MyTake

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...

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 ...

Technology is a big disruptor. For not just businesses but for state as well. The governments have learnt lessons from businesses and have started using technology to devise policies and to deliver them efficiently to the end users. Digital disruption is one such initiative and Digital India is one such mission which is targeted to provide seamless services in an open environment assuring transparency, security and speed. Public policy is an area which needs to embrace technology to strategize and develop appropriate policies to improve quality of life of people viz a viz their well-being. For state to visualise better growth and development there are two approaches which are visible. First is to push the policies whereby driving people to learn and develop an attitude of adapting to change. This pushes the people to change without much choice. By some it is viewed as an imposition whereas some consider it to be the need of time. Whatever be the case broadly it is consider...

‘He is the most uncoolest guy I have ever seen. I wish he was she… he should have been a girl… he would have had more following.’ One of the girl told her friend when they were travelling towards Bangalore Airport in the public bus. ‘And she you know, she has lot of attitude, she shows of all, many times she brags and she knows she is doing wrong, she is hurting me, she still never says sorry. She has lot of ego. You know last time she told me she got KPMG job because of me, I felt good, I felt really nice, she is a good girl, but you know, kind of attitude she shows, I don’t like.’ The other girl who was listening to her was speaking in a very low voice. It was just a whisper, politely punctuated prose. The voice of her fingers on BBM keyboard were louder than her verbal cord. I couldn’t make out much what she spoke. I wished I had the sixth sense and skill of making it out from the keyboard punching what really she was typing. Anyways by now the other girl started again talking...

It was some five years back when I visited a Mall in Gurgaon with some friends and afterwards, thought of sharing my take on their present and future.  It was put on my blog and my friends, who read it, were skeptical as to whether what I was preempting was really something that was reality of the future. In this backdrop in all these years whenever I visited a Mall, whether in NCR, Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Guwahati, Lucknow or any other small city my belief got confirmed.  Of late I kept reading stories of empty malls and some of them closing down, it started giving me a feel that business opportunities when not defended by viable research and when it is just following herd behavior, it is bound to result in what is happening in many of the cases.  And that is the challenge before entrepreneurs of all sizes and from all geographies, to respond and work on. One of the issue raised in my earlier post on sustainability of malls was that many of them were involved...

[this letter is written by me to my daughter, Ashi, which I thought I should share with all] 1.4.15/Guwahati Airport Dear Ashi Today while reading a newspaper at Guwahati airport I read a news item that the department of posts ( India Post ), Government of India is closing down more than 100 years old money order service from 1st April 2015. I just thought since you have never seen anybody using this service today or used this service anytime yourself, you may not know its importance in the life of an individual in the yester years. So I thought to let you know this whole story and our experience and how important it used to be in our lives of which you are an important part today. Money Order was a service through which money could be sent to the addressee through hand. What was required was that you go to your nearby post office, fill up the form on both the sides on which you were suppose to put name and address of the person to whom you wanted money to be delivered, ...

In   June2014 issue of SME World   I had talked of some challenges that newly elected government at the centre faces. The key expectations were identified as emphasis on rural entrepreneurship, entrepreneur-friendly regulation, skill development initiatives, and initiatives for coexistence of giant and tiny units. The new government took over the reign and introduced general budget on the floor of the house of parliament on 10 th   of July 2014, for the year ending March 2015. This annual document somehow provides an overview of the intentions and priorities of the newly elected government and further it is supposed to help us understand the direction in which the government is going to take initiatives. In this brief write up I shall like to discuss the provisions for MSME sector in this budget in the light of the expectations that I identified earlier. The budget proposes for constituting a committee   to examine the financial architecture, remove bottleneck...

The other day we were discussing among ourselves the motivation of students to study.  And some of the views of friends were really surprising. One of them said,  'these students are not really students, they are individuals, the class is a group of individuals, not really group of students'.  I thought let me think in my mind what ideally a student is. A student has a drive to learn new things, a student has urge to know more, a student has desire to excel, a student want to compete with others, a student raises questions, a student prepares and participates, a student engages him/herself in studies, etc etc. And then it struck to my mind, if a student is not doing either of this activity, one can not really call a student a student.   This is what gave me questions to raise and solutions to find for the problem that we, the teachers, are facing. Our experiences may not be generalised to all students at all geographies and I also wish that it is proved wro...

