Does it make sense to create luxurious things and artful objects when so much squalor remains to be eliminated?
We live in a world full of ironies and conflicts. The world’s rich fret over how to gratify their palates with a new recipe, while the poor wonder when or whether they are going to have their next meal. People in one part of the world go to bed nestled in comfort, while in another they spend sleepless nights looking for a few inches of space to rest their exhausted bodies. There are some who don’t know what to do with all that cash piling up in their vaults, while there are many who are unsure how they’d support their families if they lose the only jobs they have known for years…
In the midst of acute food deprivation, we keep worrying about exotic cuisine. In the midst of widespread homelessness, we keep building sprawling bungalows. And as we face alarming levels of job cuts, we never tire of devising ways to hike productivity and efficiency.
Why?
Wouldn’t it make more sense to first bridge the gap between the haves and the have-nots? Shouldn’t we work at equally distributing wealth, means of production and living space? Why should we cater to the luxurious living of the rich when we can’t take care of the basic needs of the poor?
Our conscience pricks us uncomfortably at these questions. And we are often left speechless when we try to defend our pursuits. But centuries of physical, mental and spiritual evolution has meant that creating creature comforts and continually developing things that please us is something that’s gotten etched into our minds.
We see luxury not merely as production of things that gratify us, but as an aspiring pursuit for enhancing our lives with things which we really value and which prod us to go higher – be it art, literature, music, gadgets or anything else that doesn’t necessarily have to be pursued in order to merely survive.
At times, this aspiration does get bogged down by the misery of fellow human beings around us. But it never dies out. On the contrary, the coexistence of squalid subsistence and luxurious living creates a vivid contrast of how things are and how they should be.
For instance, a landscaped apartment block surrounded by slums does look like an eyesore, but it’s also a very powerful pointer to how we should and should not live. One that blaringly reminds us that well-built homes in a clean and green environment – not dingy slums – is worthy of our emulation. It’s only that the contrast between the two highlights it in a painful way.
But such a contrast also heightens the intensity of our aspiration. Potholed roads make a new, superfast highway all the more valued just as a rag makes a finely tailored suit so much more desirable.
That, however, doesn’t mean undesirable things such as potholed roads or rags or hunger should exist. But the fact of the matter is that they have always existed in human history – and we’ve always been struggling to keep them to the minimum, but with different degrees of success.
We are a race that is forever seeking new pleasures, exploring new frontiers and improving upon our own concepts of beauty. It’s hard to think of how to distinguish between two delicacies on an empty stomach, or go for an adventure trek if we’ve been shivering in cold without shelter for weeks, or create a designer label when our nakedness is a compulsion rather than a choice. But once our basic needs are taken care of, our mind itches to get more, to make better what we already have, and to excel in our chosen field.
We can’t altogether reject this ‘itch’ – it’s an inseparable part of our character, chiseled into our brain over centuries of civilization.
Creation of luxury and of things we consider beautiful is the only way for us humans to exercise and stretch our faculties that make us so different from other animals. That creativity and urge to create is the bulwark upon which we have honed our ceaseless efforts to become more and more civilized. If we stop to evolve in our creativity, we’ll most likely retreat to our uncivilized ways – and perhaps finally become just another species.
That’s why we must keep our creative efforts going – in spite of all the wretchedness surrounding us. We must not see our attempts to live a better life as counter-productive to our intent to create a more equitable and just society. But we should see it as a challenge before us to balance our quest for luxury with the removal of our destitution.
The day we achieve that balance more peacefully and successfully will be the day of a paradigm shift in our rise to the top among fellow animals. It will also be a time when we’ll be free – perhaps for the first time in history – of the collective guilt of inequality we’ve been carrying on on our shoulders for ages.
So we must continually ask ourselves: How far is that day and what can each one of us do to make it happen?
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Remembering the Ganesha 'Miracle'
Did the Hindu god Ganesha really drink milk in thousands of temples on this day many years ago?
I can never forget what I saw on that twenty-first day of September when I reached the temple nearest to my home. It changed my whole outlook toward God, life and people in general.
I had paddled fast on my bicycle on that slightly nippy morning and, leaving the bike unlocked against the temple wall, I rushed inside. I had to jostle my way through a motley crowd of devotees to reach the inner sanctum, where Lord Ganesha’s stone sculpture was affixed amongst several other Hindu deities. The idol was thronged on all sides by devotees, who were all falling over themselves to offer spoonfuls of milk to Ganesha.
In Hindu rituals, Lord Ganesha is usually offered a laddoo, a round sweet made of gram flour, but on that particular day of 1995, news had spread that Ganesha was “accepting” milk. On normal days, the faithful would put a laddoo to Ganesha’s mouth and then place it at His feet or in a tray nearby. This act of offering is essentially symbolic and a portion of the sweet remains stuck to the idol’s mouth. But that day, people claimed that Ganesha’s idols everywhere were literally drinking the milk offered to them, spoon by spoon. Within a few hours, the phenomenon was being hailed as a miracle in modern times.
It was this miracle that I had come to witness. I got up a little late that day, and as I was rubbing the early morning sleep out of my eyes, my overly credulous and religious mother told me that Lord Ganesha was drinking milk in temples everywhere and I must go and offer some to the Elephant God.
I was not exactly irreligious but, in my haste to see the impossible happen right before my eyes, I had rushed out of the house without carrying any milk to offer.
Now, as I stood inside the temple, agape, and watched the throng near Ganesha’s idol, I just could not believe it.
Not the miracle but what I really saw.
People were actually tilting their spoons, cups and other dishes full of milk they had brought with them at the stone idol – and the milk that was supposed to be sipped by the deity was spilling down its body and away into the drain that led out of the temple and mingled into the bigger culvert outside.
All of these religious people had come running to the temple hearing that Ganesha was drinking milk, and all without exception were actually pouring milk at the idol. They did it one after the other in quick succession, without stopping for a moment to look at what happened to the milk. Their already devout beliefs needed no confirmation – the idol was indeed drinking milk as far as they were concerned.
I carefully looked at several more acts of milk-offering, hoping to see Ganesha take a single sip of the white liquid - if only to help me form my own faith in miracles. But my eyes saw the same thing over and over again: milk trickling down the sides of the idol without so much as a hint of acceptance by the deity. I even dared to ask the person standing next to me, “Don’t you think these guys are spilling milk instead of feeding it to the idol?” But he only chided me for being an atheist and for making such a sacrilegious comment. “You shouldn’t doubt this miracle, or the gods will punish you. If you can’t offer any milk, at least don’t poison other people’s faith!” he retorted.
With a heavy heart I walked back home, my bicycle beside me. But I kept thinking: How could it be? How could it be? Was I shorn of any devotion whatsoever, that I couldn’t see the miracle? Or were people so blinded by their faith that they could not see what was obvious to me?
By late evening that day, the “news” of the “miracle” was breaking on all TV channels and other media. Not just temples in Delhi and across India, but many places of Hindu worship in several countries of the world, including Britain, Canada and Dubai, reported the same phenomenon being replicated.
Some novice reporters even got carried away by the spectacle and, in addition to the reports they filed, made their own offerings to Lord Ganesha right there on live television – and came away “believers” themselves. At the same time, there were some channels that had rounded up a bunch of rationalists in their studios and were putting up questions to them, demanding either plausible explanations or asking them to surrender their rationality to the televised images of the miracle beaming alongside their somber visages.
I watched as many programs as I could. Among other explanations given by the scientifically inclined, I remember hearing “capillary action and surface tension” as being responsible for milk getting slightly sucked out of the spoon before making its way down the idol in minute trickles. The tiny streams of milk down the idols went mostly unnoticed. Or it didn’t matter to those who had already decided to believe in the miracle.
As for me, I wasn’t really looking for explanations, for I had seen the truth behind the miracle with my own eyes. But it really amazed me how millions of people across the world came to believe in it in such a short time – and that they still carried on with their belief even after many scientists repeated the “miracle” in a laboratory setting, offering their explanations in layman’s terms.
Like I said earlier, not that I was completely irreligious, but from that day on, I vowed not to be blind in my faith. Whenever any other news of such miracles appeared (and many times it did, in fact), my mind played out the images of people spilling milk at Ganesha’s idols as if in a movie flashback – and my sense of reason prevailed over mass mirage.
Today, 16 years on after the incident, my own spirituality and religious beliefs have gone through tremendous changes – and perhaps will continue to evolve till my last moment. But that single incident taught me more about mass hysteria, herd mentality and blind faith than any volumes of literature could. It also acquainted me with the power of telecommunication and electronic media – and what it could wreak together with a little rumor let loose.
Looking back to that incident, I’ve often tried to make sense of many other widely believed miracles – often dating back to times when there was no television or photography. I’ve also tried to make sense of people’s own experiences with worship and prayer and with bringing their loved ones back from the clutches of terminal illness through their religious leanings, especially after the world’s best doctors had given up on them.
Can these personal experiences be called the real miracles? Did Moses really part the sea? Did Jesus Christ really rise from the grave? Did Savitri (in Hindu legend) brought her husband back to life on the strength of her love and devotion to him? Did scores of holy men and women who are said to have healed thousands through their touch over the centuries really perform miracles?
Then what of those whose heartfelt prayers go unanswered and their loved ones are lost forever? What about those who die in a stampede or burn alive in a fire at the very place where they have come to worship God (irrespective of whose God it is)?
And then I look at the mess in the world surrounding us – global warming, terrorism, religious fanaticism, food crisis…and think again: Can anything other than a miracle save us from hurtling toward a collective catastrophe?!
Will somebody perform that miracle? Till when will he or she wait?
The questions keep flooding my mind until they form a deluge and I have to set them aboard an ark so they could float away for a while and allow me to breathe.
Meanwhile, my own search for true spirituality – with or without miracles – goes on…
I can never forget what I saw on that twenty-first day of September when I reached the temple nearest to my home. It changed my whole outlook toward God, life and people in general.
I had paddled fast on my bicycle on that slightly nippy morning and, leaving the bike unlocked against the temple wall, I rushed inside. I had to jostle my way through a motley crowd of devotees to reach the inner sanctum, where Lord Ganesha’s stone sculpture was affixed amongst several other Hindu deities. The idol was thronged on all sides by devotees, who were all falling over themselves to offer spoonfuls of milk to Ganesha.
In Hindu rituals, Lord Ganesha is usually offered a laddoo, a round sweet made of gram flour, but on that particular day of 1995, news had spread that Ganesha was “accepting” milk. On normal days, the faithful would put a laddoo to Ganesha’s mouth and then place it at His feet or in a tray nearby. This act of offering is essentially symbolic and a portion of the sweet remains stuck to the idol’s mouth. But that day, people claimed that Ganesha’s idols everywhere were literally drinking the milk offered to them, spoon by spoon. Within a few hours, the phenomenon was being hailed as a miracle in modern times.
It was this miracle that I had come to witness. I got up a little late that day, and as I was rubbing the early morning sleep out of my eyes, my overly credulous and religious mother told me that Lord Ganesha was drinking milk in temples everywhere and I must go and offer some to the Elephant God.
I was not exactly irreligious but, in my haste to see the impossible happen right before my eyes, I had rushed out of the house without carrying any milk to offer.
Now, as I stood inside the temple, agape, and watched the throng near Ganesha’s idol, I just could not believe it.
Not the miracle but what I really saw.
People were actually tilting their spoons, cups and other dishes full of milk they had brought with them at the stone idol – and the milk that was supposed to be sipped by the deity was spilling down its body and away into the drain that led out of the temple and mingled into the bigger culvert outside.
All of these religious people had come running to the temple hearing that Ganesha was drinking milk, and all without exception were actually pouring milk at the idol. They did it one after the other in quick succession, without stopping for a moment to look at what happened to the milk. Their already devout beliefs needed no confirmation – the idol was indeed drinking milk as far as they were concerned.
I carefully looked at several more acts of milk-offering, hoping to see Ganesha take a single sip of the white liquid - if only to help me form my own faith in miracles. But my eyes saw the same thing over and over again: milk trickling down the sides of the idol without so much as a hint of acceptance by the deity. I even dared to ask the person standing next to me, “Don’t you think these guys are spilling milk instead of feeding it to the idol?” But he only chided me for being an atheist and for making such a sacrilegious comment. “You shouldn’t doubt this miracle, or the gods will punish you. If you can’t offer any milk, at least don’t poison other people’s faith!” he retorted.
