunachalam (Aruna)’s farm in Erode. I had a couple of mail / telephone conversations with Aruna. What attracted to his farm - his confidence and his statement – I don’t do farming, I only do harvesting.

I travelled overnight to Erode -> Gobichetaipalyam (everyone seems to be knowing this place, finally I figured out it is the place of Veerappan) -> puthakarai puthur, last stretch of journey was very beautiful with lot of greenery and designer trees including coconut and toddy trees (toddy trees have special feelings in the hearts of farming community), landed there at 6:15 in the morning. I called him and one young guy came to pick me up at the bus stand, I thought he was Aruna’s son, but he surprised me – he said he himself is Arunachalam.

Started the day with a very good coriander tea, we started the tour in his farm. He has a herd of desi 8 cows and few goats. Apart from their needs for cow’s milk, they use the herd for developing the calves and sell the calves. For him, it is more profitable than selling the milk.

His motto is to make farming a profitable venture from year 1 itself, through making soil fertile. His argument is People from other professions, with lot of cash can invest money and wait for years to get the returns from the farm. How will the farmers survive if they have to invest and wait? So, his focus is on generating income from the farm at the same time improve the soil fertility. His focus is on using the earth to make it fertile instead of any external inputs and making the farming less labor intensive.

He has customized Dabholkar’s way of developing top soil, grows lot of green manure, after 21 days, he adds dry cow dung and ploughs back into the ground. He continues this three times before growing the main crop. He uses bullocks for farming work than any mechanized farming equipment and tractors.

Unlike most of the other farms I have seen in the recent past, he has adopted flood irrigation. According to him, this saves lot of money and effort in maintaining the drip irrigation equipment. Since he has acquired this piece of farm only recently, he is focusing on improving the soil fertility than developing trees or green fence. He is actively growing paddy, sugarcane and banana for commercial purposes, and vegetables for their own consumption.

We walked across the road to their old farm, which is more a forest than a farm. He has a banana plantation with around 2300 and several timber trees. Though banana requires lot of water, he has a very limited water source there. Few things there were kind of fascinating to me
• Banana plants were more like trees, first time I saw such huge ones. Each plant gives around 38 kilos of harvest
• Apart from the fruits, nothing else like leaves or fiber is harvested, left to itself - around 18 inches of biomass which had retained lot of moisture even in the hot summer
• Trenches had lot of biomass and are 40 wide, Once in a while he floods water through these trenches and the biomass around the plants in between the trenches would suck the water
• Continuous regeneration of banana plants – when the main plant reached its maturity, another plant will get developed from one its buds. So, every six months he harvests from one set of plants, adjust to each of them, plant will start growing. So in the last 12 years, around 22-24 cycles of harvesting has been done there.

Outside his farm, he has been doing lot of good work in

• Helping group of farmers in a village near tirunelveli to go organic and be profitable
• Worked with local government in improving the soil fertility of farms after Tsunami, with success there, many governments including Sri Lanka and Indonesia have used his services there.
• Working on reforestation in Malkangiri (recently district collector was kidnapped by Maoists) – where over the years, a large paper factory has caused mass deforestation and soil erosion

Paying property tax to BBMP is very easy now

2011-04-12T20:41:00.002+05:30

Finally, IT has reached the places where it should reach in India, BBMP. One can pay property taxes online ( http://www.bbmp.gov.in/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=681&Itemid=235) , it is very easy and fast. You need to have 2008-09 property tax filing application no or PID (Property Identification) No, to check the past details. Beautiful thing is, if you these nos, tax form for 2011-12 comes auto populated with all the details including the previous years tax paid details, address and personal details( whoever is the IT guy at BBMP who has implemented it - very good job done boss, keep it up). You need to make changes only if it is absolutely necessary and proceed for payment. For some areas ( i guess the ones that are newly added into BBMP) , since they have not yet keyed in the tax details for 10-11, it may not be possible to pay online.

Overall pleasent experience. Good job BBMP on the online front. Hope they do similar job in the physical world.

Superstition and Cricket

2011-04-11T21:00:00.004+05:30

Commuting in Volvo buses has its own charm, wide windows give a beautiful view of the world outside. Today while coming home, It just occurred to me – how passionate Indians are when it comes to cricket. Though I rarely get thoughts and interest to write on weekdays, but was keen to write tonite.

Indians and superstitious beliefs are inseparable, while older generation were superstitious in some areas like marriage and jobs, while middle aged will be superstitious about getting their future, while youngsters will be superstitious about their exams and wants. Every profession has its own set of challenges, risks and aspirations for which people derive strength from their beliefs. Many of them have turned to superstition for self gains and equal number are converted by the national passion i.e., cricket,

Every now and then, we read about players’ superstition and their beliefs. Different players follow different traditions of superstition, while some follow numerology, some follow astrology, some carry good things from their past good matches and some follow bookies. There is nothing unusual about players being superstitious as they are in the thick of action and have a role to play in the outcome of the game. But God up there is very happy and usually favorable to the superstitious beliefs of the fans. Though 11 guys play as a team, thousands in the stadium and millions watching from home will have lot more diverse, unique and peculiar patterns that require lot of attention from the god, to such an extent – baby born on any crucial match day ( like the recent quarterfinal, semifinal and finals) would not have got sufficient attention from the god, will have to do lot pujas to seek God’s attention.

These days you see Mukesh Ambani in the small blue checks shirt and cheering the Indian Cricket team (and now Mumbai Indians). I believe he is very particular about it. Bachchans don’t want to watch the match on TV, because they are afraid that India would lose. There are several such stories and people who have temporal beliefs on their role in making India win, they come and go. But there are few die hard fans who have carried strong and specific beliefs for a long time, have utilized them in match after match, series after series, and have contributed to India’s win for many years.

One such die hard superstitious fan I know and had a privilege to be part of his gang in engineering days is Mr.S. For every challenge and aspiration in life, he had his own superstitious tactic to tackle and achieve it. Leaving everything aside, coming to cricket, for many years, he single handedly won matches for India even in the most difficult times – when mighty Aussies were crushing every other team or when unpredictable Pakistanis use to be very assertive against Indians or when cold war among the Indian players was in peak.

He is a believer of many layers of superstition – starting from wearing a particular shorts to holding a particular engineering book in a upside direction to sitting in a specific position on the sofa (Indian way of sitting in a casual setup – putting up the legs on the same sofa) to setting his fielding placements at home with his family and friends taking right positions on different sofas as well as on the floor. For himself, he had a very strategic position in a corner next to the phone table. Though he is a great connoisseur of good, he had devised a timetable for eating based on many factors including team composition, opponents and situation, and he struck to it religiously come what may. He had a different tactic for different situations – increasing the run rate, his favorite player has to hit a boundary or six, wicket has to be taken and so on. He unleashed such a tactic accordingly. If a bigger force was required to salvage the match from the jaws of defeat – he used to observe silence for couple of minutes, cut a spot deal with his favorite deity on offering something or visiting the temple. It has worked.

All these beliefs didn’t go wasted as India made a steady progress in the international cricket, winning many matches to the much delight of Mr.S and thousands of such fans. Also, Mr.S was never casual and careless in using his tactics. Even, when over a period of time his shorts (Bermudas) were cut into 2 pieces around the hips (due to his interesting sitting position), on one thigh it was torn in the front, another thigh it was torn on the back, loosely held by a thin strip of cloth. They were given same treatment as other clothes - washed and maintained (albeit without stitching – which would have made it lose its originality and lose winning power). Like a disciplined fan, before every match he used to diligently wear his shorts and hold all the pieces together very protectively. At times, when he had to go downstairs to pick up the post, he use to cover his torso with a small towel diagonally, walk carefully with small steps not to reveal multiple piece of his shorts - very similar to cabaret dancers in local movies – it was a sight to watch, even his favorite Sanjay Manjrekar would have bid for this special attire.

His sincere and uni-directional intentions to make India win, most of us were also part of his placements and made us believe in his approach. And, most often results spoke for themselves. .

Today, if India has won the World cup, I feel prayers and superstitions of Mr.S has a great role in building the confidence and competence of the team over so many years. Hope Indian cricket team recognizes such contributors to the game off the pitch.

For national passion, if Mr.S has such a comprehensive strategy and followed them will utmost fervor, you can imagine his beliefs for his own aspirations. He had a different set of rigorous superstitious beliefs for doing well in exams, which can be compiled into a book by itself, so will leave it aside for monetizing.

Mr.S – I hope you appreciate me sharing your million dollar secret with wider audience, when Indian team (your boys) has won the pride for the country, what better memories one can have. I feel many people can benefit from your advice and guidance,

Flavor of the season: World cup win to Corruption

2011-04-10T11:54:00.002+05:30

Don’t you think - World Cup Win went into hibernation very quickly, it deserved more celebration, attention and gossip than what it actually got. It is all about timing, First of all, it had a very little window because of IPL. Now, Anna Hazare hijacked the media and attention of the people. In the parks, cafeteria and restaurants, people hardly spoke about pyrotechnics of Dhoni and team in the last 10 days of the world cup. Many had lost an opportunity to showcase on how they contributed to India’s win in the crucial knock out matches. For a day or two after the world cup, all the discussions involved analysis of the match and more importantly on when (during the match) each of them thought that India will win the match. Only vocal guys got the opportunity to share their views whereas the quieter ones were waiting for their chance to share their analysis, superstition and turning points, but by then a new phenomenon called Anna Hazare occurred.

By Wednesday, discussion in the parks, cafeterias and restaurants changed to a far more serious subject – from celebration to suffering – world cup win to corruption, from opulence to simplicity – Nita Ambani to Anna Hazare. On Thursday, I went to BBMP office to pay property tax, what I saw there was very interesting. Since I went around 10 AM, many of the staff there were reading newspapers. I was curious to see their response to the headlines on Anna and his crusade against corruption. Believe me, there were unemotional, read it as just another news without even reflecting for a minute about its impact on them and how they have contributed to the frustration of the general public. They had a kind of wicked smile while reading about government’s response to Anna’s demands – as if they knew it already. Meanwhile I tried reasoning out on accepting my cheque (I have been paying taxes through cheques), but they said unless there is some adjustment between them and I, cheques are not accepted, only demand drafts are accepted. After more than 60 minutes of haggling I had to come back without completing my work. I will have to make one trip to BBMP to pay taxes.
Now, coming to Anna and his crusade against corruption. Hats off to him, his resolve and his team for standing up for the entire nation and fighting the mighty system. It is amazing to see a man of 72 years having so much of concern for the people and confidence to fight the powerful and corrupt system.

When I reflected about this crusade, I felt I don’t have moral right to talk about it – because I have paid bribes to get things done at government offices – most of the times it is out of frustration to move things, sometimes out of fear that they may scuttle the whole thing and few times, out of appreciation I have given. There has been a contradiction between the feeling and action. I am not morally confident to be part of such an agitation; I really have to blame myself for that.

Anna stands out as a unique person because I am sure he has always been correct morally and ethically. Else, politicians who look for loopholes or bad antecedents of a person to break any crusade, would have publicized and brought disrepute to the man and the cause. I feel there are hardly few people in the country who have been upright even when they are on losing side (because it is very easy to be honest when it is beneficial).

Human intelligence is very dangerous when used in the destruction of the good, it is amply demonstrated by the intelligent lawyers, who are part of the government and the ruling party – tried misleading the nation consistently and playing with the words to bring disrepute to Anna, his team and the movement. Only when they realized the power of the movement and support it is gaining across the country cutting across the age, status, religion and sex, they realized it is better to give into the demands than face the resentment of the public. Also, the happenings (more specifically scams) of the recent past have done no good but put the government on a back foot.

Hope Janlok Pal bill will be passed and implemented with sincere intentions. Will this end the corruption in the government? It will certainly threaten the existing system of bribes, kickbacks and scams, and slowdown the corruption to a good extent in the initial days with dumb fellows getting caught. But, again human intelligence and greed is a powerful tool, smart people will create a newer sophisticated ways of looting the system. Once perfected, it will be broad based by the rest.

There is lot to write about the prime minister and his escapist attitude, but I feel it will add lot of negative energy considering that earlier I had highest regards for him and his commitment to make India a better place to live.