Having attended the conference at Bangalore, I would like to mention some of the takeaways which are purely based on my personal observation. Hence I would love to have your disagreements as well as agreements (if any). a. Excellent inaugural address (by Sri Hansraj Bharadwaj) as well as valedictory address (by Sri Veerapa Moily). I am going to cherish the memories of it for many years. I have no hesitation in saying that both were some of the best ever addresses I have ever attended. Congratulations for the organizers to have chosen these great personalities. b. Excellent cultural program by the professional dancers. It provided great relaxation after the hectic day. Thanx a lot organizers. c. Good arrangements for stay of the delegates. I did not hear anything negative about it, though some of the research scholars and young faculty members were complaining about the stay on 7th night, but somehow that was arranged by the organizers. As for my personal experience, thou...

Saket District Court is going to announce the sentence to the accused in the GangRape case which happened on 16th Dec 2012 in Delhi. It led to numerous agitations at different locations in India which also included candle march at several places showing their solidarity for the cause of a strict and stringent law which could punish the accused with the capital punishment. The agitators demanded fast action from the court. Later the parliament passed a law which made provisions of punishing the accused with death penalty. That law is in action now. The question as to whether such laws would be able to control such heinous crimes in the times to follow keeps pondering over my head and I have a different take on this. We have several laws, many of them very strict. We have several institutions, very pious in nature, very committed to the cause of welfare of people of the republic of India. We have all kinds of bureaucrats and politicians who are involved in making laws as well as...

The market sentiment is the major player in the fall of the currency of any country.  US Dollar is an international currency unlike Indian Rupee, so all imports are converted into USDs and for all exports India earns USDs.  When there is favourable condition in the market, the sentiments support the home currency and vice versa. This is primary reason.  However there are other reasons as well.  In order to improve growth parameters, a country is required to spend money on the projects and sustainable endeavors.  For this there are two options available for a nation, one it can print/mint currency and another one to collect the currency from the market.  First option requires similar collateral for security, which is not the case for the second option.  US federal government announced collecting currency (USDs) from other nations, which made USD a valuable currency following Demand-Supply law of economics.  This caused the fall of rupee as well ...

Recently Vijay Govindrajan, Professor of strategy at Dartmouth College, USA was asked – ‘ While Innovating, whom should companies target – local consumers or global ones? ’ His reply was:   ‘The focus has to be Indian consumers, especially Indian non-consumers.’   He divided India into three categories, namely   ‘Developed India’   (100 million people living in 15 major Indian cities), ‘ Developing India ’ (300 million people living in 6,000 small towns), and   ‘Underdeveloped India’   (700 million living in the 600,000 villages). He combined developing and underdeveloped India into one group of customers as non-consumers. The needs of these non-consumers have to be addressed in order to capitalize on the opportunity that India provides and it is possible through developing innovative products and services which cater to their pockets. These non-consumers pose a greater challenge for the corporate houses to attract their attention. Mo...

Prof Man Mohan Singh, an economist turned politician and the prime minister of India while addressing the audience at the University of Mumbai on the occasion of its 150th anniversary mentioned - ‘Our university system is, in many parts, in a state of disrepair...almost two-third of our universities and 90 per cent of our colleges are rated as below average on quality parameters... I am concerned that in many states university appointments, including that of vice-chancellors, have been politicised and have become subject to caste and communal considerations, there are complaints of favouritism and corruption…We should free university appointments from unnecessary interventions on the part of governments and must promote autonomy and accountability. I urge states to pay greater attention to this aspect. After all, a dysfunctional education system can only produce dysfunctional future citizens!’  It is in these contexts that we need to have a re-look into the role of individual...

It was a great opportunity for me to attend this Conclave on Financial Inclusion, under the aegis of Meghalaya Basin Development Authority, Government of Meghalaya, Shillong. The beginning coincides with the beginning of the 12 th Five Year Plan of the Government of India and as was communicated it is coterminus as well.  Micro Finance Institutions (MFIs) are the key players in helping and supporting the cause of financial inclusion.  Grameen Bank which was established in Bangladesh to help poor in improving their livelihood conditions has pioneered the movement of MFIs all across the globe.  SKS was a great success story for India, however its fate is not less known by its stakeholders as well as the patron of all, the government.  It is really nice to hear policy makers, bankers, MFI representatives etc who show their concern for poor and poverty through their talks and data support.  I shall like to vent my views on the issues discussed in the conc...

Outline The other day we were discussing the issue of development among colleagues and few mentioned that India has really developed in last 60 years.  Out of my inquisitiveness I asked how do they defend this view, their indicators were like, use of mobile, availability of ice-cream, motorcycles, cars and such other products.  I put a simple question before them, before 30 years what was the state of education and health in the villages and what it is today.   To my surprise I could not get the view of any of them on this.  Certainly there is huge wealth creation which has happened in all these years, more in the real monetary terms.  The availability of all branded products and services across different industries, proliferation of multi-national corporations, increase in the number of cars, television, mobiles, and such other products might surely reflect positive side of an economy like that of India, might surely boast of higher GDP...