Shades of Journey

I find every journey (leisure trips not included) that I take bothersome, particularly to new destinations. The unease of leaving the current state of life, change in daily routine, disappearance of familiar faces, appearance of unknown faces, insertion of new surroundings put you a state of transition from a steady state (pardon me for the use of technical words).

So the anxiety of transition state makes me uncomfortable. Somehow I feel that I find a steady state inside this transition state. So the ever changing surroundings, faces, are all put together steady. It’s like inertia, if you are in state of transition you want to be in the same state. We attach ourselves to the objects in your personal space.

So if I have got a seat in a train, or bus, I want to sit in my seat. If I find someone occupying my seat I will ask him to vacate the seat for me. If the bus stops at a mid-way, you get down and have some snacks but when you come back you are again happy and relax once you are seated in your seat. You find the same window, same front seat (actually the back of the front seat) and the same side seat and the same faces. You find the same view of the bus from your seat and thus familiar surroundings. You will feel uncomfortable if after every stoppage your seat gets changed.

Let’s come to the hotel where you have done your booking. Day before today, you are not at all concerned about the room that are going to stay, but once you are in that room, the surroundings, ceilings, window, furniture, curtains find a place in your ‘comfort space’ (just coined this term, not sure if this exists). After having done a sizeable field visits to rural markets when I come back to my hotel room, I get some respite. You will not find that kind of relief anywhere else in that new city but your hotel room. Once again it’s the same surroundings, ceiling, window, curtains, furniture etc.

At once I thought that it is not the ‘comfort space’ but the privacy that you find in your hotel room. But thinking deeper you realise that it is not the privacy at all. Let take a train seat for example, you have other people in the compartment but you are confined in your seat and you do not complain, you are happy that the seat meant for you is all yours. Let say that you do not occupy the whole seat and someone comes and sit on the remaining part of the seat, suddenly you say ‘hey that’s my seat’; why? There is no privacy but the steady state in the transition state that I talked about is broken. Forget someone coming and seating, just imagine that someone put his/her bag there, still you do not feel the same. You want it to be removed immediately. This is the reason I call it a ‘comfort space’ which is little different from privacy.

And once again when you start your return journey, you again deal with the same experience. The changing definition of ‘comfort space’ and external space again keeps you guessing about the next station or the next steady state of your journey. And as I write this blog waiting for my return flight to Mumbai from lucknow, I am in my ‘comfort space’ of waiting lounge. Well this blog is going too long, and I do not like reading long blogs, so let me just stop here.

Innovative Premier League

I was surprised when I first noticed that Google is making money by selling English words. In Google Adwords one can buy a set of words/phrase and then whenever anyone searched for the term the buyer’s link will appear in the sponsored category.

IPL has gone the same path this summer in order to generate more revenues. I agree they are incurring more costs as they have shifted to South Africa but then the traditional means of getting the sponsorship has been given a new face.

One had never heard before a DLF maxima or Citi Moment of Success and you will never hear it’s a SIX or a WICKET. So in the already innovated version of the game has become more innovative.

This coupled with strategic break where you get ample time to advertise in between the match apart from the break between the overs. The thinktank behind all this has done a commendable job.

Another challenge while moving to South Africa was how do you get the local crowd to see the matches and I mean 59 matches. They have linked the IPL with a social cause by donating 100,000 Rand to a local school. At the same time you have Miss Bollywood South Africa contest going on.The TRP have improved a bit but still a long way to meet the expectations. I wonder if there are other things on store to excite the viewer.

Awareness campaigns gone wrong?

The first phase was very successful with round 60% turnout in many of the cities but comes the second phase and it’s all the same again. A meagre 45% turnout in Mumbai. Mumbai people are considered to be among the most concerned ones as it has business class at one end and emerging middle class on the other end. Still we failed.

The people who conceptualized the campaigns, who participated the campaigns and who endorsed the campaigns are popular Mumbai people but nothing worked. You discuss it with people and they say that it should not have been on the long weekend. It happens in 5 years and we value a long weekend like we get a long weekend once in 5 years. What is it that prevented the intellects to come out for voting. Are we elite enough not to vote for ourselves and intelligent enough to blame the elected representatives for non competence. I think we have lost the conscience of our duties towards our society, we are becoming more individualistic. The people who will surely benefit by our insensitivity towards these important rights are the ones who play around with the sentiments of masses by repeating trivial issues like Ayodhya, telangana, marathwara etc. No surprise why the vote bank of Lalu still remains the poor and why it is in his personal interest that they remain poor. Why the situation in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh hasn’t changed for the past 20 years. Why the issues 20 years back are still the issues today and they will be the same 20 years hence.

