The prophecy called Mind

The prophecy called Mind

After a long time I return to blogging with the inspiration coming from the most complex yet researched part of human body. For those who assumed I am talking about the brain.. Sorry I am not. I am talking about the Human Mind. I am motivated to write about the mind due to few thoughts, which have been flowing through my mind and how my mind has been processing it.

Every human mind is trained by self and surrounding, to process information less from self but more from surrounding in its own speed. Sometimes the mind is preoccupied with this processing and it tends to totally ignore things happening around. This is a safe state. And sometimes when there is a constant flood of thoughts, and the mind is constantly trying to increase its processing capacity, there is a state of turbulence. In software terminology we sometimes refer to this as deadlock.

This turbulence can however affect only active and aggressive thinkers. And there are very few who deploy their minds with such focus. And whenever the mind is turbulent it tends to form faster judgments and conclusions. And what comes out from our mouth after all those judgments is very tough to be perceived correctly by the listener. After all you cannot expect the same processing speeds in every RAM (Random access memory) !!

So where and what is the remedy for such critical situations we are forced into?

Whenever there is a rush of thoughts its better we postpone judgments. And if the situation does demand a quick judgment, we rather sit in solitude and decide a temporary solution which could address the imminent problem, and think about what’s to come after some time when the turbulence settles and the wave has receded :)

The next thing I was to briefly write about is the power of influence. The mind is a very smart creation and it very smartly embraces people, which is in its prime area of influence. But after an age the mind is dominated by one of the internal processes inside it and this process is called EGO. This process which is dormant in young age starts to take proportions as we age. And it is important to take that whip and goad (or) rather < –stop> this process when and where we feel it disturbs our integrity. And those to lack the skill to take that whip often end up as bad decision makers or, at least cannot make a win-win decision making.

This is just the part-1 of my writing admiring the Human Mind. I wish to at least write 25 of such blog’s tracking each of the emotions I encounter (both inside and outside) and see how excellently the mind does exception handling J. Thanks for your time and Keep thinking :)

Heads on!

Heads on!
I recently had a chance to listen to a presentation where a Foreigner shared his experiences of visiting India. He is someone who had been here for more than a year and his experiences are hence genuine, measured and matured!

As he started, he not surprisingly expressed all the problems of traffic, garbage collection (or in fact garbage stagnation) , communication problems, commuting etc.. etc..

But what struk me was his small quote about poverty and more so about beggars. He was telling his audience that India has deep-rooted poverty problems and many resort to the easy way of begging for a living. But he advised and followed the approach of not giving money to beggars. He said that he felt giving money to beggars was just solving the problem temporarily for them. He rather said to the audience that money should be given to NGO’s and other social service organizations that can bring about a transformation and in effect solve the problem for a long term. This is no new thought, but this made me think about something that might irritate many of my readers but I still want to write it down.

How different that these beggars from the thousands of so called NRI’s who leave this country for their own convenience. They fail to face the problems heads on here and resort to going to a developed country and living a cozy life. Most of the Indians leave this country for the so-called education facilities available in the US or elsewhere in the world. Interestingly many of the Americans travel to India these days for pursuing education in the IIM’s, IIT’s or to the medical colleges in India. The reason is two fold. Some of them come for genuine meritorious experience, while some come because education is costly in their country. Either way they wouldn’t come to spend in a worthless education.

Migration: I see this only as escapism. Many people don’t want to adjust to the environment they were born in and since emigration is an easy option with not many surprises at its destiny, they take the easy route, just like beggars in India who think to beg is easy and you don’t have any surprises. Sometime back I read that beggars in Bombay live like any other middle class family!!

As I turn to the other side of the coin or loonies :) , The immigrant countries aren’t idiots too. They are all high inflation economies and they want you to spend your productive years in their country. After all you earn for their economy and they let you spend in your economy. In return you get to experience the life of a middle class guy in their economy!! , which is rich class in Indian standards. And once your productive years end you realize that it’s too costly and unreal to spend your old age there and you quickly resort to get back to your home country.

Think about it. I admit I am not writing anything new. But I am certainly not a person who hates the western society or the western economy. I admire them, but just wanted to indict on the temporary pleasure people, who migrate from India falsely and seemingly enjoy!

Hurray I am not a beggar :).

