MyTake

In my earlier post I tried building an argument through my limited understanding of life-blood of business (finance).  An attempt was made to defend the case of investing in relationships.  Nations invest their might in people for the cause of building sustainable future.  Individuals need to invest in relationship for the want of enjoying the fruits of life, the blessing that humans have over other living creatures.  There are still many facets left that fall under the domain of finance and can be replicated in improving human performance through concerted efforts.  Time value of money believes in a very simple principle – a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush .  It reflects on the risk factor involved while considering future time.  In ontology there is strong relationship between space and time and human mind.  However, it depends on whether one believes in traditional realist school of ontology or in idealist school as to the proximity o...

As a student of commerce, I held a belief that finance is the life-blood of business.   For the cause of business sense and sustainability flow of funds or circulation of money is important.   And in the domain of finance and business, investment stands as one of the most important activity and decision.   When it comes to investment one has to have the competence for making useful investment which can reap good returns.   Risk and return are inherent part of investments and financial growth.   As individuals or as a business entity one has to learn and master the art of making good investments so that one is able to convert them in the times of need.   Time is also an important factor when it comes to making an investment and it is linked with market expectations and capitalising on such investment in the time of need.   Futures are good options, they are the derivative products.   Derivations as such are significant to understand the evolution. ...

It is around 3 months that we have started classes in the usual physical mode.  The lockdown continued for many months ever since it was first declared on 23rd March 2020 in India.  During these months, teaching learning process suffered a lot or I can put it in other words that in the given conditions what best was possible was done so that the process is not brought to halt.  Though the pace was slow the classes continued, exams got conducted, results got declared.  So all the activities that were possible with the use of available technology were taken care of.  The offices were closed and in most cases the employees were working from home.  These conditions greatly affected human lives.  The times of lockdown during the COVID - 19 pandemic taught us many lessons at all levels, regional, national and global; personal or professional; family life or work life; individual or organizational life. On one hand we got lot of time to introspect, on the oth...

Few days back I received an email addressed to me: Hello Sir, Since lockdown I have been working from home and rarely go out and spend time with other people. I see I have been losing interest in people or if I would reframe this so I'm not finding the type of people I can vibe with. I don't feel like connected with other easily. I have same 2 people with whom I always spend time and when they are not there when I need them then I feel like I'm missing something. It's not like I don't want to go out and spend time but I feel I'm not able to find the type of people I can bond with as all I stay at home mostly. With new people online I don't feel like making an effort to talk and form that bond as online I don't feel comfortable to connect. What should I do Sir in this case? I know social aspect of human is very important to live a quality life and this has been impacting me unknowingly. I'm sharing all this to get some perspective and how to approach ...

Leaders are there because there are followers. Leadership cannot be understood in isolation of followership. It is the followers who make a leader. Self-styled leadership lasts for a very short time, till the followers are ignorant. It is temporary. Such leadership is imposed and there are subordinates following the leader out of compulsion or in absence of any choice. However, when followers make a leader, when they elect or nominate a leader, such leaders are remembered for their ability to lead. When one amongst the team members is given the responsibility to lead the team, one cannot afford to ignore the team members, their interest, their abilities, their competencies and their drive to work towards the larger cause of achieving organizational goal. The team leader has to invest on enhancing capabilities of the team members and on building trust among team members. The leaders who resort to pick and choose, divide and rule, ignite and ignore, without any reason or rhyme, just...

The world has progressed in speed and space, in wealth and health, in knowledge and wisdom and the process is going on. It has also expanded the horizon of our thinking and raised expectation from society, government and individuals. There are more visible democracies, there are larger and taller buildings as ever, age span has increased, there are more schools and hospitals, more people are getting above the poverty line, it gives a feeling as if it has become a better and happier place to live now. This is what has to be studied as to really whether the visible progress has been translated into better human well-being or not. Human Well-Being is a construct evolved from the philosophy of living well – mentally, physically, socially, and spiritually. Individuals tend to perform acts that (they think) provide them satisfaction and lead towards improving their state of ‘living well’. Fulfilment of human needs and having positive living environment around, contributes towards an assur...

Background of one of my forthcoming chapters... On #happiness , #income & #HumanWellBeing .... === Last 2 decades have produced voluminous literature on happiness, well-being, and quality-of-life. Objectively the world has become a better place to live; science has solved many problems and has made life comfortable and easy; economically last century has witnessed tremendous growth; per capita income grew by around 6 times whereas population grew by around 4.6 times; and the world GDP has grown by more than thirty times. Amid all these visible indicators the problems of depression, stress, health hazards, family disputes, work-life conflict, discrimination, crime, emotional imbalances, social alienation, climate change, etc. are hindering human progress. The inequalities are on the rise and aspiration levels for material well-being are high. This in result is affecting happiness and peace of individuals. The puzzle of income and happiness has been in the domain of research for...

