Ashamed to be Indian

I like N.R.Narayanamurthy ( Founder of Infosys ) or Murthy as he is called simply because his simplicity shines through in complex situations and he is able to cut through the flim-flam and BS with ease and felicity. Yesterday he told the Indian public at large that he was 'Ashamed to be Indian'. This from a man who probably is an Indian icon for much of the civilized world. He is ashamed for the horrific act of brutality that six or more lumpen elements perpetrated on a young women in a moving bus in our national capital New Delhi. This reminds me of Mahatma Gandhi who said something similar when the Indian sub continent was suffused with hate and vengeance even as the sub continent was being cleaved into two nations in what was a weird and tragic accident. Does Murthy offer a solution? He is humble enough to say that he does not have all the answers for the moment but is just ashamed to be Indian! Contrast this with the lovely Gul Panag ( Bollywood actress), who says that statistics are probably lying and that Delhi is not the Rape capital of India. Does this really matter in the face of the agony that the young women who battle for life faces? The portly Kushboo ( South Indian actress - made famous by a temple being built with her as a Goddess in Tamil Nadu ) goes on to add that all rapists need to be hanged pronto, all the time resembling a Deepavali fire cracker about to explode/implode! Brand Delhi is taking a beating - much to the oblivion of its politicians and Indian society at large is taking a bigger one with our inability to look at women as simple human beings, rather than item girls or pieces of entertainment. As more women enter the workplace, issues of harassment are going to become pieces of contention that will surface with increasing rapidity and regularity, unless there is a fundamental shift in the way that the Indian male thinks.This can only happen at home, where parents teach their young son's that there is an intrinsic equality among all life that needs to be respected and preserved.Subjugating other people is not sustainable over time as history has shown repeatedly.Bullying, harassment and rape are forms of primitive subjugation that has no place in modern society and people who indulge in them need to be aware of the repercussions. Interestingly Should we be ashamed to be Indian? If we are proud to be Indian for many things that this great civilization has thrown up, we ought to be ashamed as well for this horrific act of senseless, drunken brutality perpetrated on a young woman who fought with all her might to defend herself. The only one who probably, needs to be not ashamed of herself at the end of this sordid and rather chilling episode!

Shockwaves

The other day I was watching a rather interesting interview of Pervez Amirali Hoodbhoy the particle physicist from Pakistan. The noble doctor has been hammering away for nuclear disarmament for many years. However I was a little puzzled by his argument against India's nuclear program. His contention is that the nuclear explosion at Pokhran in 1974 was a disaster for India! How so? Hoodbhoy argues that it was this explosion that got Pakistan to work on theirs and go nuclear. He further argues that it was this explosion that eventually lead Pakistan to have the nuclear bomb and get military parity with India. While this may be true it is worth remembering that while Pakistan may be India centric, India is not. India's nuclear program was aimed not at Pakistan which has always been considered to be an irritant rather than a threat. The bigger threat was China and that too in a neighborhood that was hostile after successive wars were fought. Let us hark back to 1974 for a moment. Pakistan and China were an alliance, to whom the American's were cosying up under a Richard Nixon who disliked India. The Russian's were our only ally and China was a nuclear power that could always arm twist a non nuclear India.I do not see what other choice India had but to catch up with the Chinese

. Hoodbhoy goes on say that since Pakistan now has a nuclear bomb that country can harbor terrorists, who can strike at India with impunity and India will not be able to respond for fear of provoking a nuclear war. Kargil proved otherwise, didn't it? India used conventional weapons to smash occupying troops. I do not think that the equation is as simple as Hoodbhoy makes it out to be. India need not fight a war to choke Pakistan off. It can be done by diplomatic and economic means, which even the Pakistanis seem to now recognize. The People's Republic of China has developed and possessed weapons of mass destruction, including chemical and nuclear weapons. China's first nuclear test took place in 1964 and first hydrogen bomb test occurred in 1967. This was a full ten years before India's. China has been implicated in the development of the Pakistani nuclear program. In the early 1980s, China is also believed to have given Pakistan a "package" including uranium enrichment technology, high-enriched uranium, and the design for a compact nuclear weapon. Chinese complicity is what worries and should worry India and not Pakistan as Hoodbhoy erroneously believes.

On violence and other things......