Handling Criticisms ...

For all possible reasons ,I don’t want my blog to be containing Management lessons. However I thought this topic is more relevant to the present world in all phases of life. So Here we go…

As people are becoming more and more communicative and expressive there is a thought pattern that gets associated with people uniformly. To be more precise, a person who is interested in philosophy has a particular verbatim. A person who is a communist has his own way of forming and expressing his opinion, and So on… Now move this paragraph to your cache memory and read On..

As the world is shrinking we are getting exposed to various cultures, communities and reactions. For example during a day we see the same news happening in some part of the world in SunTV, BBC,NDTV,Fox,CNBC and what not… Not only is there a verbal difference but there is also a difference in the way the news is presented. I have the same request.. move this paragraph to your cache memory and read On..

As this ambit of communication is wide and narrow :), there is bound to be a lot of criticisms associated with every situation we handle, day in and day out. I have observed that there is very little response time these days. Whenever there is a criticism it’s handled almost instantaneously. The reaction time being so less, can also be stopping the individual from thinking what he is saying and to whom he is saying. After all words once said are said. You cannot take them back!

I am referring to those marriage’s which end in divorce in few months. I am referring to the job that we all quit just a month after joining. I am referring to the contracts that get closed with our customers because of few minutes of debate. I am talking about the friendship that takes few moments to break, but which shaped up along years.

And I am sure each one of us have been part of such incidents and must agree that all of us over-reacted in such situations. The fact that we nod our head when we agree to have over reacted sums it all up. We didn’t analyse and react, to the criticism that we were subjected to. To a great extent all this is caused by our ego which takes control of our mind and makes us do things in a hurried fashion. To be frank it requires a very matured thought process to analyse things on the fly, and react to people around us. And the ones who do are called philosophers!!

Personally when I am confronted with such situations, I like to step out of it from stopping myself from reacting to it. So I am not a philosopher :) .I either say a sorry and make the person feel guilty, or just walk out of the tepid situation speechless. Because there will definitely be a time when the person who criticized you would feel guilty about it and come to you and seek your opinions. I am ruthless during that time. Because he has come to hear to you, and you should express all that you felt. In that way you don’t hide all your emotions. This may take you out of depression.

My quota of one MS Word page has ended.. Will continue writing about this some time later.

Until then keep thinking and Happy reading!

What drives a Boom…?

I was just thinking about what’s in a boom. What drives it? And what brings a downfall. And why I got this thought suddenly? Because for the first time in my life I today came across a company laying off people. So I thought I would better discuss and explore what keeps the giant wheel going round and round, up and down :)

Read this…

Sam Walton said,

“There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else”

But drilling a little down everyone is a customer and each of us work in this viscous circle to keep the circle a perfect one ,ensuring the circle has no open ends! Not making sense??… I will explain it with a example.

In India we work in a services oriented fashion. Lets for the sake of it assume Iam a engineer working for a client Nokia. Now I work only to please my client and make him happy. I ensure I deliver my part of the product best.Nokia does his part of it ,integrates them and makes sure he sells his mobile to make his customer happy. And who is this customer? .The so called End Customer/Consumer? ..It happens to be me, you or someone else. And the money nokia earns it shares with me indirectly because I am paid indirectly by him.

Now there are two things. One, economies/companies grow only by sharing wealth and two, the consumer needs to spend, for the money to percolate. Only then the wealth flows and at some point flows back to us.

If you read the above paragraph again you will realise that these are the two things USA does excellently well.

And what is this viscous circle I am talking about should already be clear to you. It’s a binocular view of Demand – supply theory. Only if the supply is matched, and matched with the demand the product would sustain in the economy. If for some reason the demand becomes less the loop is broken. To be precise if the consumer is not in a position to afford the product or the product is not meeting consumer’s expectation then, the company/economy/product will become obsolete.

And now you know who drives the boom? Its you and me!!. :)

Having talked about spending/sharing wealth, to sustain the boom for our selfishness, :) in my next blog I will write about Saving!!!

Till then Happy reading…

On-sight!!

Oh ya!!, the long pending onsite trip of mine finally happened and I think the excitement of being in the new culture and seeing a developed economy kept me occupied for the first two weeks. But finally, I sat down to write, trying to do some justice to the blog I started.

