Indian Political Power… Good for India

Recently while reading all about CWG and India’s ability to host such games, few thoughts came to my mind. The news was depicting the India’s inability of having world-class infrastructure and mis-management at every level.

It was all there because of one thing, the host was not India, it was Government of India. Same thing if taken by some private firm, then it would have been far better than now and at the same level as it would have been at any ‘developed’ country (with less cost).

Then something struck in my mind. India is told to be the future super power, and it would be; but is it how it will be? Certainly it will, but not because of the government. It would be because of the people of India. We all curse India’s political power as they have not done anything for us. But at the same time, by doing nothing, they have made (read: forced) us to do all things by our own. Being a small (read: having less money/power) in size, we still are moving the world right now. And the condition is still improving, people are doing better than yesterday and the same story repeats everyday! This is all being possible because of bad governance and ‘great’ Indian politics.

Just imagine, if politicians were good and working in a better way, then the people of India would never have been so enthusiast to work more and achieve more with less resources. We even might have the luxury like people of US and made us so much dependent on the government. Saving would have been less and courage and will-power to come out from all bad things would not have been there. The worst, the recent economic downturn would have collapsed the Indian economy as well.

So, pray god that politicians would help us to stretch our limits even further and help us to make our country even better.

PS: Please note that I am not having any political view and would not like to discuss which politician is better. Rather, work my own and contribute to Indian economy. And if government is not doing show to all that it is not doing.

India to become US

Recently I had a discussion with my friend. He was mentioning, “We are so much underpaid. If we were in US, we would have been getting 8 times more!” Adding to his points, “Same is the case with UK and other developed countries.” He has good knowledge about the economics. So supporting his comments on salaries, he added, “US has just 300 million people and still able to manage 14 trillion GDP and we (India) are more than 1.2 billion now and just have 1.2 trillion GDP.”## Then I said, “My friend, think in this way, India is managing its 1.2 billion population with GDP of 1.2 trillion where US need GDP of 14 trillion for its 300 million population! Who is better?” Here is the point where new perspective has come about India.



It’s true that India has the population of 1.2 billion and GDP of only 1.2 trillion whereas US can have DGP of 14 trillion with just 300 million people. And they are having such higher salary packages.


I asked him a single question: “What if in India, such high salary packages are being offered?” Forget about the capacity, it can be managed. But, going ahead what will happen? With higher salaries, we will spend more. But, with higher spending, demand of goods will increase, with same supply, so prices of the goods will go high. This leads to inflation. Government will try to buy more goods from other countries to fill the supply crunch. For that government need money. But remember, we have higher money to with us. So, government will go for higher taxes (as it is in US). And eventually with proper prices people will get things. But, still there is higher income. So people will buy more and at the end waste more (like US). And the whole cycle of high income and spending will turn in to higher GDP for India. And no doubt it will be more than US. India will become another US! Or may be bigger! Wow! That’s great! Then why not we are going in that way?


Now think from another side of demand supply chain. If India, like US, consumes more and wastes even more; then what will happen? Do resources in the globe have sufficient resources to supply this increased demand forever? And the answer is, NO. Currently, when we are managing with economy of 1.2 trillion and other ‘developed’ countries with higher GDP, are consuming more. With this scenario, the globe is facing very high resource crunch with other environmental problems.


Going that way will lead us nowhere. We have to reduce the resource usage. Currently, developed countries along with US have realized that high consumption should be controlled and should reduce the resources usage. In west, people are reducing their usage by “Going Green” and managing their life style with less money. And guess what, India is just doing that thing right now! In fact, it is pioneer in that.


So it is US who will follow India; not India to follow US.






## GDP – Gross Domestic Product – which generally means how much money a country is making and it is used to compare the countries’ economy

Some work Lessons by Keyur Thakkar...

If you want to look good in front of your boss, we have some lessons for you. Following these shall not guarantee you to get anything extra, but might end up impressing someone. The lessons are collected and compiled by Vani Patel (who is excellent fashion designer and a Software Executive) which is inspired by our own "Vadil" (Elder) in B'lore House, Keyur Thakkar (The most busiest person in town, after CM). I am becoming the medium for them to express their feelings.


Lesson 1:
Never walk down the hall without a document in your hands. People with documents in their hands look like hardworking employees heading for important meetings. People with nothing in their hands look like they're heading for the cafeteria.

People with the newspaper in their hands look like they're heading for the bathroom. Above all, make sure you carry loads of stuff home with you at night, thus generating the false impression that you work longer hours than you do.

Lesson 2:
Use computers to look busy. Any time you use a computer, it looks like work to the casual observer. You can send and receive personal e-mail, calculate your finances and generally have a blast without doing anything remotely related to work.

These aren't exactly the societal benefits that everybody from the computer revolution expected but they're not bad either. When you get caught by your boss--and you will get caught--your best defense is to claim you're teaching yourself to use the new software, thus saving valuable training dollars.

