It is the late 1970s, or the early 1980s.
Secure jobs are government jobs. Government jobs are secure jobs. Respectable jobs.
And they are hard to come by.

You apply for one of those and become a lucky one to land a job with the sarkar.
Your role? Delivering milk. Your status rises in the society, in your circle of friends and your in-laws they treat you with renewed respect.

For the next 10 years, you work at the central dairy plant, rise up to a supervisor level and continue to live in the government quarters, which has only some paint peeling off. But overall, life looks good.

Come the 90s, increased purchasing power of people, opened-up economy, changes in people’s tastes. Milk is still bought, but not the way it used to. Foreign brands are luring many away and you are still looked at with respect, but only fleetingly so.

Then the avalanche tumbles over, the millennium ushers in and people no longer buy that flavoured milk which you sold at a premium. People no longer buy milk from a government owned dairy. What they buy instead, is skimmed low-fat milk in tetra packs. What they also buy instead is colas and fruit juices. What do you do? Your dairy plant now faces decreased demand. Some of the delivery trucks are sold, a part of the plant is auctioned away.

You continue to come to work, since you can’t afford to leave the government quarters. Nope, not at this stage for sure. Besides, government job is a secure job. The era progresses, people’s tastes continue to change and almost all of your plant ceases to exist.

Who is to blame? Your choice of taking up a government job? The opening up of the economy? The change in customer tastes? Or, is there a blame at all? After all, the customers got exposed to multiple choices and the free markets are finally here.

What to do? More importantly, when to get the peeled off paint patched up?

The above post written based on this article by Eric Bellman in the mint. It is a very well written article and for me, it raised a series of questions that I wrote above.
Do read the article. Well worth your time.

I get into office and my coffee is waiting – luke warm, sweet and yet inviting. I pick it up and notice the circular brown mark left behind on my white desk.
The air conditioner has started bellowing and I can hear loose vents rattling under the air pressure.

The air is clear, the blinds are drawn up and sunlight is pouring in with full gusto. I switch on my laptop, the black screen freezes for a minute and suddenly turns into a source of light blue light, emanating a hint of a beep.

I log right in, a host of applications pop-up on my face, hover around, and then disappear into the corners of the electronics that runs this whole thing. I am suddenly called out by the watchman who sits at the reception of the office.

“Sir, a relative of mine is looking for a job. Can you help?”, he asks in Kannada.

I offer to help, at the same time thinking to myself of what possible use could an internet company have of a relative of a watchman. It was an instinctive thought and I had to check myself and stop the years of cynicism and societal thinking from clogging my brain.

“What is the education background ?”, I ask.

“I don’t know that, but the person is looking for a Business Development role”

The two words in English took me by surprise and I was keen on helping him out. I gave him my contact number, got in touch with the candidate, found out that the person had a very good work profile , spoke to the HR person sitting at the far end of my office, ensured that the company invites the person for an interview within the next couple of days and finally returned to the now cold coffee.

The reason I did this? To help out the watchman? Or to suddenly cover up my initial shameful bias of concluding that a watchman’s relative wouldn’t be of much help to us?

I still don’t know. But I am glad I helped. The light blue screen in front of me flickers for a moment before jumping into a screen saver mode. I shy away from the screen and look out through the window. The traffic has started moving, people have resumed living and the din and noise outside return to my head.

Work has begun for the day, ladies and gentlemen. The air conditioner’s vent rattles in affirmation.

Scoble writes this helpful post on What to do if you’re laid off in 2008.

This is a genuine worry that most people in the US would have, and of course many people in the Technology sector in India, which is dependent on the US economy to a significant extent.

Some excerpts:

1. Don’t get lazy. It might seem dire, but if you work it you WILL find a job. Some of my friends went on vacation, started drinking, or generally just hung out with their families. Those people took a LOT longer to find a job than the friends of mine who approached their time off with these tips.
2. Make sure you spend at least 30% of every day trying to find a job. That means working on your resume. Getting your cover letter finished. Sending out resumes. Searching the web for work. Networking. Etc.
3. Start a blog on the field you want to work in. Want to be a PHP programmer? Start a PHP blog and make sure you put world class stuff there. Link to EVERYONE who has a PHP blog. But that’s only the beginning.

