It is indeed a great feeling when you realize you still have the ability to surprise yourself. We plan and scheme things but it can only take you so far, destiny takes its own course – something I still haven’t been able to rationalize my way out of yet. Either way although things almost never go according to plan, the way things pan out keeps life interesting and worth living. All this philosophy up here has something to do with the next chapter of my life – IRMA. Supertramp says that happiness is only real when shared, I thought I’d share an abridged version of my journey to IRMA.

The days on the other side of the wall:

Somewhere during the 3^rd year of engineering, among the less technically inclined, a mirror-like phenomenon called “MBA mania” happens. I believe it is still rediscovered in every batch. You read up on the placement figures, read up on the comfy life of post Bschool and finally buy in to the great Indian middle class idea of utopia – MBA degree.

CAT - The predator posing as a house pet

Apparently, the only thing standing between you and your dream life is a pesky exam called CAT. But as it turned out exams like CAT don’t come with humble numbers, basically she is a predator posing as a house pet. Sitting back now I can say that buying the prospectus is a close to home parallel to buying a lottery ticket. In all likelihood you would have already cynically dismissed the whole bloody exam half way through your campaign. Trust me it happens!

Anyway as a risk mitigation strategy, I picked up application forms for all exams I had ever heard of. Of all the exams – 5 or 6 of them, subconsciously IRMA was certainly not the place I imagined seeing myself. Common, I am city bred and cornflakes fed what do you expect? The prelims happened on exactly the day my sister was getting married and I missed the function. I was pissed off!

As providence may have it at the end of the prelims season, I had enough calls from good Bschools and IRMA to keep my campaign alive (by that time I had gathered that IRMA could not be categorized a typical Bschool).

The new dynamic:

The interview season began and I started visiting campus after campus. At most places I managed to encounter flashy presentations, the never ending race – blind, concentrated, continued action with a tinge of snobbishness in style and superficial interviewing. Most places did not really have a soul, nevertheless, I had prepared my self for unadulterated hypocrisy and it paid off for me. I did well at all places I visited.

Institute of Rural Management Anand

Right on the middle of this all was my interview of very average priority – IRMA. I dragged myself to Anand, mentally tired and underprepared. I arrived at the campus the day before my interview – lovely, absolutely amazing campus. I started seeing things better now. I met a few guys from different parts of the country, some people having attempted only IRMA and passionate about joining the institute. I asked them why? They had answers that had me stumped. Quite uncharacteristically I quickly realised that I might be missing something here. Things were slightly slower and meditative, passion and vision defined the air and they didn’t give a damn about the suits. I loved that!  There was more than obvious overlap between my true being and the character and vision of the institute. Now I became desperate to get in. Whomp! The tables had just turned. I played my cards differently albeit more naturally – confidence bordering arrogance with genuine passion. I knew I had pulled IRMA off.

A whole new world:

Now a lot of my worldly wise fellows think I am nuts (not that it hasn’t been suggested before). Right from the entrepreneurial capitalist to the socially oriented, oh the twist and turns keep on coming! I can’t really reason why, I guess I am just following the natural course of my being.

So what is in my mind at the onset of this new detour?

A) I love the fact that I have been able to take a decision out of power and not weakness. I have a lot of worldly wise options before me but I chose my own path. That’s a little more responsibility than I would have liked but the challenge seems interesting.

B) Right at the core of man’s spirit lays a desperate need for new experiences. I believe I am going to expose myself to something I haven’t ever experienced before, the prospects are inspiring.

C) It is a clean slate now, my past has little significance any more.

Blessing myself and Signing off!

PS: I’ve committed the cardinal sin – inconsistency. I resist my natural inclination to reason my way out of this, it is just the way things are.

So when your best buddy turn’s up with a heavenly JW Blue Label (aha, u read it right!) it was like Kerala tourism’s new ad campaign saying “Your moment is waiting.” So here, under the pretext of a druken (Royally, if I may) ranting I am gonna share some excerpts- correction- whatever I can remember- of my true unadulterated self.

The traditional kickstart:

A symbol of excellence - just like virus's pen!

Just as expected – love lost, women, girl friend(s), compatibility damn! Together these words would make a quaint oxymoron for the urban dictionary. The start is always a suck fest for me. I have nothing to add. I mean I’ve been single all my life and not for one second been tormented by the middling bachelors craving need for companionship (f). I think the underlying theory is simple. (ps. Future wife- these are drunken rantings!)

A)     As it is I am plain awesome or as Barney Stinson put it “I am the Angelina Jolie of incredibility hot guys”

B)     In my experience, men in relationships are boring. They are slaves, a shadow of their true selves and just turn the clock back. Who in normal levels of sanity would dream of seeing themselves as a joker?

C)     And finally and more importantly – like some wise man said beautiful women are in the league of the Mercedes Benz, the Blackberry and beach view bungalows. They are just out of the range of the common man!

Then I start of with my “Freedom until lost is seldom valued” types speeches. Of course, I have no idea what it is at the other side of love. I am too much of a narcissist. He fires back – “You’ll eventually find yourself contradicting very thing you say and will realize what a fool you are!” I reply “Maybe…I am cool with that!” Whomp!

Why can’t I contradict myself?

It get this quite often my mom, sis and friends – “You are contradicting yourself.” Well is it a crime? What is wrong in doing that? Ok, let me bring in a bit of perspective in here. Basically it is your life experience that shapes your viewpoint. A different experience is a chance to revisit an idea and subject it to correction or change if necessary. I would rather leave my self open to new experience than subject myself to the distasteful prospect of being a prisoner of my long held views. The effect of which could be cataclysmic by comparison. From where I see it, if at some point of life you don’t contradict your past self, you are just not growing. It’s being stagnant!

The root of this problem is society’s compulsive urge to measure personality in absolutes or rather place him/her in a stereotype. You are not allowed to make mistakes and change. “Once a thief, always a thief” and lots of other ridiculous theories are the cornerstones of the make-believe society we live in. People change and we need to accept the idea that change is possible. “Rewrite rules, Retain values” is Kishore Biyani’s business philosophy. And the only way to change is to challenge your earlier ideas and make way for new ones. So if it involves contradicting yourself, so be it. It’s the price I pay for wisdom. It’s the price of living in the moment.

“So how does anyone trust you? You are a chameleon. What credibility do ya have?”