With a heavy heart I walked back home, my bicycle beside me. But I kept thinking: How could it be? How could it be? Was I shorn of any devotion whatsoever, that I couldn’t see the miracle? Or were people so blinded by their faith that they could not see what was obvious to me?
By late evening that day, the “news” of the “miracle” was breaking on all TV channels and other media. Not just temples in Delhi and across India, but many places of Hindu worship in several countries of the world, including Britain, Canada and Dubai, reported the same phenomenon being replicated.
Some novice reporters even got carried away by the spectacle and, in addition to the reports they filed, made their own offerings to Lord Ganesha right there on live television – and came away “believers” themselves. At the same time, there were some channels that had rounded up a bunch of rationalists in their studios and were putting up questions to them, demanding either plausible explanations or asking them to surrender their rationality to the televised images of the miracle beaming alongside their somber visages.
I watched as many programs as I could. Among other explanations given by the scientifically inclined, I remember hearing “capillary action and surface tension” as being responsible for milk getting slightly sucked out of the spoon before making its way down the idol in minute trickles. The tiny streams of milk down the idols went mostly unnoticed. Or it didn’t matter to those who had already decided to believe in the miracle.
As for me, I wasn’t really looking for explanations, for I had seen the truth behind the miracle with my own eyes. But it really amazed me how millions of people across the world came to believe in it in such a short time – and that they still carried on with their belief even after many scientists repeated the “miracle” in a laboratory setting, offering their explanations in layman’s terms.
Like I said earlier, not that I was completely irreligious, but from that day on, I vowed not to be blind in my faith. Whenever any other news of such miracles appeared (and many times it did, in fact), my mind played out the images of people spilling milk at Ganesha’s idols as if in a movie flashback – and my sense of reason prevailed over mass mirage.
Today, 16 years on after the incident, my own spirituality and religious beliefs have gone through tremendous changes – and perhaps will continue to evolve till my last moment. But that single incident taught me more about mass hysteria, herd mentality and blind faith than any volumes of literature could. It also acquainted me with the power of telecommunication and electronic media – and what it could wreak together with a little rumor let loose.
Looking back to that incident, I’ve often tried to make sense of many other widely believed miracles – often dating back to times when there was no television or photography. I’ve also tried to make sense of people’s own experiences with worship and prayer and with bringing their loved ones back from the clutches of terminal illness through their religious leanings, especially after the world’s best doctors had given up on them.
Can these personal experiences be called the real miracles? Did Moses really part the sea? Did Jesus Christ really rise from the grave? Did Savitri (in Hindu legend) brought her husband back to life on the strength of her love and devotion to him? Did scores of holy men and women who are said to have healed thousands through their touch over the centuries really perform miracles?
Then what of those whose heartfelt prayers go unanswered and their loved ones are lost forever? What about those who die in a stampede or burn alive in a fire at the very place where they have come to worship God (irrespective of whose God it is)?
And then I look at the mess in the world surrounding us – global warming, terrorism, religious fanaticism, food crisis…and think again: Can anything other than a miracle save us from hurtling toward a collective catastrophe?!
Will somebody perform that miracle? Till when will he or she wait?
The questions keep flooding my mind until they form a deluge and I have to set them aboard an ark so they could float away for a while and allow me to breathe.
Meanwhile, my own search for true spirituality – with or without miracles – goes on…
Saturday, August 27, 2011
Anna, Corruption and the Development Equation
We must look at the whole development structure, and not just corruption, if the mess called “India” needs to be set right
It is a dumbfounding moment for a lot of Indians. This Anna Hazare thing and the whole idea of a nation suddenly up in knots against corruption.
Most people are beginning to feel that the Jan Lokpal Bill as envisaged by Team Anna will rid India of the cancer of corruption – to a significant extent. Some feel the Sangh Parivar is ready to ride on the back of the moment – and the movement. Yet others are trying frantically to save a government from whose cupboard the skeletons of corruption just can't stop coming out.
While corruption has become a buzz word, a love-hate word, a cure-all and curse-all word, I think it might not be a bad idea to look at the whole development equation and see where corruption – and we, a nation of billion-odd people, including oddest ones – fit in.
Let me warn you: this could be a longer article than the mostly asinine tweets and cut-and-paste status updates fast gaining currency as our preferred mode of conversation rather than well-considered and longish pieces of writing. So if you are just looking for some sound bytes, scoot away now! Please.
So, what does the whole development equation look like?
This questions is directly and significantly related to corruption, so just think it over.
To my mind, to embrace development in today's fast, technologically advanced and increasingly rights-aware world is to ensure these things: people are able to feed and clothe themselves, children get to play and learn the things they find interesting, adults get to work and get paid in fair proportion to their abilities and labor, and there's a speedy and reasonably fair system of settling disputes and administering justice.
What we have in the world today is this: a huge proportion of humanity goes to sleep on a hungry stomach; each year thousands of poor people die in heat or cold waves for want of proper clothing and shelter; millions of children are malnourished, millions more are child-laborers who hardly get to play anything, let alone learn about interesting things; most people have to settle for whatever they get for the back-breaking work they do (with only a few complaining about salaries and weekends – and still fewer making noises on taxes directed at the really wealthy); and justice is either out of reach for most, too delayed or simply putty in the hands of the powerful.
When you consider these parameters of development in third-world countries like those of sub-Saharan Africa or India (not very different if you look at the bottom two-third of the pyramid), you find that the development situation is truly appalling.
And yet...
Yet there is development happening. Can't you see, there are malls sprouting all around suburbia? Didn't you read about the 20 or so Bentley cars sold in India? Haven't you seen advertisements of bathroom fittings that promise to drench your body with hundreds of liters of water in a single shower? (Okay, the ads don't say anything about how much water is needed to “enjoy water” with those fancy fittings, but you could make out, couldn't you?) And hey, didn't you hear about the new shampoos for your dogs launched by that cult multinational brand?
Truly, there must be a lot of people out there willing to bathe their doggies in exotic shampoo? Or installing a thousand-dollar shower and taking a bath themselves instead? And don't you forget all those vacations in picture-perfect locales that the papers are so aggressively promoting through ads and articles (I forget which is which these days.)
So the top one, two or five percent of an economy is full of all these people – the mega consumer-owners who keep the bulldozing engines of “modern” development going on. And they get the economists to throw a beautifully coined term at anyone who raises an objection to this resource-hungry and environment-ravaging model of development: the “trickle-down effect” that reaches the common man.
The bottom 95 percent? Most of them just manage to keep alive, a majority never having any real chance of shopping in the same mall they helped build with their own hands. And a not-so-big-as-made-out chunk, the neither-here-nor-theres of the world, the enamored middle classes, looks up dreamily at the owners-superconsumers and aspires to reach there some day. But most never do.
The result is a gaping structural deformity in development. Which means a tiny portion of people enjoy all the luxuries of the world, a significant number work blindly for money in the hope of making it big, but the astonishing majority barely scraping through life in unhygienic, depressing and impoverished conditions.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not against capitalism, if that's the idea you are getting from the above views. We've seen socialism fail miserably and the days of autocracy are long numbered. So capitalism or market economy is what we are left with essentially.
What I'm just trying to get at is the root cause of corruption and the enabling environment that helps it grow and enrich a few at the cost of so many.
At the heart of such an enabling environment are three things: natural resources, power and greed. Corruption results from the unholy mix of these three ingredients. In particular, when the legal and systemic structure of a country is not designed to take care of huge structural inequalities in development, corruption seeps in, becomes a flood and starts to boil the blood of the suffering millions.
The unholy mix of corruption, in which powerful people loot the natural resources of a country to largely distribute the wealth thus generated among themselves and throw some peanuts to the milling crowds, is not a new phenomenon. Right from the old colonial masters, be they the Spaniards or the British, down to the current power-brokers and “industrialists,” this loot has been going on for ages. Nothing seems to stop it. What can be realistically expected, perhaps, is that this loot somehow lessens to a tolerable level so that people at the bottom can breathe a little fresher air.
The current upsurge in India is an acknowledgment of the huge and multiple instances of rampant loot going on in the country for the past so many years. The worst part is that almost all political parties that make the so-called democratic polity of India have been caught with their hand in the till at one time or another. Which is why “the common man” has lost faith in the democratic process itself.
If you look at the candidates who fight elections, who are they? Most of them are goons, goondas, boors, hardened criminals, apathetic profiteers and so forth. Many of them are the already rich scions of political bigwigs or their proteges. A tiny minority might be sincere and honest, but there numbers are too few to make a big difference.
Fortunately or unfortunately, the natural resources of a country are limited. That is why, after the process of economic liberalization in India has gathered pace, there is an urgency among our political and owner-superconsumer class to quickly dispense the remaining resources (mines, land, etc.) and ensure their own further enrichment. If palms need to be greased to hasten that process, so be it! If inferior material can be bought at exorbitant costs to the exchequer (read to “you, me and other tax-payers”) but at enormous profits to those giving and receiving contracts for infrastructure and other “nation-building” exercises, why not? Such is the rationale of the corrupt.
And what happens in successive elections? The party or parties that come to power blame the previous regime for all the ills of governance, including corruption, lack of financing, poor decisions, etc. – and continue to line their own pockets while mouthing blames and expressing their own helplessness. Given that almost all parties in India shelter a growing flock of bad sheep in their midst, this cycle of blame and loot just keeps on repeating every five years.
And what development do we have at the end of the day? Oh, my God, don't ask me that! We have a monstrous situation in the country. But let me first talk about a few good things: there are some spanking new, world-class malls and office buildings, a huge number of automobile beauties are available for purchase, some expensive medical facilities have come up, a few lakh educated folk have found employment and there's a cornucopia of consumer goods out there in our urban markets.
Now, get ready for the not-so-good, bad and really ugly parts. There's muck and filth all around those swish malls. Muck and filth in large parts of our cities – on the roads, along the railway lines, around our very houses. Some posh localities and gated communities aside, the sheer amount of muck and filth is mind-boggling. If one were to weigh all that garbage in, say, Mumbai, it would perhaps equal half the waters of the Arabian Sea! Maybe more.
Come to the roads now. The Merc, the Alto and the cycle-rickshaw all stand side-by-side, trying to wiggle their way out of massive traffic jams. Flyovers have turned into nice places where cars crawl bumper-to-bumper, giving their occupants an opportunity to enjoy wide-angle views of their sprawling city – except nobody seems to be enjoying. The honking and heat and smoke are just all too annoying!
There have been many reports of the five-star-type hospitals charging exorbitant money and still not being able to provide the necessary healthcare to their customers. The poor are just turned away (despite the fact that many got land from the government at concessional rates in order that a certain number of poor can also avail of their facilities).
The increasing amount of burgers, pizzas and processed foods are making more and more Indians grow – their bellies, that is. And also grow the instances of diabetes and heart disease amongst them. Why do you think they are building all those expensive hospitals? All marketers have got their projections in place and are readying for the battle to fight diseases that the very pseudo development caused in the first place!
This whole development equation is coalescing around the few: the owners-superconsumers. Along with the politicians and bureaucrats, they are creating these development paradigms and profiting from it at the expense of millions and millions (for whose real uplift and betterment the public money should have been spent).
I can see the objections and the barrage of questions coming: At least more people today are well-off than at any other time in history. Wouldn't some inequalities creep in given the size and scale of our country? And then, what is the way out? Should we just live in shacks in villages? Shouldn't our children aspire to work and live in modern corporations in modern buildings in modern cities? What's wrong with having so many flavors of ice-cream? And how can we root out corruption?
Let me try and answer them in the best way I can.
I'm not against modernization or capitalism. And I love to experiment with flavors in ice-cream along with my kids.
I'm against the mess we have created in the name of development. Why I write strongly about all this is because much of it could have been avoided. Corruption is part of the problem but lack of a holistic vision and poor quality of leaders are bigger causes for this mess.