As Mumbai braces itself and waits with bated breath, it is said that Balasaheb Thackeray battles for his life in what is a deserted city. The state administration has moved in a large number of reserve police and the Rapid Action Force as well to counter violence that might erupt should the Shiv Sena chief pass away. There has been a prelude with Sainiks attacking media persons a couple of days ago. Why and how violence can be justified by grieving political party workers is a question that has troubled many in our young country? While the Sikh riots of 1984, post Indira Gandhi's assassination might be qualitatively different it falls into the same genre. In more recent time the mayhem that was caused by the death of M.G.Ramachandran in Tamil Nadu and that of Cinema star and legend Rajkumar in Karnataka are a case in point.In both cases entire cities were shut down and millions of rupees and some lives lost due to looting and senseless violence by so called grieving supporters.Does this behavior have a place in a mature country? There is a pattern which plays itself out time and again and in order to protect innocent citizens administrations need to break it ( the pattern ). What does this mean? Lets look at a similar situation. The occupying American forces in Iraq had their hands full. While they expected a grateful local populace to treat them like liberators all they got was abuse and violent riots.A young American Major who viewed video footage of the riots saw a pattern after many sightings. What did he see? 1. A small crowd would first assemble. 2. The congregation would gradually grow larger with time. 3. Food hawkers would appear and set up shop as if on cue to feed the crowd. 4. The tension would grow and soon somebody would hurl a rock and all hell would break loose. The Major had a brilliant idea and requested the local administration to prevent food hawkers from setting up shop near a potentially riotous situation. Next time a crowd gathered there were no food hawkers to feed them, the restless crowd soon melted away in apparent hunger and frustration.What had the Major done? He had simply changed the pattern or changed the rules of the game? Indian administrators need to do this too. We simply cannot afford to allow lumpen elements driven by suicidal tendencies to take control of our cities.We need better strategies for crowd control.Violence is not an option anymore.

Great leaps that end in disaster.....

A glossed over and poorly reported disaster of the modern age has to be Mao's- Great Leap Forward. Mao was so inspired by Nikita Khrushchev's call that the USSR would overtake the United States in industrial production in just fifteen years. The Chinese leader promised that the Chinese nation would overtake the British in the same fifteen years and so was launched a program, that would eventually kill close to thirty six million Chinese peasants who died of starvation while members of the communist party lived fairly well fed lives. How did this come to be? When you have a cocktail of lies, stupidity and bravado disasters are not too far away and lurk at every turn. Mao began by 'collectivizing' all private land holding in China, which was very unpopular with the peasants. This was done to improve productivity. He next said that steel production must go up substantially and encouraged and then ordered people to set up backyard steel furnaces to produce steel at home.Neither Mao nor the peasants understood steel making technology and the upshot was that most peasants melted their tools- shovels, rakes, pikes, axes in the smelting furnaces of their homes. The end result was that the tools were gone without any steel. The communist party was too afraid to tell Mao that his plan was an unmitigated disaster and that food production across China was dropping. What they kept telling him was that food ( rice ) production had gone up and that people were singing paeans in his praise! Mao like all megalomaniacs was so full of himself that he believed the lie. The story has interesting take away's for all of us: 1.Science leave alone the rocket science kind is not common sense and its planning and execution is best left to experts. 2. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. 3. Eventually it is the famous 'aam admi' that gets the short end of the stick, however else you plan it, simply because the rich did not become so by being daft and swallowing patriotic propoganda! Did this have a bearing on India? I think it did, as by 1961 starvation deaths had reached a peak and Mao was desperate for a way out. In 1962 the Chinese fought us in a short war...................a timely diversion!

Stinking Bengaluru

I'm glad I live in the outskirts of Bengaluru, a reason being that I do not wake up to see mounds of garbage staring at me or worse have to smell it every time the wind comes my way. The dreaded problem of garbage has come to Bengaluru before other cities and this does not mean that it will not come to them. Many many years ago I made a train journey with a British lady and her boyfriend from Gujarat to Bengaluru. The lady kept making jokes centered around Garbage that I found difficult to fathom leave alone laugh at. Now I do, at least the fathom part. Garbage is a problem simply because the general population thinks it is not an issue that concerns them, that is till they see the garbage heap growing at their doorstep.That is the moment the finger pointing starts. Most households neither segregate or process their wet and dry wastes. Many a busy denizen just dumps his garbage at the street corner while on his/her morning walk and expects the garbage to disappear from his/her sight. This is a piece of magic that is not going to happen. Hapless villagers around Bengaluru who were absorbing our trash for years have woken up and cried a halt to dumping of waste around their villages even as we behave and live as if we are from an alien land living in Bengaluru and the issues of this city does not concern us. The garbage has raised serious questions on the spread of disease particularly dengue which is life threatening.While we can keep pointing fingers it is important to ask how the problem can be addressed as a normal citizen. Even while there are charges of corruption and neglect, the BBMP and state government claims to be looking at long term solutions in processing waste and thus reducing the need for landfills.While Bengaluru stinks we need proactive solutions and effort even at the cost of spending time away from regular work to avoid shooting ourselves in the foot!