This onsite had more been a path to understand the intricate advantages and disadvantages of being in a new culture like Canada or USA, so far. As the cliché goes So far So good!!. Canada is no different from USA Iam told. So i would tend to generalise as i keep writing.

For the last two weeks, I have been sighting far many things which I am still not able to digest. I came with impressions that my visit to Canada wouldn’t take me to big surprises and all my analysis about moving out of India would stand vindicated. Since I have two sisters in US and my parents have visited USA 3 times I know pretty much well about these countries. But after i have been here, so many opine’s of mine have been proved just a myth!!!

Over the past two weeks I had done some unique things which I might have not and never experienced in India. These are the obvious nice things about Canada and USA.Let me list them down…

Number One, I interacted with people from all geographies of the world. Canadian,American,Chinese,Japanese,Syrian,African,European,Russian and of course Indians.

And one uniform observation from all of them is their deep sense of timing while they converse. They mix up their fluency of English with both wit and substance and keep us thinking throughout their talk. Yes, at times they do talk non-sense but they do it in such a way that you will get out of thinking about the emptiness of their talk sooner.

Number Two , Another striking thing I have noticed is the discipline people follow in anything and everything. One of the toughest part for me is to follow the protocol while walking. It’s opposite to India both in the roads and for pedestrians. And if you walk on the left of the corridor while going south to north they look at you with disgust. And its people who are most respected on roads,then cyclist,then motorists and then follow all heavy vehicles. Directly opposite to India :).

Number three, is the variety of immigrants who have come here and settled but still respect and follow the protocols set by local Canadian government. When I was in Toronto I was told that Toronto has the largest immigrant population in the world. More than 60% of Toronto people are not Canadians!! What I immediately tend to admire is the way they have all adjusted to the system and become a part of it. Why I quote Toronto is because Toronto constitutes more than 40% of Canada’s GDP!!. In India Indians from Karnataka don’t like Indians from TamilNadu. But here people from all over the world just stay without inhibitions. They do have some differences of opinions but they keep it away from influencing others.

Number four, which is the most strking thing for me is, there is not much importance given to politics and Religion here. People don’t discuss day to day politics as seriously as they do in India. They respect and trust their leaders. Religion is of not much significance here. Many of them are not even particular to go to church and also not interested to take their children to churches. And I don’t have to say anything about India here :) .

Number five, I will end with this :) . Life as if it is day to day, is so easy here. The system has been automated to a large extent and there are hardly any failures in them. I am talking right from the morning when a municipal garbage system cleans up the city using their machines, or the microwave oven’s that heat food instantly, or the doors that lock automatically and track intruders through cameras, or the Wifi internet that’s hooked up everywhere. And once you start to office there are these GPS enabled buses which are tracked and also they are climate controlled. You go to office and find all find of devices right from the machine that gives you snacks and drinks by dropping dollars, or the cup washer that cleans up your cups. You come back from work and drop in your clothes in a washing machine that cleans then up in minutes and then you switch on your TV which works on a triple play through the cable modem!!!. As I said life is very very easy and convenient here…

Hang on… Are you wondering that this guy has turned Canadian? I am not. This week’s article as I aspired would just be to share my so called excitation. I still have my critic dormant inside. I will come out with all those worse parts of being here next week..

Till then, stay tuned and Happy reading!!!

Wallowing unaware!

Recently in a survey a group of people representing various countries of the world were asked, How many liked Japanese people? A few hands rose up. Then how many people liked Chinese people? Slightly higher number of hands went up and finally the crowd was asked, How many liked Indian people? Almost all hands went up. The same crowd was asked, How many liked Indian products? A few hands went up and, How many liked Chinese products, A sizeable number of hands went up and, How many liked Japanese products, Almost all the hands went up.

Yes, I am going to talk about this populist and pluralistic Indian population which has taken the world by surprise. But don’t mistake my tone, to be optimistic or pessimistic. It’s a mix of both :)

India has been a developing economy since 2-3 decades but the true sense of development and its percolation has been felt only recently. Growth by far, for any country is measured in terms of its GDP. And 9-10% growth is not something unseen in the developing economies around the world. But the path by which India has achieved and to some extent maintained the growth is unique. It’s through Services. And the reason I started writing this article was to analyse and assimilate whether a growth that relies heavily on services would be sustainable.