A recent news article said that the maximum increase in net worth of MLAs are observed for BSP MLAs, but this info do not ring bell in the ears of their vote bank, we pity them to have continuously vote for the same guy year after year on the same issue eradicating the poverty.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Cities/Lucknow/BSP-tops-list-in-fielding-candidates-with-criminal-background/articleshow/4315363.cms

Why do we always find happiness in pointing out what others are doing wrong and think that our duty as a learned class has ended by pointing out others’ mistakes. Why do we never change ourselves and just STOP. Why not just change ourselves and be happy about it.
Or am I completely wrong. People may have not voted because they wanted to protest the lack of proper governance for the past 5 years. I have read few stories in Mumbai mirror about a couple of people who wanted to cast a protest vote but they were not allowed to do so.

Would having an AC waiting room for the voters instead of long queue in the sun have helped in pulling the “learned class” out of their comfort zones?

While I was writing this one of my friend showed me this link -
http://election.rediff.com/report/2009/may/05/loksabhapoll-joke-ten-reasons-why-south-mumbai-did-not-vote.htm

Elections 09 – Politics ka baap

The elections are always the same from political parties’ point of view but it is different this time from the voters’ point of view. Political parties always look for third front or fourth front before the elections which never sees the sunlight. Some leaders are claiming that INC is a 125 year old party ignoring the fact that their own party is still reciting the same OLD Ayodhya aka Ram Temple ode. Others have promised in their manifesto that they will abolish English use in and schools and ban the computers and stock market. I wonder whether the respective leader of concerned political party is even able to understand any of those.

However, we have not seen the kind of awareness campaigns on TV ever before. At one side you have Amir Khan or Lead India or Jaagore.com, which are trying to educate the voters to vote judiciously; on the other side you have BJP’s campaign that lacks the charm. Mumbai is seeing independent candidates coming from leading corporate; villagers in Bihar have beaten one of the MLAs for no development in the constituency. The signs are good for the beginning but the end is as uncertain as it has always been.

The Supreme Court has restricted Sanjay Dutt and Pappu Yadav to contest the elections, Tytler and Sajjan’s ticket are cancelled, and things seem to be moving in the right direction. Though these are just a few instances but they are giving some hope to the true citizen of India. But as long as the ruling party is decided by minor (read regional) parties having 20-25 seats and acting ‘king maker’ some of the hard decisions will never be taken. This will ensure that the Indian economy will continue to crawl at the same slow speed. People hoping to see some great reform that can push the country as the next super power will have to come out and vote and make it count!

A clear majority for any party is not visible in the horizons and a really impossible event that I am hoping for (of course not in this election) is Congress and BJP coming together and forming a government together.

Recession - Counting on Traditional Jobs

What is in store for India in the recessionary scenario? Is cap on H1-B Visa really going to impact the Indian services industry or the Indian employers were already planning to cut down on the onsite staff to reduce the costs. Is the condition that each company getting the bailout money cannot outsource the work to developing nations and has to hire Americans, affect the outsourcing.

Never before students in IITs and IIMs faced difficulty in getting a job? (A job !!! they had plenty to choose from). Young fresh graduates are seeing 15-20% drop in the salaries being offered as compared to that of last year. Is there anyopportunity here for the true Indian employers. With the soaring pay packages offered at these campus till last year, manufacturing and engineering giants in India could not get the quality engineers/managers. I remember that a CEO of one of the leading engineering and construction firm had stated in an interview that India do not have sufficient engineers for engineering jobs and people are running behind KPOs and MNCs.

This time we are seeing PSUs are the most valuable recruiters at the campuses. Simple reasons, their ability to pay on a continuous basis and guarantee of business. Is it a good time for Indian employers or it’s just a temporary phase? Will India Inc. be able to retain the talent that is coming its way because it cannot go elsewhere? Will the revival in global economy (really do not know when this will happen) lead to people going back to the glamorous jobs?

Many people do not change job frequently. Fresh graduates are sometime not sure what they want to do, they take up the first job that comes their way. There might be some people who may not have joined the conventional job roles in manufacturing/engineering firms if the economy was good, but they have joined now. May be some of the people will find the job interesting enough to stay on. May be some of the people will get fast track promotion to reach at the designation where they feel they have all the challenges and satisfaction to justify their continuance with the company.

