Two events coming up.
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Editors’ Roundtable 2006.
Topic: Is the lack of political involvement amongst the youth a threat to economic growth?

Speakers:
Alam Srinivas – Editor, Outlook Group
Kaveree Bamzai – Executive Editor, India Today
CRL Narasimhan – Associate Editor, The Hindu
Niranjan Rajadhyaksha – Deputy Editor , Businessworld Kumar Ketkar – Chief Editor, Loksatta, an Express Group Publication

Click here for more details and to register (Registration is free).

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ASHA foundation in partnership with ISB is holding their annual Corporate Quiz ACE 2006.

For details and registration (not free!), click here.
For information on the Asha foundation, click here.
Asha foundation’s mission is “To catalyse socio-economic change in India through education of underprivileged children”.

Erase and rewind.

The mind takes me back to the 13th floor of Barton Centre. The table arranged out in the open terrace.

A candle and two seats. A birthday. Beautiful evening, beautiful wine, beautiful life.

Erase and rewind.

The mind then goes to a well on the outskirts of Bangalore. A 100 candles lit at the bottom of the well. At dusk, the well is glowing and there is darkness outside it.
Beautiful evening. Beautiful life. (Captured here)

Erase and rewind.

The mind is relentless. It takes me to a balcony. Cranberries and smoke share the balcony space with four guys. Four guys who dangle their legs over the balcony and celebrate that moment.
Beautiful evening. Beautiful life. (Captured here and here)

Rewind. Just plain rewind will do. Thank you.

While waiting for eternity, time just passed by.
– Dhi Only One, quite obviously so.

Its time for some role playing, ladies and gentlemen.

You are an ambulance driver. Its 10:00 am in the morning and you have just had your second cup of coffee from the roadside shop opposite the hospital.
You are right now leaning on the receptionist’s table, talking to her and joking around with your supposedly impressive sense of humour.
Your ambulance is parked in the empty plot adjacent to the hospital.

The doctor from the OPD passes by and the receptionist suddenly pours into the file in front of her. You take your millionth survey of the cieling of the reception area.
At around this time, the phone rings and the receptionist hurriedly takes down an address on her scratchpad.

A middle-aged man has suffered a heart attack and is lying on his bed at his residence, which is around 8 Kms away from your hospital. You take the address, walk down to the ambulance and start driving towards the man’s residence.

Midway on your journey, at a traffic signal, while you have your vehicle booming the famous disaster sound all around, you suddenly are a witness to a ghastly accident. A young boy, roughly in his early twenties, was trying to cross the road while a truck hit him. The boy lies knocked out on the road, blood slowly meandering from his forehead to the asphalt below.

What are you to do? Pick up the boy and rush to the hospital while the man succumbs to his heart? Leave the boy to a probable death and rush to the man?

What would you do?

Yesterday, the Nutan Mumbai Tiffin Supply Association was here at the school to give a presentation to all budding business education seekers.

Popularly known as the Dabbawalas of Mumbai, the 3 member team was a treat to watch. The first speaker, Mr. Gangaram Talekar is probably the best speaker I have come across so far.
Opening with the lines that he did not know English and hence would speak in Hindi, Mr. Talekar went on with a very well delivered speech about how the entire tiffin delivery system of theirs works with such high precision and quality.

The key to it all was the passion towards the work and the integrity of every employee. He infact even went on to add that there was an advantage of not having literate people (average literacy is till 8th standard only) since literate people ask too many questions before getting the work done in contrast to illiterate or less-literate people who get the work done first without asking questions. This statement, being made to a crowd of management students, was a knock out punch and I loved it.

A couple of years ago, a bunch of four business school students approached their office and told them that they had come from Delhi to study the way the Dabbawalas operate. Mr. Talekar asked them as to who had sent them from Delhi, and the students respondend – C K Prahalad.
Mr. Talekar’s immediate question – “Who is C K Prahalad? Had you said that you had been sent by Sonia Gandhi or Manmohan Singh, we would have been so much happy.
But who is C K Prahalad?”

I guess C K Prahalad was at the bottom of the Dabbawalas’ pyramid.

When presented with a Six Sigma certification, the first question that came in their mind was whether Six Sigma was made of Gold or Copper. That received a huge applause from the crowd.