Current round of assembly elections: What I fear the most

2011-04-10T10:24:00.002+05:30

If Tamil nadu voters bring back DMK to power, it will be the worst thing not only for Tamilnadu but for the entire country. Why? You may wonder why I am supporting Jayalalitha when she is also known to be equally corrupt - In polarized states like Tamilnadu, voters don’t have any chance but to select one of the two corrupt. If DMK is voted out of the power, it will be attributed partly to their corruption and scams.

If you look deeper into the issue of corruption and greed, understanding of Indian society’s belief in religion, karma and re-birth is essential. If one does wrong, it is believed one will be punished by the god, wlll pay for it in this birth or even the next birth. So, people are afraid if not conscience of doing anything wrong. For politicians, shelf life has always been short term – immediate elections. In the past, many powerful governments at centre as well as state levels are thrown out because of their corruption and scandals.

After two regimes of DMK of corruption, freebies, monopoly and scams, if voters vote them back, the message will be clear – voters don’t see corruption as a election issue anymore. Politicians will go on a rampage to loot the state. I am afraid if they are voted back to power, it may even lead into semi-dictatorial kind of government there. Then god only can save Tamilnadu, they will be oppressed by this family for many more years.

I am no way lauding Jayalalitha, she is also equally corrupt and megalomaniac, but she may atleast give 1 or 2 years of good governance to demonstrate a change and post that, things will be same as now.

Freebies: DMK’s innovation and biggest contribution to the Indian democracy.

DMK has piloted this dangerous culture of freebies and reaped heavy electoral benefits, every political party in other states are promising moon to the common public.

I had been to couple of villages in tamilnadu, practically everything is given free there. To some level, it may be a good thing for people below the poverty line to lead a decent life, but it is taken away their interest to work. That is very dangerous. Now, DMK has promised to broadbase the freebies distribution to wider section of the society,. AIADMK is no different; she has also promised lot of freebies. I really don’t know how state will finance all such spending.

The other day I was listing down the freebies promised by both the parties, it is unimaginable – if both get an opportunity to run the government for 30 months each, family can get all the household gadgets for a family.

I am aghast to see the affairs in state like Tamil nadu, when every Tamilian is so intelligent and aggressive, they hold such high offices in bureaucracy, in other states, in corporate world ( even at global level ), their own native state is under the grip of one family.

I guess, going forward each state needs a Junior Anna Hazare to galvanize the public and bring some semblance in the governance. Else, each state will be under a vice grip of mini-dictator who are nothing but corrupt, egoistic and money lords.

Swami Nithyanandas of the corporate world

2011-04-10T10:19:00.000+05:30

What is common between Ramalinga Raju, Harshad Mehta and fake babas?

• In short term they become very popular and rich – liked by many for their helping nature
• Many people will be suspicious of their ways of doing business or occult powers
• Will have lot of weaknesses - Many will know their weaknesses and fraudlent ways
• They are highly intelligent, innovative
• But they will fall short in their conning strategies, they will give up and accept their fraud

What is common between Rajat Gupta, Mohammed Yunus and Nityananda?

• Highly successful, role models for many in their prime, adored by the West..
• Seem to be very genuine with high conscience (ethical, social, spiritual)
• Will have some weakness, inferiority, insecurity - very few around them will know about their deficiencies
• When they are at the helm - People will be afraid to even think anything negative about them
• Deadly mix of innovation + conscience + long haul stature - they will not give up - Difficult to crack their cases - For a long time, one can’t say whether they have done anything really wrong

What is common between all of them?

• At one level, it is greed for money, recognition and power
• It is insecurity,
• Another level, their strong belief in their ability to fool everyone else easily

pointers for making a business plan for products startup

2011-04-09T09:31:00.002+05:30

Recently, jotted down some pointers for making a biz plan for products startup.

1. Market

a. Target Market
b. Segmentation
c. Value Chain
d. Current Gaps / challenges – how are they currently addressed? Are they very painful, will customers pay for it ?

2. Competition

a. Current players – offerings and Maturity
b. Technology change / obsolescence / Substitution - how do you plan to manage it.
c. Entry Barriers for players in other parts of the value chain

3. Offering

a. Offering - Solution
b. Value Proposition
c. Differentiation – Value for money ? Money for Value?
d. Roadmap and Timelines

4. Sales

a. Who will sell? You or partners? Who will own the customers?
b. Key Sales strategy
c. Who are the key customers
d. How do you make first sale? Big order?
e. Sales Channels
f. Lifecycle of the business – sales to deployment to support – who will manage?

5. Development

a. Offering - Technology, Solution, components, third party components
b. Manufacturing plan?
c. Target Price
d. Possible partners

6. Team

a. Executive, Sales and Technology teams – complimentary ? distinctive?
b. Retaining strategy

7. Commercials

a. Revenue plan – Year wise units sale
b. Cash flows , P&L
c. Breakeven
d. How long will your investment sustain?
e. Ownership
f. Scale up strategy – Expansion, replication, investment, acquisition, partnership

Helplessness

2011-04-09T09:29:00.000+05:30

Have you ever felt complete helplessness?

• It can be a crisis involving you or helping others to overcome their own crisis
• Crisis may be of your own make or thrust on you by others, but being in the thick of it.
• People would have come to you for help but you just are not in a position to help
• You want to do something you like but just can’t do it, your inability or lack of confidence or lack of resources – whatever may be the reason.

Many easily blame it on others or feign ignorance to escape from a situation involving helplessness. It is even tougher to overcome helplessness in a situation directly involving yourselves. I know couple of situations where my close friends had reached deadend in some crisis. For ordinary souls and even for them, situation was too difficult to wade through. At one point, they had given up, they were helpless, but their perseverance and capability gave them the strength. One thing I observed was, in all the cases, they didn’t blame anybody nor cribbed about their bad luck, they were aware of the situation, worked on it and they were able to come out of their helplessness. I have high respect for those who face the crises (involving them) heads-on and resolve.

Andhar-Bahaar, heads / tails, 3 leaves and Rummy

2011-04-02T08:59:00.003+05:30

Most of you might wonder what are these? some of you who know what they are – might still wonder why I am writing on these, few of you might decide not read anything on these and couple i know will have veiled reading. Go for it.

All of us know Yugadi festival is celebrated as the New Year by people in many parts of India including Karnataka and AP. Before people became rich to celebrate crackling Deepavali, grandeur Dusshera and stylish Ganesha, it was Yugadi which was the most celebrated festival, especially in Villages. Also, it fits in very well with the longer summer holidays (then it used to be full 2 months) , unlike many other festivals which will have limited shelf life.

Entire migrated community use to descend upon the village to celebrate. When I was in primary school, I also use to go to my village for this festival. After the first day of pujas and eating holige, people use to slowly assemble in the main addas. For me, this is the most memorable part of Yugadi – self organizing groups form their own teams based on the stakes and gamble without a break. They use to play it with lot of seriousness, evolve strategies and also get carried by the momentum and emotions.

You may wonder, elders use to give money to gamble – my grandmother even use to instruct local villagers not to play mischief with me and make me win. I still remember, when I first gambled while I was in 2nd standard, I played with many gangs at different addas – mainly games with raw luck (andhar-baahaar, heads-tails) and sat next to people, giving them free advice while playing games that require some logic (Rummy). Net-Net, at the end of the third day, with some wins and loss, I had lost 70 Rs. It was first loss in my life. Over the last 3 decades, I guess I have only gambled with high stakes. Childhood conditioning never leaves you, isn’t it?

PS :- Cricket world cup reminded me of those good old days.. as it is around the same time as the Yugadi festival.

Wishing you and your family a happy New Year and fun filled Yugadi.

Please don’t offer or accept free advice

2011-03-27T16:16:00.002+05:30

Over the years, many people have come to me for my advice on various issues – more when they want to start their entrepreneurial journey and some consult me on professional matters. I was known for intense discussions with lot of energy and enthusiasm. Many have even referred their friends because they felt I have broad view of the markets, good understanding of the psyche required for being an entrepreneurs and more importantly, help them analyze(critique?) their ideas with genuine interest. From my side, I use to take this kind of discussions very seriously, spend some time in studying and internalizing.

There are two scenerios where in, one seeks advice
1. looking for ideas to take an idea forward
2. validate their idea itself

In first case, When they were looking for a solution to a defined problem, I have been a good partner for brainstorming.
But the real challenge is the second case - when they are looking for a validation of their idea, they came to me for an objective assessment of their idea; I were considering lot of factors (mindset) that are required for an entrepreneur like

• Most often, people would have good clarity on their capability but very poor view on what the market wants, what customers are willing to pay for?
• Can the promoters pull it off without too much of external dependency?
• Is it a romantic view of entrepreneurship or had willingness to fight it out in the marketplace?
• Is it a one off idea or slew of related ideas.
• Does the partners share a common vision for the startup
• Uniqueness of offering?
• Just an idea, or full 9 yards execution plan is in place?
• And many more

But, I am also a human being right? Finally on executing the whole idea, I used to
• Have prejudices about the person
• Think as if I am part of the idea.
• Limit by my own limitations in executing such an idea,

If I look back, I was fooled by all these factors and have given very subjective assessment. One biggest factor that I gave no consideration, which I think is the most important factor to do anything – Individual’s inherent hunger for survival and success. It is a self belief; everyone has to be allowed to explore the self belief. No external person can predict it 100% right. It’s their karma to explore their thinking, implement and reap its benefits.

Many a times, I was very categorical about its feasibility. The force with which I was sharing my point of view, I am sure weak hearted fellows have dropped their plans. While advising, in many cases I have given positive feedback and encouraged them to plunge into it. And, I remember I have genuinely felt that it will not click, hence discouraged them. I am afraid; cases where I have discouraged would have probably become successful with their instincts, capabilities and execution.
At this point of time, I have no physical stamina to run a full length marathon, but I am sure many have that instinct and stamina to run. So, if one wants, allowan them to explore.

I sincerely feel, allow everyone to explore their way of life. Going forward, if someone wants to pick my brain for 2 cents worth of ideas for the 2nd scenerio, I will not give discouraging views.

Thought provoking words from HS Doreswamy

2011-03-26T10:26:00.001+05:30

In the recent workshop on Alternative perspectives towards life and living, Freedom fighter HS Doreswamy was invited. He spoke for few minutes, every word was worth. He beautifully summarized the work and simple life of Dileep Kulkarni and family, with a story. it goes like this – one village had full of blind people, each of them had made their own view of things are around them. For generations, children born there were blind, so all of them had a similar view of things are around them. Finally, one boy was born with a clear vision. He started narrating beautiful things around them. But, others who were terminally blind thought this guy has got some serious problem with his eyes, hence has a different and funny view of the world around them. They were all concerned about this boy’s eyes, they decided to get his eyes checked and operated. In the operation, this boy lost his vision completely and became blind. Post which, his view on world around him was very similar to theirs. Then they got relieved and were happy. – Moral is – Dileep and co have got a good vision of sustainable life and are leading it. Hope the rest of the society (that’s blind already) will allow them to live and not force them to follow the regular consumerist way of life.

One of the participants, Chandra (a very interesting lady from Italy, dedicated her life to follow and spread Gandhian values and sarvodya movement, working with weavers in TamilNadu, helping them get a respectable value for their produce and live a decent life. She is very hands-on sharing economy) asked him to share his experiences with Vinobha bhave. He narrated couple of incidents which took me into a different world altogether.

I believe in early 70s, many poor people were getting into Naxalism, by every passing day, it was snowballing into a bigger movement. So, Vinobha bhave went to a small village in Andhra Pradesh to get a first hand view of poor man’s life and learn about – why they are getting into naxalism? He went to a small hunt, where there was a old couple living, who were almost blind. When this man went in, they thought their son is back with the food, they asked him for the food. He was surprised and told them that he is not their son; he just came in to meet them. Then they mentioned that they went hungry for three days as their son who went out looking for a job returned empty handed everyday.
He went into another hut, while men went out looking for a job, two women were inside. When Vinobha wanted to meet them, one woman came out and spoke. When asked about the other woman, first lady went in and the second one came out to speak to him . this is because, they both had only one saree to wear.

In one day, he saw many such incidents, made him wonder what can be the solution. People are desperately looking out for work to feed their families. The very same day, he thought – instead of these poor looking around for job, if given a small piece of land, they may do the labour and earn their own livelihood – same evening he called out for a meeting in the same village. He was still not sure of how to get the land for the poor.