I liked this point the most:

13. Volunteer. Let’s say you are going to be out of work for six months. What could you do with six months of your time? Make sure you come away with it with a great project under your belt. Why not volunteer your time with a charity that could use your skills? Not only will you feel good about yourself, you’ll come away with job experience so you won’t have a hole in your resume (building an IT system for the Red Cross looks damn impressive — saying you were “on the beach” for six months does not). Plus you’ll make great friends with people who are trying to improve the world (they are typically the kinds of friends you should have anyway).

Read all the 17 points. They will be well worth your time.

Link obtained via IWillTeachYouToBeRich.

Bangalore now boasts of numerous radio channels. But there is little or almost no difference between their offerings. All of them play the same songs, one after the other. They also play the same ads, one after the other.

After getting bored with all these channels, we have now become fans of All India Radio’s ancient but relevant broadcasting. Their series of programs under the name Vividhbharati are a treat to listen to.

One of the programs broadcast on AIR (on 102.9 FM) is called Manthan. This program is aired at 7:30 pm daily and is a show which tries to get people’s views on various important issues facing our society today. Yesterday’s show focused on whether the Indian education system helps in identifying talent in students, or whether it churns out minds which can only memorize concepts but cannot apply them.

All the speakers in this talk were unanimous in their decision that our education system does not help in identifying and nurturing different talents in our students. Some blamed the examination structure which emphasizes rote learning. Others, especially some students, were of the opinion that the syllabus was too overwhelming and hence a lot of areas got diluted.

I have of course been a part of this education system and my friends who read this blog will rub their hands in glee at the opportunity to take digs at my way of dealing with this system. I have also been a part of a slightly different education system while doing my MBA, which proclaimed a case-study based approach.

Firstly, the so called rote-learning method employed by our schools and colleges isn’t really all that bad. How else do you explain the great number of Indian academicians and technical professionals being churned out year after year, working successfully in different sectors and achieving decent accolades. If something had to be intrinsically wrong with our education system, I don’t think we would have been able to carry it off this far. Yes, I agree that the examination system is a bit flawed and it defeats the purpose of learning. I think it would be better to do away with the annual or semi-annual examination pattern. Instead, there should be small and easy ways to evaluate every learning immediately after the teaching is done to ensure that the impact is long lasting. Do not ask students to sit on their books at the end of the year. Ask them to learn a concept, apply it and get themselves evaluated. More importantly, there should be a feedback mechanism after the exam/evaluation. This goes a long way than just marks written in bold red. If after every evaluation the student gets to know what he/she could have done better, then I think the real purpose of learning would be achieved to a great extent.

When I moved into my MBA course, I was surprised to see that most students continued to employ the rote-learning mechanism in their way of dealing with academics. The case-study approach looked great in concept and in brochures, but I found many people indulging in “mugging” (word used in common parlance for ‘learning by memorizing’). I think this has to do more with the thinking that we are embedded with during our schooling – hard work and learning by heart is the best way to top the class. My fellow students, many of them coming back to school after 5-6 years of industry experience, continued to fall back on the method that did wonders to them in school. Did it work? I don’t know, primarily because there is no way to measure the success of different learning methods. In an MBA course, the main parameter of measurement is the job you obtain upon graduation and the money that it brings with it. With that parameter, I can safely say that everyone was successful.

I would like to admit here that I learnt a great deal about computer science engineering in my last workplace and in fact was then able to make sense of many of my textbooks which I had successfully managed to “learn” for examination purposes. I am, therefore, a firm believer of the concept that it is ultimately your work life that teaches you how to make the best skyscraper with the couple of burnt bricks that you managed to steal from your school. But yes, you do need those couple of burnt bricks to make your way up.

It all started with man’s inherent need to progress. Humans devised machines, automobiles, air conditioners and aerosols to make their lives better. Then came the now dreaded word – pollution.

Global warming became the second most common two words used by the earth’s literate population. You have heard it before – “I’ve got two words for you – Global warming”.

“Next what?” you might have asked. Well, Nature News reports that pollution can help to clean the air.

Some types of air pollution might be doing a good turn by creating extra doses of atmospheric cleaner, according to new research. A lab study has shown how nitrogen oxides, a largely agricultural pollutant, can help to make hydroxyl radicals — the natural cleaner-upper of our dirty atmosphere. But in doing so they can also produce more ozone, the major component of smog.