“Yep that is the whole point; I am not (no longer rather) on the look out for the society’s “ACCEPTED” certificate. So long is I am not a sociopath, I don’t think there is a reason to complain. Some of us- correction – most of us, choose to be a slave of the neurotic social system we are born into. I don’t do that!”

The society has held me prisoner to breed mediocrity!

It has not been long but it has been awesome every since I logged out/ unplugged from the society matrix. Now I am a virus like Neo! I am no more bound by the rules of the system. Frankly, there are few feelings greater than this! You just have to be prepared for scorn, derision and in the highly unlucky case- rotten tomatoes and eggs.

Freedom

Freedom is the ultimate concept. It created legends like Gandhi. But my life experience has been different. Where we live, freedom is a legal concept. It is pure make-believe notion that I am calling the shots of my life when someone/something else actually is. The Indian middle class has a robust value system with deeply entrenched and strong right and wrong. As a kid I’ve had to bear the brunt of the society’s misplaced expectations. You work your back side off while your batch mates were indulging themselves in other kinds of educational timepass (hmm..). You get educated with no idea what you are doing. Then you land yourself up in a job get married, kids, car, house…the keyword here is “get successful (Another misjudged concept –will deal with it later!)”…then die quietly (preferably leaving no stone unturned). Every thing is set up, you might as well have somebody else live your life for you. All you do in life is catering to the system’s need. At no point of time does the system ask you what you want. It only judges you for what you did. Who needs that? The middle class value system is a badge which confers acceptability but also the breeder of mediocrity.

That is exactly my point of contention. The system never accepts you for what you are or let you discover yourself. It just makes sure that you are secure and mediocre. You have to subjugate the self. But I can’t do that! I am not happy with being secure. What I want is excellence and the truth. I want to experiment with my life to reach there. So what I ask from the universe is the freedom to experiment and make mistakes and learn. Because that is perfectly ok as per my value system.

“To hell with the society and its norms. I call the shots of my life and I will not have it adulterated with rules I did not make. I need the freedom to play with my life. So to all judging eyes out there- I am an odd ball. Your prejudice has no bearing on me. Coz I no more give a damn to what you think and people with time, learn how to judge for themselves!”

Challenge Accepted!!!

“ Life is just an opportunity and opening, it is a creative challenge. Life is so spacious that it allows you to be whatsoever you want to be.” - Osho

Spot On Bro! Life is indeed a creative challenge and there is nothing called limit or limitation. The social system just killed the idea. It gave me ethic, etiquette, morality and loads of other fancy terms. It put me in a cage and asked to find meaning of life in the cage. It even defined happiness and success for me. I believe at some point of time you get a choice. Either you live a life satisfying the system into which you were acclimatized with or you break the system and do what you want and be what you want to be. Whatever it is!

“Today I proclaim to the universe. I want to experience the whole richness in life. I want to challenge the boundaries the neurotic system defines. I want to be a slave of my bizarre dreams. I wanna live in a rarefied bubble with absolute freedom -Unquestioned, not in fear of judgment day but only rich in experience!”

On a totally unrelated note, I’ ll leave you with one of my favorites:

Maybe the world is not ready for me or maybe I knocked back more that I can handle. But when you are high there is no way to “Stop the madness”. Cheers!

Image courtesy – Google.

As a principle I believe, it is always easier to get to the answer to a problem if we ask the right questions. Here are a few of mine related to this issue:

• How different are the sexes or rather are the sexes different by design?
• Does the concept of couple/ family give us any clue in cracking this case?
• How did the women who actually did break the proverbial glass ceiling do so?
• Is the MCP – Feminist war a solution or a problem?

I feel analyzing these questions (one by one) could possibly lead us to something worthwhile. Read on!

How different are the sexes?

Dr John Gray said most problems will be solved if you consider that your opposite sex is from another planet, in his best seller ‘Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus’. Now, he is talking of a big gap there! Basically Men & Women think, feel, perceive, react, respond, love, need and appreciate differently. We could enlist biological, parental influence, culture, media, education or history (Or some other factors I could have missed) for this difference. But the highlight is that the difference is indisputable and only the degree varies from individual to individual.

It would be too much of a generalization to discuss in detail character traits of a male and female but we could assume (at least for the majority) males are often associated with aggression, risk, adventure and females by contrast usually embodies the ideals of inner dignity, security, subtlety and compassion. But were these differences coincidental or part of a larger intelligent design? Let us look into how a couple works to crack this one.

What clue does a family/couple give us?

I have grown to believe that ‘family’ is the ultimate concept; we are indebted to our progenitors for conceiving it (particularly in the Indian context). Family is the smallest and most powerful part of any social structure. It is a cell or microcosm of the larger social setup. Ever wondered how a family or

How does a couple work?

couple works? A couple consists of two parts which act or think differently but in the process complement each other. Any phenomenon can be expressed as the sum of two opposing forces and the family is an epitome. The point I am coming to with the aforementioned differences of the sexes is that they (the sexes) may appear contradictory to the intellect but the deeper you dig into it you find that these differences are compensatory. They some how depend on each other; if one disappears the other will not be there. Life adjusts in such a way that it makes contradictions complementary. It is the self compensatory or complementary forces of male and female attributes that gets the family setup working. This is the cornerstone of my argument.

If we accept this argument, may be it might help us understand people who really cracked the glass ceiling in the corporate world in a better light.

How do women break the proverbial glass ceiling?

Revered people like Indra Nooyi, Kiran Bedi and Chanda Kocchar may have become the poster girls of woman emancipation but few have bothered to analyze why they could crack the glass ceiling. People talk about their education, qualification, background and so on (of course they do add value) but why are we not willing to consider the possibility that they made it because they were women and exercised their feminine qualities, which added tremendous novelty value in a heretofore male dominated corporate world? Confused – Let me explain. Indra Nooyi famously said ‘I am a mother first, then a CEO and then a wife.‘ There is scope to take a few inferences from that statement. But I am going with Chanda Kocchar to elucidate my point.