I myself represent the Information Technology sector, a sector that has given huge growth potential and generated employment for a sizeable chunk of individuals. After having worked for more than 2 years, Infact I believe, we were forced to rely on services since we lacked Infrastructure and the expertise to manufacture. And by the time we realised we have to focus on Manufacturing, the Japanese and Chinese became masters, and it was tough competing with them.

I have a very simple parallelism. If somebody wanted to start a textile manufacturing facility in coimbatore or Erode he knows well that he would fail. The focus is heavily on Tirupur and it’s very tough to shift that focus. Tirupur has distinct advantages which are difficult to be offset. Similar it is to shift the focus away from China!

And now I have a statement to make :)

“GDP growth has been directly and indirectly driven by the liquidity, that comes from the FDI that the, services sector has magnetized towards India”

But I have a firm belief that we cannot be wallowing in this boom forever. Because Services don’t have guaranteed returns. If you outsourced a manufacturing contract the chances of you being replaced by someone else is remote, unless you deliver very low quality goods. This is due to the Investment made in Infrastructure and SCM.

But in case of services the only investment is Human brain and it will take hours to cut down a contract. The contract that came to X from Y can as well go to Z. And Z can be a small company in any part of the world other than India. The only motivation would be the cost. If they can create a belief that they can deliver on time, that’s all it takes to do Services business.

I would leave it here and I will continue this article sometime later with few instances which hold a sign of caution for this country and its citizens, who have been wallowing unaware of the fast changing world and the fast changing economics around the world!

Until then Happy learning!!

9,10 and a BIG FAT HEN!

I had decided the topic for this blog last week on the Budget day itself. And yes, the HEN is our Indian economy. Growing at 9% and a gazelle towards 10%.

The expectations much unlike yester years was too much for this year’s budget. And PC ended up with an Ordinary, Lukewarm, Innocuous (As experts called it) budget. For me the only disappointment was not the tax proposals but that, the FM missed an opportunity to launch some exciting development projects. The FDI stands at a staggering 180 billion dollars with no proposals launched in Infrastructure side or even allocations made. I must remind the reader of the Golden Quad project that the NDA launched during the previous rule. This budget which has seen the maximum growth in the economy lacked the grit.

In spite of all the parallelisms we draw with China we lack in making massive investments in Infrastructure like China. The FM is only interested in restructuring the ITI’s which has been receiving funds YOY.

We are the fastest growing economy in the world.

1)We also have a high inflation that’s catching up with our GDP growth.

2)We have the longest rail network in the world. But we have to plan 40-50 to get a rail ticket. (or even more since laloo allowed booking 90 days in advance.

3)We have to give a cushion of 30 minutes for traveling 4-5 kms to office on our roads.

4)We have to plan a week ahead to book a ticket for watching a movie ticket.

5)We have to book tickets a month ahead for traveling to USA/Europe.

6)We have to book a Hotel room 3-4 days ahead for getting accommodation in even 5 star hotels.

The above points are just indicators that we haven’t planned our infrastructure well to match our growth rate, both in economy and in population. And this is where China, has and is, racing past us.

Before closing, I am just going to say what Narayanamurthy said about the Budget “ The FM has missed a great opportunity”!!

Happy reading!

Extra-Marital Weekend!!

Would start this post with two convincing statements….

“If a Social Foreign national film, is dubbed in an Indian language, and still holds a lot of relevance and significance amongst the Indian audience it just means that ,both the cultures match.”

And the statement No.2 is one I heard someone say recently,

“Every other happy family has almost the same reasons for happiness to share, But every unhappy family has reasons unique to their own sufferings”.

After watching one of the subtle romances like Mr. and Mrs. Iyer last weekend, this weekend I watched two movies. A startling coincidence being that, both dealt with Extra-marital relationships. I somehow convinced myself after watching the first, that the culture portrayed was far different from what prevails in India. The movie had a lot of false intimacy portrayed and the desperation the heroine showcased, was not justifiably pluralistic and quite unwarranted. No prizes for guessing , the name of the movie was Murder!