What more can you ask for now, come on!

Reading Dhi Only One has been made a whole lot simpler, once again.
You can now have every update delivered instantly in your mailbox. Just click on the “Subscribe by Email” link on the right panel and enter your e-mail address in the page that appears.

Also, if you still aren’t reading this blog on a blog reader (reader.google.com), click on the “Subscribe in reader” link on the right panel.

Enjoy.

The Mrs. and I had gone on a shopping task of buying foreign films which have won some global acclaim (predominantly Academy Award winners in the foreign film category).

Till now, we have watched two movies:
1. The Shop on the Main Street (known as Obchod na korze in Czech).

Set during the World War II era, this movie is about Antonio Brtko, an Aryan, who is asked to take over the operations of a small-time button and garments store owned by an old Jewish widow, Mrs. Rozália Lautmannová.

The film does not require to indulge in sympathy-invoking-acts of displaying concentration camps and pictures of Hitler in order to show the impact that the entire campaign had on innocent, peace loving common folk like Rozália . It is a movie that is soaked with cinematic brilliance.

Rozália is a victim of the “Aryanization” that the Third Reich had initiated. But for me, the important part that the movie brought was the impact that this had on other Germans and non-Jews. Very little work has been done in the past on showcasing what the common Germans and non-Jews felt about the victimization of Jews. The Shop on the Main Street brings out this aspect through brilliant acting by Jozef Kroner who plays the role of Antonio.

Scene to watch out for: The ending. Exquisite, deep and hard-hitting. It is a masterful example of directorial genius. I had the same revering feeling that I had first experienced on watching Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali.

My recommendation: Watch it right now.

2. Divorce – Italian Style

Well, I don’t have much to write about this movie since I didn’t quite like it. However, it has won an Academy Award (in 1961, if I remember correctly)

The movie is about Marcello who is in an unhappy marriage. He dislikes his wife and has fallen in love with his cousin. The entire movie is about Marcello hatching plots to get rid of his wife so that the way is clear for him and his cousin to walk the aisle.

Divorce does have its share of laughs, but on the whole, it is dull and dreary. The wife’s character is especially irritating and does little to make the movie watchable once.

My recommendation: Do not waste time on it.

A short story from one of the masters of the art, Roald Dahl:
William and Mary

William is about to die and Landy, a doctor, approaches him for a unique experiment. William’s brain is perfectly fine and is sadly, going to die due to his body being decayed. However, Landy, has a plan to preserve the brain along with its full consciousness. Does William approve of it? And if so, does he succeed? And more importantly, what does William exist as? A consciousness in his brain?

Read the story to know about it.

Thanks to Faiq for the link to the story.

“Indian”

“Indian”, read the second line as well. He went further down.

“Indian”

“Jet Airways”. Ah, there it was. He narrowed his eyelids to follow a horizontal line from that word. “ETD” – he found it and then saw the time “20:30″ next to it and the word “Delayed” hanging in there.

A good 2 hour delay in his flight. And he couldn’t see a smoking lounge anywhere in the vicinity. He picked up his backpack lying against his feet, lugged it on his shoulder like a school student in a hurry, and searched for a chair to sit. The airport was mostly full and the announcements over the microphone made it seem as though there were double the number of people than actually present.

The chair next to him was not occupied and instead newspaper pages were strewn on it in a distraught fashion. Probably someone pissed about a delayed flight, he thought to himself. He picked up one of the pages and started reading about Hyderabad’s page 3 circuit. He noticed that the same pictures were in the Bombay edition of the newspaper as well. Giving no further thought to that, he looked around for a coffee shop.

Scanning the crowd, he noticed her furtive looks. That was a worried face, amidst the sea of tired and all-knowing faces. She would look around and then touch her bag lying beside her, more so to ensure that it was not stolen, yet. He stared at her and she repeated the act of throwing furtive glances around and touching her bag for assurance.