When he shared his observations, problems and possible solutions, with the villagers, one of the persons sitting there, Ramachandra Reddy said he will give his 250 acres of land to the poor. Vinobha bhave was surprised and felt happy to see rich people are willing to give up their land for the poor. That’s how, Bhoodhan movement started. At the very moment, he got the confidence of addressing the problem through land donation. On one side there are people with lot of land holdings, and another side, there are poor struggling for a meal. From there, he went all over the country to collect land from the rich and distribute to the poor. Numbers of acres of land that was distributed through this movement is mindboggling – something like 42 Lakhs of acres.

Mr.Doreswamy has closely worked with Vinobha Bhave on Bhoodhan movement. He shared several incidents where even the poor were willing to give away their 1 cent of land to the other needy ones. He said that the gap between rich and poor is widening at the alarming speed. Even today, there is lot of work needs to be done to uplift the poor.

Elite environmentalists’

2011-03-26T10:25:00.000+05:30

• spend lot of time in the midst of the beautiful nature. Enjoying the nature more than others qualifies them to be environmentalists.
• are very conscious about the damage done to the environment -they ensure the material consumed and discarded by them goes through proper recycling process
• don’t want to forego any of the acquired luxuries (wants) but are willing to explore any eco-friendly alternatives to have that luxury
• Just don’t like consumerism but have to buy (overbuy??) because of so many reasons.
• don’t want to add pollution in their own place, but want to buy products made elsewhere, - they are only helping the underdeveloped villages and countries to develop economically.
• Strong believers in the latest technology being the most eco-friendliest - want to continuously upgrade and have latest gadgets and electronics.
• Want to teach kids about simple living – so while going to airport on way to spend a vacation abroad, take them in the airport bus.
• Conscious of economy, philanthropy and the environment at the same time – want to overbuy everything, they want to spend money but are willing to give them (after use – shorter the better) to the charity, so that material gets reused.
• - When they want to move closer to the nature or away from the maddening crowd, they want to have second home in posh eco-friendly townships (Lavasa?).
• Are very concerned about rising pollution, but do not want to move an inch without their AC car. They don’t mind using comfortable public transport provided it is as convenient as driving a chauffeur driven personal car)
• Want to use products that are eco-friendly (electricity based instead of petrol) at the final point of use but don’t matter if the forests are cut to produce the electricity.
On the other hand, there are many Gandhi-class(I think it is very much a local lingo, in film theaters, the rows closer to the screen are priced the lowest and called Gandhi-class) environmentalists, who believe in consuming less rather than recycle and reuse.

What influences a Man?

2011-03-13T12:39:00.005+05:30

In very simplistic terms, every man is influenced by 5 different layers - Professional, Personal, Physical, Pyschological (and intellectual) and Spiritual. With spiritual practice being the primary foundation of the man, followed by psychological conditioning and intellectual capability, followed by physical health and its abilities, followed by personal relationships among family and friends(society) and finally the professional achievements.

if all the influencing layers are in moving in one direction or on hte same page, there will be no contradictions, hence life will be beautiful. One of the major challenge is managing the contradictions between each of the layers. On one level, one wants to move in some direction, whereas at another level, it will be in opposite direction or a belief. It happens every other day, isn't it.

There are several types of teachers and experts who address each of the layers (sometimes adjoining layers) like
• Personality development trainers, Motivational experts help you improve professional prospects.
• Counselors help you understand the expectations and responsibilities in the relationships, and overcome the challenges
• Doctors will help you keep good physical health
• Psychologists will make you understand the conditioning, identify invisible yet dominant patterns and devise solutions to improve the situation.
• Saints and sages grace your spiritual quest
External inputs and experts will help you tide the challenges in the first half, provided the foundation (bottom half) is solid. But, the foundation requires no external inputs and stimulations, it has to be built by self.
Person in sync at every layer comes across as a natural and at ease with himself. Most often, people who have disproportionate influence by layers in the top half, will be not in sycn with themselves, which will manifest outwardly. Different people have varied degrees of influence by each of these factors.

Figure 1 - Person in sync, natural

On one side, some will be majorly influenced by their professional achievements and Personal relationships, have good physical health but will have challenges in the bottom half (figure 2).

Figure 2 – inverted pyramid

On the other side, some are highly spiritual with strong psychological patterns and decreased influcence by the top half (figure 3).

Figure 3 – peaceful pyramid

In between these two, there are whole lot of unique patterns in different shades of influence.

With this 5 layers’ perspective, I am able to understand how people with limitation in one layer in the top half are still able to live peacefully.

If there are challenges in only one layer, I guess reinforcement from the adjoining layers will take care of the balance for a longer time. In case if one layer in the top half is severely damaged, one with strong foundation can take advise from the appropriate experts to make it balance.

If there are challenges with the several layers, then it is better to start from the foundation.

Also, If there are challenges in the bottom half, I guess it is tough to sustain the inverted pyramid model for longer period of time. It is obvious that it will come down under its own weight, so it is better to look inwards and strengthen the foundation.

Escape Velocity

2011-03-12T09:25:00.002+05:30

While few are extremely happy and satisfied with the corporate life, most are bit lost – working because of some compulsion or the other. On the other hand, some guys are living the life the way they want or living by their beliefs - It may be starting a new way of leading a professional life (as an entrepreneur) or a personal life (simple living) away from a phase which is in cruise mode. Interestingly, their families will be very comfortable with the change and in most cases, families do offer their support in whatever way they can.

First remark normally one would make when a person/family is making a move to lead a life they want, is they are just fortunate enough to have such a family or they have made lot of money for their children. At a very fundamental level, it may be true; I feel there are some stuff underneath their personality which gives them the strength.
These guys will

• Have Firm belief in their approach to the life, it may not make sense for the most of us, but for them it is the only way of life.

• Have Supreme confidence in their abilities and thinking

• Be thoroughly Hands on and take responsibility for the execution

• Do Walk the talk and have no disconnect between their beliefs and practices.

Because of all of the above and something inherent, they will be very likeable characters, which will rub on the people (family) around them. The others will feed their positive energy onto them. Through mutual reinforcement, their belief and confidence fired with the Escape Velocity. Post which, they will move into the realm of their own world away from the regular world..

PS: - though I have dreamt of living such a life for most part of life, I have never been able to live, now I know why?

Quotes from Ivan Illich

2011-03-12T09:24:00.001+05:30

Recently, I read an essay on Ivan Illich(A Turbulent Priest in the Global Village) http://www.lewrockwell.com/wall/wall28.html, it is quite a thought provoking one. (I guess we tend to like a book or an essay which reinforces our thoughts with deeper insights, broadens and articulates it in a very structured way). I am just reproducing some of his quotes.

On learning and schooling - "Many students, especially those who are poor, intuitively know what the schools do for them. They school them to confuse process and substance. Once these become blurred, a new logic is assumed: the more treatment there is, the better the results; or, escalation leads to success. The pupil is thereby 'schooled' to confuse teaching with learning, grade advancement with education, a diploma with competence, and fluency with the ability to say something new. His imagination is 'schooled' to accept service in place of value. …"

"Education implies a growth of an independent sense of life and a relatedness which go hand in hand with increased access to, and use of, memories stored in the human community…”

“managerial fascism' — the bureaucratic-managerial culture which has increasingly taken the management of people's lives away from them, entrusting it to state-approved and accredited educators, carers, and experts….”

On Health -"A professional and physician-based health care system which has grown beyond tolerable bounds is sickening for three reasons: it must produce clinical changes which outweigh its potential benefits; it cannot but obscure the political conditions which render society unhealthy; and it tends to expropriate the power of the individual to heal himself and to shape his or her environment….."

Health, argues Illich, is the capacity to cope with the human reality of death, pain and sickness. Technology can help, but modern medicine has gone too far — launching into a god-like battle to eradicate death, pain and sickness. In doing so, it turns people into consumers or objects, destroying their capacity for health….

On development - "Development based on high per capita energy quanta and intense professional care is the most pernicious of the West's missionary efforts — a project guided by an ecologically unfeasible conception of human control over nature, and by an anthropologically vicious attempt to replace the nests and snakepits of culture by sterile wards for professional service….”

On technology - "Honesty requires that we each recognize the need to limit procreation, consumption and waste, but equally we must radically reduce our expectations that machines will do our work for us or that therapists can make us learned or healthy. The only solution to the environmental crisis is the shared insight of people that they would be happier if they could work together and care for each other….”

On doing good - "The compulsion to do good is an innate American trait. Only North Americans seem to believe that they always should, may, and actually can choose somebody with whom to share their blessings. Ultimately this attitude leads to bombing people into the acceptance of gifts."

On gender - "the modern myth of sexual equality has finally triumphed completely over the complementarity of gender, in which the plurality of cultures — distinct ways of living, dying and suffering — was rooted. The reign of vernacular gender marked a profoundly different mode of existence than what prevails under what I call the regime of economic sex. They are male/female dualities of a very different kind: Economic sex is the duality of one plus one, creating a coupling of exactly the same kind; gender is the duality of two parts that make a whole which is unique, novel, nonduplicable”

Alternative perspectives towards life & living

2011-03-01T09:57:00.024+05:30

Having conditioned and lived a mechanical life, I am trying to reduce the speed in my life. So as part of that journey, last Sunday, attended a one day workshop on “Alternative perspectives towards life & living", conducted by Poornima and Dileep Kulkarni (Dileep is a mechanical engineer, worked in Telco, Pune in early 80s. He then moved with his family to a small remote village called Kudawale in Konkan - Maharashtra, in-order to live closer to nature. Poornima is an Ayurveda Doctor). Their motto is to live closer to nature, with very less needs and no/minimal wants. This workshop is to understand the holistic picture of life and living and learn from their experience and perspectives. Since they have done “Walk the talk” for more than 2 decades, we learnt a lot from their authentic experiences.
There were 5 sessions –

it was fun singing montessari kids' rhymes in their style..

History of Development

Concept of Development

Health and Development

After lunch, Ma'm made us practice Body Relaxation technique. Dileep made a good point, technology was invented to make man relax, but with all the technologies around us, relaxation has to be taught for people to relax.

Energy and Technology

Tools and tips for simple living

Discussion points, books and examples

Well known freedom fighter and a Gandhian HS Doreswamy had come and his talk was very thought provoking, It will haunt me for long time, I will write about it some other day.

Bottom-line:

1. Some of these might seem to be impossible for city dwellers, but why restrict oneself to Bangalore, if interested, can be moved to a village and lead a simple life
2. everybody has their own expectations / aspirations from life, accordingly implement
3. Most of them shared seemed to be impractical for ordinary souls, but Dileep and Poornima have been walking their talk everyday for over 2 decades, so there is merit in their logic.
4. No amount of theorizing can substitute to even small actions in the right direction ( this learning has got the minimum shelf life in our brains )

At the end of it, if we reflect on why there is so much of resistance to such simple and sustainable living. Most people may say this is too idealistic, not practical, technology is only making life better, natural resources are meant for human consumption and so on. As any argument, there is no absolute right or wrong. I feel it is the core value of the individuals that decide whether this is the way or not the way of life.
Most people believe that they belong to superior species in the entire ecosystem, they are meant to lord over the nature and other species. Hence, they are perfectly ok with the current way of living.
Whereas some people feel, they are as good or bad as any other species, they have to co-exist with other stakeholders (animals, plants), and have similar rights and responsibilities in the well being of the nature.
First set will always be bigger than the second, hence to follow this; one has to have supreme confidence in oneself and their idea of simple and sustainable living.

Related to this, you may be interested in reading some more blog updates –

Farming and living

Spirituality and Natural farming
Visit to a natural farm
Akshayakalpa
Gram Swarajya
Navadarshnam
Passionate agriculturist
Sahaja Sammrudha
Auroville

Health and Living

Essay on Ego
Lead a happy life
Do Nothing
Know your attitude
Parental Tyranny

Books and living

3 cups of tea
Small is beautiful
Parallels between reading and life

Around us

Organic farming
Natural farming
Terrace gardening

Silent National Anthem

2011-02-25T22:27:00.002+05:30

Recently, I saw a very touching video – Silent National Anthem –
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kk02qPlnS2E&feature=player_embedded)
One of my close family friend had come home, showed her this video and was admiring those kids’ strength and zeal to lead the life to the fullest.
She was also moved by the video, was admiring the video but she shared her fundamental observations which were quite challenging to comprehend and analyze.