You can read about it in this article covered by Zee News.
Ladies and gentlemen, I am in a hurry now hence you shall be spared my views on this, on the world and the universe in general.
God bless.

For the first time ever, I am trying to study while having a beer bottle on my desk.
I don’t like the beer. Neither do I like the studying bit.

The track playing in the background is The Cult’s Painted on my heart (From the Gone in 60 seconds OST).
Not an apt song for the moment.

Once in a while an evening comes by that makes you rejuvenated and gives you the feeling of wind blowing in your face and making you misty eyed by picking up the dew drops off the grass and splattering them against your face.
As refreshing as refreshing can be.

Current song: Wonderwall by Oasis.
All the roads that lead you there are winding
And all the lights that light the way are blinding

“2:49 am”, screams my clock albeit silently since its quite late in the night.
The song continues. Life continues.

There are many things that I would like to say to you, but I don’t know how.
‘Cos maybe, you gonna be the one that saves me
And after all, you are my wonderwall.

Lack of coherence is an indication of bigger things to come.

The woods are green. Birds chirping all around and the flowers are in full-bloom.
The sun’s rays are penetrating through the green cover and lighting up the special spots of the woods.

In the distance, you can hear the sounds of water splashing onto a hard rock.

We zoom into this view and lo and behold – we see two men walking down a not-so-used path. One is wearing a brown robe and the other a white robe.

Ladies and gentlemen, Dhi Only One presents the return of Socrates & Plato.

Socrates (with a hurried look on his face): This is the time of the year when the flowers bloom and share their happiness with the woods. This is the time of the year.

Plato (trying to figure out what they were doing in the woods): Uh-huh. Okay. But why are we here?

Socrates (continuing his pensive demeanour): Flora is what we appreciate when we no longer want to be in the rat race. Besides, as quoted by a certain man whose birthday it is today – Even if you win the rat race you will still be a rat.

Plato: Yeah, okay. I wonder who won the rat race for that girl wearing a floral skirt though.

Socrates raises an eyebrow and increases the pace of his walk.

Plato shrugs his shoulders and follows suit.

Socrates: That is chamomile, that is aloe vera and that is passion flower.

Plato (thinking hard): It is wonderfully strange that these are the exact same ingredients of my shampoo.

They both approach a clearing from where there are two paths.

One takes them to the newly formed Greek School of Philosophy. The other takes them to a life of peace and tranquility.

Socrates: We take the path to peace and tranquility.

Plato: I heard there are good looking women at the Greek School of Philosophy.

Socrates: Philosophy and women? But then you lose peace and tranquility, the path to that, that is.

Plato: That is great! (pauses) Er, well okay. I have heard there is a lot of diversity there, we will surely learn from others, won’t we?

Socrates: Learning is a process of assimilating what you think. Thinking is a process of structuring your brain’s momentary reactions. (pauses). Do we need diversity for this?

Plato: Yeah.

They both set off to the Greek School of Philosophy, leaving peace and tranquility behind.

Sometimes, the road less travelled is indeed a better option. The other path ends up being Greek to you.

Previous Socrates&Plato posts:
1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13

“There are people so poor in India that God cannot appear before them in any other form but bread”
- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

In the macro economics class, the discussion usually revolves around the Keynesian viewpoint and the classical viewpoint (those initiated by Adam Smith and carried on by Friedrich August von Hayek).

Keynes advocated government intervention whenever markets were not doing well or when unemployment was increasing and Friedrich August von Hayek stood for liberal democracy and free-market capitalism wherein markets would adjust themselves to reach an equilibrium point. The classical view dismisses government intervention.

Singapore is a good example of the classical economic theory working very well. The government is not supposed to intervene in trade and is supposed to focus on other aspects such as law and order, infrastructure etc.

However, I am not quite sure how in a country like India free trade can be given the reins of taking care of a billion+ population.

Before we get to that, let’s take a view on the spread of capitalism all around the world. The former Soviet Union misinterpreted or rather mis-implemented Marx’s idealistic rules. Communism crumbled and people suffered.
Capitalism, on the other hand, fuelled the United States and Western Europe.

Note that capitalism has emerged as the favourite economic system for most of the countries across the world. Also note that I am not rooting for capitalism neither am I biased towards it. I am just stating a fact. Given an able and wise administration, I would probably incline towards Socialism. But no, I am not yet a socialist.