You're not a loafer, you're a self-starter. Offer to show your boss what you learned. That will make your boss scurry away like a frightened salamander.


Lesson 3:
Messy desk. Top management can get away with a clean desk. For the rest of us, it looks like you're not working hard enough. Build huge piles of documents around your workspace.

To the observer, last year's work looks the same as today's work; it's volume that counts. Pile them high and wide. If you know somebody is coming to your cubicle, bury the document you'll need halfway down in an existing stack and rummage for it when he/she arrives.


Lesson 4:
Voice mail. Never answer your phone if you have voice mail. People don't call you just because they want to give you something for nothing-- they call because they want YOU to do work for THEM. That's the way to live. Screen all your calls through voice mail.

If somebody leaves a voice mail message for you and it sounds like impending work, respond during lunch hour. That way, you're hardworking and conscientious even though you're being a devious weasel. If you diligently employ the method of screening incoming calls and then returning calls when nobody is there, this will greatly increase the odds that they will give up or look for a solution that doesn't involve you.

The sweetest voice mail message you can ever hear is "Ignore my last message. I took care of it." If your voice mailbox has a limit on the number of messages it can hold, make sure you reach that limit frequently. One way to do that is to never erase any incoming messages. If that takes too long, send yourself a few messages.

Your callers will hear a recorded message that says, "Sorry, this mailbox is full"--a sure sign that you are a hardworking employee in high demand.

Appraisals - Fit in wrong curve

I am a student of a leading business school in India and we have the best in class professors to teach us things. Currently I am studying an important subject for organization, i.e. Human Resource Management. While studying that, I came across one topic called “Appraisal”.

I have been an employee of one of the major IT Service Company in India. During my working time, I went through my appraisals. And at that time I heard a new term, “Curve Fitting” for appraisals. I think this was one of the way companies are doing appraisals and this may not apply to other sectors.

The process of appraisal was something like this. Initially person has to do “self appraisal” and then his assessor will do his appraisal and give him a rating. Reviewer will also confirm it. We were given 5 point grade according to our performance in previous year.

Now interesting thing comes here is after everything is done and results are sent to HR person for rest of the things, HR person changes the rating. And that change is obviously on the negative side. The reason was given as it was because of curve fitting and due to that everybody’s grade might get affected. At that time I did not take care of these things as I was getting top rating and also was into lot of work. But now while studying things about HR management, now I am getting what was happening.

Let us go to the basics first. Now in the image below, you can see three types of distributions.

• Normal - Where maximum density is in the middle and low at the ends
• Positively Skewed - where more density is at the left hand side and low on right hand side
• Negatively Skewed - where more density is at the right hand side and low on left hand side

Now in the normal distribution, as we can see from appraisal point of view, maximum (around 60%) people will be at the middle. That means maximum people will be having average performance and few (around 10%) will get higher grade.

So companies will try to fit the performance grades of employees in to this curve by changing the grade of the people. By changing the grade, they made most of the employees “average” employees.

If we see from company’s point of view, it wants to have best employees and wants them to perform better. Also they want to retain only those people who have above average performance (if not all, most of them).

Then, my question is, why they give less while expecting more? Isn't it fair to have a negatively skewed curve than normal curve when more people are performing better? In that case good performers will get more. But they are not doing this; and the only reason I could get is, they want to maximize their profit (for growth and other things) even though that profit has come by the hard work of the employees only.

Now you have to decide whether it is right or wrong. You are free to put your comments.

Non-Value Added Activity - Bhasad

Bhasad.

Its a word which I heard first time when I came here. But after that, I was overwhelmed by it. I found it all around me.

People do it everywhere. In class, near pond, in mess, more specifically on IPMSG and now they have started on emails also. I am trying to find a way coming out of it. Because there PEOPLE JUST SPEAK and NOBODY DOES ANYTHING. May be pointing to someone or rather pointless discussion. But they say something as somebody is forcing them to say anything even it is worthless.

Its a innovative way of spamming...

Any idea how to come out of it?

PS: If somebody knows how to block someone on IPMSG please let me know.

Flu is in the air: More panic than disease

Nowadays a new word is fuming around with lot of energy and anxiousness. This is called “Swine Flu” or “H1N1”. And unfortunately it has caught our campus also last day. L

From a long vacation of “Rakshabandhan” people came to the college yesterday and I could even felt that they are still in the mood of vacation and attending long classes are still being pain to them. Still somehow people were managing to attend classes and managing to be awake in the class and show their physical presence in the class!

Suddenly there came a spark came in the usual talk and somebody utter a word that NITIE has got few cases of SWINE FLU!!! That’s it. It was enough for the mass show their creativity and level of professionalism and calm. Here are the few points which I found in last 24 hours.