• While we so admire people, who strive despite being physically challenged, why do we look down on certain other physical constraints (like people who cannot bear children)??

• While we accept people who are mentally challenged, why do demean idiots (I mean people who are at lower levels of interest in studies)??

• While we respect people who live up to their principles, why do at the same time find it difficult to accept certain others who want to follow their own ideology (or heart)??

If we go deep into each of these observations / questions, the pattern is very similar.

When a person has a problem that is externally visible, many people are sensitive enough to care for them but how many people are sensitive to the problem (either internal physical or emotional) that is not visible externally. People help others who have physical limitations at a very basic level that affect the life on a daily basis, but very often people will be ignorant when the limitations are internal.
Many a times, people would have lost their ability to read a situation on their own and make their own assessment, their excuse of being ignorant or rude to a person who is in crisis (internal physical or emotional) is – they were not told of it (they may be aware but not directly / explicitly told). Should a person with less intelligence (or person with some internal problem) go around saying that I am not so intelligent (or I have some problem), so please respect me? People have to let others live peacefully.
While Most of us admire the high end achievements of differently abled people, many of us walk an extra mile to take care of them but how many of us respect differently abled in general for what they are? Ego plays its best here to fool people. Unless a person is matured, even the caring attitude will not be a pure one; Ego wants to feed itself of being more valuable in caring others.

People who
• Are not confident of solving a problem in hands-on manner or
• go after achievements
• believe in the end results than the journey of achieving it
-will admire an unknown person (whether it is differently abled or rags to riches story) who has already achieved. At the same time, they will not be sensitive to give encouragement to a similar person around them who is striving for excellence in his own way.

If a person has lived-with or seen a challenged person in the family, they will be far more sensitive to everyone with challenges. Else, they will be quite insensitive. Insensitiveness is the first step, which later develops into rudeness. So, if you come across a person who is insensitive to certain things and you think he /she is influenceable, please make them aware of the right way to deal with the things else one more candidate towards the path of rudeness and hurt ego.

Student with occasional B Grades will become an A Grade people manager

2011-02-25T22:26:00.002+05:30

PS: - This blog is dedicated to all those who feel arm twisted by their less worthy colleagues or let down by their organizations. Just because you think you have better ideas and capability, others will not listen / follow you. You have to fight it out for the success.

• Same family friend triggered this discussion with her 2nd observation – While we accept people who are mentally challenged, why do demean idiots (I mean people who are at lower levels of interest in studies)??

My response to her may sound cynical and oxymoron theory, but it is a fact of life. There are people with less intelligence or commitment or hard work, who will be doing well in the professional life. Instead of cribbing about your fate, Reflect and look around – there will be numerous examples to demonstrate this fact in every organization.

Rewind your memory to your childhood –

You would have seen kids who are A-graders (A-grade is relative though – one sided show in the family - surpassing the expectations of the self, parents, family and friends during the school days), would naturally be very straightforward. Especially, if the kid is very quick in answering the questions, good in all subjects, high scorer in the class, and intelligent among the family and friends - invariably everyone will be keen to listen to him and pamper. He would have never faced any difficulty in facing anyone in his family and friends as his tangible achievements and results will speak for him. Without bothering about his parents’ mood and priorities, or without being sensitive to the circumstances around, he will communicate his achievements or share his frustration. Whatever the kid says – it will be taken in the right spirit. Also, parents and family also would put him on the high pedestal even at the cost of suppressing their own emotions. Naturally, kid will be thinking what he is talking and doing are always right. If his dream runs for many years, kid will get conditioned with this habit of being straightforward and insensitive.

Similarly, you would have seen kids who are intelligent but not so interested in studies or at times don’t get good marks or in some subjects, they get less marks always (B-grader – doesn’t meet expectations of self or parents, or not the best among the extended family or school mates). When they get good results to show, you can see pride in them while communicating. When the results are bad (especially when they are failed or fared below average) they will wait for the right time to communicate. They will put efforts to understand when to show / tell the results to their parents / family so that they don’t thrash. They will work on – how to message the news, how to massage the ego, when others will be in happy mood, when they will sign the score card without much bother. Else, he will get beaten or shouted by his parents. Also, importantly, they will know how to manage the face loss when the scene are created and some smart guys will even devise the strategies to avoid the face loss. Different kids will be have B-grades from one or more angles that are important to the self and family – studies, smonetary background, sports. Right from the very young age, these kids will learn to manage the situation - message the communication and, read the situation and opposite person’s mood before communicating anything.

Back to your office now
You will not be able to get things done if you stick to – being straight forward, I am always right, I’m the intelligent hence you listen to me types. Then, you will be considered as intelligent but immature, arrogant not-a-team-player and so on. In such a case, no one will prefer you.

Then what is people management all about?
• Messaging the news – whether it is bad or good – playing well with the good news and downplaying the bad news
• Understanding the situation – when to communicate
• Be realistic – there will be others who are better than you sometimes
• Other person’s expectations, strengths and weaknesses – so that you can get your things done
• Management books suggest genuineness, sincerity and clarity are important to manage the people – which are necessary but not the sufficient.

So, map the people management skills with the traits of an intelligent student who regularly gets a B-grade in his school days.
Deadly combination would be a guy with A-grade intelligence with B-Grader survival instincts, they will sure to have stamina and capacity for long haul career growth.
Eternal A graders need not feel bad – people will still come to you, if you are highly talented with a lot of depth in some areas, but only when they need you for that expertise.
Unless one is exceptionally matured or living in one’s own world, everyone has to have to these basic people management skills to grow in this aggressive professional world.

Trust based Library – it is working and it rocks…

2011-02-25T22:25:00.002+05:30

Recently, one of my friend took me to a library, which is self managed and serviced library. This 2 roomed old building had lot of racks filled by books ranging from fiction, travel guides, history, management, philosophical and spiritual. through a 4- digit code, one can get into the library. There is a catalog and register. Spend as much as time one wants in the library, use catalog to locate a book, browse books, get as many books one wants, make an entry in the register and that’s all. While returning, one can make a note on the register entry. I guess there might be a box for putting the contributions, but I could not locate it.
No membership fee, No subscription fee, No follow-up, No reservation, No Computers, No paraphernalia, It runs only on the trust and contributions. Beautiful isn’t it?
Some like minded people have come together and donated their collection to set up this novel concept. I believe it has been working quite well for over couple of years now, with people donating their books collection regularly.
Even I have borrowed two books; I will certainly return them and even give part of my collection too.

Ego: an essay

2011-02-05T18:30:00.005+05:30

Though they are many dimensions to life, ego is one of the big factors that consumes majority of the human bandwidth.. There are many dimensions to this pervasive thing like ego.
There are different ways of studying:
· The usual logical and scientific way of studying ego, what chemicals, genes and molecules form Ego, how the brain constructs and processes it? When it gets high? and so on.
· Philosophical and abstract way: Ego of being Intellectual, Ego of Action oriented and Ego of Pleasure seekers.
· psychological and perception way of studying ego considering Childhood upbringing, , internal make up (aspirations, fear, anger, greed and so on) and surrounding culture
I was curious to understand Ego from mere observations around me; I thought perhaps writing day to day observations will be a good self learning exercise.

Ego and Insecurity
For various reasons including availability of cheap labor or doing high value things considered to be the mart thing or intense competition to accumulate more, Individual contributors are looked down in general and labor (manifests in different forms in different situations, right from cooking / cleaning in the homes to developing anything in the offices). It simply results into delegation or out-sourcing
Initially, this starts due to lack of time and then it becomes a mandatory thing (almost like a life support system). At personal level we all know what happens if someone only delegates or out-sourcing, they will get some disease or the other because of sedentary lifestyles. Then they will spend lot of time and effort in physical exercises and consulting doctors. Then they will start living in a fear forever.
In the professional life too, it is same story, but since there are not many seniority related manifestations yet, everyone will be in a hurry to delegate the creation part of it, because reviewing will be considered to be high value thing. So, to boost their own egos and further their own careers, they cite same excuse (lack of time), start avoiding any labor work and start delegating big time. Over a period of time, they will lose touch with the work but will become parasites on others work (if lost touch with the work, even best of brains will lose their competence). Unlike in personal life, there are very few (or no?) options to recover from the professional sedentary life.
Most people work for financial independency but become heavily dependent on other people for their own survival. At one level they want independency but succumb to fear and insecurity at another level.

Ego and Self Interest
To make any professional relationship to work, one of the two – Ego or Self Interest has to be satisfied for both the parties, then only the relationship work; whether it is boss with the reportee or vendor with the customer. Different situations will have different audience, while some like to see a subservient person and in other situations, audience would like to see Egoistic person. So depending upon the situation, in some scenarios, one has to keep self interest and in others, Ego should rule.
My simple definition of Ego – at a given moment, it is the intangible thing and the self interest is the tangible thing – money, business, progression.
A will work with B only when one of the two is satisfied, most often it is the self interest route works with other person or entity has more command, else it is the ego route. Without this double track, no one can work in a professional set up,
When the results speak, it is the self interest that has been the key driver; else Ego takes over and starts proclaiming things like “I have done this and that”. More one talks endlessly about the past achievements, it is sure shot case of – ego hurt. Better to get aware of it and come out of it quickly else it is self consuming.
Smart guy will always boast the other person’s ego according to his own self interest. Look at all the successful managers especially the sales people, you will find lot of them. Smartness in a person is about finding about the egoistic traits and needs, of the other guy and play accordingly. More importantly, smart guys will make sure that the other person (A) will think that this guy is genuinely interested in other person’s (A’s) growth.
It is very common to see people boasting ego of others, only to further self interest. Today, the situation is come to a level, where every interaction, people ask – what’s in it for me? Some go for ego massaging and some go for self interest. Everybody will have them in certain proportions, smart people will play them in right places and others play them in wrong places.
It is near impossible to have gain both ego and self-interest from the same relationship at a same point of time. Some people do fight a losing battle on both the dimensions and suffer quite a bit.
Most often, you will find people align with the group or team where they find comfort in terms of ego massage. Very rarely, people with lot of drive in self-interest will align with a team even if it is at the cost of hurting ego.
Though earlier, it use to be explicit exploitation of other human beings who were less privileged. Today, it has become even more widespread but more implicit. Whether it is exploiting the Bottom of Pyramid or the less skilled or the nature, some are raw in exploitation and some will have finesse.
People with fear will always guard their ego as well as self interest, it becomes obvious, they will tune their brains and mind accordingly, so that they keep reality at bay and live in self defined Maya.

Small experiments –
· In couple of meetings, speak well about the work of one person, after that he will speak very high of you and your work in an even bigger and important meeting.
· Write a mail praising someone’s (especially contemporary) work, altogether a different mail will come from that person praising your work.
· Reverse of these experiments - you don’t try, then you really don’t when they will give you back – situations you didn’t expect or haven’t prepared for.

Ego and willingness to compete
Only few with lot of complexities including ego, situation, survival issues and confidence, would be willing to face a real challenge or competition in life.
Whereas others, because of their fear of hurting their ego.
· Most are ok to fight competition or challenge through others.
· Some are ok to fight a competition when they are sure of winning
· Many people don’t want to face any competition or challenges.
There are so many instances that we come across regularly where people manipulate competitions and challenges to suite them. For some reasons, people might have been forced to fight a challenge, but it will come as a packaged story (with bells and whistles) posts the good results.
Real litmus test for the spirit of competitiveness is, when people see their peers or someone who is considered to be a notch below(in whatever parameter) grow past them right in front of their eyes.

Ego and Passion
Though people say it is the passion that drives human to do something, it is only in limited cases and that too with high intensity. Whereas ego is broader, runs in every human being and more pervasive For passionate people, their internal drive is so strong, they can run on their internal strength for quite some time and refuel themselves when their batteries are down. But, ego requires lot of external support.
Eventually, at one stage even passion will give up and turn into ego, looks out for external energy.