The Battle of the Bulge!

An interesting question doing the rounds is whether we have reached a moment in India's history which is a defining one. A couple of days ago, I watched a heated exchange between the leader of a Khap court or Panchayat from Haryana and a woman activist. The Khap's are advocating a ban on the use of cell phones for girls below the age of eighteen and more so are encouraging families to get their young daughters married off to prevent rape, incidence of which has risen sharply in the North Indian state over the last few months. The lady in question was pretty peeved and was making the point that the law of the land did not allow for both. Not too far away in Delhi social activist turned politician Arvind Kejriwal is giving politicos a scare and has them scurrying for cover. The point for me is that, both protestors are from India's middle class, which seems to have attained a critical mass and a life of its own. You find more of these folk striking out at citadels that were difficult to breach not too long ago: Rural India, the rich and politicians. Today the middle class is ready to take them on to good effect and I think that this is the genesis of a movement that can only better India. A report by National Council for Applied Economic Research's (NCAER) Centre for Macro Consumer Research said by 2015-16, India will be a country of 53.3 million middle class households, translating into 267 million people falling in the category. There are many India’s and that is a fact. What is also a fact is that a burgeoning Indian middle class refuses to be ignored anymore and wants to be heard, whether it is about corruption or ancient social prejudice.

The Battle of the Bulge has truly begun and its outcome is going to define India in the years to come.

Statesmanship is not just about entertaining the peasants.........

Even as the first ball is just being bowled at the idyllic sea side southern port town of Hambanatota in Sri Lanka, for the just started T20 Cricket World Cup, the Sri Lankan premier is all set to land in India. Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa is scheduled to lay the foundation stone for an international Buddhist university in Sanchi, Madhya Pradesh, on September 21. This event has not gone down too well in the state of Tamil Nadu which accuses the man of genocide against ethnic Tamils, a legacy of the Tamil freedom movement in that country, from which the Sri Lankans have not emerged looking like angels. Shouting slogans against the 'genocide' of ethnic Tamils in the island nation and holding Rajapaksa responsible for 'war crimes', Vijayaraj, an unmarried auto-rickshaw driver, took his colleagues by surprise by dousing himself with kerosene and setting himself on fire even as ploitical parties of all hues go to town on the issue and whip up a frenzy in Tamil Nadu. Vijayaraj was rushed to a nearby hospital and his condition is stated to be critical. Just a few weeks ago close to 178 Sri Lanka tourists in Tamil Nadu bore the brunt of a fresh round of protests in Tamil Nadu when a pro-LTTE group intercepted the seven buses they were travelling in. The pilgrims were returning to Nagapattinam after offering prayers at Velankanni. In another incident, a group of Sri Lankan tourists were accosted by another Tamil group who waved black flags at them while they were on their way to the Trichy airport. This has prompted the Sri Lankan government to issue a travel advisory against travelling to that state. Sri Lanka just a few years ago had just one major port at Colombo, that is not the case today. The Chinese, in China Harbour Engineering Co & Sinohydro Corporation Ltd JV, have built them a superb facility at Hambanatota on the sothern arc of Sri Lanka and there is a perception that the nervous Lankans are looking at closer ties with the Chinese even as statesmanship is held hostage to regional politics in India. A strong Chinese presence in Sri Lanka controlling sea routes is a major threat to India. After all 100 % of our East-West cargo goes by Hambanatota. While we enjoy the cricket, that should makes us nervous indeed......... India, should she want to play a major role in the region needs to seperate local politics from strategic interest.

Are we really green?

In a world where everybody seems to want to go green, it is a pertinent need to understand, their understanding of going green or green initiatives. Is it wearing a green ribbon on their sleeve, a green Tee Shirt or using paper made of Elephant dung?

A few days ago, I was at the facility of a major paint manufacturer in Bangalore and on my way to meet their Director noticed a gent rushing off with a forked stick in one hand and a large plastic bag in the other. His mission.....to catch a rat snake that was enjoying a gentle stroll in the sun! Catch the snake he did rather deftly and then he let it off in the wilderness outside the campus. I was impressed enough to mention this to the Director and he said that it was normal practice. After all, humans had invaded their territory.They did not slaughter snakes! I once knew a CEO who claimed that his facility was a green one simply because he had a large green lawn, which was watered by drawing water from bore wells in a water depleted area of Bengaluru. One might wonder if this is really a green initiative. Going Green is using resources as efficiently as possible and cutting out waste, even at the cost of pushing your own costs up. A good example would be Xerox that recycles its old photo copiers at a steep cost. They do reduce waste! Cutting down on the amount of paper used is also highly beneficial for the environment. A product called ElectroForms can help companies capture information without having to store vast amounts of paper. Individuals and Corporations need to make things happen without vandalizing nature.