• The number of positive cases were not known, but there was a quite a good number of speculation going on by the experts. And the number was ranging from 1 to 10. Lastly we found that there was a person who had similar symptoms like flu (may be swine flu) and sent to hospital for further check-up and treatment.
• I went out near our college gate for taking money for paying mess bill. I found around 80% of people were having mask(!!) and that too made up of hanky! I don’t know how a hanky can stop a virus coming in to you.
• It was a good day for the chemist and general stores owners. Their sells shot upto 3 to 5 times than regular days and people were mad to buy hanky(!), dettol, maks (that too regular one which is used in the pharmacy lab), paper dishes, fruits(!), and many more things. Even people were asking about the “Tamiflu” medicine at the chemist shop and want to take even they don’t have any symptoms.
• Whole campus was covered in to this hysteria and you see people everywhere under stress and fear of swine flu with special masks and doing KD (Knowledge Display) of swine flu.
• It was very well known that flu can be spread by the air and mask can be helpful. But you should also avoid touching your face and nose and due to fear people were holding their hanky in hand and covering their face/nose and giving more chance to flu to catch them.
• Suddenly people were become so expert about H1N1, complete material about the matter is read and spread across the campus. And as usual IP Messenger was filled with the “Bhasad” (Spammed discussion where conclusion is zero) about it. Also there were demand of cancelling of classes and closing of institute (from a week to a year!).
• In this unfortunate event we have missed 2 tests and 3 classes, which we have to compensate in the letter stage were time will be more critical. People have started moving to their home. Don’t know where they are more secure, in campus being isolated or in trains and places where more people will be there and more chance to get exposed.
• Now there is a common view in the campus: meetings with masks being at distant with each other, people wearing mask and eating in mess (I don’t know how), If someone sneeze, it’s the sign of panic.
• Some of the good takeaways from this incidents:

o People have started having good health habits: sleeping early, taking bath regularly (!) And washing hands every time before having meal(hopefully it will be continue)

o Management have suddenly starting cleaning of premises and water arrangements (to stop flu!!)

o Food quality has been improved suddenly and fruits are also being served in the lunch time (hopefully this will also continue)

o Management may have check-up for everyone in the campus

A meeting place under Flu!

Regular view at mess! (Scene Recreated)

Hopefully this hysteria will stop early and we can start working normally. And I am preying that we wont have any cases of H1N1 in our campus now and also in future.

Come out!

This incident happened to me few weeks before. When I was heading towards the classes at 8:50 in the morning (class starts at 9 and late comers are not allowed), I saw a cute nice puppy chasing the people. Just out of curiosity it was following the people there. When a person stops there, due to fear it was moving back and then once again trying to get close to the person. Then slowly it was going to that person and tries to play with him. The people were also giving them something to eat. I was moving towards the class, but as I had some spare time I went near that puppy. Puppy was very small and barely able to walk and run. So when I went near it, somehow it managed to run and come towards me. Looking at this I also moved forward and tried to play with it. It was cute, white, with small little eyes and full of energy. As I also had to go to class, I spent few minutes with it and started moving. While leaving it I thought to catch these cuties after the class. So I walked towards the class. While leaving the place I decided to keep something for this puppy and feed it in the evening as it was looking hungry.

When I was going to class, one of the employees of the college who saw me playing with this cutie told me that its mother is very weak and not able to feed them properly. They are total seven puppies and they are staying nearby place. At that time was being late to the class so I just listened was he said and rushed to the class.

After reaching the class I found sir would come little late. I took my seat and sat and then again wondering about the puppy and its family. At that time I realized that that puppy had chosen a nice way to fill their tummy. It was very small and there are plenty of chances it could be crushed in the cruel world. But for the survival (was hungry and could not get enough food) it came out and tried to draw attention of us towards them. By chasing the people and playing with them, it successfully gained some of their potential feeders! They found doing this they are getting something to eat now! It was not easy job for them. There was a plenty of risk for them and some of people whom it was chasing could harm them also and some of them just place with them and never turned back. But due to restless efforts it was trying to gain something for it and its family.

That day was very hectic for me and I was not able to go to them. The next day when I was again rushing to the class, to my surprise, I saw another puppy, doing the same job what was done by its brother last day. It was also chasing the people and was trying to get attention of the people towards them. But this time I was late and couldn’t afford to spend some time with them. So I moved on. I found the whole exercise was a team effort. I saw the puppy which was playing was sleeping now and other one is doing the job now. Due to team effort now work was easy and still they were achieving their goal – food. I wonder who has taught them these theories…. Team work, risk taking, calculated risk, innovation, doing for others and in all entrepreneurship.

Now here comes the second part of the story. Some days ago put an article, 15 reasons why you should you not become an entrepreneur. But on the next day while I came back to my room, I was thinking about the puppy and that article; and was also trying to relate them. I found that those 15 reasons have less importance when there is a question comes to your existence. When there is a situation of life and existence, you will not think of the risks and trouble you will face. Same is the case with people who is having a passion and that too comparable with the need of existence, you will find ‘success’ there.

I am not drawing any conclusion but I think it’s a matter of one’s choice and his situation.