Capitalism, by essence of its functioning, creates a well-defined and widened gap between the rich and the poor. Communism on the other hand tries to not have a gap at all.
Many current economies aim at operating somewhere between the spectrum so as to have a mix of Capitalism and Communism.

Now, in India, the libertarians argue that there is too much government intervention. Leave the markets to themselves and all stakeholders will operate to make their gains and overall the economy will boost up, they say.
If the government abstains from all intervention, who will take care of the other India? The India that is referred by Gandhi in the above quote? Will a capitalist society care for this other India?
Reservation is a point that can be debated upon, but what underlies that topic is the fact that the government is trying to help out the backward and downtrodden masses. Whether they are doing it in the right manner is not the question here. The highlighted point here is that the government takes initiative to do this.
If the markets were free, would anyone have taken the initiative to do this? I am not quite sure.

Libertarians are good for balancing this world but at some point in time, Keynes has to be reverred and listened to. The government is not only there for law and order, it is also present to ensure that the lesser-privileged are given a slightly better chance for survival.

Economists might rip this post one way or the other, but I am not concerned about that. If they can provide me with a solution which will ensure equal growth of all sections of the soceity, I shall be glad to follow their theory.

Until that happens, asta la vista baby.

Life in this term has been far from a walk in the woods. However, the woods are not that far.

We had the VP of Nokia visiting our campus a few days ago. I was quite impressed by his speech. He gave his thoughts on the future of brands and the future of the market in general.

We have also had the screening of the documentary Commanding Heights. This is an awesome documentary and a must watch!! It talks about global economies and how various countries have failed or succeeded in the world market. This is a 6 hour film and is highly recommended by Dhi Only One.

It includes interviews of von Hayek, Milton Friedman, Margaret Thatcher, Richard Nixon, John Maynard Keynes, the former heads of Latin American countries, our Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, P Chidambaram and a whole lot of other eminent statesmen and economists.

Ladies and gentlemen, watch it.

Last night was hectic with two assignments. One was due at 12 midnight and we finally took the printout at 11:30, did a proof read and dropped it off at 11:45 pm. Then sat down to do the next one and we finished by around 2:30 am.
End result of all this: I learnt a lot about all these subjects? No, I am afraid not. The end result was that I had to skip dinner.

As an aside, this morning I managed to scrape out my old Socrates & Plato posts which you shall now find on the right side of this blog (below the Book Reviews section). I used to love writing those posts, whether they made sense or not was not really my concern.

Getting back to the happenings here, one of the clubs that I volunteer for is organising a blood donation camp with the Red Cross and Thalassemia and Sickle cell society on the coming Friday.

Following is from an e-mail sent by the co-ordinator:

Thalassemia is a genetic state of blood disorder, wherein the body cannot generate blood on it is own so to augment hemoglobin. Blood transfusion is required for the affected children and adults every 3rd week, lifelong. Seven percent of the world’s population is carriers, and 400,000 affected babies are born each year. Click here to know more about
this genetic disorder.

I wasn’t aware of this disorder till now. Blood tranfusion every 3rd week, lifelong!

The post is long enough for me to leave.
Abruptly at that.

The morning is on the threshold, waiting impatiently for the night to collect its garb and vanish to the otherside.

There used to be a time when I never knew what it was like sitting up at 3:00 AM. That time, infact, was buried under my pillow for all I knew.
However, here I am, in front of my laptop, trying to make it seem a mundane usual run-off-the-mill activity.

A series of Hemant Kumar songs, thanks to a friend of mine, are playing in the background as I shuffle between the myriad folds of life’s beautiful moments.

The light on my study table glows brightly as my eyes dim. A pack of Benson & Hedges lies around but it fails to entice me. One can get intoxicated by the simplest of acts – a recollection of a happy past, a sight towards the future front, a song from Pyasa on the laptop, talking about your favourite books, waiting for breakfast time, calling up home, getting called on anytime of the day and night, late night coffee. The list is endless.

Time for me to leave this state of solitude which lets you float across so many thoughts, so many people that you no longer feel alone.

The morning is rushing in.
Ladies and gentlemen, I will now grab whatever little is left of the night to get some sleep before the darkness is pulled away to usher in a bright new day.