Teachers Day!

Most nations would like to lie and that is a fact. Either they would like to gloss over shameful events or parts of history that seem so unpalatable that they would rather distort than square up to. Master's at distortion of history are our immediate neighbours and cousins the Pakistani's. They have made it a fine art, so much so that their history seems to start in 712 AD when Mohammed Bin Quasim, the Arab landed in Sind, rather than Mohenjo-Daro and the civilizations of the Indus, because that seem to be too Hindu and so Indian. Many would like to trace their genesis to Arabia rather than the sub-continent.A greater sham has not been perpetrated by so few on so many! Moving forward Pakistan has again distorted their books indicating that eventually they were the victors in their four wars with India, so much so, that the loss of East Bengal is no big deal and hence has lead them to a pass where they might have a repeat in Baluchistan which is protesting shameful neglect, abuse and exploitation just as the Bengali's of Bangladesh did and eventually broke away to form a new nation. Nations are not vaudeville players and are expected to learn from painful lessons in history. The question is how do you fool a nation into believing the drivel that you dish out? The easiest way would be to blatantly lie in school text books or even worse highlight certain areas while glossing over others. Hence you incept thoughts into young minds that are fertile grounds for ideas, true or otherwise. You need to catch them young and most importantly you need the teacher to be part of this nefarious agenda. The other day I bumped into a lady from a state of India, in course of a workshop. The agenda was to discuss, what of our achievements we were proud of. While I was contemplating what I could gas about ( my friends say I blow my own trumpet ), the lady without batting a shapely eyelid said, I'm proud to have been born in .........state.Nothing else, just that she was born at a place!!!!!! I was flummoxed and have a sneaking suspicion that many of our text books at the state level are jingoistic enough to have ideas that are carried through to adulthood. A tragedy, as far as I'm concerned! Can you be so foolish to pretend that you and your people are a cultural fountainhead in a nation as old and diverse as is India? If nothing else we ought to learn from Pakistan and teach our youngsters the right things without being parochial or jingoistic. As a maturing and forward looking nation we owe that to our young and even more so to ourselves as teachers around what is yet another Teachers Day in India.

The Nokia Story.........

What is the similarity between Nokia and the Titanic? Separated by almost a century the cell phone manufacturer and the ‘unsinkable’ ship would seem to have little in common but they do indeed. When the Titanic hit an iceberg, her side shell was sliced open like a can of Sardines. This caused sea water to flood a few of her side tanks and from there flow to the other tanks on one side of the great ship. The flooding could not be contained and the ship eventually went down as her dead weight increased. Naval architects the world over learnt from this tragedy. Ship design and construction changed for all time. Longitudinal and transverse bulkheads connected decks and hence if a tank was holed, flooding was contained to one or two tanks and the ship though crippled could still float. The titanic story seems to be playing itself out on the economic stage with Nokia, today. The Finnish behemoth contributed a quarter of that country’s growth from 1998 to 2007, according to figures from the Research Institute of the Finnish Economy (ETLA). Over the same period, the mobile-phone manufacturer’s spending on research and development made up 30% of the country’s total, and it generated nearly 20% of Finland’s exports. In the decade to 2007, Nokia was sometimes paying as much as 23% of all Finnish corporation tax. Nokia gradual descent as a mobile phone leader in the wake of the rise of Apple and Samsung has set alarm bells ringing in Finland and Europe. The Finnish economy can implode with just this one company going down, in what is nation that has not cared to diversify its economy and mitigate risk.The Netherlands tell a similar story with Royal Dutch Shell contributing about 56% to that country's revenue as percentage of GDP,last year.

One company national economies always face the risk of sinking like the Titanic unless they diversify and not solely depend on that one goose that lays the golden egg! I feel particularly sad as my choice of mobile phone for close to fifteen years has always been Nokia, till my son thrust a Samsung on me a couple of months ago, forcing me to change brands. And that I guess sums it up..............

An Assembly Line!