He found it amusing and timed his next gaze at her after precisely 5 minutes. And there it was, that worried look and that by-now customary reaching out to the bag. He allowed himself a smile. At the same time, her eyes fell on his smile. She didn’t quite understand why he was smiling at her, but caught off guard, she let a smile escape her worried face.
He hadn’t expected this and didn’t quite know what to do next. In a momentary lapse of thoughts, he looked right through her, as though he was smiling at someone else.
Instantly he realized it was a stupid thing to do. An opportunity lost.

He started rummaging through the newspaper pages, occasionally stealing a glance with increasing curiosity. In a manner that appeared to be solely to assure him, she continued to check on her baggage with alarming frequency.

“Maybe a schizo”, he thought to himself. “But a pretty schizo”, he nodded to himself.

“Is someone sitting here?”, the voice came from above him. He looked beyond the horizon of the newspaper and there she was, the worried face replaced with a question.

“Er. No.”

“Okay, I was just looking around and found that you look like a dependable guy. You atleast don’t look like a thief”

“Excuse me?”, he tilted his face a little, indicating that he wasn’t sure what he had heard was right.

“Yeah, you don’t look like a thief. What time is your flight?”, she enquired with more authority than he had expected.

He had no reason to answer that, he thought to himself. But before that thought was processed and churned out by his brain, his mouth had already released the words “Eight thirty”.

She looked at her watch in a singularly fast motion and blurted “Good, I can leave my bag with you, you don’t mind?”

“Yeah”, his mouth was no longer relying on his brain to dictate terms.

She kept her bag right next to his legs and told him she would be back in half an hour.

“Okay”, he said, and at the same time was shouting inside:
I don’t even know this person, What the hell am I doing, What if it is a bomb or something like that?”
But all that came out on his face was a smile and a nod. She walked a few paces in the direction of the coffee shop, stopped, turned around and with a concerned expression came jogging back to him.

“Would you want me to keep the bag on your right side? I can do that if you want”

“No”, he smiled. Schizo was indeed the word. “Perfectly fine here”.

“Sure?”

“Yep!”

Feeling relieved she walked away and he found himself glancing at the bag. Maybe a baggage note with address/phone number? No such luck. He continued reading the newspaper and suddenly she plonked herself next to him, fuming.

“All okay?”, he ventured slightly

“Can you believe it? They do not have an internet cafe here! I mean, this is an airport for god’s sake. And no internet!”

“Yeah, I checked. No internet. Had some important work?”

“Yes, but its okay. This is pathetic, what a city!”, she was serious and fuming. Her eyes glowered with anger and all he could do was continue his quest for unraveling the personality sitting next to him. He smiled again.

“You can use the Jet Airways lounge there, they have an internet kiosk. You can use my boarding pass to get in, I can wait out”

She turned towards him with a jump and a turn. The chairs shook a bit.
“No thanks. It is very nice of you to offer, but I don’t want to trouble you that much”, she looked at him and gave a wide smile.

He didn’t know what to say, and as an act of the messiah, a squeaky voice blared on the microphone with some announcement. That was enough time for him to gather himself.

“What do you do?”

“Me, teacher. I mean, I am a teacher in a government school in Kolkata”, she said hesitantly and then immediately added, “Of course, before that I was a software engineer”.
She always added that last line. A teaching profession was usually considered as one which people ventured into only as a last resort. But she was different and wanted to convey that.

“Okay, so you going to Kolkata”, he added for want of anything better to say

“Yeah, I missed my train today”

“Oh! How did you miss your train?”

“I always miss my trains”, she said nonchalantly and pulled her bag from his side towards her legs.

He smiled, partly for that statement and partly for that act.

“What do you do?”, she finally returned the favour, much to his relief.

“I work in a BPO, you know, call centre stuff”

She started gazing at his hair, and used her fingers to push his front locks backwards. He leaned back a little, with absolute surprise in his face and thoughts.

“You work in a BPO?”, she asked while still fixing her gaze on his head.

“Yeah, why?”, this was getting stranger than what he had expected.

“Because all BPO people lose their hair very fast. I have read that. My brother is also in a call centre and he has no hair. But you don’t have any such problem”, she expressed with a confused look.

He broke into a light laughter. He found that innocence extremely appealing. He used his palm to brush against his hair and said, “Maybe I am not that efficient at my workplace, so my hair is still in place”, and again broke into a laughter.