Why did our leaders throw open the flood-gates of economy without proper planning and preparation? How could we not learn from the mistakes of Western countries? If we had, a monster like Gurgaon should never have come to life. Why do we seem hell bent on aping the West, mostly guzzling their beer but not imbibing their spirit of freedom and justice?
Lokpal Bill may or may not cut down on corruption. But if we do not overhaul our existing laws and labyrinthine governance systems into simpler, speedier and more equitable ones, our development equation – and corruption situation – won't change much.
Over the past few days I have seen the resolve and sacrifice of a simple-minded – though sometimes confused – man, Anna Hazare. But he's already 74 and doesn't seem to have either the experience or the intent to play a larger and more active role in running the affairs of this country. His collaborators and team members seem well-meaning people but will the current political establishment allow them center stage once Anna's ongoing fast recedes into some complicated reconciliation?
To run a country as big and diverse as India, you need at least a dozen or so best minds who can review, change and execute our existing model of development. This will require an immense effort, honesty and perseverance of an order that would make Hercules' task seem tiny in comparison.
It will also require some radical thinking and steps on development: those that do not look at development as encouraging billions to crowd the roads with raucous cars but instead put more Metro tracks and create more walking space; those that include prevention of diseases and espousing a healthy lifestyle as essential elements of a nation's healthcare planning; that take systemic measures to ensure there's bathing water for every citizen and not bother too much about pricey faucets and showers; that rationally allocate natural resources to the production process for a more justifiable and environmentally friendly dispensation...
I hope that Jan Lokpal would be a right step in that direction, but I know that so much more is needed in India to set the course right. And I will be wary of what happens next. Won't you be?
It is a dumbfounding moment for a lot of Indians. This Anna Hazare thing and the whole idea of a nation suddenly up in knots against corruption.
Most people are beginning to feel that the Jan Lokpal Bill as envisaged by Team Anna will rid India of the cancer of corruption – to a significant extent. Some feel the Sangh Parivar is ready to ride on the back of the moment – and the movement. Yet others are trying frantically to save a government from whose cupboard the skeletons of corruption just can't stop coming out.
While corruption has become a buzz word, a love-hate word, a cure-all and curse-all word, I think it might not be a bad idea to look at the whole development equation and see where corruption – and we, a nation of billion-odd people, including oddest ones – fit in.
Let me warn you: this could be a longer article than the mostly asinine tweets and cut-and-paste status updates fast gaining currency as our preferred mode of conversation rather than well-considered and longish pieces of writing. So if you are just looking for some sound bytes, scoot away now! Please.
So, what does the whole development equation look like?
This questions is directly and significantly related to corruption, so just think it over.
To my mind, to embrace development in today's fast, technologically advanced and increasingly rights-aware world is to ensure these things: people are able to feed and clothe themselves, children get to play and learn the things they find interesting, adults get to work and get paid in fair proportion to their abilities and labor, and there's a speedy and reasonably fair system of settling disputes and administering justice.
What we have in the world today is this: a huge proportion of humanity goes to sleep on a hungry stomach; each year thousands of poor people die in heat or cold waves for want of proper clothing and shelter; millions of children are malnourished, millions more are child-laborers who hardly get to play anything, let alone learn about interesting things; most people have to settle for whatever they get for the back-breaking work they do (with only a few complaining about salaries and weekends – and still fewer making noises on taxes directed at the really wealthy); and justice is either out of reach for most, too delayed or simply putty in the hands of the powerful.
When you consider these parameters of development in third-world countries like those of sub-Saharan Africa or India (not very different if you look at the bottom two-third of the pyramid), you find that the development situation is truly appalling.
And yet...
Yet there is development happening. Can't you see, there are malls sprouting all around suburbia? Didn't you read about the 20 or so Bentley cars sold in India? Haven't you seen advertisements of bathroom fittings that promise to drench your body with hundreds of liters of water in a single shower? (Okay, the ads don't say anything about how much water is needed to “enjoy water” with those fancy fittings, but you could make out, couldn't you?) And hey, didn't you hear about the new shampoos for your dogs launched by that cult multinational brand?
Truly, there must be a lot of people out there willing to bathe their doggies in exotic shampoo? Or installing a thousand-dollar shower and taking a bath themselves instead? And don't you forget all those vacations in picture-perfect locales that the papers are so aggressively promoting through ads and articles (I forget which is which these days.)
So the top one, two or five percent of an economy is full of all these people – the mega consumer-owners who keep the bulldozing engines of “modern” development going on. And they get the economists to throw a beautifully coined term at anyone who raises an objection to this resource-hungry and environment-ravaging model of development: the “trickle-down effect” that reaches the common man.
The bottom 95 percent? Most of them just manage to keep alive, a majority never having any real chance of shopping in the same mall they helped build with their own hands. And a not-so-big-as-made-out chunk, the neither-here-nor-theres of the world, the enamored middle classes, looks up dreamily at the owners-superconsumers and aspires to reach there some day. But most never do.
The result is a gaping structural deformity in development. Which means a tiny portion of people enjoy all the luxuries of the world, a significant number work blindly for money in the hope of making it big, but the astonishing majority barely scraping through life in unhygienic, depressing and impoverished conditions.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not against capitalism, if that's the idea you are getting from the above views. We've seen socialism fail miserably and the days of autocracy are long numbered. So capitalism or market economy is what we are left with essentially.
What I'm just trying to get at is the root cause of corruption and the enabling environment that helps it grow and enrich a few at the cost of so many.
At the heart of such an enabling environment are three things: natural resources, power and greed. Corruption results from the unholy mix of these three ingredients. In particular, when the legal and systemic structure of a country is not designed to take care of huge structural inequalities in development, corruption seeps in, becomes a flood and starts to boil the blood of the suffering millions.
The unholy mix of corruption, in which powerful people loot the natural resources of a country to largely distribute the wealth thus generated among themselves and throw some peanuts to the milling crowds, is not a new phenomenon. Right from the old colonial masters, be they the Spaniards or the British, down to the current power-brokers and “industrialists,” this loot has been going on for ages. Nothing seems to stop it. What can be realistically expected, perhaps, is that this loot somehow lessens to a tolerable level so that people at the bottom can breathe a little fresher air.
The current upsurge in India is an acknowledgment of the huge and multiple instances of rampant loot going on in the country for the past so many years. The worst part is that almost all political parties that make the so-called democratic polity of India have been caught with their hand in the till at one time or another. Which is why “the common man” has lost faith in the democratic process itself.
If you look at the candidates who fight elections, who are they? Most of them are goons, goondas, boors, hardened criminals, apathetic profiteers and so forth. Many of them are the already rich scions of political bigwigs or their proteges. A tiny minority might be sincere and honest, but there numbers are too few to make a big difference.
Fortunately or unfortunately, the natural resources of a country are limited. That is why, after the process of economic liberalization in India has gathered pace, there is an urgency among our political and owner-superconsumer class to quickly dispense the remaining resources (mines, land, etc.) and ensure their own further enrichment. If palms need to be greased to hasten that process, so be it! If inferior material can be bought at exorbitant costs to the exchequer (read to “you, me and other tax-payers”) but at enormous profits to those giving and receiving contracts for infrastructure and other “nation-building” exercises, why not? Such is the rationale of the corrupt.
And what happens in successive elections? The party or parties that come to power blame the previous regime for all the ills of governance, including corruption, lack of financing, poor decisions, etc. – and continue to line their own pockets while mouthing blames and expressing their own helplessness. Given that almost all parties in India shelter a growing flock of bad sheep in their midst, this cycle of blame and loot just keeps on repeating every five years.
And what development do we have at the end of the day? Oh, my God, don't ask me that! We have a monstrous situation in the country. But let me first talk about a few good things: there are some spanking new, world-class malls and office buildings, a huge number of automobile beauties are available for purchase, some expensive medical facilities have come up, a few lakh educated folk have found employment and there's a cornucopia of consumer goods out there in our urban markets.
Now, get ready for the not-so-good, bad and really ugly parts. There's muck and filth all around those swish malls. Muck and filth in large parts of our cities – on the roads, along the railway lines, around our very houses. Some posh localities and gated communities aside, the sheer amount of muck and filth is mind-boggling. If one were to weigh all that garbage in, say, Mumbai, it would perhaps equal half the waters of the Arabian Sea! Maybe more.
Come to the roads now. The Merc, the Alto and the cycle-rickshaw all stand side-by-side, trying to wiggle their way out of massive traffic jams. Flyovers have turned into nice places where cars crawl bumper-to-bumper, giving their occupants an opportunity to enjoy wide-angle views of their sprawling city – except nobody seems to be enjoying. The honking and heat and smoke are just all too annoying!
There have been many reports of the five-star-type hospitals charging exorbitant money and still not being able to provide the necessary healthcare to their customers. The poor are just turned away (despite the fact that many got land from the government at concessional rates in order that a certain number of poor can also avail of their facilities).
The increasing amount of burgers, pizzas and processed foods are making more and more Indians grow – their bellies, that is. And also grow the instances of diabetes and heart disease amongst them. Why do you think they are building all those expensive hospitals? All marketers have got their projections in place and are readying for the battle to fight diseases that the very pseudo development caused in the first place!
This whole development equation is coalescing around the few: the owners-superconsumers. Along with the politicians and bureaucrats, they are creating these development paradigms and profiting from it at the expense of millions and millions (for whose real uplift and betterment the public money should have been spent).
I can see the objections and the barrage of questions coming: At least more people today are well-off than at any other time in history. Wouldn't some inequalities creep in given the size and scale of our country? And then, what is the way out? Should we just live in shacks in villages? Shouldn't our children aspire to work and live in modern corporations in modern buildings in modern cities? What's wrong with having so many flavors of ice-cream? And how can we root out corruption?
Let me try and answer them in the best way I can.
I'm not against modernization or capitalism. And I love to experiment with flavors in ice-cream along with my kids.
I'm against the mess we have created in the name of development. Why I write strongly about all this is because much of it could have been avoided. Corruption is part of the problem but lack of a holistic vision and poor quality of leaders are bigger causes for this mess.
Why did our leaders throw open the flood-gates of economy without proper planning and preparation? How could we not learn from the mistakes of Western countries? If we had, a monster like Gurgaon should never have come to life. Why do we seem hell bent on aping the West, mostly guzzling their beer but not imbibing their spirit of freedom and justice?
Lokpal Bill may or may not cut down on corruption. But if we do not overhaul our existing laws and labyrinthine governance systems into simpler, speedier and more equitable ones, our development equation – and corruption situation – won't change much.
Over the past few days I have seen the resolve and sacrifice of a simple-minded – though sometimes confused – man, Anna Hazare. But he's already 74 and doesn't seem to have either the experience or the intent to play a larger and more active role in running the affairs of this country. His collaborators and team members seem well-meaning people but will the current political establishment allow them center stage once Anna's ongoing fast recedes into some complicated reconciliation?
To run a country as big and diverse as India, you need at least a dozen or so best minds who can review, change and execute our existing model of development. This will require an immense effort, honesty and perseverance of an order that would make Hercules' task seem tiny in comparison.
It will also require some radical thinking and steps on development: those that do not look at development as encouraging billions to crowd the roads with raucous cars but instead put more Metro tracks and create more walking space; those that include prevention of diseases and espousing a healthy lifestyle as essential elements of a nation's healthcare planning; that take systemic measures to ensure there's bathing water for every citizen and not bother too much about pricey faucets and showers; that rationally allocate natural resources to the production process for a more justifiable and environmentally friendly dispensation...
I hope that Jan Lokpal would be a right step in that direction, but I know that so much more is needed in India to set the course right. And I will be wary of what happens next. Won't you be?
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Four Life Lessons My Kids Taught Me
In one of his poems, William Wordsworth famously remarked, “The child is father of the man.”
I had read this line years ago. But now, when I look at it again I'm not only in a better position to appreciate its import, I can perhaps make my own little additions to the very notion as well.
As an unabashedly proud father of a 14-month-old son and a seven-year-old daughter, I have spent countless wonderful hours with them—loving, learning and laughing enough to feel a little preachy.
So, my dear poet, not only is the child father of the man, the child is the teacher, guru and even God to man.
If the smiling face of a young child does not belong to God Himself, what else does?