Ego Trips:
I feel everyone is in their own ego trip; everybody wants to prove themselves and to others that their belief and path are superior over others’, so they will define a very niche path, believe it, pursue it and make others to follow.
Fundamentally, everyone has to feed themselves with a regular dose of EGO, just that different people require it in different doses based on their internal make up. Right from celebrities to leaders to common public, everyone wants to boast their ego with their own audience which may be in different magnitude and shape.
Very interesting behaviors,
· Some believe only in their way of doing things, everything done by others especially by their contemporaries is not good.
· Some want to succeed professionally to demonstrate their capability by depending on others (delegating on one side and pleasing on the other).
· Some believe only in a particular way of saving the earth, everything else is not so effective
· Some believe only in a particular way of professional approach, others’ are not so professional -If it is my idea, it is great, if it is yours, it is theory
· Some want to do farming as the only path to moksha
· Like most want to pursue path of materialism, some want to pursue other ism as the only path to peace and prosperity
· Some want to vacation only in expensive resorts or foreign jaunts, when at home want to be very serious.
Many miss out on the bigger objective, but focus on their immediate needs and make them as priority, which will result in putting ego on top of everything and get obsessed with it.

Professional Mistress

2011-02-05T18:29:00.001+05:30

It is a quite common to see rich and famous men in every walk of life having mistresses, but have you ever noticed successful and smart business managers having professional mistresses??
It is debatable on why a man will have personal Mistress, there are many reasons including the obvious ones and some psychologically unobvious ones. What does personal Mistress entail? In most cases, it is the money and safety.
Then what is this Professional Mistress; a smart manager will be identify some energetic and intelligent people several layers below one’s rank and act to be very professionally close on informal basis, to get a view on the ground level opinions and information, and share their own frustration and insecurities. They will massage this information and selectively use it in the high profile gatherings with their peers and bosses, and build an image for themselves – strategic thinker with a 30000 foot view as well as perspectives on ground zero.
There are several things in common between people who will have personal mistresses and people who will have professional mistresses. Relationships are borne out of
· The need to be successful or
· to satisfy some basic insufficiencies and insecurities or
· to boast ego
There are commonalities at a very fundamental between the personal and professional mistresses.
· Initially, get into it because of Security and safety, later it will be Ego issue
· Are trapped into a peculiar situation
· Will not be seen in the formal set up
· Willingly or unwillingly, volunteer themselves to be exploited
· What they don’t get is also commonly knownOne can write about professional achievers, professional critics and professional khamchors, but they are very easily visible

Professional self realization

2011-02-05T18:27:00.002+05:30

These days, every company is reorganizing within to align better with the market and customer. Basically, every company has to grow at the market place; hence there is a huge pressure on the management to lead their army from the front. So, it is very natural to have the ‘pressure on the top’ to be transferred to the subsequent layers. There are whole lots of managers and business leaders who are working very hard, few have clarity and many are clueless on the path forward. Naturally, clueless means fear and insecurity, it is visible on their faces and actions.
But, there are quite a few middle and senior management professionals who stand out – they are as cool as cucumbers. They have very good clarity on their professional life. I would say they have reached nirvana professionally. They are very clear that they will take any pressure and mentally switch-off whenever there is a challenge or crisis. They will only do what they can do, without any extra effort.
On one side, leaders responsible for the overall results are under tremendous pressure from internal and external stakeholders. On the other side, there are supervisors and workers on the ground that is equally under pressure to outperform their past. But these managers who have attained professional nirvana are floating with professional bliss.
They have attained professional nirvana – with average effort and no tension, they are working for their salaries, thinking about the luxuries, focused on their savings and concerned about the future economics.

Rajnikanth, the Boss

2011-01-29T19:10:00.002+05:30

Today every celebrity wants to endorse as many as brands one can and make all the money. With every brand they endorse, they give very convincing reason on why they want to associate with the brand or why they think they can relate to the brand. For celebrities, endorsement is the easiest money they can make quickly without any risk. Every one of them is fighting hard to get the maximum fees so that they will be in the news and their egos will get boasted.
Have you ever seen Rajnikanth in any endorsements or advertisements? It may be the first time; you might be giving a thought in the midst of watching and cribbing about the endorsements. It is a simple fact – Rajni has not endorsed any brands so far. He could have commanded the highest fees in India.
I believe he was offered couple of crores several years back to endorse a Cola brand. Cola Company was too sure that if Rajni endorses their brand, their market share will catapult and wipe out the competitors from the market. Upon lot of persuasion, he agreed to consider the deal but asked for a day’s time to think and get back. He thought from his fans’ perspective and felt his fans will spend all their hard earned daily wages every day to buy anything that has his photo or endorsement. He was convinced that he should endorse this cola brand or any other brand in the future.
In a country like India, where everyone wants to exploit the exploited, he had some conviction and heart to say NO to this endorsement business.
Another thing is, if you see many of these celebrities wear their makeup and new dress every time they are out in the public functions or in front of the media, they want to showcase their rich and larger than life image. In Rajni’s case, we see him in media moving around with NO makeup. He is a self realized man who is confident of himself.
Also, with all his achievements, wealth and stardom, he is very comfortable with his past especially his life as a bus conductor and his friends from those days. For me, this is the best thing I admire in him; it shows his humility and respect for the people for what they are and what they have done to him

Mobile phone tamasha

2011-01-26T10:20:00.003+05:30

Voluntarily or Involuntarily, Everyone would have developed a pattern of making or more so receiving calls over their hand phones . Some of them are very conscious of their traits and some of them have got habituated, here are some of the funny ones.
• Some use their phone very systemmatically - use it as a organizer to store memos, notes, reminders
• Some are very moderate in their usage
• Some just don’t pick up phone while they are driving -
• Some pick up every call, even if they are busy, they will let you know they are busy and call you back.
• Some speak for hours over the office phone, but if not at the desk, no call from the personal phone, will expect you to call
• Some will speak to you only if you call them, they can speak for hours on the phone but don’t want to initiate the call.
• Some get offended if you have not saved their numbers
• Some will not just pick up the call, they will call you back at their convenience (sometimes even after weeks)
• I know someone, who just doesn’t pick up the call – his theory is, he will call people at his will and convenience
• Some will call only when they are in the car or when they are walking.
• Some are very insensitive to others, they will call people when they are in auto and try to speak leisurely
• Earlier during office hours, I use to see people not speaking much over the phone to personal friends, but now a days, it has become everyone’s right to talk to their friends and relatives in the office time.
• Some keep their phones in the silent mode
• Some, even during the busy office schedule have enormous amount of patience in listening to pesky marketers and explaining them why they don’t want to buy certain products and services
• Some have a peculiar habit, when they are alone, they don’t pick up the phone, but when they are with some people or in a meeting, they will promptly pickup and say- I am in a meeting, will call you back.

Very interesting sites

2011-01-24T18:27:00.001+05:30

Auroville Radio (http://www.aurovilleradio.org/): it has got lot of mp3s of lectures and interviews of aurovilleans on very interesting subjects like farming, sustainability, environment, health and philosophy.
Through this radio, I learnt one very interesting thing about Auroville – many of its residents are working on different manifestations of ‘Living with Awareness’ and ‘living in harmony with Nature’. Though Awareness is an internal thing, it reflects externally in many forms – behavior, body language, communication, eating habits, and sensitivity towards the nature and other. If one is not rooted well, one’s body-mind coordination will be way off the mark or will be violent in communication or eating erratically,
Apart from the known ways of enhancing one’s ability to live with awareness like Meditation, Yoga and Natural farming, Aurovilleans have mastered / created very interesting tools and approaches.
Interestingly, one group is working on ‘Awareness through the Body’, where they help to improve body-mind coordination, concentration and so on.
Another group is working on Non Violent communication – it is very interesting, if one is not aware of self and surroundings, will speak very violently and abusive. So, these folks conduct week long workshops to enable people have non violent communication.
One lady is working on raw foods; I believe she has been living on raw foods for over 7 years now. She is running a raw food restaurant, training and serving raw food to many. Another lady teaches on natural food for a healthy body and mind.
There are lots of interesting farms like solitude farm, Buddha farms, Annapurna, sadhana who practice different forms of natural and organic farming. Each one of them are inspired by different guru like Krishna of solitude is inspired by Fukuoka, Priya of Buddha is inspired by Natueco farming (Dabholkar) and so on. Listening to these people is very calming and interesting.
On using natural material for livng, there is Earth Architecture Institute which is doing pioneering work on using natural material including mud bricks (CSEB) in building energy efficient and low cost housing. There is bamboo research unit, which is finding uses for bamboo for humans’ living. Lot of units are working on using solar power in wide variety of scenarios.
I must accept my ignorance of Sri Aurobindo‘s and Mother’s teachings, but there are lot of radio talks on their teachings and philosophy. I am trying to listen to them, long way to go though.
The core essence of Auroville is very fascinating – share the knowledge with others and enable them to share with others. So, there are many workshops and training programs for a decent fee, throughout the year. Also, there is a well managed volunteer program where one can live there for months, work, learn and earn a bit of money too.
Disconnect from the Auroville story - another interesting blog - partapstoriesforall.blogspot.com/
He is one of finest anthropologists who has seen the different worlds from farming to post modern society, east to west and interacted with Fukuoka. He is a strong believer of ‘living with awareness’ is the only solution to peaceful life and strong health.

Personality through the lens of 2 by 2 Matrix

2011-01-09T16:21:00.005+05:30

We are all used to seeing 2 by 2 matrix in our office work, but it is fun to see them in normal situations. Though boxing personalities in 2 by 2 is subjective and irrational, they give some good thinking triggers though.

there are many 2 by 2s i can create, here are some of the samples

Have fun

pride in one's work

2011-01-09T15:42:00.002+05:30

Recently, our gas stove was not working, as usual shop fellow washed off his hands saying that they don’t provide after sales service, neither does company fellow offered service because it was beyond Warranty period. But shopkeeper gave me contacts of one stove repairman.
When I saw that man, an old gentleman of around 60 years, I was bit puzzled about his work (again I was presumptuous about who can do what). As he started working, it was fun to watch his meticulousness and expertise in the area. Through out the 90 minutes he worked on two stoves, he was very attentive and perfectionist in his work,The way he went about cleaning the burners, internal pipes and repairing the regulator, it was looking like handling a very precious and delicate art. He was not happy with the spares he had, he spent considerable amount of time cutting and grinding the existing part. After he completing his job, he was very careful with his tool kit, he placed each one of them in appropriate boxes and covered the box with a good cloth.
After a long time, I saw a person who was very proud of his work,

Very rarely I have seen people loving their profession and take pride in their work
Contrast this to – Cribbing that we hear from every one about something or the other related to their work, I wonder how can ever be productive with so much cribbing.

organic farming and terrace gardening

2011-01-07T09:09:00.002+05:30

Sites I follow- Interesting sites on organic farming, sustainable living and terrace gardening.

www.navadarshanam.org/
http://www.urbanleavesinindia.com/
www.sahajasamrudha.org/
solitudefarm.blogspot.com/
http://geekgardener.in/
rajsmusings.wordpress.com/
www.vanashree.in/
http://www.bhoomimagazine.org/
www.acres-wild.com/
http://goodnewsindia.com/pointreturn/online/home/
www.amefound.org/

Gram Swarajya

2010-12-31T10:05:00.005+05:30

Everyone in the village including landlords, zamindars landless labourers, doctor in the local PHC, school teachers, grocery trader and every other person will do farming (offcourse organic way). They may be into any different profession, but they will do farming for couple of hours everyday in their farms or others’. Primarily, they will all grow food, vegetables and fruits that are required for them and save some for the rainy days. Over and above that, they will sell their produce to outsiders. Through this, they will lead a healthy life, get to eat good food and be in sync with the nature.
Along with farming, every small and marginal farmer will have one more secondary profession, be it agri-based like dairy, poultry, food processing or skill based like carpentry, electrician, which will ensure enough work in the day and earn decent income on a predictable basis.
The good part in this is, everyone gets to eat food. If market prices are not remunerative, they may lose their efforts but will have no debts as organic way doesn’t require huge investments in the form of chemicals, fertilizers and machinery. Worst case, what will happen if weather is not favoring? There will have the second profession that will take care their livelihood. Natural progression of this, local ecology will improve with more trees, flora and fauna, birds resulting into good rains and healthy soil.
Big challenge for this to be realized, you will have no village starting life afresh, everyone will have debts and huge interests staring at them. So, more financial planners at the ground level are required to recast villagers’ debts and help them reduce the burden.

New Year wish – Speak no evil, See no evil, hear no evil

2010-12-31T10:05:00.004+05:30

May this New Year fill you with positiveness and peace. Wishing you and your family a joyous 2011!