Is it a right time for industries to redesign some of the entry level jobs, making it more interesting and more challenging and hence a better learning experience that can result fresh recruits sticking with the organization. Can the competitiveness of Indian industry improve because of the easy availability of rich talent in the country to an extent that the traditional businesses are able to survive the bad times?

Or is it a farfetched conclusion by someone who is too optimistic about the future scenario and believes that India has seen it's bottom?

The case of ‘Case based teaching’

Almost all of the course outline out here proudly display ‘case based learning’ as a part of pedagogy. It was a feel good factor in the beginning but not now. No doubt, it plays a critical task, i.e. to instil real life problem solving aptitude in students. The complexity involved in real business problems, the uncertainty involved with every decision and the trade-offs. Professors expect students to sit in groups and discuss the case in detail, brainstorm, come up with alternatives and evaluate each alternative against short-term vs. long-term impact on the decision problem and business. But is it really happening?

All that I wrote is too good to be true. There are many reasons for that, some systematic and some random. I can’t discuss about random reasons out here, but what I want to discuss is the systematic ones. The IIMs are known for their hectic study schedules and numerous courses compressed into 2 years. I think they have just managed to compress it in two years, I say this on the basis of experience that people have had while student exchange. All the students who have gone for student exchange have one thing to say, the study there is balanced, i.e. you get sufficient time to study on your own, any topic of your interest. And if not, you at least get time to discuss the cases in detail.

The scenario is different here, if you have 2-3 cases on an average to solve every day, coupled with the regular lectures, projects and quizzes, what justice one can do with the case analysis. If you are fortunate enough to have good team members, willing to work, the maximum you can do (showing your management skills) is distribute the case amongst group members and somehow able to finish each of the case in time. No wonder professors here say “Students do individual assignments in groups and Group assignments individually”. On the contrary if you have an unfortunate group, well I need not write the usual method people adopt to do cases and assignments.

The idea is not to remove the case analysis completely, but the idea is to give students sufficient time to prepare each of the cases. I think we have adopted all of the ‘good practices’ from other B-Schools altogether, without even thinking that the time available is limited. Like you say in operations, if all the machines are individually efficient it doesn’t mean the process as a whole is efficient. The problem is amplified by the fact that groups formed here work as more of groups and not as a team (I hope you know the difference). So at the end of the day the objective of case analysis is not achieved.

I think I should end this on the same note as other cases end, the problem is out there, the situational analysis is almost done but like all other cases the ‘case of case based teaching’ is still there. The good part (or bad?) is that there are no exhibits in this case.

Scratch Pad – Store the ‘Waste’ Energy

I have written earlier about wind energy, the usefulness and the disadvantages. But one thought has troubled me for long, isn’t that the energy that we derive from wind is a cost to the ecology. Whatever efficiency we consider for wind turbines, still we are absorbing the energy from the winds and reducing their power. This wind power should definitely have some role to play in the ecology for e.g. monsoons in India is a result of Wind. I am not saying that if we build a lot of wind power stations then monsoons will stop but definitely we are reducing the power of winds that has some role to play in the ecology. The point I am trying to make is that we should be proactive and should start thinking of possibilities of storing the energy that gets dissipated in our daily course of actions.

During one of my recent air journey I realised that when the airplane touch down on airstrip and apply brake to stop, it surely dissipates a lot of energy. With a touchdown speed of 250km/hr and weight in the range of tonnes, the brake surely dissipates a lot of energy to decelerate the airplane. Instead of just exhausting it by applying brakes can we devise some method to store that energy?

If you have seen the way a fighter jet takes off from an aircraft carrier, there is a hydraulic piston that provides the much required speed for takeoff in minimum distance. Same is seen when a fighter jet lands on a aircraft carrier, a rope is used to quickly slow it down. Can we replicate this phenomenon? I want to say that when an airplane touchdown it should store its energy in some high tension spring/coil that can be stored. Remember the toy cars that we have used during childhood days, when we push it back and release it, it speedily moves ahead, while pushing it back we store a lot of energy in a metal coil placed inside the car. I am hoping of similar technique here. Yes, all of it does have a aspect of safety as the touchdown is itself risky but then if fighter jet can do it, the same may be possible with civilian aircrafts with required modification.It’s not just aircraft, think of driving your car, think of the same toy car here, and when you apply brake let the energy get stored in some metal coil inside the car. The same energy can be released by some push button whenever required; it will surely save some fuel. One can think of all other forms of energy that we knowingly or unknowingly dissipate and if something can be done to store/conserve that energy then I call this being truly proactive.