Chanda Kocchar took the reins of ICICI bank when they were undergoing an unprecedented crisis after the collapse of Lehman Brothers and speculation was rife that it was going to wreck the bank. K.V Kamath who preceded her as the CEO was all in for aggressive growth and a bulging balance sheet. He also maintain

K V Kamath and Chanda Kocchar

ed a vast network of collection agents with muscle power as their weapon to collect credit card dues. When Chanda Kocchar came to power she made shockingly contradictory motions like cutting out on unsecured high risk credit and embarked on major internal cost-cutting measures. She placed capabilities ahead of business objectives. She changed the high risk philosophy and gave stability and security its due by working from within. She said “Growth can mean various things. It isn’t just about growing the balance sheet.” What I am coming to with this is that even though Chanda Kocchar’s philosophy seems diagonally opposite to K V Kamath’s it is the best considering the climate of the time because in the long term the high risk growth cannot sustain itself without stability.

So this is how K V Kamath and Chanda Kocchar complement each other over the long term. This is exactly how the cell of society (Family) works with each different element complementing rather than contradicting each other.

This is where the woman makes her way into the male dominated corporate world. You see, they think differently and for all you know that could bring in diversity of perspective, enrich discussion, enhance decision making and make the whole setup more sensitive than an ‘Old Boy’s Club’. So evidently if the world is seeing the dawn of a competent and experienced woman it is because of nature’s law of complementing, which makes it more of a necessity than anything else. Why else do progressive economies like Norway require 40% of the board to be occupied by women? Sadly in India only 5% of the directors are women.

MCP – Feminist war a solution or a problem?

Having said all this it would be totally impractical if we were to close our eyes to the fact that women in India are victims of years of suppression and they still face problems like unequal opportunity, work condition safety, sexual harassment and so on. It will only be fair to say that men on the other hand have been victims (repeat victims) of generations of privilege and superiority bestowed on them by the society. It is also going to take time to change the habits of an entire generation.

Feminism is the retaliation to years of suppression but the question is: is the solution worse that the problem itself? Even though the text book definition of feminism sounds good to read, the concept has diluted itself. May be at the dawn they were able to create awareness and pride towards better acceptance but that is where the glory ends. Over the years it is just become an extremist idea of female sex victimizing the other sex for everything  they face. If MCP’s survive on downplaying the idea of competent women, contemporary feminists (majority taken into consideration) make a career out of  stirring up hatred towards men. If MCP’s suck, feminist suck too! Dilution has killed feminism (Taking the holistic picture). Is replacing the ‘Old boy’s club’ with an ‘Old girls club’ a solution or a problem?  The answer is anyone’s guess.

If men are changing from their MCP ways, it is not because they fear a crazy girl club making noise, it is because the idea a competent woman is an idea whose time has come and this generation is used to it and has seen genuine value in the way thing are. MCP’s and feminists are like two people sitting at two ends of a boat rowing in opposite directions. They either act as agents of stagnation together or sink together. The earlier they sink the better!

Conclusion:

Men and women are fundamentally different by design and that is how the law of nature works. Each sex has its strengths and traits and both these qualities are required for long term sustainability of any venture be it family, business or society as a whole. Over they years an imbalance has been created with concepts like ‘superior sex’ which has resulted in crap like MCPs and feminism. But what is our way forward in bridging this gap and restoring nature’s law?

You can’t brute force your way into a problem of generations. The solution is answering to the need where your strengths are coherent. In a beautiful age of meritocracy we live in time has shown us an age where qualities natural to women are respected and required for any sound practice and debate. Women should convert their natural strengths if they are to gain their due. Neither aping men nor blaming them is a way forward in this predicament. The solution lies within the woman. Chanda Kocchar opined that she dealt with the glass ceiling relying on her strengths. It all the same, nothing challenges the laws of nature – The contradictions are actually complementary!

Over the years, much like what has happened to the game itself, it is things off the field that has kept me more interested in the game. Yes Cynicism! I can’t help notice that the change cricket has undergone. The muck in the media about our de facto national sport merits no repetition. This is the first of a few post related to the only sport I actively watch. It deals with a trite topic but I still stand to express my opinion.

How did the game capture the Indian psyche to an extent that almost all other sports are non existent?

Let us start off in my own backyard – P.T. Usha regarded as one of the greatest athletes India has produced has slipped into the oblivion while the upstart cricketer Shanthakumaran Sreesanth who has comparably trivial achievement is a media baby. Thinking objectively it seems outright injustice but the question is – did cricket sound the death knell for other sports in India? I am not sure. Can I blame you if I got lower marks for an exam? It happens in all fields – when cinema started making inroads, Drama took the back seat. To understand what cricket is today we need to briefly look at the history of sport in India.

It is understood that badminton originated in India and other games of local importance were kabaddi, hockey and kusthi. The golden period of Indian hockey lasted from 1928 summer Olympics till the 1980 Moscow Olympics during which we gathered 8 gold medals and produced wizards with hockey stick like Major Dhyanchand. The team was nothing short of invincible and the populace entertained them selves glued to radio sets imagining each pass with rapt attention. Cricket was for all practical purposes non existent at that time. After this run of hockey’s total dominance in sport came a bleak period where nothing of significance happened. Then came the surprising win by team India in the Prudential Cricket World Cup 1983. Since then cricket took a radical turn and got engrained in the psyche of the masses. But it was not that cricket had a stroke of luck. It was that the guys in BCCI then had the wit to make out that the 1983 win opened up a heretofore unseen opportunity in cricket as a sport of mass appeal. They built new stadiums and brought in technology. They ran the body professionally and gave their players the share of the pie they deserved, which others sports didn’t. It’s just the case of tapping an opportunity nothing else! Now BCCI is the richest body in world cricket and Indian players are the most handsomely paid sportsmen in the game.

As evidently seen in the history of Indian sport, if the sport is entertaining and the country team has worldwide recognition people will naturally follow the game. The masses follow success and so does money. With awesome infrastructure, the best raw sporting talent is converted to world class material and the team gains further strength. It is kind of like a vicious circle….true to a market economy nature, the rich get richer and the poor stay where they are. So cricket takes multiple jumps economically where as other sports in the country stay where they are.

So the point I am coming to is that for other sports in India, there are some good takeaways from the success of cricket in India:

1. Cricket is not an infallible goliath and it need not be killed for other sports to come up
2. Result is the only way to capture the attention the masses
3. Invest in infrastructure and training facilities big time
4. See the slightest of success as a big time opportunity

Every now and again, when it comes to the question of other sports in India, Cricket is the first guy to take the blame. It is so because it is convenient to do so but it’s just another case of shameless escapism. Just because Infosys is big, it doesn’t mean that other smaller IT companies have stopped growing. Meritocracy rules in any industry and so is it with sport. Let us not hope for cricket’s sympathy for others to grow because it is just not going to happen. If others have to grow we have to work intelligently and systematically towards it (Much like cricket did). And who knows, Cricket is currently in its honeymoon period but the day it stops producing results (just like hockey) the Indian sports window is open again. It is anyone’s for the taking!