With all the turbulence iexternally and internally, I guess only way to have some semblance in life is to follow this simple principle of Gandhi.
If you start speaking or seeing or hearing about evils, there is no end to it. It is like a maze, very difficult to come out of it mentally and literally. Hence, instead of fighting it in the end to come out of it, it is better to follow this principle. If one begins from any of these three avatars, the other two will invariably follow and destroy one’s mind and health.
Otherwise, Mind will be processing lot of unnecessary thoughts as each of the evil will have secondary issues attached to it exponentially. Once mind process less, body will have less acids to produce to meet the body and mind requirements.
Hope to stop reading Newspapers and News portals (really tough call)
Hope to have healthy and pleasant year ahead.

Portal for farmers

2010-12-31T10:04:00.002+05:30

Background:
On one hand, rural people especially small and marginal farmers are migrating to urban center in search of livelihood. On the other hand, every government will have biggest budget outlays to support agriculture and improve farmers’ life. In most of the villages, over the years, situation with the farmers have gone bad to worse (I don’t want to talk about the farmer suicides – I feel very low). Earlier they used to make a decent living from their farms, but now most have given up hopes on agriculture for several reasons – unreliable rains, unpredictable prices, and costly inputs, unavailability of labor and degradation of soil because of chemicals.
Bureaucrats and policy makers know all these ground realities and accordingly they are coming up with programs and policies. There is a certainly an issue with the program and policies of the government but the real issues are in inappropriate dissemination of information and lackadaisical implementation.

Some of the questions
• Where is the money going, who is benefitting? Why are farmers and rural folks not seeing their life change for the better? Why farmers are not availing the incentives and subsidies that genuinely belongs to them.
• Is there an information center which will give all the required information on programs and policies of the government, weather predictions, and market prices and so on?
• Can Information technology or internet be used to improve the situation?
• Are the existing agri portals not meeting these requirements?

Current challenge:
Today, there are many programs, schemes and subsidies announced by various departments in the government to improve the living conditions, agricultural output and income generating avenues in the villages. But, most of the farmers don’t receive this information or the benefits because of incompetence, negligence or lack of awareness among the local government machinery. Also, each department will have its own policies and programs that will work in silos and not integrated with the programs and policies of others departments. Finally, the intended beneficiary – farmer (especially the small and marginal farmers) don’t get benefit and there will be pilferage.
So, how do we plug the information gap and disseminate the information timely?
Proposed Solution:
With a click of button, Farmer will get information in their local language (Kannada) on all the programs, subsidies and benefits he / she is entitled from the government. Based on various parameters including District, size of the farms, gender /age and so on, farmer should be able to see relevant information cutting across the departments that focus on the farming community including
• agriculture
• horticulture
• sericulture
• Animal Husbandry – poultry, sheep / goat farming, milk dairy
• Dry land development - Rainwater harvesting,
• Information related to credit, loans and farm insurance
And so on. Also, farmer will get access to all the relevant information that are meant to improve the living conditions from various departments including
• Rural development,
• Off-grid electricity - non renewable energy,
• housing and sanitation
• education,
• Health care

Data gathering
As one time activity, we have to go around and collect the information and demonstrate the value of this portal to the farmers as well as government. So that bureaucrats will share information as and when they can make new policies and programs.

Future Roadmap
1. Access to information related to programs and incentives provided to improve the living conditions in the village and increase the income generation avenues by the government agencies.
a. Housing, sanitation
b. Water harvesting and energy based on non conventional sources including solar, wind, bio-mass
c. Cottage industries – KVIC.
2. Perhaps, this portal can also aggregate information from Corporate CSR departments and NGO sector that are focused on rural or farming community.

Deployment:
One of the real challenge will be – how many farmers have access to the internet, how will they access this portal ? If there is a value in the content and intent is there to help farmers, (one of ideas - as you mentioned, we can attach this to an office that distributes Pani in each taluk).we will definitely come up with ideas to spread the usage of this portal.

Product development is akin to climbing a new mountain that has no trail

2010-12-30T21:46:00.003+05:30

(Collage made out of the images from internet)
If it is revolutionary product creating an altogether new market, the creator himself will develop the product because he / she will find it very difficult to explain it to others and get a final product that is to meet his / her expectation. Also, it will be so vague in idea, challenging technically and doubtful in the acceptance, it will get diluted or killed if many people are involved in the development. So, creator will often end up in developing it.
If it is based on the market research and to replace an existing product or to extend the market, product owner (P) will start with a good understanding of the Voice of the customer, but through the life of the development, P’s understanding will go through a lot of change as it is dependent on his perceptions of the user perceptions. Product development is a culmination of thousands of perceptions that are volatile, so product owner will have tough time assimilating and structuring the requirements. There will be innumerable perceptions and communication channels between the P and the target audience. Product features, future customer expectations and uncertainties will look like a mountain with broad dimensions of height, width, gradients and bunch of little mountains.
Now, a whole new dimension of complexity and misunderstanding when P gets it developed through internal or external team (the order will be higher in the latter case). Even with all the processes and documentation, product requirements given by P will still be as broad as description of a Mountain. The very nature of product, having to hit the market at the earliest, development team will work very hard to meet the deadlines. Like any new mountain climbing, team members will be climbing from different directions, trying to find the easier way out.
Conquering each of the smaller mountains will reinforce the confidence of reaching the summit of the main mountain. The description of the summit of the mountain 1 will be redefined and reinforced at the summit of every smaller mountains. Through this whole journey of many climbs and descents, P will be with the team though not sure of whether this mountain is the one that needs to be climbed.
First shocker will come when team reaches the summit of the first mountain - P thinks he had communicated the 2nd mountain in the picture, whereas team understands it as 1st mountain. One can blame either P or the team or both in climbing the wrong mountain, but the fact of the matter is, product development is like climbing a new mountain that has no trail. In most of the mountains, smaller mountains will be similar in nature, so it is not inhuman to have different perceptions on the main mountain even at this stage.
In many cases, based on the experience of climbing mountain 1, revamped development team will set out to climb the mountain 2. It is not straight climbing, team has to descend from mountain 1, walk a distance and set out on climbing mountain 2. Most of the team will be burnt out in this long and strenuous adventure.
Between the start and now, the world has moved, so are its expectations and requirements. Team would have reached close to the summit of the 2nd mountain with all the climbs and descents, but the desired destination is actually the summit of mountain 3. Imagine about both physical and mental exhaustion of all the stakeholders, few can understand and relate to this.
Though the team gains experience in climbing mountains, but most of the times, it is of less significance because each mountain have different terrain and require different strengths and flexibilities.
While climbing the 1st mountain, time to reach summit will be a very critical factor, but by the time they start climbing 3rd mountain, reaching summit somehow will take the precedence over the time and resources.
PS: - This is one of my first few theories...

Hype Curve : way to look at any business trend or buzzwords

2010-12-30T21:44:00.003+05:30

Everything in today’s world from busineses, markets, ideas to initiativees in the organizations follows the trend something similar to this graph (Though in the consulting world, Gartner has trademarked its Hype curve, but this was one of my homegrown theories long time back)
Initailly, couple of people or companies (all are called “entities” henceforth) will pursue a new thought or business idea. There will be some challenges, problems and let-downs in the initial phase, so some weak hearted and resource strapped entities will drop off resulting into a trough. From here, powerful entities will invest their brains, creativity and resources in creating the initial ramp of the inevitable hype peak.
Once the ramp crosses the past peaks, smart entities with access to reports and information will join the bandwagon. More the entities having stake, pride and greed in increasing the momentum will be in multipliers. So, all the entities will use all their might and creativity to enroll more entities to join the bandwagon.
From here general public will invest into it, naturally the trend will be upwards. After this, some operators will make it so attractive, even gullible investors will start breaking all their secured investments and invest in this trend. Post this, you know what happens, there will be sharp decline for couple of years.
Throughout this climb and descent, conservative and risk averse investors will wait for descent to settle before investing. After this phase, it will be as good as any other idea or industry.
Take real estate (all of us have some stake either small or big), at very different stages, people have come into the market and invested. Depending upon when they have invested, they would see their investments appreciate appropriately.
You put any buzzword, it will have more or less similar trajectory. Whether it is E-Commerce sites or Cloud or Y2K, only some entities will be making up the most of the uptake.

Lunch time talk

2010-12-30T21:43:00.004+05:30

Why some consultants fail in getting the desired results from others?

Most of the ideas are same, but how come some consultants’ advice is taken well and others’ is not taken seriously at all. Common observation is, person who is not fit to even climb small hillock, will give fundas on climbing Mount Everest (not even about the same hillock that consultant can’t climb).Will we take him seriously? How much ever talk one might talk, but action will speak for itself.

Whereas few consultants would have climbed tall mountains if not Mount Everest in their chosen of profession, when they consult on climbing tall mountains, people can make it out the commitment and passion for the advice.

Very few would have actually climbed Mount Everest in their chosen field, if they don’t disclose their achievements and provide advice when sought, many would assume that they are idealists.

Why some people are hooked to TV, especially serials?

Gossiping is nothing but being political, so many people want to gossip but do not want to be seen as political. Also, in metros one can’t get time from any of their friends to gossip on common people, so it is very easy to get to listen to gossip in the TV serials.
Also, TV serials will show some infidelity or family politics or professional jealousy on daily basis, which people will comment upon and boost their own dormant ego.

Same Ideas - practical or theoretical?
Person who has a good equation with others or domination over others will have all his ideas appreciated. Whereas, when it comes from others, it will become theoretical or idealistic
Also, it is one of those sophisticated offensive strategies to put the other person on the backfoot by saying the idea is theoretical or idealistic.

Why some people always taunt others?
They think they are very straightforward by taunting or bringing up uncomfortable incidents, but they are only tyring to give boast to their dormant ego.

Everything in life is relative, not an absolutes

It is very common to categorize some one is absolutely bad or good. for everything that is said to be very good, will have people somewhere will problem with it.
For ex:- road widening may be bad for the people who would loose their property, but for commuters it is great thing.
Most will say Veerappan is a bad guy, but I am sure people in his village will be offering prayers in his name.

Shikari – the hunters – Known people hunt you, unknown people hunt you, past hunts you, thoughts hunt you and desires hunt you

2010-11-29T08:31:00.003+05:30

Easiest thing to write is reporting or narrating an incident, to describe the nature one has to have appreciation towards life, to write about a fiction one has to have creativity, but to write about a thought process of an introvert, along with all other capabilities, one has to have sensitive, emotional and had a feeling for smallest of small things in life. There is a Kannada writer, Yashwant Chithala. Who has written Shikari, an intense account of thoughts in a man’s mind in a very precarious situation- victim of organizational politics and at a fundamental level, fear of fear.
Many are afraid of others knowing truth about an incident or past or something, but most are afraid to know the truth themselves.
Like any other great novelists, he is done exceptionally well in all the departments of the novel – language, narration, plot, characterization and climax. But, few things stand out, non hypocritical account of a thought process in an introvert, chaos in the mind, oscillations of the mind in a difficult situation, dominance of the past in one’s way of looking at things,
It is very fascinating to see how everyone’s mind is full of thoughts, most often dictated by the basics like fear, anger, jealousy, disgust and greed. Getting out of the thoughts and focusing on the NOW is a challenge that everyone fights constantly, but few are able to enjoy it.
Life is all about mind games, how strong one is mentally to lead a life – whether an ambitious life or conservation life. There will be challenges, opportunities and temptations to drift from the set path, Mind games play a major role in shaping up one’s life., Understanding human psychologiy is very interesting.
• Most people are good by nature, would always want to be there in the times of both good and bad. But, their behavior and decision making will be dictated by Borrowed Perceptions. Even the very capable, educated and well placed people are unable to overcome from this phenomenon of borrowed perception.
• Few will be manipulative, capable of forcing their perceptions upon others for their own selfish benefits.
• Very few are capable to see through these perceptions and have their own perceptions.
Though many will be competent and committed, because of their inherent personality traits- even with all the preparations to face a situation and keenness to win the battle, their reaction in the real-time to the battle will go by the personality traits.
At the end, many a times, one would give up the battle voluntarily for far more fundamental discords than for the obvious reasons.
Some of the good dialogues
“Out of selfishness, insecurity, everyone wants to use people, incidents, information and imagination to their favor”
“The professional world is not a world of truth and values but a world of self-interests. For every action, roots are in self interests. The motive force working behind the façade of its evolving organization structure is ambition of the individuals to climb its tall ladder”.
He is written this in late 70s; it is even more apt in today’s corporate world and professional life. I am surprised why this has not been made as a film. It can be a classic movie set in the present world of corporate rivalry, individual aspirations, fluid personal life and organizational politics.