If the whooshing cooing gurgling bubbling sounds of the child do not come from God's own throat, what else does?
If their little innocent pranks and pulls are not rooted in God's mischievous mind, what else could be?
In India I've heard a lot of old folks say, “Children are the embodiment of God.” Not only do I second them but I think the reverse could equally be true: God is made possible by children.
But let me not take you too far into the domain of theistic or ontological questions. Let me only share some of the most vital lessons my kids have taught me.
The first and foremost lesson—though I'm yet to fully imbibe it (revive it, rather)—is to always take delight in the little things around us. The melodious sounds of a toy, the vibrant colors of a book, the playful dance of a piece of paper in a whorl of light and air. Delight in anything that is pleasing to the eye, sweet to the ear, cool to the touch. Delight in anything that is new, exciting, mysterious, inviting...
They have made me discover the beauty of the world and take delight in it through their experience. So whenever my senses are numbed by the greedy and possessive ugliness of the world (and they often do), I need only look at the kiddos laugh and play and share their delight.
The second vital lesson is simplicity of being. A child just wants to be. Period. The thought of emulation or rivalry or the blind pursuit of a vocation is thrust upon them in their formative years. Have you ever heard children spontaneously say what they want to be? It is the parents or other people who usually put the nasty idea of being or trying to be someone else into their fragile brain.
True, sometimes the children say they want to be whatever they fancy at any given moment. But these whims keep changing and no true picture emerges until at least teenage. I've learned—and continue to learn—that we must let kids be. Our role is only to help them identify their true calling and facilitate their journey as much as we can. The rest is up to them.
Another great learning is that, tied as we have become to our clockwork schedules, we must sometimes allow ourselves to be yanked away from the tyranny of time—and be thrown cheerily into the timeless playfulness that is immanent in all children. (And in all Nature indeed.)
By simply throwing their arms around me, or clinging to my legs when I’m late for work, my children have often taught me, without saying a single word, how infinitely better it is to be a willing slave to love than to be a forced prisoner of time.
That is not to say that we do not meet our professional commitment or neglect work we are paid for—but just to reiterate that one thing cannot be a substitute for something entirely different and certainly much more important. (Unless your only priority is to chase greenbacks, in which case you shouldn't be reading this article.)
Perhaps one of the most important lessons children have taught me is forgiveness. They just keep forgiving me for my innumerable imbecilities. No matter how cross I’m with my daughter or how much I’ve scolded her (my son is too young to be scolded, though my wife disagrees :), she hugs me with an unconditional love that puts my tyranny to shame—and makes me want to become a better-behaved father next time around.
And these are not the only lessons. As I continue my parental journey, I'm sure there will be countless occasions for me to learn, unlearn and re-learn life's most vital lessons from children.
And so my education goes on...
-o-
I had read this line years ago. But now, when I look at it again I'm not only in a better position to appreciate its import, I can perhaps make my own little additions to the very notion as well.
As an unabashedly proud father of a 14-month-old son and a seven-year-old daughter, I have spent countless wonderful hours with them—loving, learning and laughing enough to feel a little preachy.
So, my dear poet, not only is the child father of the man, the child is the teacher, guru and even God to man.
If the smiling face of a young child does not belong to God Himself, what else does?
If the whooshing cooing gurgling bubbling sounds of the child do not come from God's own throat, what else does?
If their little innocent pranks and pulls are not rooted in God's mischievous mind, what else could be?
In India I've heard a lot of old folks say, “Children are the embodiment of God.” Not only do I second them but I think the reverse could equally be true: God is made possible by children.
But let me not take you too far into the domain of theistic or ontological questions. Let me only share some of the most vital lessons my kids have taught me.
The first and foremost lesson—though I'm yet to fully imbibe it (revive it, rather)—is to always take delight in the little things around us. The melodious sounds of a toy, the vibrant colors of a book, the playful dance of a piece of paper in a whorl of light and air. Delight in anything that is pleasing to the eye, sweet to the ear, cool to the touch. Delight in anything that is new, exciting, mysterious, inviting...
They have made me discover the beauty of the world and take delight in it through their experience. So whenever my senses are numbed by the greedy and possessive ugliness of the world (and they often do), I need only look at the kiddos laugh and play and share their delight.
The second vital lesson is simplicity of being. A child just wants to be. Period. The thought of emulation or rivalry or the blind pursuit of a vocation is thrust upon them in their formative years. Have you ever heard children spontaneously say what they want to be? It is the parents or other people who usually put the nasty idea of being or trying to be someone else into their fragile brain.
True, sometimes the children say they want to be whatever they fancy at any given moment. But these whims keep changing and no true picture emerges until at least teenage. I've learned—and continue to learn—that we must let kids be. Our role is only to help them identify their true calling and facilitate their journey as much as we can. The rest is up to them.
Another great learning is that, tied as we have become to our clockwork schedules, we must sometimes allow ourselves to be yanked away from the tyranny of time—and be thrown cheerily into the timeless playfulness that is immanent in all children. (And in all Nature indeed.)
By simply throwing their arms around me, or clinging to my legs when I’m late for work, my children have often taught me, without saying a single word, how infinitely better it is to be a willing slave to love than to be a forced prisoner of time.
That is not to say that we do not meet our professional commitment or neglect work we are paid for—but just to reiterate that one thing cannot be a substitute for something entirely different and certainly much more important. (Unless your only priority is to chase greenbacks, in which case you shouldn't be reading this article.)
Perhaps one of the most important lessons children have taught me is forgiveness. They just keep forgiving me for my innumerable imbecilities. No matter how cross I’m with my daughter or how much I’ve scolded her (my son is too young to be scolded, though my wife disagrees :), she hugs me with an unconditional love that puts my tyranny to shame—and makes me want to become a better-behaved father next time around.
And these are not the only lessons. As I continue my parental journey, I'm sure there will be countless occasions for me to learn, unlearn and re-learn life's most vital lessons from children.
And so my education goes on...
-o-
Friday, July 1, 2011
India and the Morality of Corruption
A scathing look at the state of corruption and its root causes in the world's largest de-Mock-racy
For the past few weeks, corruption has become a fashionable topic in India. Starting from Anna Hazare's fast over Lokpal Bill to Baba Ramdev's anti-black money drama, anyone who's got an opinion is voicing it stridently. There's a flood of opinions in electronic media, in the papers and on the chatter of Facebook and Twitter.
But all this brouhaha is the product of an increasingly and shamelessly corrupt nation. And it would hardly result in a major change in the way politicians and bureaucrats have been looting the country.
Before giving my reasons for saying so or suggesting any semi-cooked corruption-curing recipes of my own, let me state where my loyalties lie.
I'm neither with BJP-RSS-Sangh types nor with the Congress or its multiple splinter groups, nor with any just-for-name's-sake-group on any social networking site. I am with the proverbial and much-abused common man who, while all this media circus is going on, is busy carting a back-breaking load of supplies through our ramshackle markets.
I'm with the man who is trying to survive with meager earnings from his nondescript kiosk-shop. I'm with the girl who must hurry home if she doesn't want to be raped or teased and who hasn't got a chauffeur-driven car to take her home. I'm with the homeless beggar who is being harassed by the policeman and the gangster alike. I'm with the farmer whose irrigation water is diverted to serve five-star hotels and resorts...
In fact, I'm with about 700 million poor people of India who never understood the meaning of Shining India and probably never will.
Let me take you a little back in time. I'm not sure how many of you would appreciate it, but I grew up on an ample dose of all-round prosperity shown on Krishi Darshan (a government TV program). It was also taught in school books and preached through a state-controlled media.
I was under the impression that the founding fathers of this nation had done a great job by putting together a wonderful Constitution. And by following in the footsteps of our erstwhile rulers (the British), they kept a gargantuan bureaucracy as well-oiled as you would find in a spanking factory.
How was I to know that all that oil was actually grease, exchanging millions of palms for the enrichment of their owners alone? How was I to know that while our leaders threw out the tyrant rule of the British, they wittingly or unwittingly installed a draconian regime that thrived on abusing power?
I wouldn't bore you with all the details of a newly Independent, proud India with great leaders having a great vision for our great nation. But the bottomline is this: our population control measures have failed. Our aging infrastructure (much of it bequeathed to us by the British) is deteriorating. The sub-standard products made by our 'license raj' industrialists have mostly failed to stand against global competition (do a count of how many products we buy come from China and elsewhere). Our socialistic mutlipoint programs and hare-brained schemes have failed to give social security to the poor...
The list of failures just goes on and on.
But yes, we have succeeded in creating a vicious, greedy, bloated and extremely corrupt 'governance' system. And at the tentacled head of this system sits that obsequiously dynastic, shamelessly appeasing and pathetically spineless 'grand old party' – with a foreigner madame and a stooge of a man currently at the helm.
This otherwise useless party seemed to have done a good thing when it opened up the Indian economy in the early nineties. But, alas, it all came a cropper!
While the license raj was being disbanded, a new band of robbers and looters emerged – and they were of all forms and persuasions, comprising politicians, bureaucrats, land grabbers, deal brokers, thugs and curmudgeons.
This band set out in earnest to divvy up the natural and other resources of the country. They did it largely among themselves, but threw away some bits and pieces off and on for the rising middle, lower middle, lowest middle and god-knows-how-even-lower middle classes.
Some crazy statistics were rustled up about the benefits of all this 'wealth creation' trickling down to the lowest rungs of society. Never mind that the trickle has been nothing but a stinky obnoxious drain.
If you are stats oriented, chew these: more than 75% of Indian population has a purchasing power of less than Rs20 a day. Nearly half of Indian children are malnourished. About 110 million agricultural workers found employment for only 209 days in 2004-05 compared to 220 days in 1999-2000. Around 150 of India's 607 districts are engulfed in Naxalite movement. And while the much-touted GDP growth races ahead in the 7-9% range, employment growth has been a meager 1%...
In these twenty or so years of liberalization, one of the most 'liberalized' things in India has become honesty and integrity. While the slogan of India's freedom fighter Subhash Chandra Bose was “Tum mujhe khoon do, main tumhein azadi doonga” (You give me blood, and I'll give you freedom), the prevalent leitmotif in an increasingly corrupt India has become “Tum mujhe ghoos do, kyonki main kisi aur ko doonga!” (You better give me bribe, coz I gotta give it to somebody else.)
Mera Bharat mahaan, indeed! (My India is great.)
It is this ghooskhor or bribe-infested culture that seems to have captured the absconding imagination of a few lakh people (a handful in the colossus of India) all of a sudden.
Ask any businessman – from the local chaiwalla to the global Ambani – about the number of times they have to bribe the multiple power brokers in order to survive (in Ambani's case, thrive).
Ask the owners of the buildings in any Indian city (most of which are truly ugly and urgently in need of fresh air) whether they could have erected those eyesores without making “the authorities” turn a blind eye to their multi-storied plans?
Hell, ask yourself, would you be able to survive the daily horrors of getting a gas connection, registering a property, obtaining a government stamp of approval, securing school admission for your child and innumerable such “tasks” without paying any bribes to someone?
So, in a broader view of things, almost all of us are corrupt.
But the way in which the high and mighty are corrupt – and the way they engender this culture of corruption all around them – calls for special discussion.
Imagine a unit of society in which the head of that unit is corrupt. The unit could be a family, a resident welfare association, a local governing body, a state government or the central ruling formation. This head goes about lining their pockets at the expense of others, asks and permits others to do as they please so long as all those “involved” get their “cuts”, and generally remains unaffected by the misery of those way down below in the hierarchy. How do you think one can cure this unit of the curse of corruption?
By asking those at the bottom of the ladder to not pay bribes? By just complaining about the situation and the whole machinery? By pressing the Like button on someone's anti-corruption page?
No, dear reader, of course, not. And that's precisely what we the people of India seem to be doing. From the above example, I'm sure you would agree that the most effective way of making the unit corruption-free is to remove the head of the unit and replace him or her with an honest, caring one.
And that's where the biggest challenge for India lies. My question is, who do you install in place of the current corruption-laden ruling parties in India? Which national-level party today is without the stains of corruption?
A bigger and related question: Do we have any leader of the stature who can clear up the mess in our heritage-rich but idea-poor country? Can anyone take India to the social, economic and scientific heights achieved by the likes of US and Japan (or by its own people centuries ago)?