Reference:

http://www.anirudhlohia.com/blog/is-cricket-killing-other-sports-in-india/

“XXXX, What are your Hobbies?”

Understanding Hobbies:

Let’s kick off with what the Wikipedia has to say:

“A hobby is an activity or interest that is undertaken for pleasure or relaxation, often in one’s spare time.”

While that is good, most of you guys might feel out of your depth if I were to ask you to categorize your pleasure activities as Time pass, Interest, Hobby and Extra-curricular. Actually this could be a good place to start knowing yourself better. These four words though closely related actually refer to four different psychological levels of an activity. What I mean is that no activity can be a time pass and interest or timepass and hobby at the same time. Confused? Ok, let us deal with each of these four words separately:

Time pass:

What would you be doing if you having nothing else to do after reading my blog? Random surfing? A walk ? Yea, time pass is something you do to kill time; it need not even interest you!

Interest:

An interest is at the next psychological level, it is when you have a liking or taste and take interest in knowing more about something. A bathroom singer following the great singers in our country, collecting trivia and other information can be said to have an interest in music.

Hobby:

This is a quantum leap from the psychological level of an interest. Here contrary to the Wikipedia definition, hobby is practiced interest for which a person creates time for, almost on a daily or weekly basis. If suppose a manager in an MNC budgets half an hour in his daily schedule to play tennis, for him tennis has moved from the level of an interest to a hobby. He creates time for it and his

understanding and enjoyment of it is at a much higher level.

Extra-curricular:

Now, when your hobby reaches the dimension involving public or may be economic activity, it is called extra-curricular. For a person whose hobby is gardening, selling Bouquets would be making it an extra-curricular. Kamal Hassan famously said “Acting is my hobby but the fact that it is also my profession is my greatest blessing”

To clarify the concept lets take the example of cricket. For a person watching matches once a while, cricket is a time pass. A further interested person collects trivia and engages himself in animated post match discussions and so on follow cricket as an interest. All the above activities plus playing cricket on daily basis and creating time for it raises it to the level of a hobby and if a cricket related activity leads to your livelihood, your hobby becomes an extra-curricular (think Harsha Bhogle!)

These are the four levels of an activity and each activity related to a person can be in only one of these four levels at a particular point in time. Which means, for an activity to become a hobby it first has to be a time pass, then it becomes an interest and it transcends that level to finally become a hobby. So the question is what are the activities that you create time to do? Only those qualify as hobbies. Others remain at the level of either a time pass or interest! It is also possible for an activity to regress from hobby to interest (rarer case though!)

Interestingly when I categorized my activities for the first time I could find lot of things to place in the time pass and interest buckets but poignantly little for hobbies and extra-curricular. It requires a systematic effort to really convert your interest into a hobby – a practiced interest. Try this activity out yourself, it is an awesome experience, you get to know yourself a lot better!

A hobby can change your life!

Stated in plain English, a good hobby is one of the best things that can happen to you (At least that is my personal experience) because serious hobbies are like soul mates. Human beings are creatures of habit and it is amazing what all we could get used to but even more amazing is the range a hobby can take a person to. A serious hobby is freakin’ powerful because it is a self-driven chase for fulfillment of a personal aim. But sadly, in these times of job-wedded people, you have better chances of winning a lottery than meeting a guy with seriously pursued hobbies.

Taking into account this history of hobbies, all the early scientific research was a hobby of the wealthy. The OS Linux was a student hobby outcome. To state the obvious, serious hobbies have created new levels of excellence in mankind. Engaging in a hobby can lead to acquiring substantial skill, knowledge and experience. It helps shape our character and discover ourselves. Another advantage is that we develop a plethora of skills connected to our hobbies too.

The point is that when we make a choice about spending time outside our core economic sphere, we have to choose something capable of restoring our lost up energy which give real pleasure. They should free us from a drab pedestrian existence making us more colourful and lively. This is the gap which good hobbies are capable of filling effectively.

Tailpiece:

As I said earlier, a serious hobby is one of the best things that can happen to you. A creative product need not necessarily be of commercial value but it is high personal satisfaction. So if I may put in my two cents, first do a soul search and find your interest. Systematically convert them into your hobbies and see how it changes your life forever! Cheers!

PS:

1) The hobby discovering activity is a common part of self discovery boot camps not my IP!

2) Anything under the sun can be made a hobby, the article has been drafted with the conventionally better hobbies in mind!

An Indian Dilemma: What is an Entrepreneur?

Just for the uninitiated, ‘Entrepreneur’ is a loanword from French coined by economist Jean-Baptiste Say (in 1800) meaning “One who acts as an intermediary between capital and labour” which essentially means a person who is in possession of a new enterprise or venture or idea and assumes significant responsibility for the inherent risks and outcome. Now that is just a bland definition rather unromantic.

” Entrepreneurs in my perspective are people to whom freedom, individual and capitalism are not words but a way of life.”

It is exactly the kind of mental conditioning that makes them what they are. Unlike the popular social mindset it is not only the corporate Mercedes owners who are entrepreneurs; your neighbourhood smalltime vegetable shop owner is one too. I see both these people in the same light because I consider these ideals (Freedom and individual) above anything else. I’ll give you this in writing- even some of the best educated or the people in plum cushy jobs can’t run a vegetable shop with success if he doesn’t have the spark! Yea, let’s accept it; entrepreneurship requires a much higher level of individual and social conditioning than what India’s ‘Trained –for-job’ education can give.

As we dig deeper into the Indian entrepreneurial dissonance, I feel there are fundamentally 4 questions that can lead us to an answer:

1)      What is the Indian entrepreneurial legacy?

2)     What social impact is an entrepreneur capable off in the Indian context?

3)      What is the skill set required at the individual level?

4)      What can we do to promote entrepreneurship?