Lokayukta : bane or boon for corruption?

2010-11-29T08:30:00.001+05:30

General perception towards Lokayukta – has done lot of good work, highly committed to find out the corrupt folks in the system. Every second week, he will catch 8-10 government officials who are deep into corruption and publicise their assets in the media.
Analysis 1:
For a minute reflect upon this – A typical lifecycle of one of your close relative’s addiction to smoking.
When in college, just to experiment or out of friends’ force, he will smoke during a college trip. After couple of times, he will start smoking in a remote place where nobody sees. Then he will start smoking near the college canteens. Through out this journey, his only fear is that his parents should not get to know about his new found passion.
After some time, his father will get to know through one of his friends’ or relatives’, he will call and shout at his son. For few days, this guy will be sounding very low with guilt. It becomes unbearable, to overcome that he has to smoke. Slowly he will restart smoking. Now his objective is – his mother should never get to know about this. So, he will never smoke closer to his house; will be 2-3 streets away.
Having mentally got used to smoking, one’s metabolism will not be far behind; it will need smoking as triggers for many things. So, once his mother sees him smoke near the corner of his street. She will shout at him, emotionally advise him on the ill-evils of smoking, narrate how one of their known persons died at a very young age because of smoking and finally will extract a promise. He feels dejected, having lost all the face and trust of his loving mother. As usual, there is an old saying –one has to use thorn to remove thorn. So, to remove this guilt he has to start smoking, it becomes clear and hard in his mind though far away from the preying eyes of his family.
By now, he would have started earning his own; he becomes confident and smokes more. As a byproduct of smoking for years, he will get some serious health problems. When doctor sees the medical report, he will find out 2-3 big issues including smoking and work pressure, and discuss this with this guy along with his parents. As a compromise solution, he has to forgo others but will be allowed to smoke. Now, it is official and formalized. After this he starts smoking under a tree right in front of this.
If someone sees that their brother or cousin or close friend didn’t have to go through all the stages of the lifecycle or get any guilt before reaching the final stage, he will become very bold and start moving faster towards the last stage of the lifecycle.
Now come back to Lokayukta.
If one has observed, earlier corrupt people used to go away from their office and take bribes without the knowledge of others. But, after lokayukta raids they take bribes right on their desks / cabins.
Just by finding corrupt people and highlighting their assets, he is certainly made them feel guilty. They feel they have lost their face in front of their relatives and public. But, what happens after the guilt, it is very similar to smoking lifecycle, they get trapped and resolve only gets stronger. So instead of having to go through each stage of the lifecycle, most of the government officials have become even bolder and have made corruption as their main occupation.
Analysis 2:
When lokayukta raids, media especially TV channels will show the raid operations in a very possible way with lot of ingenuity to make it interesting and entertaining for the audience.
Take a minute and reflect upon – films with an angry and honest hero who is fighting the bad and evil people in the system especially the political and bureaucrats.
These films are normally blockbusters in every language. Most often, these movies get very good feedback / review for its relevance to the society and its message. People adrenaline will be very high while watching the movie and haunt the audience for couple of hours after watching. Once audience sleep overnite, they will forget about the movie.
Once in a while, it is good point for debate amongst friends and peers, because everybody can relate to it , share their own experiences and narrate their own stories.
After few movies, these kind of movies will go bust in the box office for obivious reasons.
Now come back to Lokayukta
Same here, Lokayukta raids when shown are intensely debated among the public. But after some time they are of entertainment and gossip value. When shown on the TV, people are glued to watch free entertainment and discuss about it with their friends while walking.
Now, what do you think? Lokayukta is helping to fight the corruption or actually fueling it?

Current Political Crisis: beginning of the new ways of corruption

2010-11-29T08:28:00.002+05:30

I feel politics is never discussed in the public, it is just played. What is leaked in the media is just a small drop in the ocean. Behind the scenes there will be a well orchestrated drama that will be played amongst the key stakeholders. They release things in a media to entertain the public, so one cannot make any analysis or conclusions based on the media reports or press releases.
On a daily basis opposition leaders in Karnataka are unearthing (not a struggle though) land scams involving Chief Minister, his family and cabinet colleagues. It is never an uncommon practice for the ruling governments to usurp public land. BDA site distribution and de-notification are an ugly age old practices which successive governments have conveniently abused.
It is an untold truth - without money one can’t fight elections today. It is a chicken and egg story here, common people started demanding money first or the leaders invented the corruption first. No clear answer exists.
Every political party and leaders are cheats, system is deep into corruption. Some leaders look clean, only because they have firm control over their party set up; hence they have delegated corruption to the next level. Whereas, leaders who don’t believe in others have created a coterie for money collection.
I guess there was unwritten protocol of understanding between the government and opposition not to talk about these methods lest they will find it difficult to raise the funds for fighting the elections. It is apparent that under tremendous pressure because of loss of face due to the recent ill-managed government dislodge campaign; opposition had no option but to open the can of worms. It was a question of their survival in the short term, they also know they are hitting the government below the belt which will hurt them too, but knowingly they have done it. Current government will not take it lightly; will certainly bring out scams involving opposition leaders. Mudslinging in the public will be going on for some more time. If you and I think this is end of the corruption in Karnataka, we are grossly mistaken.
With one of their main sources of amassing wealth is under the public glare, uncanny human being are these politicians who will invent new sophisticated ways of looting the system which will take another 10-15 years to unearth. (In the history of stock markets in India as well as elsewhere, every unearthed scam has resulted into a even bigger scam with an unthinkable modus operandi)
For some time politicians will act as if they have learnt from mistakes, so will try to be clean.
But, Humans have tremendous Survival instincts; politicians would want to survive and get the power at any cost. Hence this will be a beginning of new ways of corruption.

Amazing Astavadanam

2010-11-22T09:29:00.002+05:30

Thanks to Nagaraj, I got an opportunity to attend astavadanam session by Shatavadhani Ganesh, where he was challenged by Eight Experts from different facets of Literature I don’t have any words to describe his mastery in literature (Sanskrit, Vedas, Ramayana, Mahabharata, Old Kannada, Kannada), and ability to parallel process, remember, be spontaneous and above all, creativity. Each of the Eight Experts come with different experiences and poses challenges randomly (at times just to divert his attention and break his concentration). Astavadhani was successful in solving each of the challenges without losing track on any of them.

Some of the real time problems that he solved
1. For every poem that he was constructing, experts were putting lot of constraints on a real time basis ( like what alphabet should not be used, what kind of swara it should have )
2. To use different brands of motorbikes (Bajaj, Yamaha, Kawasaki and Kinetic) and create a poem in Sanskrit that a girl uses to describe beauty of another girl to a man. When this problem was given, I thought how on the earth one can find Sanskrit usage for these English / Japaanese words. Through the session, amazingly he constructed a poem.
3. Poems from Vedas, Bharatha were sung by a lady, which he summarized in his own way and gave the coordinates of the poem (who wrote, what was the context)
4. Constructed a beautiful song in Kannada that 3 sticks of a clock expresses their feeling to each other. Later when someone asked him which are the three famous ladies he would attribute to each of the 3 arms of the clock- Lakshmi for the seconds, Saraswathi for the minutes and Savtri for the hour.
5. Created a 5*5 matrix – each row / column adds upto 930, in the middle of nowhere one guy keeps asking what is the value of cell(2,4), what cell in third row is not yet mentioned? Mention it.
6. One guy was asking lot of political satire questions that were more of nuisance value, he answered them to the gallery.
7. One Pandit gave him an abrupt sentence ( which was inappropriate to be in any of the poems) and asked him to create a poem using that line. It was mesmerizing, he used the start and the end words so beautifully as part of the ending of the first half and starting of the second half of his poem, it changed the meaning of the original sentenance completely and came out as a poem that – An artist uses to describe the beauty of his painting and how falls in love with that painting.
8. Lot of poems / songs he sang spontaneously.

It was filled with wit, laughter, message, emotions and knowledge. It is once in a life time experience to watch this man perform. Don’t miss it if you get an opportunity.

Pondicherry

2010-11-22T09:28:00.004+05:30

Recently, I had been to Pondicherry to learn Eye Exercises at School for Perfect Eye Sight. I am a believer in our body’s ability to cure itself if observed and guided properly. After the exercises, I could feel improvement in my eye sight. I have to go long way in practicing regularly to see marked improvement in my eyesight.

Interestingly, lot of people from all over India as well as the world had come there for learning. One interesting observation is, many people have very less risk appetite when it comes to health. Many people there had come with a power of less than 1 and were very concerned about their eyes.

Had a very good time in Pondicherry, staying in Ashram guest house, eating ashram food and moving around on a rented cycle. Ashram is very nice. I haven’t read much of Sri Aurobindo’s teachings but sitting in Ashram is a peaceful experience.

Got to eat natural Dosa, Idli – it was not boiled in traditional sense, it was of room temperature, and it was very tasty.

Auroville

2010-11-22T09:28:00.003+05:30

It’s everybody’s dream to live in such a community, work on things that interest to you, do what you like, live close to the nature, interact with nice people and eat healthy food. I had a very good time visiting few farms that are truly organic and natural. If you are not aware of Auroville – it is a global community envisaged by THE MOTHER and people (over 2000) from all over the world have been living there for decades now – earning their livelihood working on things they are good at.

Each of the farms has very good names – Solitude, Buddha, Annapurna and so on (All of them have good information on their websites if you want to know more).
a. Visited Solitude, Krishna is doing amazing work, influenced by Masanabu Fukuoka, grows paddy, varagu, ragi, lot of vegetables and fruits. He has a very committed bunch of volunteers from Africa and Europe who are working on the fields, getting their hands dirty. He has a beautiful community kitchen which doubles up as discussion adda also. He has one of those Windmills to pump the water – meets the farms’ water requirements. They are the real barefoot soldiers.
b. Buddha farm is another interesting farm, use Natueco Farming methodology of Dabholkar, has a series of raised beds with lot of compost and mulching, grow vegetables, greens and grains throughout the year. They use solar energy for both pumping water as well as lighting.

It is not just about the farming (though it is a significant part of the Auroville Economy); there is lots of other interesting stuff they do.

Couple of them which caught my interest
a. Earth institute – they have developed a technology for constructing eco friendly, vernacular (building with locally available material) and yet less expensive buildings. They have something called CSEB (Compressed Stabilized Earth blocks) which h is basically made of soil, clay and very less cement that requires no plastering. Normally if you see an eco-friendly house, you can safely assume many of them are constructed using this methodology.
b. I feel wind energy is one of the grossly underutilized energy. ( for some purposes, electricity is not the best solution – for ex:- solar water heater is working out well for many years now, bio-gas is used for cooking in many places) For pumping water from sump to overhead tank in both urban setup as well as rural setup, I feel windmill is the ideal as it can be pumped 24 hours in a day for daily consumption. Visited wind mill maker, they have done fantastic work.
c. One group makes cheese; I wanted to see how they make cheese. But, because of some miscommunication I could not see.

Actually, the major attraction of Auroville is MatriMandir built in a globe shape with a chamber for meditation; sunlight is passed through some stuff to create energy suitable for meditation. To meditate there, one has to make a trip to Auroville one day, get a pass for the next day and go again the next day for meditation (this is a way they check one’s seriousness to meditate). I got the pass but it rained next day, because of which they cancelled the appointment.

Gold jeweler shops

2010-11-22T09:27:00.005+05:30

Even at twenty thousand per 10 gm of Gold, Gold shops are mushrooming in every street. Each one of them is coming up with Swanky and massive showrooms paying heavy real estate rentals, with celebrity’s endorsements and heavy advertisement budgets. Everybody claims that their gold is pure and adheres to some standards, charge lowest making charges, least waste and so on. With heavy spends on one side, if there are so many businessmen coming up with new shops, it looks like there is lot of money they are making by fooling people. Every gold showroom on MG Road in Kochi has started a huge showroom in Bangalore. I wonder what kind of tricks they are playing on gullible women and men who are splurging money on Gold.
Gold is considered to be safe investment for many years now, but it is only going upwards for a decade now. Looks like, there is a worldwide cartel that is controlling the gold prices.
At one level Gold prices are soaring high, at another level these gold shops are fooling gullible customers by promising some stuff. Knowing antecedents of some of these jeweler shops, I am sure they are fooling customers’ big time – For ex:- if one buys a jewel for 10 gm by paying 20000, the jewel will have only 7.5 gm of gold. When they go and sell this jewel, they will get less than 15, 000.