Is there anyone who can ensure that calling India a superpower in the making is not a laughing matter but a matter of progressive achievement? (For one, I laugh out loud at such peasant-like thinking, given the way things are going.)
Who is going to be that person? That leader?
Anna Hazare? Hmmm, perhaps, but let me think...
Sonia Gandhi? I was so happy that she refused to be Prime Minister (PM) – only to be much angry later when she installed that puppet-puppy PM...and we all know how many corruption scandals have erupted. Why, you are reading this article because of that!
LK Advani? Gadkari? Narendra Modi? No way!
Baba Ramdev? He doesn't see himself in politics – and neither do I!
Rahul Baba? He has neither the credentials nor the credibility (what he has is the Gandhi dynasty and a boatload of sycophants)...
You? Me? What are we talking about!
Alas, my dear reader, no one. To my eyes, there is NOT A SINGLE human being (as far as that weary eye can see) with the moral courage, impeccable integrity, caring humanity and a wide support base who can lift India out of the abyss of corruption and then take it to the greatness we are so fond of remembering.
And so? So we keep on trying (or pretend to), while the millions keep on dying. Sorry, CK Prahalad, despite your philanthropic economic advice, when it comes to India, there's only misfortune at the bottom of the pyramid.
For the past few weeks, corruption has become a fashionable topic in India. Starting from Anna Hazare's fast over Lokpal Bill to Baba Ramdev's anti-black money drama, anyone who's got an opinion is voicing it stridently. There's a flood of opinions in electronic media, in the papers and on the chatter of Facebook and Twitter.
But all this brouhaha is the product of an increasingly and shamelessly corrupt nation. And it would hardly result in a major change in the way politicians and bureaucrats have been looting the country.
Before giving my reasons for saying so or suggesting any semi-cooked corruption-curing recipes of my own, let me state where my loyalties lie.
I'm neither with BJP-RSS-Sangh types nor with the Congress or its multiple splinter groups, nor with any just-for-name's-sake-group on any social networking site. I am with the proverbial and much-abused common man who, while all this media circus is going on, is busy carting a back-breaking load of supplies through our ramshackle markets.
I'm with the man who is trying to survive with meager earnings from his nondescript kiosk-shop. I'm with the girl who must hurry home if she doesn't want to be raped or teased and who hasn't got a chauffeur-driven car to take her home. I'm with the homeless beggar who is being harassed by the policeman and the gangster alike. I'm with the farmer whose irrigation water is diverted to serve five-star hotels and resorts...
In fact, I'm with about 700 million poor people of India who never understood the meaning of Shining India and probably never will.
Let me take you a little back in time. I'm not sure how many of you would appreciate it, but I grew up on an ample dose of all-round prosperity shown on Krishi Darshan (a government TV program). It was also taught in school books and preached through a state-controlled media.
I was under the impression that the founding fathers of this nation had done a great job by putting together a wonderful Constitution. And by following in the footsteps of our erstwhile rulers (the British), they kept a gargantuan bureaucracy as well-oiled as you would find in a spanking factory.
How was I to know that all that oil was actually grease, exchanging millions of palms for the enrichment of their owners alone? How was I to know that while our leaders threw out the tyrant rule of the British, they wittingly or unwittingly installed a draconian regime that thrived on abusing power?
I wouldn't bore you with all the details of a newly Independent, proud India with great leaders having a great vision for our great nation. But the bottomline is this: our population control measures have failed. Our aging infrastructure (much of it bequeathed to us by the British) is deteriorating. The sub-standard products made by our 'license raj' industrialists have mostly failed to stand against global competition (do a count of how many products we buy come from China and elsewhere). Our socialistic mutlipoint programs and hare-brained schemes have failed to give social security to the poor...
The list of failures just goes on and on.
But yes, we have succeeded in creating a vicious, greedy, bloated and extremely corrupt 'governance' system. And at the tentacled head of this system sits that obsequiously dynastic, shamelessly appeasing and pathetically spineless 'grand old party' – with a foreigner madame and a stooge of a man currently at the helm.
This otherwise useless party seemed to have done a good thing when it opened up the Indian economy in the early nineties. But, alas, it all came a cropper!
While the license raj was being disbanded, a new band of robbers and looters emerged – and they were of all forms and persuasions, comprising politicians, bureaucrats, land grabbers, deal brokers, thugs and curmudgeons.
This band set out in earnest to divvy up the natural and other resources of the country. They did it largely among themselves, but threw away some bits and pieces off and on for the rising middle, lower middle, lowest middle and god-knows-how-even-lower middle classes.
Some crazy statistics were rustled up about the benefits of all this 'wealth creation' trickling down to the lowest rungs of society. Never mind that the trickle has been nothing but a stinky obnoxious drain.
If you are stats oriented, chew these: more than 75% of Indian population has a purchasing power of less than Rs20 a day. Nearly half of Indian children are malnourished. About 110 million agricultural workers found employment for only 209 days in 2004-05 compared to 220 days in 1999-2000. Around 150 of India's 607 districts are engulfed in Naxalite movement. And while the much-touted GDP growth races ahead in the 7-9% range, employment growth has been a meager 1%...
In these twenty or so years of liberalization, one of the most 'liberalized' things in India has become honesty and integrity. While the slogan of India's freedom fighter Subhash Chandra Bose was “Tum mujhe khoon do, main tumhein azadi doonga” (You give me blood, and I'll give you freedom), the prevalent leitmotif in an increasingly corrupt India has become “Tum mujhe ghoos do, kyonki main kisi aur ko doonga!” (You better give me bribe, coz I gotta give it to somebody else.)
Mera Bharat mahaan, indeed! (My India is great.)
It is this ghooskhor or bribe-infested culture that seems to have captured the absconding imagination of a few lakh people (a handful in the colossus of India) all of a sudden.
Ask any businessman – from the local chaiwalla to the global Ambani – about the number of times they have to bribe the multiple power brokers in order to survive (in Ambani's case, thrive).
Ask the owners of the buildings in any Indian city (most of which are truly ugly and urgently in need of fresh air) whether they could have erected those eyesores without making “the authorities” turn a blind eye to their multi-storied plans?
Hell, ask yourself, would you be able to survive the daily horrors of getting a gas connection, registering a property, obtaining a government stamp of approval, securing school admission for your child and innumerable such “tasks” without paying any bribes to someone?
So, in a broader view of things, almost all of us are corrupt.
But the way in which the high and mighty are corrupt – and the way they engender this culture of corruption all around them – calls for special discussion.
Imagine a unit of society in which the head of that unit is corrupt. The unit could be a family, a resident welfare association, a local governing body, a state government or the central ruling formation. This head goes about lining their pockets at the expense of others, asks and permits others to do as they please so long as all those “involved” get their “cuts”, and generally remains unaffected by the misery of those way down below in the hierarchy. How do you think one can cure this unit of the curse of corruption?
By asking those at the bottom of the ladder to not pay bribes? By just complaining about the situation and the whole machinery? By pressing the Like button on someone's anti-corruption page?
No, dear reader, of course, not. And that's precisely what we the people of India seem to be doing. From the above example, I'm sure you would agree that the most effective way of making the unit corruption-free is to remove the head of the unit and replace him or her with an honest, caring one.
And that's where the biggest challenge for India lies. My question is, who do you install in place of the current corruption-laden ruling parties in India? Which national-level party today is without the stains of corruption?
A bigger and related question: Do we have any leader of the stature who can clear up the mess in our heritage-rich but idea-poor country? Can anyone take India to the social, economic and scientific heights achieved by the likes of US and Japan (or by its own people centuries ago)?
Is there anyone who can ensure that calling India a superpower in the making is not a laughing matter but a matter of progressive achievement? (For one, I laugh out loud at such peasant-like thinking, given the way things are going.)
Who is going to be that person? That leader?
Anna Hazare? Hmmm, perhaps, but let me think...
Sonia Gandhi? I was so happy that she refused to be Prime Minister (PM) – only to be much angry later when she installed that puppet-puppy PM...and we all know how many corruption scandals have erupted. Why, you are reading this article because of that!
LK Advani? Gadkari? Narendra Modi? No way!
Baba Ramdev? He doesn't see himself in politics – and neither do I!
Rahul Baba? He has neither the credentials nor the credibility (what he has is the Gandhi dynasty and a boatload of sycophants)...
You? Me? What are we talking about!
Alas, my dear reader, no one. To my eyes, there is NOT A SINGLE human being (as far as that weary eye can see) with the moral courage, impeccable integrity, caring humanity and a wide support base who can lift India out of the abyss of corruption and then take it to the greatness we are so fond of remembering.
And so? So we keep on trying (or pretend to), while the millions keep on dying. Sorry, CK Prahalad, despite your philanthropic economic advice, when it comes to India, there's only misfortune at the bottom of the pyramid.
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Six Effective Ways to Relax Your Mind
Are you finding it difficult to ease life's chaotic pressures on your mind? Take a deep breath and just follow these six steps to a soothing mental symphony
We live in a noisy, chaotic world. Many might argue that it's always been like this. Maybe. Perhaps we had the same basic notions of cacophony eons ago. But the prism of modern development has magnified the human noises to an unbearable extent.
The result: even when we shut ourselves indoors, far away from the madding crowd, we can still hear the echoes of that clamor in our mind. Echoes that refuse to go away. Echoes that cling to a mind desperately wanting to relax. Echoes that impede or interfere with the body’s natural tendency to remain in an easy, happy existence.
Tell me frankly, haven’t you been in situations when – even after you lie down – your mind continues to overflow with thoughts of care, worries of yesterdays, and noises from the daily rumble around you?
The dictum “A healthy mind in a healthy body” holds true in its inverse form as well. If you keep your mind in a poised, relaxed state, you are more likely to have a physically fit body. As modern research in psychosomatic medicine suggests, the condition of the mind directly or indirectly affects the body’s wellbeing.
So, how can you detox your mind? How can you drive out stress, commotion, conflicts and other detritus from the daily life and invite in a gentle sense of calmness and poise? Can you do it without retreating to a remote, secluded (and often, expensive) resort or spa? Hell, can you do it in your existing routine?
Don't try and raise hell. Try, instead, these simple tips for giving your mind the peace it's been asking for.
Finish what you start: The mind is like a non-stop factory in which our words and thoughts are either woven into new fabric to clothe our personas or taken apart to be deposited on a growing pile of rags and tatters. Often, there are many unfinished strands that just lie about frayed in our mind, without finding their perfect-knit. A growing list of incomplete things can make you feel miserable and wanting. So go back to your to-do lists and keep them to a manageable minimum. If you know you can only do ten things rather than twenty-three, leave the unwanted thirteen out.
Make only the commitments you can keep: A businessman once gave this advice when starting up his son: “My son, never break a promise; but then, never make a promise!” Well, you’ll have to make commitments in your daily life: just be sure to make only those that you can keep. If you are firm in accepting only what you can do now, it will save you from the gnawing feelings of failed commitments later.
Exercise focused concentration: According to mind-training experts, one must pursue what one wants to achieve with “focused concentration.” Through constant practice, one can indeed train one’s mind to think about one thing at a time. This is what most meditative techniques also suggest: focusing the mind on one shape, sound, color, or any other object. The idea is to constantly train the mind on the job at hand. After sufficient practice, this ‘training’ should cease to be an effort and become second nature to you.
Forsake your regrets: We often don’t realize it, but we routinely carry a scary load of regrets at the back of our minds. If only we could do this! If only we had seen that coming! Our laundry list of regrets keeps getting longer and longer – without ever getting ample washing. Unbuckle your past lamentations and let them rinse down your memory drain one by one – and you’ll feel the same lightness and crispness that you do when you put on a freshly washed and sunned piece of garment.
Practice doing nothing: It is usually said that “an empty mind is the Devil’s workshop.” However, there’s an art to emptying the mind that yogis, rishis and monks have been practicing and preaching over the ages. An art that, instead of making your mind a playground for Satan, can make it a blessed abode of the gods.