The Creation Of Wealth: Indian entrepreneurial Legacy

First, we have to accept the fact that considering the huge opportunity that is ‘India’, we produce too few entrepreneurs. Well, the reasons for this could be that for starters, we have been trained generation after generation to be cog-in-the-wheel people by society and education. Another is fear. Yes, a popular theory goes like 5% of all startups survive for five years and 5% of these survivors survive more than 10 years. He implies that only 0.25% of all startups eventually taste blood. We can’t question the veracity of this theory but I can say that there is a logical fallacy taking temporal succession for causal relation for failing entrepreneurs. Let me elucidate.

India 200 years ago:

For the contemporary Indian, the pain of losing money (or the drudgery of a high paid slave) is greater than the joy of not only being successful but also absolutely free! But that certainly was not what Indians 200 years ago thought. Then making their own way was natural to Indians. Few of us know that back in 1750, India & China made for 60% of the global trade of which India accounted for 25%. Now we contribute on 1.5% of global trade. Look beyond 200 years and we understand the inevitable position we were in.

So what happened to Indians?

It is probably the influence of 200 years of working for somebody else clubbed with the middle-class social norm of risk aversion. Yes, damage has been done to the quality social fabric of India and a dreadful precedent of a job crazy society has been established. But we must understand that small time entrepreneurs are the back bone of an economy. By the time they reach their retirement years, half of all working men in the United States probably have a period of self-employment of one or more years. Yep! The point I am getting to is that Indian contemporary entrepreneurship quotient has been knowingly lowered by the society but that is a temporal state. Our history says entrepreneurship was natural to Indians. It is just a matter of getting back to our own ways!

An Entrepreneur’s Social Impact: the Indian Context

This is a clichéd topic but is unavoidable considering the theme of the article. The question is what is the role of the entrepreneur vis-à-vis the Indian context.

a) The Creation of Wealth:

Back in 1874 Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata floated a company with the dream of India one day becoming a world power in mind. Yes, entrepreneur’s like Jamsetji were nationalists even before this word had any great significance. Albeit it was a silent revolution powered by the idea of creating wealth for a nation. This is fundamentally what differentiates an entrepreneur, he creates wealth. Others consume it by providing support services which tantamount to a smaller contribution. There is a significant difference to what an entrepreneur and what a cog-in-the-wheel can do!

b) Saving by indigenous produce:

We all know that telecom is the happening place in the Indian economic space. Do you know how many telecom equipment companies India has? ZERO! The telecom equipment business is ruled by two Chinese companies Huawei and ZTE. Search your souls friends, isn’t this purely a case of lack of entrepreneurial imagination in a technical sound country like ours? Think!

c) Efficiency into systems:

Entrepreneurs generally spot a gap and fill it in. In the process they bring in efficiency in different business domains. For example consider social entrepreneurship. There is a limit to the kind of effect a politically motivated and rigged government can do. Things like MGREGA come like once in the history of the world. But entrepreneurs have no such limitation.  They can bring their ideas to social relevance monetizing it the process. The reach is beyond imagination reaching win-win situation which are here to last.

I can go on and on about this but highlight is that the range of social contribution of an entrepreneur is unfathomable. In the Indian context it a matter of being able to see our population as our biggest opportunity economics wise!

The Skill Set: Dissecting the individual behind it

The 3^rd point of contention is understanding the individual in the entrepreneur. Edison said after he invented the light filament:

“I have successfully discovered thousand ways to NOT make a light bulb!”

It is gives a sneak peek into what we call the entrepreneurial mindset. I am not going to take this question at the physical level which I am sure most my readers will be able to work out (Leadership, Money….etc). I feel this question needs to taken at a psychoanalytical level which is certainly beyond the range of this author as a run-of-the-mill engineer! Nevertheless with the Wikipedia as Friedman said the world is flat. Here check this out to bore yourself with the – Entrepreneurial Mindset. One thing is for sure, there is certainly a cognitive dissonance between excellence in academics and entrepreneurship. The aforementioned model stresses into 4 factors which they name Existentialism, Axiology and Telelogy , Pragmatism and Ethics and Sustainability. Further elucidation is beyond the scope of this article but I’ll give us this entrepreneurial mindset might exist in cooking just as well as web-2 innovating, it is the philosophy and the action it generate that counts – not the context. Just that you guy’s don’t feel left high and dry hear Howard Roark Speech (Ayn Rand) on objectivism philosophy it really gives a feel of how individualistic an entrepreneur might be:

Promoting Entrepreneurship:

An entrepreneurial venture is a scientific experiment – it may or may not succeed. One of the biggest realities of entrepreneurship is imminent failure whether it is at the start up stage or in a well established stage like Subhiksha. Entrepreneurship too is like the different stages of a human being – before birth, infancy, toddler, adolescence, teenage, adult and so on. Each level craves for a different kind of treatment. To make big time entrepreneurship a reality there are many factors that can contribute to ameliorate the economic favourability.

a) Funding mechanisms :

The most crucial and difficult part of an entrepreneurship is the first 10 years. It’s a matter of surviving. Financial bootstrapping is biggest challenge. Venture capital and angel funding seeking returns of 20-30% are the only go. But the catch is here, to get a VC you got to show your academic credentials. It is their kind of security. So even though academic excellence and Entrepreneurship have hardly anything in common your funding depends on it. What an irony! This has to change, you have got see opportunity and vision rather than certificates. This is why is said earlier the climate of our times favours the educated entrepreneur.

b) Efficency at the govt level

A typical example was in 1967 Tata Chemicals prepared a unique fertilizer project to indigenous production. Unfortunately the government opposed it and in the subsequent years the imports of fertilizers went up from a few 100 to a few 1000cr. Ultimately it was India who lost in the bargain. See, just because our markets were opened up in 1991, entrepreneurship has not proportionally gone up. To get a fair chance we need proper regulation and quality control so that brand India sells in the world. This is the best service the government can do to its people in the long term perspective.

c) Incubators at IIM, NGOs & science parks

We need Knowledge entrepreneurs in research, political entrepreneurs for a just democracy and social entrepreneurs for social upliftment and economic entrepreneurs for converting a social economic situation or need into greenbacks. Each of these institutes of excellence were found with a social objective. The incubators at these places have great role in giving orientation so that success is democratized!

d) School level

This is where the conditioning of people takes place. It is here that the relevance of changes in education system has to show relevant improvement. Children should get into the habit of questioning rather than forcing them to accept. Avoid programming kids for a job at this impressionable age. Give them the best teachers possible and also introduce them to the world of books. This can influence their ideas and change their understanding of the world.