Buying Gold biscuits as investment is one thing, but buying jewels as investments is at a different level altogether.

Visit to Krishi Mela

2010-11-22T09:27:00.004+05:30

I visited recently concluded Krishi Mela (Agriculture fair) organized by GKVK on Bellary Road. I must say they had done a fantastic job in organizing such a beautiful, comprehensive and informative fair. Since it was my first visit to such mela, I was quite thrilled to visit their demonstration farms where they had showcased
a. Best practices in growing food grains, vegetables, greens, fruits and medicinal plants.
b. Different ways of organic compositing

There were lots of stalls organized,
a. many of them were selling everything related to farming including seeds, organic compost, produce, equipment and value added products
b. Some of them were sharing information on food processing, hi-tech and books.
c. Good amount of information on Dairy farming, livestock, poultry and honey bee – looks like, there is a new fad of developing a farm to grow new bird – Emu from Australia, and I thought that bird is meant to live in cold weather, feel sorry for it – for having to live in hot temperate weather here.
d. Renewable energy, water management and green house

It was fascinating to see complete breadth of visitors –
a. Tens of thousands of agriculturists and their families – looking for new practices, enquiring about the equipments
b. Thousands of school students learning about the agriculture
c. hundreds of Bangalore folks interested in gardening – shopping for seeds
d. tens of Expats with their kids explaining them about the rural life, agriculture and nature
e. Hundreds of young who are interested in learning about business opportunities in this sector.

I learnt quite a bit, collected lot of information about organic farming, compositing, plants, seeds, value added products and intermediate technologies which I am sure will be of great use in the future

I am not sure of how many of you have ever visited GKVK campus, it is massive – spread over more than 1500 acres (politicians must be eyeing for its land for a long time now). Some parts of it is lush green forest and some parts of it is small plots where teachers experiment with farming techniques and study the plants from different facets of science ( seed, insects, weeds, fertilizers, pathology and so on ).

There were lot of vendors selling fruits that are grown in the campus, I had a nice time eating local fruits (like in our school days), and they were really fresh and tasty.

Public Transport Etiquette

2010-11-22T09:26:00.005+05:30

Like our deteriorated traffic sense, people have lost their sense while commuting in the public transport. Just to give an idea on how it is in Japan – it is simply mind blowing
1. People will give their seats voluntarily to old, pregnant and ladies with small kids
2. They maintain pin drop silence, forget about sleeping, one can even meditate in their public transport, especially the train –
a. even amongst friends, they don’t speak while in the train / bus
b. They don’t speak on their mobiles, they will have their phones in silent mode, very emergency calls, they run to the doors and pick up the call and speak for few seconds and disconnect, and they apologize for that.
c. By mistake if someone picks up the call, rest of the crowd wake up from the deep slumber and just look at him. if one continues to speak, it is known that he is new to Japan
d. They either take a nap or read or play games (even when they are standing, they will be busy reading). While reading newspapers, they will fold paper in such a beautiful way and they will not disturb their neighbors.
e. Playing music from their cell phones or music players is strictly no-no
f. They don’t play music in the public address system
3. They will make queues, give way to the people to get down firsts and then they get in – if you offer your seat to senior citizens, many times they offer it back to you.

Contrast this to our people commuting in public transport systems. Forget about common people commuting in the ordinary city buses, even the so-called while collared professionals travelling in luxurious and expensive Volvo buses create so much of noise and nuisance. Many times, it is like a fish market. It is diametrically opposite to what I have experienced in Japan.
Some of the things that really amuse me…
1. People speak loudly on their cell phones all their personal and professional stuff ( even to the extent of bitching about their spouses, colleagues and companies)
2. Some people use foul language even if there is a girl sitting next to him
3. Playing some crap music loudly on their cell phones
4. It is everyone’s birthright to grab a seat, even if there is a more needy person standing and swinging like a pendulum in Volvo
5. Some couples will be uncontrollable in expressing their affection to each other -
Summary is, basically people here have become very insensitive to their fellow passengers. There are so many things that one has to be aware of while commuting in the public transport.

Day outs

2010-11-22T09:26:00.003+05:30

Visited Bangalore Book fair: it was very good, well organized fair. Purchased quite a lot of books, I was hunting for many Kannada literature books for quite some time, it was 100% success, and I could get all of them. Now the big challenge is to read them.

Like minded people meet: One of my friend had called me for a meeting of Like minded people on Social Service to brainstorm on ideas to focus on. Bunch of very committed and passionate social service people had assembled. Since I have not done (apart from thinking and talking) any social service yet. It was good to hear their stories and ideas. But, the way the facilitator conducted the whole session, it reminded me of two similar meetings I attended more than 8 years back, cajoled by my friends to attend a meeting of like minded entrepreneurial people – got to know that it is organized by Amway only after going there. Though the difference is - this meeting of social service people was good in intent and content.

Attended NASSCOM Product Conclave: It was quite interesting to so many software product companies doing well in India. Last five years, there has been a new wave of product entrepreneurs like Zoho, Fusioncharts, and Orangescape doing great business serving global customers. Current season, overarching trend has been - Cloud computing. There was a usual debate on whether entrepreneurs are born or nurtured – more of entertainment than any value because there are enough examples for each argument. These conferences are good for meeting up old friends.

Mobile Phones – Tobacco in waiting

2010-10-18T08:35:00.005+05:30

These days it is common to see two wheel drivers driving in one hand and while other hand will be holding their cell phone. It is damn dangerous, they will drive unmindfully even in the busy roads. I see people (cutting across the age groups) doing lot of acrobatics on two wheelers to hold their cell phone as well as drive. Some will be holding their phone in the helmet, even auto drivers maneuver in the traffic jams and speak on their cell phones at the same time, and so are bus drivers. Car drivers are no less guilty in this.
There is lot of research that has been done on the long term health hazards caused by using cell phones. How about the motor accidents caused by the drivers busy talking over their mobile phone. People are not worried about it much; even the governments are ignorant of it. This problem is very similar to the one faced by the cigarette smokers; governments neglected till it became too obvious and big. After the damage was done, tobacco industry was forced to create a fund to compensate the people suffering from the smoking.
Fundamentally, it is the human being who has to own up for his life as well as others on the road. But, as usual, drivers don’t want to utilize every possible moment in communication. Even with cigarette smokers, if they were responsible there is no need to create legislations or funds to curb their instincts. Governments all over the world use various awareness campaigns to overcome this (smoking) problem but these being a lucrative business, governments succumb to the lobby.
In this case, it is two thriving industries – telecom (both handset manufacturers and Service providers) and automobile who will be responsible for all the accidents and deaths caused by drivers.
Government has failed to curb this habit through its awareness programs and penalty by the traffic police. It is high time it mandates the industry - Mobile Service providers and handset manufacturers in particular and automobile industry in general (Though Bike manufacturers have to be mandated) to create campaigns and advertisements to curb this. Else, it may be become a big national crisis.
Though Media highlights the deaths caused by road accidents, they never create consistent and continuous programs to sensitize people on this issue. Their creative team have to think innovatively to make programs on such issues with good TRPs, so that it can create a win-win model (May be they can learn a trick or two from Aamir Khan – Taare Zameen Par)
PS: - I have couple of easy ideas for scientists to provide solutions and companies to make money out of it.
1. Have a helmet which jams the signal - one can’t use the cell phone (even with hands-free) when helmet is on the head.
2. Have a cell phone jammer on top of the driver seat in all the vehicles including car, bus, goods vehicle, which will make mobile phone inactive when ignition is on.
3. Every Cigarette packs have message stating Smoking is injurious to health and a picture of skull to convey its negative impact on the health. Similarly, handset manufacturers as well as automobile manufacturers have to be mandated to put a message on the phone and steering wheel / handle.

TV for Bollywood actors: Capitalism of worst kind

2010-10-18T08:35:00.004+05:30

Every TV channel wants to have a celebrity managed show in their stable. It guarantees them certain TRP ratings, can price their advertisements at premium, advertisers can make a killing (as they charge 15% of the ad expenses) and companies get more eyeballs for their products. Also, TV watchers get to see enough of their favorite actors, there will be lot of other stars participating in the shows as guests and get to watch lot of masala drama. This is a win-win for all the stakeholders.
Every day we hear about the fees paid to the host (celebrity), it runs in crores per show. If Channel has to pay couple of crores to the actor, they have to make more money on top of it, so they have recover it in advertisement fees. If companies have to shell out more money for the advertisements, they have to either increase the price or reduce the quality / content of the product. So finally, who will bear the brunt; it is the common man who enmasse pay for the ego boasting fees for the actors.
There is no tree in the backyard that will print money (or cut cheques) for these guys. It is the mass in Bottom of the pyramid pay up more for the same goods to the ones on top of the pyramid to scale newer heights.
Beyond certain level of fees, isn’t it obnoxious to pay actors for just to boost their egos. For 90 days program, these actors will be making 180 Crores (at the rate of 2 Crores per episode) and rest of the country pay for it in multiples.

Dasara: childhood memories

2010-10-18T08:34:00.000+05:30

For most of us, deepavali is the most favorite festival in our childhood, but for me it was always Dasara that I used to eagerly wait. I have lot of good memories of this festival.
During my primary school days, we had couple of buses (transportation business) and Lorries; I used to go around buying flowers and other decoration material. Since I was too young, I was tolerated with my entire nuisance. I used to always end up buying more flowers than what was told. Also, I used to buy lot of different kinds of flowers and garlands. On the festival day, I used to get up very early, because I didn’t want to miss out on anything to do with the cleaning, decoration and pooja.
I still remember I used to throw up lot of tantrums; I used to insist on tying the biggest garland for each of the buses. I used to climb on top of the bus, try to tie and as usual, I only used to the initial things but finally someone else was completing it.
Now I wonder how much excited I use to be during these festivals. It was maha-fun.
PS: - When I was a small kid, Transportation was the first business I dreamt of doing when I grow up. That time I used to think that I will have a fleet of buses and vehicles so thsat during Dasara, there will be a big convoy of well decorated vehicles. On business front, I used to dream that my buses will always be plying with full capacity.

Recent Political drama in Karnataka

2010-10-18T08:33:00.001+05:30

It was a shame, political system is at its lowest point in Karnataka. I always thought Karnataka people deserve a good set of politicians ( I hate to call them leaders) but what we saw last 15 days was worst in the history. Every party has contributed their bit to the crisis, no party or politician is above the board. Some were acting like hooligans, some were praying in the temples, some were brokering the mega deals and some were silent, but all of them are crooks and trying to further their own self interests. Corruption is at its peak in the state while planning and administration are at bottom.
Even now I don’t know what the demands of the rebel and independent legistlators were. If any of you have interacted with legislators, they are the lords of their constituencies but what we saw of them last two weeks, they were nothing but goons and were treated like bonded labors by their respective heads. They moved around as if they were chained because they were convicts of petty theft.
In the Indian democracy, these kinds of defection and political crisis were seen in the smaller states like Haryana and Goa, and recently carved out states like Jharakand. But, now it is come to the mainstream states like Karnataka. Going forward, every state will go through this mess if ruling parties have no simple majority in the house. Politicians have legalized money power in the elections and think that is the only way to win an election. It is not the party or ideology or work that will fetch votes anymore, it is only the money that fetch.
If you consider one political party is loser and another party is winner, I think you need to reassess, it is the public who pay taxes and are not part of the political system are the losers (I am making this distinction because there is lot of ancillary business attached to these legislators and trickledown effect happens on them too).
I somehow don’t want to think and write about politicians, it will be disgusting and depressing, but this time I wrote just to offload it.
PS: - I was talking about these with couple of my friends from Chennai and Mumbai, they not only shared my frustration and they shared even horror stories about politicians in their states. In Tamil Nadu, K & family have nationalized the corruption and they are legal heirs of the official treasury – looted heist.