Think about it: we are infused with a lifestyle that requires us to be always doing something or the other. If we were really programmed that way, there would be no need for sleep, isn't it? By doing nothing, however, I don’t mean sitting idle or staring at the idiot box. What I mean is being free of your troubling, trivial and compulsive thoughts.
Choose a moment and place when you are just by yourself. Take a posture in which you are comfortable and let the whole world pass by you as if you were a spectator serenely yet effortlessly watching life’s little episodes. In such a state of nothingness, you can often feel the goddess of peace whispering gently in your mind.
Curb your craves: This one is not easy, especially because most people live to have more, get more or possess more. But if you can reduce the number of things you depend on or cut down your list of must-haves, you’ll also reduce the burden of relentlessly going after them. Pursue your ambitions or follow your dreams by all means, but don’t let them become your daily pester points. Set out to achieve big things that matter to you, but try and shun mere objects of desire that you constantly crave. Like I said, it’s a bit difficult to achieve this balance between worthy objectives and petty longings – but it’s far from impossible. And indeed very tranquilizing. Just ask your mind.
We live in a noisy, chaotic world. Many might argue that it's always been like this. Maybe. Perhaps we had the same basic notions of cacophony eons ago. But the prism of modern development has magnified the human noises to an unbearable extent.
The result: even when we shut ourselves indoors, far away from the madding crowd, we can still hear the echoes of that clamor in our mind. Echoes that refuse to go away. Echoes that cling to a mind desperately wanting to relax. Echoes that impede or interfere with the body’s natural tendency to remain in an easy, happy existence.
Tell me frankly, haven’t you been in situations when – even after you lie down – your mind continues to overflow with thoughts of care, worries of yesterdays, and noises from the daily rumble around you?
The dictum “A healthy mind in a healthy body” holds true in its inverse form as well. If you keep your mind in a poised, relaxed state, you are more likely to have a physically fit body. As modern research in psychosomatic medicine suggests, the condition of the mind directly or indirectly affects the body’s wellbeing.
So, how can you detox your mind? How can you drive out stress, commotion, conflicts and other detritus from the daily life and invite in a gentle sense of calmness and poise? Can you do it without retreating to a remote, secluded (and often, expensive) resort or spa? Hell, can you do it in your existing routine?
Don't try and raise hell. Try, instead, these simple tips for giving your mind the peace it's been asking for.
Finish what you start: The mind is like a non-stop factory in which our words and thoughts are either woven into new fabric to clothe our personas or taken apart to be deposited on a growing pile of rags and tatters. Often, there are many unfinished strands that just lie about frayed in our mind, without finding their perfect-knit. A growing list of incomplete things can make you feel miserable and wanting. So go back to your to-do lists and keep them to a manageable minimum. If you know you can only do ten things rather than twenty-three, leave the unwanted thirteen out.
Make only the commitments you can keep: A businessman once gave this advice when starting up his son: “My son, never break a promise; but then, never make a promise!” Well, you’ll have to make commitments in your daily life: just be sure to make only those that you can keep. If you are firm in accepting only what you can do now, it will save you from the gnawing feelings of failed commitments later.
Exercise focused concentration: According to mind-training experts, one must pursue what one wants to achieve with “focused concentration.” Through constant practice, one can indeed train one’s mind to think about one thing at a time. This is what most meditative techniques also suggest: focusing the mind on one shape, sound, color, or any other object. The idea is to constantly train the mind on the job at hand. After sufficient practice, this ‘training’ should cease to be an effort and become second nature to you.
Forsake your regrets: We often don’t realize it, but we routinely carry a scary load of regrets at the back of our minds. If only we could do this! If only we had seen that coming! Our laundry list of regrets keeps getting longer and longer – without ever getting ample washing. Unbuckle your past lamentations and let them rinse down your memory drain one by one – and you’ll feel the same lightness and crispness that you do when you put on a freshly washed and sunned piece of garment.
Practice doing nothing: It is usually said that “an empty mind is the Devil’s workshop.” However, there’s an art to emptying the mind that yogis, rishis and monks have been practicing and preaching over the ages. An art that, instead of making your mind a playground for Satan, can make it a blessed abode of the gods.
Think about it: we are infused with a lifestyle that requires us to be always doing something or the other. If we were really programmed that way, there would be no need for sleep, isn't it? By doing nothing, however, I don’t mean sitting idle or staring at the idiot box. What I mean is being free of your troubling, trivial and compulsive thoughts.
Choose a moment and place when you are just by yourself. Take a posture in which you are comfortable and let the whole world pass by you as if you were a spectator serenely yet effortlessly watching life’s little episodes. In such a state of nothingness, you can often feel the goddess of peace whispering gently in your mind.
Curb your craves: This one is not easy, especially because most people live to have more, get more or possess more. But if you can reduce the number of things you depend on or cut down your list of must-haves, you’ll also reduce the burden of relentlessly going after them. Pursue your ambitions or follow your dreams by all means, but don’t let them become your daily pester points. Set out to achieve big things that matter to you, but try and shun mere objects of desire that you constantly crave. Like I said, it’s a bit difficult to achieve this balance between worthy objectives and petty longings – but it’s far from impossible. And indeed very tranquilizing. Just ask your mind.
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
5 Mistakes PR Pros Must Avoid but Often Don't
Ever wonder why your communication wasn't well-received in the media? It might have misfired because you failed to avoid one of these traps
Public relations is a tricky, often thankless business. While the tricky part is acknowledged by the PR pros, it is the journalists who often bring in thanklessness (add ungrateful clients, too).
But it's a business – and a lucrative one at that, all right. So it wouldn't hurt to go through some tips that might help.
In communication schools or on-the-job, most PR executives learn the common tricks of their trade: treat clients (and journalists) with respect, always spell-check your releases (do you?), and yes, don't forget to bill clients for the out-of-pocket expenses.
Yet, there are also some no-nos that a seasoned PR exec should avoid under most circumstances. Unfortunately, in the hurly-burly world of 'mass' communication, things are prone to turn out into 'mess' communication. That's why it's important for a PR pro to keep in mind these five don'ts when communicating with journalists:
Long-winding story pitches: In the course of writing their stories, journalists often go through a lot of background and research material. But they would rather look at a lot of text about a story they have chosen to do than read paras upon paras intended to give them a story idea. So keep your pitch mailers or calls short and sweet. If the journo likes it, they'll jump at it anyway. But if it doesn't cut ice in the first couple of sentences, don't bore him with dense details, please.
Mixing up similar media: The media scene today is crowded. But that's no excuse for calling up a journalist and mixing up the name of their media house or publication with another one – which, annoyingly, usually happens to be a key rival. Get the journo's name, their paper's name and, if necessary, the name of their dog right. Names are important, very important (as you sometimes might have realized when your client's name appeared misspelled in the headline!)
Corralling journalists for a conference: “You must come.” “Please, it's the most important event for our client!” “The client is holding this PC (press conference) after a gap of two years.”
Understood. Your client and their conference is all-important to you. But unless you can find something of relevance to the journalist in question, it's not good practice to request-force them into attending the event. Even if you send the cab. In any case, most communication today happens on the phone or over email, and journalists (especially experienced ones) usually attend only the really significant conferences or those where they expect to network with lots of friends or industry execs.
Following up too much: If not following up at all is a disaster, pestering the journalist with too many calls for a press release or a story is anathema. Too much aggression can perhaps get you in the first time, but the media will be alerted to your tactics sooner rather than later. And then? Then they'll avoid you like a diabetic shuns sugar. So learn to strike a balance in how much you follow up.
Hiding the negative: Thanks to the Internet, it's not that difficult to discover skeletons in a company's cupboard (and these days there are many). Then there are journalists' contacts and other 'sources.' So if you happen to know that a journalist has gotten wind of something fishy or negative about your client, try to illuminate it in the light that your client wants to. Trying to hide it or cover it up with fluff usually makes the journalist more dogged in their pursuit – and, of course, leaves a worse impression than they started off with.
Needless to say, these aren't the only don'ts. For instance, you shouldn't miss a journalist's story deadline if you want to ensure that your client's inputs are taken or their name mentioned where it matters. But the above are points that keep recurring in PR-media communication and that often harm your efforts behind-the-scenes rather than upfront. For want of caution, don't let your key messages go wasted.
Public relations is a tricky, often thankless business. While the tricky part is acknowledged by the PR pros, it is the journalists who often bring in thanklessness (add ungrateful clients, too).
But it's a business – and a lucrative one at that, all right. So it wouldn't hurt to go through some tips that might help.
In communication schools or on-the-job, most PR executives learn the common tricks of their trade: treat clients (and journalists) with respect, always spell-check your releases (do you?), and yes, don't forget to bill clients for the out-of-pocket expenses.
Yet, there are also some no-nos that a seasoned PR exec should avoid under most circumstances. Unfortunately, in the hurly-burly world of 'mass' communication, things are prone to turn out into 'mess' communication. That's why it's important for a PR pro to keep in mind these five don'ts when communicating with journalists:
Long-winding story pitches: In the course of writing their stories, journalists often go through a lot of background and research material. But they would rather look at a lot of text about a story they have chosen to do than read paras upon paras intended to give them a story idea. So keep your pitch mailers or calls short and sweet. If the journo likes it, they'll jump at it anyway. But if it doesn't cut ice in the first couple of sentences, don't bore him with dense details, please.
Mixing up similar media: The media scene today is crowded. But that's no excuse for calling up a journalist and mixing up the name of their media house or publication with another one – which, annoyingly, usually happens to be a key rival. Get the journo's name, their paper's name and, if necessary, the name of their dog right. Names are important, very important (as you sometimes might have realized when your client's name appeared misspelled in the headline!)
Corralling journalists for a conference: “You must come.” “Please, it's the most important event for our client!” “The client is holding this PC (press conference) after a gap of two years.”
Understood. Your client and their conference is all-important to you. But unless you can find something of relevance to the journalist in question, it's not good practice to request-force them into attending the event. Even if you send the cab. In any case, most communication today happens on the phone or over email, and journalists (especially experienced ones) usually attend only the really significant conferences or those where they expect to network with lots of friends or industry execs.
Following up too much: If not following up at all is a disaster, pestering the journalist with too many calls for a press release or a story is anathema. Too much aggression can perhaps get you in the first time, but the media will be alerted to your tactics sooner rather than later. And then? Then they'll avoid you like a diabetic shuns sugar. So learn to strike a balance in how much you follow up.
Hiding the negative: Thanks to the Internet, it's not that difficult to discover skeletons in a company's cupboard (and these days there are many). Then there are journalists' contacts and other 'sources.' So if you happen to know that a journalist has gotten wind of something fishy or negative about your client, try to illuminate it in the light that your client wants to. Trying to hide it or cover it up with fluff usually makes the journalist more dogged in their pursuit – and, of course, leaves a worse impression than they started off with.
Needless to say, these aren't the only don'ts. For instance, you shouldn't miss a journalist's story deadline if you want to ensure that your client's inputs are taken or their name mentioned where it matters. But the above are points that keep recurring in PR-media communication and that often harm your efforts behind-the-scenes rather than upfront. For want of caution, don't let your key messages go wasted.
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Excuse Me, an iPad for You? No, Thanks!
In spite of being labeled as the fastest selling gadget, the iPad is doomed to fail in India. The reason? The dynamics of the Indian market are completely different.
Apple Computer has always regarded the Indian market as the boondocks, keeping its presence in the country very limited and launching many of its products late into the country's ultra price-sensitive market. The most recent example: the iPad, which was launched here almost 10 months after its US debut.
Not that the company is entirely wrong in its thinking. Only 10 million PCs are estimated to be sold a year in a country of 1.1 billion – whereas this figure is over 70 million for US, whose population is about 300 million.
But that's only the macro picture. When you look at the details of how and why most consumers buy computing devices in India, the case for a product like the iPad becomes clear. Whether it's a desktop, a laptop, netbook, or, ahem, a tablet, Indians go shopping for computers mainly for two reasons: office work or children's education. And the majority of them look for the cheapest options on the market.
So when you drill down to the lowly category of tablet computers, all the thrill and whistles are confined to a few thousand people – including geeks, aficionados, analysts and media. They may chorus excitement and wonder in an echo of the US market, but the realities in India are totally different. But even they would prefer a sleek notebook (even netbook) or go for a smartphone rather than loosen their purse strings for something that is neither a full-fledged computer nor a handy smartphone.