The Verdict:

Understand that our legacy is not of a consumer but of a creator of wealth. Entrepreneurship is in the blood is just a matter of rediscovering our ways. India becoming a world economic power in 2020 is a dream all Indians carry close to their heart. Entrepreneurs are the facilitators for this dream. It is time that the youth start understanding people like Ayn Rand and move out from the mediocrity of social security and move into a realm of individual power. Let there be more puppet masters and fewer puppets from the educationally empowered!

Understanding an Engineer:

Ok, now who wants to read something ironical? 2 years after successfully completing a B Tech course, I struggle for words to a potentially stumping question for many of my types – ‘Define: Engineer’. Whomp! It turns out engineer comes from the Latin root “Ingenium,” meaning “cleverness.” Ironically, a majority of the 50,000 (AICTE stat) engineers mass produced in India’s education mafia plantations don’t exactly qualify as “Clever” because for all you know, not even 18% of these people are “Employable.”

Fundamentally a good bachelor of the engineering discipline is expected to:

Plan, Design, Organise and Execute safe solutions to practical problems or improvement to the status quo using manpower, resources, time and money to the satisfaction of all parties involved.

– Industry Expectation 0f an Engineer

The above statement will qualify as the expectation from an engineer by any industry. But an engineer during the four years of his/her professional education is forcibly exposed to only the ‘Design’ factor in the above definition which primarily involves only applying mathematics, scientific knowledge and ingenuity considering technical constraints.

Cultural aspects of an engineer:

No one has mocked engineers better than Scott Adam’s Dilbert. Checkout the knack:

Dilbert opines that engineering is a domain for nerds and he enlists idiosyncrasy of style, hopelessness in dating and obsession with tools and tech products as their classic traits. Another difficulty engineers face with their profession is that average people in the typical run of life don’t have personal dealings with engineers, even though they benefit from their work everyday by contrast to a doctor, accountant and occasionally even a lawyer! Even if we take Dilbert’s theory with a pinch of salt the writing on the wall for a good engineer is the general lack of social skill.

Taking the other side of the coin, an engineer as person is taught to take a scientific approach (systematic knowledge-base capable of resulting in a correct prediction) to anything. Engineering is a science of possibility and imagination and pure science traces the theory behind the application. So fundamentally, an engineer is a person who has armed himself with inward thinking and the ability to ask questions towards a solution. Plus he is comfortable with numbers. He is a utility creator albeit working away from the actual user!

Understanding Management:

Ok, so let us start from the basics: What is management? One theory propagated by non-MBA aspirants is “The art of getting things by other intelligent people meanwhile enjoying a luxury coach ride of a lifetime.” Now, that is a load of crap fueled by hideous intransigence to understand before forming an opinion. May be it was only in 1908 that HBS offered the world’s first MBA program but this program was based on books like Sun Tzu’s ‘The Art of War’ which doled out military strategies and tactics in the 6th century BC. Another school of thought draws out striking similarities between what is taught in the Bhagavat Gita (Hindu book on way of life) and in B-schools! So where does that lead us to? Management is a science that has evolved over the years and it essentially deals with how to effectively handle life situations. Period!

An MBA always betters the skills and never changes the basic skill set which means a graduation is of paramount importance as your MBA builds on that. My $0.02 are that MBA education is the best add on to any graduation available to civilians today because a MBA is a general degree. It opens the opportunity to ‘manage’ oneself, a pre-requisite to attempting to manage others. It demonstrates a willingness and commitment to updating skills and professional development empowering people to tackle most worldly problems whether professional or personal.

So other than Dilbert’s salary theorem what could some good reasons to pursue a good management course? I’ve enlisted my reasons below:

1. Liking for Management as a science:
Now, those may seem like some fancy terms but science means a highly perfected technique. If you are really interested in the Micro and Macro aspects of a business then a MBA grooms you just for that. Even a bit of psychology if I may. The management disciplines like Finance, HR, Marketing, Systems, and Operations etc seem worth while knowing. At least the course seems very practical in the real world for me – It just sharpens your image of reality!

2. Updating your personal skill set:
To be very frank, life today is about managing your self well. One skill you could do with is networking which will help you gain perspective, enhance your emotional quotient and people skills like listening. Knowing quality people whether in your peer group, as good faculty or may be even people from the industry as mentors will in all likeliness keep you in good stead. Other skills like confidence, Street smartness, integrating skills and quick response to changing conditions might prove handy both in personal and professional life.

3. The Liquid-Oxygen effect:
Creating the right first impression opens a lot of doors in life much easier. An MBA from a top school is a cool jump in the socio-economic ladder. But more importantly it really helps to a have an awesome brand to flirt with so that you don’t feel sweat down your spine when a chance with a Venture Capitalist  is on (Talking entrepreneur wise).

4. Empowering to create wealth
This is the best part and personally speaking, the draw for me. An MBA gets a person to a position of power and is empowered to create more wealth rather than consume and give back to the society by creating a greater impact either as an entrepreneur or as a top executive.

Purpose of this short note is not to put a weight behind the “MBA” argument but to understand the benefit of attending a business school. Whatever the background an MBA grooms people to think creatively and improve oneself and it is not basically only about greedy guys making money hand over fist as per the popular perception.

So how does an Engineering degree help a Manager?

So why should engineers dominate so completely in an area which is designed to offer entry to any kind of graduate? Well prima facie it a may seem that the entrance tests favour engineers because of the math but that of course is a misnomer. What I understand is that engineers are trained to believe that every problem has a logical solution and scientifically approach all problems. They are in the habit of thinking inwards and reasoning in a more obvious way than other branches. So with one great skill already in hand, engineers may be a preferred set because of their way of thinking.
Becoming a manager is about adding the skill of thinking outwards, adding a bit of perspective about market place and polishing personal skills. It is like the ideal finishing school which completes the aforementioned weak links which a good engineer is naturally prone to so that he is ready to win the rat race.

Synopsis (Book Filpside):

A lot of professors give talks titled “The Last Lecture.” Professors are asked to consider their demise and to ruminate on what matters most to them. And while they speak, audiences can’t help but mull the same question: What wisdom would we impart to the world if we knew it was our last chance? If we had to vanish tomorrow, what would we want as our legacy?