Henry Ford in 1909 is said to have said "Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants so long as it is black", about the Model T. Ford ushered in the assembly line concept taht revolutionized manufacturing and to large extent process efficiency. He also said "The average man won't really do a day's work unless he is caught and cannot get out of it". Henry Ford was a hard driving man who made his own rules and lived by them in a fast changing world. Fast forward to present day India and what is said to be one of the toughest examinations in the world to crack, the IITJEE. The examination always was a test of intelligence, skill, hard work and perseverance, where teens slog long hours to achieve a place in some of India's top technical colleges. Today in India, admission to these institutions resembles Ford's assembly line. Kids are taken from home and dumped in hostels, grilled for hours on end, away from their parents and eventually many do make it to the IIT's. But at what cost? Former Infosys Head Honcho, N.R.Narayanamurthy said a few months ago that the quality of students at the IIT's were dipping and that there were a singular lack of innovation. I'm sure the assembly line concept has something to do with this. To circumvent, this system India's current minister of education has said that, entry to the IIT's will henceforth carry a component from the 12th Grade passing out marks. This would preclude the assembly liners in coaching kids only for the IIT's at the exclusion of all else. However with the ingenuity of the Indian mind, I'm sure coaching centres would find a way around this initiative, by maybe roping in kids when they are ten or so and putting them on the assembly line. The point I'm trying to make is that, we need to be efficient, however should all our cars be black and should we collar kids and grind them to get them to join an institution of national importance? Can you compare a custom made Ferrari to a Ford Sedan? Assembly lines are good to a point, but when efficiency turns into a national obsession it can be debilitating.It kills creativity and innovation. When I see an Alfa Romeo go by, I tip my hat, is what Ford had to finally say of the superbly designed and crafted Alfa Romeo, which did not come off the assembly line.

Porcelain Unicorn

*British film director Sir Ridley Scott launched a global film making contest for aspiring directors. * *It's titled "Tell It Your Way". There were over 600 entries. The film could be no longer than three minutes, contain only 6 lines of narrative & be a compelling story. * *The winner was "Porcelain Unicorn" from American director Keegan Wilcox. It's a story of the lifetimes of two people who are totally opposite, yet, very much the same - all told in less than 3 minutes. You'll see why it won.* Click here: Porcelain Unicorn />

In the Name of Peace

The Nobel Peace Prize “The said interest shall be divided into five equal parts, which shall be apportioned as follows: /- - -/ one part to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.” (Excerpt from the will of Alfred Nobel) Every time I hear of a new winner announced for the prestigious Nobel Peace Prize, there is curiosity and then the bitter taste of bile. Why, you might wonder? Well, I think the prize lost permanent sheen when it failed to take cognizance of an Indian gentleman called M.K. Gandhi who took on the might of the British Empire and rattled it for good measure all in the name of peace and independence. He would have been an outstanding example as a torch bearer for peace. Gandhi did not get the prize. I'm not sure he cared, but the committee that awards the prize does and recently 'regretted' that they failed to recognize the man and his amazing greatness. The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded by a committee of five persons who are chosen by the Norwegian Storting (Parliament of Norway), Oslo, Norway. It is no surprise that, a 'spiritual' Guru from Bangalore was said to have made frequent trips to the Scandinavian capital to canvass for the medal for himself. Apparently he did not make the cut and returned disappointed. Maybe he should read Alfred Nobel's will a tad more carefully. Squatting on vast tracts of land in a third world country does not qualify one as a potential for the medal. Some prize winners are: 2009 Barack H. Obama 1994 Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres, Yitzhak Rabin 1990 Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev 1983 Lech Walesa The last named a shipyard worker at Gdansk in Poland took on the might of the Soviet Union and lead Poland to freedom while Gorbachev was the architect of the breakup of the Soviet Union. Both events suited the West. Gandhi's movement quite does not fall into that category does it? I would be very impressed if the Peace Prize would go to Fidel Castro. Remember old Fidel kicked a corrupt President Batista out of Cuba in a people's revolution and has since thumbed his nose at the collective West. Who are people who received the prize around Gandhis moment in the sun in 1947? 1950 Ralph Bunche 1949 Lord (John) Boyd Orr of Brechin 1948 No Nobel Prize was awarded this year. The prize money was with 1/3 allocated to the Main Fund and with 2/3 to the Special Fund of this prize section. 1947 Friends Service Council (The Quakers), American Friends Service Committee (The Quakers) 1946 Emily Greene Balch, John Raleigh Mott 1945 Cordell Hull. Brunche and Hull were both American diplomats/politicians who were involved with Palestine and the United Nations. The first a simmering quagmire of hate and violence and the second being close to being defunct. In the midst of this was this little man who was leading India to freedom, while the Quakers were receiving the medal. I would not be surprised if the Guru from our own Bengaluru, has the little shiny around his neck one of these days!