The world is witnessing one of the worst pandemic of last one hundred years.  In one or the other way all citizens of the world are affected by this catastrophic occurrence causing huge losses of human lives viz-a-viz conditions of living.  The so called first world is the worst hit so far.  On March 22, 2020, the Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi announced 21-day lockdown to be effective from midnight.  He was able to read the signals and looking at the size of the population and the kind of health infrastructure that is required to deal with such a menace, this declaration was timely and needed.  On March 26, 2020, the King of Saudi Arabia convened an extraordinary virtual session of G20 nations where all the leaders expressed their concern over this grave global pandemic and agreed to develop a concrete action plan to fight together.  The Prime Minister of India , emphasized on putting the human beings at the centre of such planning for global pros...

Dear students We are all affected by COVID 19 pandemic in one or the other way. On one hand it has disturbed our routine life, on the other hand it has pushed us to explore and experiment new ways of learning. On one hand it has posed certain restrictions to our movements, on the other hand it has driven us to spend more time with ourselves. In these given conditions one has to organize oneself in such a way that it does not hamper learning zeal and personal growth. Technology as always has been able to facilitate our living conditions in a big way, be it getting things delivered to our doorstep or maintaining contacts with all near and dear ones while in social distancing mode. When I was young and attending school, teachers used to tell us - Science is a good servant but a bad master. We wrote essays and assignments around this theme many times.  In the process of growing in the last five decades I have witnessed exploitation of nature to the optimal levels. We have t...

The quest for having an objective idea of reality began with an intensely great zest primarily during the Enlightenment era. What started as a search for an absolute and concrete vision of Reason and reality, faith and belief, later transformed into what philosophers like Heidegger and Kant, would call ‘subjectivity’. That is to say, people gradually started to realise that there could not exist any absolute, objective definition of these subjective ideas. The beginning of the previous century witnessed a drastic and rather, dramatic turn in this context when the disillusioned ideas as well as ideals centred on reality were questioned in the post-war era and a general understanding regarding the subjective nature of reality emerged. It is during this period modernism that where on one hand, the subjective ideals were spread and on the other hand, capitalism got many more wings to fly around the globe. Both of these approaches stand their ground in the present, post-modern world whi...

All of us have an inherent desire to live happy life. Organisations help us achieve our individual goals whereby contributing towards making employees happy. Finance, Marketing and Production are identified as the key functional areas of management and are considered as line function. However HR is traditionally considered as staff function. Though without people, no organisation can ever function, yet their participation in key strategic decisions of the firm is not welcomed. That has caused much harm to organizations and modern day organizations have started realising this which is visible in their overall strategies. Volumes of literature is created on the premise of productive worker, happy worker transformation. It has also driven the academia to explore happy worker, productive worker relationship. Whatever be the case the spillover is evidenced in many organizations which are thriving by putting people first. It is in this context that organizations have to devise appropriat...

Festivals are the rituals that remind us of our togetherness and  relationships.  These were required for celebrating crops, harvesting and were entangled with religious practices in order to have consistency and discipline. Mind it we are more God fearing tribe than God loving. Trading and business fell as offshoots with the change of time. Till our economy was closed and till we operated in sellers market there was no problem as to export of intangible and import of tangible. However when we became part of larger world and started speaking the language of market we became more susceptible to all kinds of market behavior. We started operating in buyer's market and that is how we started loosing in competition. When we compete we have to follow rules of the game and accept the verdict of the market. When everything gets decided by the market, we can only watch like deaf spectators.  The illusion of tangibility gets faded off when one starts learning crude lessons of li...

Literature reflects society. As society travels and transcends, it's footprints get registered and reflected through contemporary art and writings. What happens in social contexts, how individual behavior changes over time, how experiences are registered in memory, what expectations get framed, how actions are primed, and how outcomes are influenced - all these questions and their responses change over time, depending on context and condition. Blessings and curses stay in the surrounding environment forming vibrations whereby affecting ultimate result. Imagination and creativity get corroborated accordingly. We visited recently concluded Jaipur Literature Festival 2019 and experienced the dominance of market forces everywhere. The way JLF has become a prominent brand among literature enthusiasts and market circles, has proven that product content is secondary to advertising, promotion and packaging. Past investments in JLF are reaping fruits that are as per effective business pr...

All my friends in the discipline of commerce know SRCC as the premier commerce college of India. But for Charles Feltman SRCC meant differently. Sincerity, Reliability, Competence and Care are identified as four assessment criterion of trust. In the book titled The Thin Book of Trust , which was published around a decade back, Charles discusses his model of trust and provides practical solutions to avoid the enemies of trust around these four criterion. This model is timeless and helps one to build trust – a primary requisite for effective leadership - and lead a team of trustworthy people. Effective leaders create loyal and smart teams through winning the trust of team members which is duly reciprocated with an intent of concern and achieving organizational goal. Leaders go beyond rules and help making new rules. They cannot just afford to be manipulative and opportunistic and use others as sanitary pads. This may reap fruits for a very short period but otherwise it shall ruin th...