Consider this. When a product like the iPad is launched in the mature and advanced markets like the US or Japan, people queue up outside hundreds of retail stores even before the doors open. Here in India, if you go to a handful of Apple stores that exist (only in the big metros), they mostly maintain a bare, clean look. And the few curious visitors who do enter the stores come out rather quickly, usually empty-handed.
So the iPad might have sold in millions in USA and Japan, in India the sales number over the next one year is bound to be in single-digit thousands or even just a few hundreds. Some market estimates put the total number of iPads in the hands of Indians thus far - including gray market sales, online purchases and those brought from abroad – at 40,000. But even this number seems suspect on the higher side.
One might argue that the starting price tag of about Rs28,000 isn't that high. (To give you an idea of the priciness of Apple products, an entry-level Mac starts around Rs60,000 whereas one can get a high-end custom-built or branded PC for less than Rs40,000. The iPad range is priced up to Rs45,000 in three versions.)
However, for a product like the iPad – and there's a debate about what animal exactly the iPad is – it is not just the price that will act as a stumbling block. There just isn't enough traction for it in India.
In developed countries where iPads are selling like crazy, consumers are used to a rich online web experience. This includes putting up lots of pictures and videos online, listening to music and podcasts, even reading books and periodicals (remember Kindle?). There's a large consumer base and widespread and easy availability of high-speed connectivity, applications and quality content.
India, in contrast, is a country where all this enabling infrastructure is missing. We are still arguing about 2G licensing irregularities while the world is moving on to 4G. Here, the average time spent online is among the lowest. And the 30-million-odd Internet users who do go online mostly surf job sites, buy travel tickets or send/receive emails. A few thousand do hang around on Facebook, Orkut or LinkedIn, but so what? They just hang around most of the time.
None of these constituents of the Indian cyberworld would need an iPad. Not in the short term at least.
Some reviewers and analysts are urging consumers in India to hold their iPad purchases until iPad 2 is unveiled. My response to them: don't bother, guys. They wouldn't buy iPad 1. They wouldn't buy iPad 2.
Apple Computer has always regarded the Indian market as the boondocks, keeping its presence in the country very limited and launching many of its products late into the country's ultra price-sensitive market. The most recent example: the iPad, which was launched here almost 10 months after its US debut.
Not that the company is entirely wrong in its thinking. Only 10 million PCs are estimated to be sold a year in a country of 1.1 billion – whereas this figure is over 70 million for US, whose population is about 300 million.
But that's only the macro picture. When you look at the details of how and why most consumers buy computing devices in India, the case for a product like the iPad becomes clear. Whether it's a desktop, a laptop, netbook, or, ahem, a tablet, Indians go shopping for computers mainly for two reasons: office work or children's education. And the majority of them look for the cheapest options on the market.
So when you drill down to the lowly category of tablet computers, all the thrill and whistles are confined to a few thousand people – including geeks, aficionados, analysts and media. They may chorus excitement and wonder in an echo of the US market, but the realities in India are totally different. But even they would prefer a sleek notebook (even netbook) or go for a smartphone rather than loosen their purse strings for something that is neither a full-fledged computer nor a handy smartphone.
Consider this. When a product like the iPad is launched in the mature and advanced markets like the US or Japan, people queue up outside hundreds of retail stores even before the doors open. Here in India, if you go to a handful of Apple stores that exist (only in the big metros), they mostly maintain a bare, clean look. And the few curious visitors who do enter the stores come out rather quickly, usually empty-handed.
So the iPad might have sold in millions in USA and Japan, in India the sales number over the next one year is bound to be in single-digit thousands or even just a few hundreds. Some market estimates put the total number of iPads in the hands of Indians thus far - including gray market sales, online purchases and those brought from abroad – at 40,000. But even this number seems suspect on the higher side.
One might argue that the starting price tag of about Rs28,000 isn't that high. (To give you an idea of the priciness of Apple products, an entry-level Mac starts around Rs60,000 whereas one can get a high-end custom-built or branded PC for less than Rs40,000. The iPad range is priced up to Rs45,000 in three versions.)
However, for a product like the iPad – and there's a debate about what animal exactly the iPad is – it is not just the price that will act as a stumbling block. There just isn't enough traction for it in India.
In developed countries where iPads are selling like crazy, consumers are used to a rich online web experience. This includes putting up lots of pictures and videos online, listening to music and podcasts, even reading books and periodicals (remember Kindle?). There's a large consumer base and widespread and easy availability of high-speed connectivity, applications and quality content.
India, in contrast, is a country where all this enabling infrastructure is missing. We are still arguing about 2G licensing irregularities while the world is moving on to 4G. Here, the average time spent online is among the lowest. And the 30-million-odd Internet users who do go online mostly surf job sites, buy travel tickets or send/receive emails. A few thousand do hang around on Facebook, Orkut or LinkedIn, but so what? They just hang around most of the time.
None of these constituents of the Indian cyberworld would need an iPad. Not in the short term at least.
Some reviewers and analysts are urging consumers in India to hold their iPad purchases until iPad 2 is unveiled. My response to them: don't bother, guys. They wouldn't buy iPad 1. They wouldn't buy iPad 2.
Monday, January 24, 2011
Why Reading Your Horoscope Doesn't Help
Okay, first the facts: millions of people around the world spend a fortune on knowing about their future. And what they spend is not just money but invaluable time when they read predictions of all kinds in a variety of media.
But do they get their money and time's worth when they rely on a motley bunch of people who know zilch about them? Palmists, numerologists, tarot readers, and others who use all sorts of animals from parrots to Pomeranians. Can there be some truth in what they churn out?
If you really ask me, horoscopes suck. Especially the daily horoscopes appearing in newspapers, magazines and websites. And they suck big time. Here's why.
If you look carefully, most predictions are vague and based on common sense. They could have come from anyone with half a brain. Sample this prophecy I picked from a popular website: “Your curiosity is running on high, and you just won’t stand for anything less than the entire truth, no matter what question you ask. Your antennae will tell you whether it’s an honest answer.”
Well, my antennae tell me that not many people would admit that they'll “stand for less than the entire truth.” Needless to say, such a cloudy bit of mumbo jumbo would put me off rather than bolster my confidence – and boosting their self-assurance is what many horoscope readers look for.
Here’s another specimen from the Sunday edition of a paper: “You suffer a great deal because of others’ wrongdoing. Maybe it’s time you stopped others from taking you for granted. Just be more assertive and you’ll find all the happiness you deserve.”
Wow! Reading these lines, our bleary-eyed reader is sure to scream with self-pitying joy: “I told you so. See, it’s all their fault!” The advice may not turn our feeble fella into a bold brat, but it can perhaps make them feel a bit over the top.
Again, I'm not sure of the usefulness of the proffered suggestion. Tell me honestly, who benefits from being over-emotional in this day and age?
Wait, there’s more stuff coming up. This one was buried inside an old stack of newspapers. And it caught my eye when I was looking for something else. (Isn’t that how you find anything these days?)
It goes like this: “Your stars are shining bright and mighty. Just the perfect time to make that critical move you have been waiting for all your life. Lucky numbers 1, 3 and 7; favorable colors Blue and Orange.”
Oh, really? You mean, if I wear a blue shirt to office today, I can tell my boss to take a walk? Or if I pick a lottery ticket with these three digits in it, I’ll become an instant millionaire? Aw, c'mon dude, stop kidding me. If it were that simple, we would all be enjoying pina coladas on a sunny beach doing nothing but reading horoscopes.
Now, tell me, do you still want to know what the stars say about you?
But do they get their money and time's worth when they rely on a motley bunch of people who know zilch about them? Palmists, numerologists, tarot readers, and others who use all sorts of animals from parrots to Pomeranians. Can there be some truth in what they churn out?
If you really ask me, horoscopes suck. Especially the daily horoscopes appearing in newspapers, magazines and websites. And they suck big time. Here's why.
If you look carefully, most predictions are vague and based on common sense. They could have come from anyone with half a brain. Sample this prophecy I picked from a popular website: “Your curiosity is running on high, and you just won’t stand for anything less than the entire truth, no matter what question you ask. Your antennae will tell you whether it’s an honest answer.”
Well, my antennae tell me that not many people would admit that they'll “stand for less than the entire truth.” Needless to say, such a cloudy bit of mumbo jumbo would put me off rather than bolster my confidence – and boosting their self-assurance is what many horoscope readers look for.
Here’s another specimen from the Sunday edition of a paper: “You suffer a great deal because of others’ wrongdoing. Maybe it’s time you stopped others from taking you for granted. Just be more assertive and you’ll find all the happiness you deserve.”
Wow! Reading these lines, our bleary-eyed reader is sure to scream with self-pitying joy: “I told you so. See, it’s all their fault!” The advice may not turn our feeble fella into a bold brat, but it can perhaps make them feel a bit over the top.
Again, I'm not sure of the usefulness of the proffered suggestion. Tell me honestly, who benefits from being over-emotional in this day and age?
Wait, there’s more stuff coming up. This one was buried inside an old stack of newspapers. And it caught my eye when I was looking for something else. (Isn’t that how you find anything these days?)
It goes like this: “Your stars are shining bright and mighty. Just the perfect time to make that critical move you have been waiting for all your life. Lucky numbers 1, 3 and 7; favorable colors Blue and Orange.”
Oh, really? You mean, if I wear a blue shirt to office today, I can tell my boss to take a walk? Or if I pick a lottery ticket with these three digits in it, I’ll become an instant millionaire? Aw, c'mon dude, stop kidding me. If it were that simple, we would all be enjoying pina coladas on a sunny beach doing nothing but reading horoscopes.
Now, tell me, do you still want to know what the stars say about you?
Sunday, January 16, 2011
Why Companies Like Infosys Consistently Fail
Far from making it a software superpower, Indian technology firms seem to be struggling to remain relevant in the global market. The financial results of Infosys are just one indication. Here's why.
Once again, the financial results of the so-called Indian tech bellwether Infosys have disappointed – but there are much bigger concerns for its future.
In its recently declared results for the third quarter of 2010, Infosys made net income of $397 million on revenues of $1.58 billion for Q3 2010. This represents a year-on-year (YOY) growth of 28.7% in revenues and 18.9% in net income.
Despite growth in the numbers, shares of the company fell on both Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) and National Stock Exchange (NSE) on the news, mainly because analysts expected still better numbers. The company's less-than-encouraging future outlook did little to help matters.
This is a story that keeps repeating in the media – with slight variations – each quarter when the big daddies of Indian tech industry (TCS, Infosys, Wipro, HCL and a couple others) declare financial results.
In most cases, analyst expectations are either barely met or missed by single-digit percentage points. Likewise, the stock of the company goes up or down a little – sometimes taking the BSE Sensex (sensitive index) down as well.
While this little see-saw of results keeps anaylsts and media busy, few are asking the bigger questions that face the future of Indian software industry as a whole. How long can the likes of Infosys, TCS and Wipro grow linearly on the basis of hiring more code-writers?
Can they make the next big leap from $4-5 billion companies they are today to $50 billion or $100 billion global corporations in the foreseeable future?
Can they rise significantly above their current minuscule share of 0.6% in the nearly $780 billion worldwide tech services market?
And most importantly, can their existing business models remain relevant in a world where sea changes are happening in the way consumers buy products, including software and applications? (Think of the app stores for anything from iPhones and iPads to Android-based smartphones.)
For decades, companies like Infosys have spawned an army of low-level software programmers, plunging them into projects for maintaining applications, providing technical support, managing systems, etc. Such work usually comes from big global corporations in various industry segments, who bought expensive hardware and software from companies that had the intellectual property (IBM, Oracle, SAP et al) and then began seeking cost reduction in maintaining or upgrading these systems.
Indian firms like Infosys, TCS, Wipro, HCL and multinationals such as IBM and Accenture have been competing to get these tech projects, with Indian companies usually quoting lower and lower prices they charge clients on an hourly basis (now with large developer bases in India, MNCs can do that, too). Already, such rates seem to have hit rock bottom (around $10-15 per hour) and many Indian firms have increasingly focused on BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) for additional growth.