Pizza for Two and an act of generosity

Italy has agreed to pay 10 million rupees each to the families of two Indian fishermen allegedly shot dead by Italian marines who mistook them for pirates.
This has muddied the waters in India, a bit, as many feel it would be the route that the Italians would take to get way for waht people feel is murder, after all the fishermen were shot in cold blood ostensibly without any provocation by well-armed and professionally trained men.
Italian Defense Minister Giampaolo Di Paola confirmed that his government would compensate the families with 10 million rupees each, saying it was an out-of-court "act of generosity."
The important point is that the company that own the ship is not making the payment and a reflection of the fact of how interconnected are trade and politics in the present day world.
The fishermen -- Valentine, and Ajeesh were killed when the two marines, deployed on the oil tanker Enrica Lexie, opened fire on February 15, 2012 off the coast of the southern state of Kerala.
The two marines were arrested by Kerala police and have been in judicial custody since February 20. The compensation would facilitate the withdrawal of compensation claims made by the families of the fishermen but not the criminal case of murder which is outside their purview.
Interestingly the families had also charged the captain of the oil tanker of negligence and murder and it would be interesting to see how that charge plays out, as it would have huge ramifications on the marine community's views on carrying armed soldiers on board trading ships. This was an accident waiting to happen, as the marines operate in a grey shadowy area where authority is not clearly defined and it is not clear who they are answerable to. The ills of a matrix organization one might say, worse when you have cowboys on the loose.
The Italian government feels that its citizens are being illegally detained as the incident occurred outside India’s territorial waters and want the case transferred to an international court. Till that happens, if it does, the Italians would have to live off Cochin’s very best pizza and pasta.

Bengaluru Boys

The other day as I sat down to watch the Royal Challengers of Bengaluru play the Rajasthan Royals in the Indian Premier League at Bengaluru I was struck at the emotional discord that Rahul Dravid seemed to be going through as he went out for the toss. Rahul received huge applause from a partisan Bengaluru crowd...they were cheering the enemy. Rahul Dravid skippers the RR from Jaipur.
The enormity of playing against your home team at a ground where you learnt your cricket must have sunk in, even as the crowd chanted his name. Rahul Dravid is talked about as the next big thing in cricket administration and one day is expected to be the chairman of the International Cricket Council, the premier role in cricket administration. The cap stone, to a wonderful career on and off the cricket field.
As Rahul Dravid, left the centre, post the toss, there was this other bloke, in the RCB dug out looking relaxed and cheerful. Another Bengaluru boy and legend, Anil Kumble now mentors the RCB. Anil played for the RCB a couple of years and retired immediately on hearing that he was not selected by the RCB. His reason for quitting was that he could not dream of playing against Bengaluru, should he be selected by another franchise, as in the case of Rahul Dravid. The ethos and principle is fantastic. One loves the game and just wants to play, the other wants to play within defined parameters and not against his own ex collegues. Both made their choices and right in their own way and both fantastic role models and individuals.
Importantly both great Bengaluru boys!
As Shakespeare said in A Midsummer Night’s Dream:
Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, and therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.

The Circus in town

The patriotic fervor displayed by the honorable Corporaters of the BBMP in Bengaluru has been a touching sight. The gentlemen have been clamoring nay agitating for free passes to the Indian Premier League (IPL) games played at the Chinnaswamy Stadium .The further demand is that the passes be for the ‘VIP’ enclosure, where they can watch the matches with ‘dignity’.
Why should they get these passes? Why not, they are the people’s representative and have been elected by the people of Bengaluru. Did the people elect them to watch a cricket circus,in style, is another question.
A few days ago, I had the opportunity of travelling by a ‘City Bus’, the common name for public transport in Bengaluru, a practice I gave up almost thirty years ago for the comfort of my own car or a cab. After years of traipsing around in ships, aircraft and chauffer driven car’s I got a taste of what the common man endures when he/she has to travel in overcrowded, rickety buses which seem to bounce rather than run on our cratered roads.
Since, this was a ‘private’ public bus, it carried a TV, which showed a Kannada flick where the hero, a policeman seemed to be in a perpetual rage and wanting to beat the living daylights out of every gent that crossed his path. The movie was particularly engrossing as much of the population of the bus were glued to the small screen and barely seemed to notice the rough ride that we were being dished out. In its decline the emperors of Rome, fed their people on circuses where people and animals slaughtered each other. A ploy, to keep the hoi polloi from questioning their excesses.
Now one may ask, as to who is responsible for the roads in this fair city? Apparently the same honorable gentlemen who want to watch cricket in dignity. A good question would be,’ Can we travel in dignity?’
With the way in which the Bangalore boys are performing or rather not performing, it might soon come to pass that the honorable torch bearers of the BBMP may not be interested in free passes to the circus anymore. After all who wants the company of a loser? There is no dignity in losing, is there?
As for the bus ride, I quite enjoyed it, simply because it shook me out of my sedated and cocooned world and screamed; “Welcome to India”. The real India that is. The one I had left about thirty years ago, where the guy who battles the city bus on a daily basis, tries to do it with dignity and does not think of the IPL, where grown men, sweaty and tense in pajamas hurl a leather ball and attack it with a wooden stick, watched by a baying crowd.