When Randy Pausch, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon, was asked to give such a lecture, he didn’t have to imagine it as his last, since he had recently been diagnosed with terminal cancer. But the lecture he gave–”Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams”–wasn’t about dying. It was about the importance of overcoming obstacles, of enabling the dreams of others, of seizing every moment (because “time is all you have…and you may find one day that you have less than you think”). It was a summation of everything Randy had come to believe. It was about living.

It struck a chord : My bag of goodies

Reading this book was a truly humbling and emotional experience. But this experience came with its bag of goodies. Randy talks of what he came to believe in life which might seem like cliché stuff to the some but I felt it was classic! What I have complied below is the stream of thought that came while I read this book. I felt it was worth sharing. Read on!

#1 The Parent lottery:

Most of the things we take for granted are seldom valued till they are lost. We forget to feel lucky and grateful about being born with a winning ticket – the almost perfect parents! The selflessness of a mothers love has never failed to fascinate me. My dad is awesome too. Many a time in life I have found myself channeling my dad, more like recycling a few of his choicest bits of wisdom. They have loved me enough to let me free at the same time being my best critics not letting their love warp their judgement. Wow! I won the parent lottery at birth -  a born winner – Awesome feeling!

#2 The theory of optimism: The ability to count your blessings

Contrary to my idea that being compulsively half-glass-full and zero gravity mind wishful thinking is optimism, Randy Pausch professes the ability to count your blessings as optimism though not explicitly mentioned. When Randy was told that he had only 3-6 months to live instead of losing himself in desperation, He was thankful that he didn’t get hit my the proverbial bus and was given time for the family to prepare for it. That’s optimism. If you were to draw up your life in a balance sheet with boon and bane, most of us would be able to fill the boon section with more efficiency. Optimism is the ability to see things holistically and count your blessings. No matter how bad things are you can always make them worse. At the same time, it is often within your power to make them better. There is nothing called a no-win scenario.

#3 Time is of essence:

Time is all you have. For all you know, you might find out some day that you have less than you think. Randy makes the point, that you need to have fun in everything you do, you need to live life to its fullest. Life is about having dreams and the ability to make them work but the factor of time is beyond us. Never take time for granted, time is of essence.

#4 The Brick wall and the Recovering Jerk:

Obstacles are part of every dream but brick walls are there for a reason, it gives us a chance to reflect on how badly we want something. I think for the most part if you are really honest with yourself with what you want, life gives it to you. When Apollo 11 landed on the moon It was almost like humanity had given itself the permission to dream big.

There are times in life when you look at your past and wish to break with it. You really wish to change your past but you can’t. You ask your self- ‘When are you going to stop sucking in life’? Well Randy says that is the best part. Education is about helping people develop the ability to assess themselves. Having flaws are just part of the imperfections of humanity and it’s always better to have a flaw in the social than in the moral category. Assessing yourself can make you feel better because you realize you are not really a ‘Jerk’ but you are a ‘Recovering Jerk’!

#5 It’s about how you decide to live your life:

Bravado in most individuals is only skin shallow but for Randy he proved it wasn’t. He talked about living in the moment and taking life as an experience. Understanding that failure is not just acceptable but is also essential is very important. He also talks about helping others achieve their dreams as source of endless joy. He says ‘Stop sucking and live a life of abundance because people generally tend to live lives far below their potential mentally’.  But fundamentally as mentioned in the $100000 salt and pepper shakers episode – there is more than one way to measure profit and loss in life!

Verdict:

Even if a commendation from a person like me is a fragile endorsement, if this write up has induced some curiosity in you please give it a try. You are less likely to regret it! This book is based on a presentation that Randy Pausch gave at Carnegie Mellon. Check out the video of his presentation. Its simply awesome!

PS: visit the site http://www.thelastlecture.com/ Life Rocks!

‘We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand’ – Randy Pausch

The Scenario: Where hypocrisy is staged

So, incidentally, I went to this function with a cited reason of helping about 40 meritorious students pursue their education financially. I was thrilled at the prospect of being indirectly part of this great initiative, I mean, is there any better way to financially liberate underprivileged families than by education? The sponsors were a club of Neo-rich NRI Mallus with a shade more than 400 families of which close to 25 families had come down to Kerala solely for the event. This event was staged the biggest auditorium in a small picturesque town in Kerala. So much for that. Things from here on are gonna get brutally frank, only god knows how I have been able to keep the below few paragraphs within the parliamentary category!

The Economics: Numbers Matter!

So, we people, the audience, are almost invariably stupendously naïve and end up overflowing with admiration and respect for the showmen at a Philanthropic functions. We never care to see the holistic picture and work out the money matters. I don’t know, but for some inexplicable reason, I pulled a few strings here and there and got to my hand a rough idea of the amount distributed in this swanky function. It gave me the shock of my life!

The popular wisdom is “C’mn man, these guys r doing something, we morons never give a damn”. Well I just can’t buy this theory in totality; I’ll reason why but let’s get back to this event. So, one after the other, speakers keep patting themselves on their back (The speakers are the organisers) and then to make matters worse, they play their bromidic Organisation Song composed specifically for this event. Whomp! After 2 hours of unashamed eulogy, they finally call upon the 40 selected kids and hand over small envelopes claiming ‘We are sponsoring your studies champs!’.

So what did the kids get? Believe me, a paltry 1500 peanuts for an entire year of study. So a total of 55,000 bugs was distributed by a group of 400 ultra rich NRI families. Imagine, Rs. 137.5 is the outgo per family for this event for an entire year whose annual income could be anywhere above the 20L category. It is literally a cruel joke. Cheapsters! So, to distribute 137.5 peanuts the families travel all the way down from the Gulf, book a swanky A/C hall and kill the time of everyone involved including the kids (who incidently spend anything close to 500/- to come down to the event venue to collect his package). So evidently these morons (sponsors) had their some other lowly agenda.

Why the hell was this thing staged?