But again with BPO, the business model has been 'more bodies on the job for more projects'. And even in BPO, there has been a race to the bottom as far as pricing is concerned.
This is not the first time Indian firms are being criticized for their lack of vision and daring. But they have responded to such criticim with intermittent, half-hearted attempts like trying to 'move up the value chain in consulting' and developing or monetizing branded products. And they have consistently failed in achieving any speakable amount of success in anything other than hiring more people or spreading into more locations.
To be fair, Indian tech industry has given a new recognition to the country of snake charmers and roadside bovinity. But its success has been only modest, to be polite. While many in the industry and media gave India the moniker of a 'software superpower', advanced economies such as US, Germany and Japan have tech behemoths whose turnover still far exceeds the scrapings of the whole Indian tech industry.
So, it is this failure to grow beyond their existing business models and become world-class global corporations that should be more worrying for Indian technology firms than short-term needs to meet analyst expectations. Unfortunately, keeping shareholders happy and stock price afloat is where they spend their time and energy – instead of developing something that creates higher and lasting value.
It is well known that most top tech companies in India are awash with funds and have ample human resources (the biggies employ 100,000-plus people). But they like to keep the cash in banks or use it for things like hedging on currency fluctuations. Likewise, they keep their armies of techies happy with flashy campuses and infrastructure. But they do little to ingite any sparks of creativity in their people so that they could come up with the next Facebook or Zynga.
As I said before, that's where the likes of Infosys have consistently failed.
How long can they keep failing like this?
Once again, the financial results of the so-called Indian tech bellwether Infosys have disappointed – but there are much bigger concerns for its future.
In its recently declared results for the third quarter of 2010, Infosys made net income of $397 million on revenues of $1.58 billion for Q3 2010. This represents a year-on-year (YOY) growth of 28.7% in revenues and 18.9% in net income.
Despite growth in the numbers, shares of the company fell on both Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) and National Stock Exchange (NSE) on the news, mainly because analysts expected still better numbers. The company's less-than-encouraging future outlook did little to help matters.
This is a story that keeps repeating in the media – with slight variations – each quarter when the big daddies of Indian tech industry (TCS, Infosys, Wipro, HCL and a couple others) declare financial results.
In most cases, analyst expectations are either barely met or missed by single-digit percentage points. Likewise, the stock of the company goes up or down a little – sometimes taking the BSE Sensex (sensitive index) down as well.
While this little see-saw of results keeps anaylsts and media busy, few are asking the bigger questions that face the future of Indian software industry as a whole. How long can the likes of Infosys, TCS and Wipro grow linearly on the basis of hiring more code-writers?
Can they make the next big leap from $4-5 billion companies they are today to $50 billion or $100 billion global corporations in the foreseeable future?
Can they rise significantly above their current minuscule share of 0.6% in the nearly $780 billion worldwide tech services market?
And most importantly, can their existing business models remain relevant in a world where sea changes are happening in the way consumers buy products, including software and applications? (Think of the app stores for anything from iPhones and iPads to Android-based smartphones.)
For decades, companies like Infosys have spawned an army of low-level software programmers, plunging them into projects for maintaining applications, providing technical support, managing systems, etc. Such work usually comes from big global corporations in various industry segments, who bought expensive hardware and software from companies that had the intellectual property (IBM, Oracle, SAP et al) and then began seeking cost reduction in maintaining or upgrading these systems.
Indian firms like Infosys, TCS, Wipro, HCL and multinationals such as IBM and Accenture have been competing to get these tech projects, with Indian companies usually quoting lower and lower prices they charge clients on an hourly basis (now with large developer bases in India, MNCs can do that, too). Already, such rates seem to have hit rock bottom (around $10-15 per hour) and many Indian firms have increasingly focused on BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) for additional growth.
But again with BPO, the business model has been 'more bodies on the job for more projects'. And even in BPO, there has been a race to the bottom as far as pricing is concerned.
This is not the first time Indian firms are being criticized for their lack of vision and daring. But they have responded to such criticim with intermittent, half-hearted attempts like trying to 'move up the value chain in consulting' and developing or monetizing branded products. And they have consistently failed in achieving any speakable amount of success in anything other than hiring more people or spreading into more locations.
To be fair, Indian tech industry has given a new recognition to the country of snake charmers and roadside bovinity. But its success has been only modest, to be polite. While many in the industry and media gave India the moniker of a 'software superpower', advanced economies such as US, Germany and Japan have tech behemoths whose turnover still far exceeds the scrapings of the whole Indian tech industry.
So, it is this failure to grow beyond their existing business models and become world-class global corporations that should be more worrying for Indian technology firms than short-term needs to meet analyst expectations. Unfortunately, keeping shareholders happy and stock price afloat is where they spend their time and energy – instead of developing something that creates higher and lasting value.
It is well known that most top tech companies in India are awash with funds and have ample human resources (the biggies employ 100,000-plus people). But they like to keep the cash in banks or use it for things like hedging on currency fluctuations. Likewise, they keep their armies of techies happy with flashy campuses and infrastructure. But they do little to ingite any sparks of creativity in their people so that they could come up with the next Facebook or Zynga.
As I said before, that's where the likes of Infosys have consistently failed.
How long can they keep failing like this?
Saturday, January 1, 2011
Happening New Yeahhh
Time did not exist, but we invented it. We sliced and diced it as we wanted, adding a week here or a month there, to suit the calendar of our life.
It's curious that at the end of each year – not month, week, or day – we engage in a wishing war. Shooting off last minute SMSes or making turn-of-the-midnight phone calls in order to perch ourselves in the moments between the passing of the last year and the emergence of the new. Goodbye Old. Hello New.
I, too, do all of that. But I also like to take the opportunity that comes at the end of 365 days (sometimes after 366 days, for the mathematically minded) to turn my gaze inward. To think back, to reflect, to pause for a moment at the absurdities and profundities that went through the cauldron of my mind.
And if people share all those goodie goodie wishes, why not spill out some thoughts that indeed make us who we are? And that prod us to become what we want to be?
Please feel free to share anything you like or dislike below. Just don't forget to attribute the quote to me :)
Best wishes, then. Here you go:
Time flies
But tomorrow never dies;
It merely frolics in the lap of eternity,
Unfettered in the boundless skies...
* So many of us want to live the good life. But so few are willing to do good.
* Looking at the mess around us, we can now divide society into just one class - the Muddle Class.
* To avoid the coma of its aroma, give a bigger pause; use semi-cologne!
* The mere thought of children puts a smile on my face, a song in my heart and a supreme sense of blessedness in my soul.
* Being lost in time is often the only way to find our space.
* We often forget that being connected is more about listening than talking.
* For the rich the world is not enough; the poor don't know what is enough.
##
The child inside man never dies;
Only, more and more silent grow her cries
Of joy, of pain, of wonders infinite...
Ah, won't we be child again if time'd permit?
##
* We keep thinking of doing so much, without even taking the first step; all the same, we keep doing stuff we barely pause to think about. This mismatch between thoughts and actions is one of the key disconnects in the world today, isn't it?
* Life = death = life. . . Death is an interregnum; life, a continuum
* Inside God's mind at each apocalyptic moment: Aw shucks! I got it wrong once more. Now I have to start all over again. . .
* To cry sincerely is as important as to laugh freely. Perhaps more...
* In India you don't Do the Dew, you don't Do the New – you only Do the Queue...long, long queue.
* Difference between vampires and politicians? Vampires stop sucking after the victim is dead.
* For some dull people there's never a bulb moment.
* If God did play dice and won, would it be by chance?
* Kindness of the heart is in direct proportion to broadness of the mind.
* Truth can have many versions but it has only one character.
* I'm necessary but not sufficient: if I were not necessary, I'd not have been born; and if I were sufficient, I'd have been dead.
* We can wander much farther in our mind than we can in the physical universe.
* Man tends to be absent-minder; God, absent-bodied.
* Potential is not what you can do as a matter of routine; it is what you can achieve at the extreme edge of your abilities.
* Part of a writer's job is to reflect the true image of society. And do it with as little distortion as possible.
* The problem is neither with us nor with the world; it's always with the relationship between the two.
* Understanding comes with Dime – lots ov 'em! (with undue apologies to Time magazine)
* Too many meetings makes it discuss-ting!
* Flyovers in Delhi seem to have become Cryovers!
* It is not the truth that is ugly; it is our reluctance to face it.
* “Kentucky!” Cried Chicken. Or so it seemed. What the bird actually shouted before it was killed: “Can't-Take-It!”
* As long as there's possibility that the poorest man alive can be happier than the richest one kicking, there is hope.
* What do you call a complete ass? The Ass Whole.
* Not a fable: The Thirsty Grow.
* It is irrelevant whether the world was built bit by bit or all at once; the main thing is, it was built.
-0-
It's curious that at the end of each year – not month, week, or day – we engage in a wishing war. Shooting off last minute SMSes or making turn-of-the-midnight phone calls in order to perch ourselves in the moments between the passing of the last year and the emergence of the new. Goodbye Old. Hello New.
I, too, do all of that. But I also like to take the opportunity that comes at the end of 365 days (sometimes after 366 days, for the mathematically minded) to turn my gaze inward. To think back, to reflect, to pause for a moment at the absurdities and profundities that went through the cauldron of my mind.
And if people share all those goodie goodie wishes, why not spill out some thoughts that indeed make us who we are? And that prod us to become what we want to be?
Please feel free to share anything you like or dislike below. Just don't forget to attribute the quote to me :)
Best wishes, then. Here you go:
Time flies
But tomorrow never dies;
It merely frolics in the lap of eternity,
Unfettered in the boundless skies...
* So many of us want to live the good life. But so few are willing to do good.
* Looking at the mess around us, we can now divide society into just one class - the Muddle Class.
* To avoid the coma of its aroma, give a bigger pause; use semi-cologne!
* The mere thought of children puts a smile on my face, a song in my heart and a supreme sense of blessedness in my soul.
* Being lost in time is often the only way to find our space.
* We often forget that being connected is more about listening than talking.
* For the rich the world is not enough; the poor don't know what is enough.
##
The child inside man never dies;
Only, more and more silent grow her cries
Of joy, of pain, of wonders infinite...
Ah, won't we be child again if time'd permit?
##
* We keep thinking of doing so much, without even taking the first step; all the same, we keep doing stuff we barely pause to think about. This mismatch between thoughts and actions is one of the key disconnects in the world today, isn't it?
* Life = death = life. . . Death is an interregnum; life, a continuum
* Inside God's mind at each apocalyptic moment: Aw shucks! I got it wrong once more. Now I have to start all over again. . .
* To cry sincerely is as important as to laugh freely. Perhaps more...
* In India you don't Do the Dew, you don't Do the New – you only Do the Queue...long, long queue.
* Difference between vampires and politicians? Vampires stop sucking after the victim is dead.
* For some dull people there's never a bulb moment.
* If God did play dice and won, would it be by chance?
* Kindness of the heart is in direct proportion to broadness of the mind.
* Truth can have many versions but it has only one character.
* I'm necessary but not sufficient: if I were not necessary, I'd not have been born; and if I were sufficient, I'd have been dead.
* We can wander much farther in our mind than we can in the physical universe.
* Man tends to be absent-minder; God, absent-bodied.
* Potential is not what you can do as a matter of routine; it is what you can achieve at the extreme edge of your abilities.
* Part of a writer's job is to reflect the true image of society. And do it with as little distortion as possible.
* The problem is neither with us nor with the world; it's always with the relationship between the two.
* Understanding comes with Dime – lots ov 'em! (with undue apologies to Time magazine)
* Too many meetings makes it discuss-ting!
* Flyovers in Delhi seem to have become Cryovers!
* It is not the truth that is ugly; it is our reluctance to face it.
* “Kentucky!” Cried Chicken. Or so it seemed. What the bird actually shouted before it was killed: “Can't-Take-It!”
* As long as there's possibility that the poorest man alive can be happier than the richest one kicking, there is hope.
* What do you call a complete ass? The Ass Whole.
* Not a fable: The Thirsty Grow.
* It is irrelevant whether the world was built bit by bit or all at once; the main thing is, it was built.
-0-
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