pic is by J Vedamurthy

A leg up for the HR Manager

In the United States of America a recent ranking has indicated that 'Human Resource Managers' occupy spot # 3 in the best jobs category. That is a huge lift for all HR professionals, considering that many in India think that it is a job for women or worse thinks that HR Managers are back office paper pushers.
Why is the HR Manager's job rated so high on the list? The obvious answer would be that in a knowledge economy Human Resources are the key differentiator that lend a competitive and cutting edge to an organization and so the HR Manager is a much wanted man/woman. In terms of Job Design and Motivation Theory it would translate into the job having a huge 'Job Identity' and 'Task Significance'. HR Managers are very important.
People would like their jobs to have an impact on the fortunes of their organization and when that is recognized it translates into job satisfaction.HR as a profession has seen major changes and from being a common sense practice has gone on to be concept driven, backed by research and empirical data.
I for one 'am hugely pleased as would be many in the HR family!

http://www.careercast.com/jobs-rated/2012-ranking-200-jobs-best-worst

Nature Deficiency Disorder

It is indeed alarming at the general policy of 'slash & burn' that most people seem to adopt these days in dealing with many of the issues that they face. And without a pause at that.
An excellent example would be my apartment complex set amongst verdant greenery. The high beams are a great site for large bee hives & most denizens share a pathological fear for these insects. Instinctively they reach for the nearest pesticide and destroy the hive. At what cost?
It is estimated that 35% of the world’s fruit and vegetable crop is dependent upon bees. Yes bees for pollination! Maybe it requires a visit to school biology but it’s true. What is worse is that, rampant use of pesticide is causing a steady decline of bee hives. The West of course leads in this area and folk in Europe & North America have woken up to the danger and now encourage bee keeping. Destroy bee hives & we may run out of food........food for thought indeed.
My understanding is that this foolishness stems from what is called Nature Deficiency Disorder (NDD) . Scientists are clear it exists, but are not very clear of its ramifications. Apparently children with poor attention spans improve after spending time with nature & kids who have had little or no exposure to nature have serious behavioural issues.Some turn psychotic. People in India realized this many centuries ago & rarely destroyed bee hives, but not today.
We do not need meteor strikes or floods to do us in. Destroying bee hives will work just as well.
If this sounds like a Doomsday prophecy, well then it is. We do need better means to manage our bees.

......a rock and a hard place!

Karnataka fisheries and science & technology minister Anand Asnotikar, last week, lost control of a state transport bus and damaged a goods rickshaw, when he hit it. How did this come to pass? A minister driving a bus? ????????
Many years ago Karnataka, had a rather dashing Chief Minister, who constructed a great many Olympic sized swimming pools in this city of Bengaluru. When complete, the Honorable CM would naturally inaugurate these pools and do it in style. He would undress in a jiffy and dive into the said pool amidst a host of rather amused spectators!
Asnotikar was in Karwar to inaugurate two new KSRTC (Road Transport) services and his followers egged him on to inaugurate the buses in style and ceremony. Now Karwar is a wonderful sea side hamlet with great beaches and even better people. When I spent time at Karwar almost three decades ago, it was quite possible that absolute strangers would invite you home for a wonderful coastal meal! The town has turned from being a fishing village to a major hub of the Indian Navy.
Coming back to our current story, it seems that initially Asnotikar hesitated and said he didn’t even have a heavy vehicle driving license. However when one has a fan club it is difficult for one to make them fans see reason and the minister was prevailed upon to take the helm of one bus.
After reporters and the minister’s supporters boarded the bus, amidst much bonhomie I assume, Asnotikar started the bus and suddenly shifted gears. After the bus leapt ahead like a jack rabbit, the driver, who was standing next to the minister, changed gears for him and the bus was away with the wind in her sails.

Pedestrians and lay spectators took off in all directions on spotting the speeding bus careening towards them and thankfully nobody was injured. It is said that Asnotikar, who appeared to have no control over the bus, drove it for about 500 meters, a fair distance, before stopping the juggernaut.