For those who have experienced it, the joy of giving is one of the most beautiful feelings but fortunately or unfortunately philanthropy is also the easiest way to score brownie points! People just assume that you are great. It’s a solid strategy and a good rule of thumb for amateurs to create an enviable identity with a majority, sans a few intrepid souls like myself. Even in the league of virtue, man is always run by incentives. The incentive here was a false sense of benevolence and social responsibility together with the appreciation and media coverage at the cheapest cost. Pitiful losers! I guess this event is another thing that substantiates my theory on the identity crisis of the global Mallu. Hypocrisy is another kind of cruelty. They gave a hope of a ‘tension-of-fee’ free life to the kids from humble backgrounds and let them down terribly. To add insult to injury, they even mentioned that they will not sponsor the same kids next year. So what’s the point? Who benefits from this crap? If find this act in a moral grey area of these neo rich morons.

The Verdict:

All throughout our lives we have been gaining so much from the public either financially in form of subsidized education or the way it shaped you. There is sometime when you have to pay back. Whether we realize it or not it is our duty and the essence of education that we be philanthropic. I mean it could be a small personal initiative from your side but so long as it is sincere it has tremendous value whatever it is. When people like Bill Gates became a full timer the whole philanthropic industry changed. For insincere losers like the guys mentioned above, save the trouble as it is better to do nothing at all than give false hope and expectation to naïve kids. So let’s conclude with what I was taught to say every morning at school:

“Let noble thoughts, come to us, from every side”

PS: those words still give me goosebumps!

Kerala: Hartals Own country?

This is how a normal harthal day looks like: not a bird moves out of its nest, like a graveyard, All marks of civilization are absent, no commerce, no German or Detroit luxury cars, its like going back to the age of cavemen with sticks. It’s like some conspiracy theory to prevent global warming!

10 men with modern ammunition terrorise Mumbai, 5 men in Shirt and Lungi with no ammunition save a lousy tongue can make the whole of Kerala come to a standstill. Oh lord it is a miracle!

Now, the best part of a hartal is that more than 90% of the people don’t know what the hartal is

about. The moment a hartal is announced Keralites start making plans for staying indoors. Playing cards in gangs, boozing and sleeping is how mallus celebrate their ‘State holiday’. Our media helps the cause by beaming their best movies on hartal days.

Success and numbers are indisputable. A total of 168 hartals were observed in 2006 and the stats haven’t improved significantly over the years. This is a definite wealth destruction activity to the tune of Rs 2000 cr every year in tangible destruction. This amounts to a tenth of Kerala’s annual budget! Achievement via Hartal : Zilch!

Unionism: The road to anarchy

You see, anything in Kerala has a union. Workers in any department, The Police, Service providers, NRIs you name it we have got the union for it. Unions give Keralites a sense of security and an identity. In my opinion the only thing that unions do is build a road to anarchy. I’ll explain why.

Essentially if you are part of a union you can do anything and get away with it scot-free. There is this astoundingly perverted concept called ‘ Nooku Kooli’- where fortune favours the idle. Trade workers union believes that they have the sole right to unload goods bequeathed on them. Generally these guys are rogues and any self respecting individual will prefer a private party or family and friends. If a private party unloads the goods, these shameless fellows demand ‘Nooku Kooli’ aka money for not doing the work –‘Looking Charges’ which they achieve through the sheer muscle power of their union. How can an individual fight a union, he ends up paying double money for unloading his goods. If you don’t pay money you pay hell. Seriously WTF?

Another case. Suppose I am a banker and I get into a bitter quarrel with a taxi driver. Things get physical and finally I am deeply hurt. The taxi driver will get the backing of his ‘Taxi Union’ and I get the backing of my ‘Bankers Union’. So a fight between individual becomes a fight between Unions. This reaches no where and no solution is found. If I go to the police, the “Police Union“ will reject my case as they don’t want displease the “Taxi Union”. So whatever happens, no one cares and no one is responsible. Under this Umbrella called “Union” anyone can do any damn thing they want and no one dares question him. This is why Unionism leads to Anarchy and total Chaos. This kinda crap does not fit in a democratic setup.

Imagine This: NREGA Kerala Style

We have all heard of the NREGA by which every adult member or every rural household in india has the right to demand a minimum of 100 days of work a year. This scheme is the best of its kind and immensely successful attempt to bridge the urban-rural divide. A desperate attempt to give a jobless guy some work to fill his famished stomach. But in Kerala, whose psyche never fails to baffle me, the right of NREGA made way for the beneficiaries to a exercise another right – the right to form Trade Unions. Imagine, A trade union in a social security scheme for crying out aloud!

Read this from the ET which is also the inspiration for this post:

NREGA in Kerala

How is this Possible?

Here’s the million dollar question. Despite the literacy and comparatively better human indices how is anarchy possible in Kerala? The Keralites logic and rational baffles everyone. Here is my take on the reasons behind this phenomena.

#1 Lack of individuality:

Keralites anywhere around the world are seen in groups. In an IT company there will invariably be a ‘Mallu gang 2008’, a ‘Mallu gang 2009’ or say in a college each class will be divided into 4 or 5 gangs and the a member having loyalty to a gang doesn’t have existence outside it. I mean it is always a “Mallu gang” he/she is never seen outside the security of it. The concept of individual simply does not exist (of course this is a majority case).

#2 Mallus are chronically cowards:

From the times of the British East India company (barring Kerala varma Pazhazzi and few others) we have displayed this beautiful trait. Fear is an average mallus guiding light. It influences all his decisions. So if he decided to stay clear off trouble on a hartal day or accept anything happening around unquestioningly, please forgive this innocuous coward!

#3 The Support mechanisms

Entrepreneurship is all about tapping an opportunity. In Kerala we have companies in the business of ‘Manpower Management’ tapping this hartal and Unionism market. They provide men for participating in dharna’s at perhead perhour rate. The men are not sycophants of any ideology and don’t have political affiliation. That is why you can organize a ‘Samaram’ overnight in Kerala with one phone call! This is what you call social entrepreneurship in Kerala. Ingenious!

Tail piece:

If Kerala is going to see any progress, she will have to do away with unionism in the way it currently is. The only solution to this is non-sycophantic political will which,considering the climate of the times seems like a childish dream. Regressive schemes like ‘Nooku Kooli’ can be fought by inflicting shame on the perpetrators by reminding them that they are ‘merciless robbers’ . God save “Gods Own Country’. This is from Shantaram:

“A man has to draw the line somewhere.

Civilization, after all, is defined by what we forbid, more than

What we permit.”

PS: Randomly stumbled upon this site http://www.harthal.com/ (has very useful info on harthal schedules, just to be prepared !