MyTake

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...