The joke was lost on her and she was busy listening to the announcement. It was her flight and it was time to go.

“Thanks a lot for helping me out with the bag!”, she said to him.

“Bag? Oh yeah, no, I mean no problem. Time for your flight?”

“Yes, got to go now”

This time he had to think fast and thought to himself: I have nothing to lose anyway.

“Hey, let’s stay in touch. What’s your phone number or e-mail?”

“Sure Mr. BPO with a full head”, she said with a smile and removed a pen from her purse.

He checked his pockets and pulled out his boarding pass. She wrote down her e-mail id on the back of the boarding pass.
“I won’t write my number please, you know I am concerned about my safety and all that, even though I know you are a nice guy”, she shrugged and smiled.

“Absolutely., absolutely. I understand. Besides, e-mail is great!”, he smiled, flashing the boarding pass back at her. She turned around, keeping that bag close to her and jumped away into the sea of travelers and their colorful bags and suitcases.

The entire conversation went in a loop mode in his head and he couldn’t stop himself from smiling at various junctions. Especially the part about the BPO and the hair bit.

Shortly, it was his flight’s turn to depart. He lugged his bag on his shoulder, stood in the long line, looked around for one last time just in case she had missed her flight and then reluctantly boarded the bus that carried him to the aircraft. He got off the bus, stood in the long queue, casually handed the air crew member his boarding pass, who tore it at the perforated edge, and returned the smaller section back to him.

He sat down in his seat, buckled himself up, turned the boarding pass around. The e-mail address was gone, it was written in that section which was torn by the air crew member while boarding. How stupid of himself he thought.

In another flight, on board to Kolkata, she decided to check her mails the first thing upon landing. Just in case, she thought, he had managed to go to the Jet Airways lounge and sent her a welcome mail. She smiled at this thought before letting sleep takeover her anxiety.

Previous short stories: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

Last Wednesday, I got the chance to attend a lecture that is part of Yahoo! Big Thinkers India Series – an initiative taken by Yahoo! that brings together researchers, academia and the corporate world to participate in discussions related to science, technology and internet. The speakers are part of the Yahoo! fraternity, and experts in their respective fields.

The talk I attended was on Pricing, by Prof. Preston McAfee, Research Fellow and Vice President of Microeconomics at Yahoo! Although most of the lecture seemed like a direct lift from an MBA text book on pricing and game theory, the examples he gave held interest levels to a great extent. The entire talk was precise, germane and humorous.

Beginning with the oldest pricing adage of never countering competition by lowering prices (as it leads to a price war, and everyone loses) he went on to explain how companies use “price discrimination”, be it direct – where the seller knows his customer and can decide the price based on that, or indirect – where the consumer characteristics are not known, and hence we need to use appropriate proxies. While the former is quite evident (happens all the time when I go to the cobbler or mechanic), the latter is more interesting. One example of indirect price discrimination is by the use of grocery store coupons. Here we are able to cater to the price-sensitive segment that also has less value-for-time, and offer them a value proposition. Same goes for bulk discounts by retailers, which aims to discriminate based on family size and affordability.

There were several examples quoted to show how airlines price their tickets (Prof. McAfee seemed to be as confused as the rest of us – but he had more data to justify his confusion!), how hotels almost always have better fares if only you ask (sometimes many better fares depending on what segment you fall in), and how several internet retailers randomize their prices to cash in on various customer types. The lesson learnt – it always pays to probe.

Some of the audience questions also led to interesting insights. One question on the impact of piracy on pricing of goods led to this remarkable revelation. Consider this – Microsoft is well-aware of the magnitude of piracy of its Windows products in large Asian markets like India and China. However, we do not see drastic actions taken to curb that. Imagine the cost of that – millions of users moving to Linux or other open-source platforms, and Microsoft out of the picture! An incredible illustration of game theory and competition strategy.

While I didn’t get all the answers I was looking for – I was mainly looking for clues to solving the mysteries of internet pricing and valuations – I came away highly entertained, and it was time well spent. Plus, if indeed a plus was needed, there were also freebies and short-eats to add to the whole experience. Yahoo! really knows how to do things stylishly…whatever else they are doing wrong.

I’m definitely attending the next lecture! Ladies and gentleman (to keep up the trend ), hope to see you there too.