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.