What a day it was, yesterday. Hectic and humid. These youngsters, mostly in their 20s, or millenials as we bracket them, were talking on Camus and Kafka - absurdity and existentialism, Ramayana and Mahabharata - idealism and reality, Buddha and Gandhi - aanand and ahimsa. Trying to explore and revisit meaning of life and meaning of meaningfulness, purpose of existence and evolution, they seem to be in hurry to jump to conclusions as fast as maggie noodles gets cooked.  Totally a different generation more into showing off what they know than what they understand and in the process getting exposed on what they do not know. Their experience and exposure of context and contemplation is away from reality yet they make sense and their intent looks genuine. Though AI and simulations, freewill and fortune, power and prosperity, chaos and criticism allows us to dive into the realms of our 'being', I am not too sure as to whether it would lead towards a thinking on focusing on...

Capability is nothing but the power to do something. The more one has, the better it is, for individuals as well as for organizations they work for. More power provides more choices and the more the choices, the more one enjoys freedom. This is an interesting continuum, whether we consider human beings in global context, citizens in national context, or employees in organizational context. The agency function gets performed by different agencies in different contexts. Whatever the case may be, one thing is sure that one has to improve one’s capabilities in order to enjoy more freedom. And incase of organizations, HR has to actively involve in facilitating the process of building capability so that the employees get empowered and make choices that are compatible with organizational goal. One should not misunderstand the term freedom in the sense that one can do anything in the organization, once one has better capability. Here it is related to one’s choices and expectations. It i...

बारिश की आव्यश्यक्ता सभी को है। प्रकृति का यह उपहार जीवन हेतु अत्यंत महत्वपूर्ण है। बारिश से पानी है, पानी से जीवन। पानी और जीवन का साथ चोली दामन के साथ से भिन्न नहीं है। मिट्टी और पत्थर दोनों बारिश की प्रतीक्षा करते हैं। जहां एक ओर बारिश पत्थर को धोती व चमकाती है, दूसरी ओर मिट्टी बारिश की बूंदों को अपने मे संजोती है। मिट्टी के स्वरूप को परिवर्तित करने में पानी की अहम भूमिका है, और यदि वह बारिश का पानी हो तो चार चांद लग जाते हैं। मिट्टी ही तो पत्थर बनती है, और बिना पानी के ऐसा असंभव है। कुछ पत्थर पानी से मिट्टी बन जाते हैं। कुछ ही, सभी पत्थर नहीं। यह देश, काल व परिस्थिति पर निर्भर करता है। हम मिट्टी हैं, या पत्थर? --- गांव और शहर में मिट्टी और पत्थर का अंतर है| जिस गति से गांव शहर बनते हैं, उसी गति से मिट्टी, पत्थर बनती है। बारिश का पानी पत्थर से टकराता है, पत्थर को चमकाता है; अपने आवेग से पत्थर को मिट्टी बनाता है| लेकिन ऐसा कम ही होता है। पत्थर-वन अपने विस्तार में व्यस्त रहते हैं, बारिश के पानी के थपेड़ों से परे। मिट्टी पानी के साथ खेलती है, अपनी घनिष्टता को प्रदर्...

Roughly around half a century back, Alvin Toffler was thinking and writing on how jobs, people, relationships and society shall change in the 21st century. Jack Ma might have barely started going to school by that time. During the World Economic Forum 2018 session, Jack Ma was talking about the future trend of work and sounding quite relevant when he was warning that automation would eat the kind of jobs that humans are doing today, so we need to have thinking shift and develop different kind of mindset. Ardent follower of Jack Ma, Vijay Shekhar Sharma, the man behind Paytm, is the richest billionaire under the age of 40 in 2018 according to a recent report. These people reflect on the call of time as they could think much ahead of times when it comes to market. In this backdrop when we look at the environment today, we find existence of impermanence, dominance of technology, transient social values, changing work schedules, emergence of multitasking, generic work portfolios ...

[pc: https://www.livehappy.com/relationships/community/celebrate-international-day-happiness] The size of an economy and level of development is predominantly measured in terms of GDP. Economic progress has been determining the speed of development through the eyes of Kuznets and Stone via production, income and output. It has its roots in Adam Smith and the invisible hand as described in The theory of moral sentiments and The wealth of nations. Paul Samuelson viewed GDP as one of the great inventions of the twentieth century. None of these economists would have imagined that the nations would get so obsessed with GDP that all their policies and practices would target growth indicators surrounding GDP and the progress of nations would be measured and compared based on this key coinage.   It is discussed at length by economists and psychologists that improvements in GDP have not translated in enhancing life satisfaction of people.   Though their physical s...