The minister very magnanimously said he would compensate the auto driver who was at the receiving end of this adventure. The police have not booked a case against the minister, the logic being that a compromise was reached between the parties concerned, namely the goods carrier and the bus. The point that seems to have been ignored is that the minister doesn’t have a heavy vehicle license and when he chose to drive the bus broke the law and the offence carries a prison sentence in India.

When last heard, the station head had been suspended for allowing a person without a license to drive the bus. Whoever said that the world was a fair place? For the Station Head, it would look like to be a choice between a rock and a hard place!

Norwegian Honeymoon?

Being an expatriate has its own shocks. While it may look glamorous residing in a foreign land for a length of time can cause severe hardship and many times one feels a sense of being buffeted in strong winds without an anchor to root you.
The incident of an Indian couple having their children being taken away from them by Norwegian Child Services Authorities is a great case in point. Anurup and Sagarika Bhattacharya lost custody of their three-year-old son and one-year-old daughter eight months ago after authorities branded their behavior inappropriate. While the authorities have remained tight lipped some of the reasons for this seemingly harsh decision are:
1. The children were fed by hand.
2. The children shared the parent’s bed.
3. The children were fed yogurt (curd) and rice.
4. The children were slapped on occasion.

None of the above would probably send a normal Indian into a tizzy and the issue has many Indian’s foaming at the mouth but Norwegian authorities view it differently. The parents have been told that they can only see their children twice a year, for an hour during each visit until the kids turn 18 when they will no longer be bound by the current restrictions under current Norwegian law. This prompted the Indian Government to intervene and the latest is that the kid’s uncle will take custody of the children and leave Norway with them. How that is a solution, is something that I fail to see.
Amidst this brouhaha one can sympathize with the Norwegians a tad. In a country with a declining population and despairing at poor birth rates, children are precious and might cause them to see fairly normal (as seen by Indian’s) parenting traits differently. However should Norway want to integrate itself into a flat and extended world and avoid bad press it would need to understand that people do things differently across nations and need to be accepted with their cultural traits?
Amidst this mess, it would be interesting to hear what support the Indian couple received from their employers, an American MNC in dealing with this trauma. Norway's Child Protective Service has come under much scrutiny in the past for excessive behavior in their handling of child cruelty. However that is how Norway is and expatriates and their masters need to sensitize folk setting up shop there.

Titanic Revisited!

Once in a while there comes a story, which sounds like a fairy tale, except for those who chose to be a part of it. The sinking of the Costa Concordia, a luxury liner, is one such story.
The ship floundered and sank a few days ago in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Tuscany.Off the 4200 people on board, thus far eleven are dead and twenty one still missing.
The ship's captain, Francisco Schettino, is under house arrest on suspicion of multiple manslaughter. He is also charged with negligence and sooner than latter will be for causing pollution. It is not be forgotten that Giglio is one of the most beautiful 'marinas' in the world.
Strangely, the Capt;, decided to stray off course and go close to the island to salute a friend! Incredible to say the least. Even more strange is that, when the ship went off her laid down course; the Head Quarters would have been alerted, if they had had an Automatic Tracking System (ATS ). What was their action?
After hitting rocks, floundering and shipping water, the Captain ( or an officer on the ships bridge ) calmly informs, the loacl coast guard, that the ship has had a black out ( generator shutdown ) and that they are trying to fix the problem.A similar message seems to have gone out to a terrified body of passengers on the Captain's orders.
As the ship keels over and is capsizing,the order to abandon ship is given and there is general confusion and a lack of command by the Captain. Apparently he has abandoned ship and fled the scene. Mistakes might be tolerated but this is sacrilege in the marine world. A Captain stays on board his sinking ship till the last person is safely out of it. In his defence the ship's captain, Francisco Schettino, says that he tripped and fell and when he awoke found himself in a life boat. That’s a story that a marine court might find hard to digest leave alone believe!

To add to the quagmire is a report that there was a woman (not part of the ship’s crew) on the bridge, when the incident occurred. The ships bridge is a restricted area and not an area for spectator sport. If this woman is identified, the Captain will be hard pressed to defend her presence on the bridge, particularly when he too was there on the bridge.
Ship Captains are process driven, so what caused this ( mis )adventure? My take is poor hiring and a lack of training. Being a commander of a cruise liner is serious business and requires serious people to do it and not gents like Francisco Schettino, who comes across as a gregarious, weak willed person who likes to take short cuts for a lark!
Like many industries the navy too faces a serious shortage of talent and unless pundits have a well thought out plan in hand we are sure to hear of more Concordia’s in the days to come.