The second was the one I watched in Satyam, yesterday night show. This was a movie based on an English film and yet the concept didn’t look western to me at all. The story is about a female who flirts with married men and takes him for a ride. Takes him to a difficult situation and from there cunningly brings in her own husband to the scene. The husband poses as a stranger and starts to rob the guy of all his money. I didn’t want to narrate the movie but justify(in next few paras) as to why I made two convincing statements right at the beginning. When I said convincing I also wanted to convince you :)

Now I would cite some real life instances I have experienced myself, and one that was told to me by my friend….

One of my close friend lives in US and her husband works for a leading SW company. Her husband is working, for his employer’s client at Onsite. They had a friend who had also come to US through the same channel and for same reasons. This guy was in love with a Girl in US. This girl also happens to be a Indian immigrant into US..This cunning chap had been to India for few weeks and after he returned he was quite hesitant to invite his colleagues to his home. Suspecting some problem 2 months after (this is the frequency at which people meet each other in US), his friends sleuthed into his house, and to their shock they found a girl in his house. After talking to the girl the true story opened up. This guy is in love with a girl in US and when he had been to his village in India he was forced into a marriage, and he married this girl and brought the innocent girl to US and left her stranded inside the house. Just about when the girl could have done something silly, due to the loneliness she was through they found her. When they tried to talk with this guy it didn’t work and when they tried even talking to the girl whom he was in love with, she also refused to give up (American culture already in). Finally without any choice the girl was sent back to India.

Now the second incident where I was myself taken to a toss. I am used to be signed in from office in Yahoo. One such day I received an invite from someone who was already in my list. This person X when I asked told me, that her old id was hacked and this is her new id. She pulled me into a really usual conversation, and got quite some information about me. I was under no clue that I was being fooled by someone. After sometime this person told me that she/he didn’t have any contact id’s since her messenger was hacked and asked me to type in all the friends id’s I had in my messenger. I didn’t develop any suspicion even then! Thank God I was busy and I told her that I would take screenshots of my messenger and send it to her id. She insisted she wanted them immediately, but I was too busy for that job! Now innocently some 2 days later I took screenshot of my messenger and sent it to my friend’s corporate id. Must thank God again for this. This female replied with saying why I was sending screenshots of my messenger. Only then I realised from her that someone was picking all her friends messenger id and getting all information about her. And the database for all this is ORKUT. I was shocked at the cunningness and how intelligently I was victimized.

This blog is already lengthy I would end with this last para. The purpose I posted this blog was 1)to ridicule my optimism about this Indian culture and 2) To warn the readers. The Indian youth is as ogling, as any other youth around the world. I definitely know I can’t change the youth. If I cannot change one of my closest friends, who had been through torrid times because of a girl, and is now behind some other girl, I am quite sure I cannot change this youth of today. But I wanted to warn the society of so many cyber crimes and intelligent , cunning crimes that are creeping into the society these days.

Be Aware and stop ogling!!

Indian World Cup Team- A critical Analysis!!

Before I get into any judgments I want to present the statistics I have collected about the current team selected that will represent India in the coming World Cup at West Indies.

1)Virendar Sehwag

Runs Scored: 4787
Wickets Taken: 71

2)Saurav Ganguly

Runs Scored:10412
Wickets Taken:93

3)Robin Uthappa

Runs Scored::203
Wickets Taken:0

4) Sachin Tendulkar

Runs Scored:14783
Wickets Taken:147

5)Rahul Dravid

Runs Scored:10044
Wickets Taken:4

6) Yuvraj Sigh

Runs Scored:4317
Wickets Taken:42

7)MS Dhoni

Runs Scored:1891
Wickets Taken:0

8)Dinesh Karthik

Runs Scored:145
Wickets Taken:0

9) Ajit Agarkar

Runs Scored:1240
Wickets Taken:270

10)Zaheer Khan

Runs Scored:490
Wickets Taken:170

11) Munaf Patel

Runs Scored:6
Wickets Taken:22

12) S Sreesanth

Runs Scored:7
Wickets Taken:34

13) Irfan Pathan

Runs Scored:1006
Wickets Taken:115

14) Anil Kumble

Runs Scored:938
Wickets Taken:334

15)Harbhajan Singh

Runs Scored:687
Wickets Taken:168

Total of Runs scored by the all the players in the team = 50956
Total of wickets taken by all the players in the team =1470

My Analysis

First Thoughts:

Any Reader who would even after a glance at the figures I have posted above, agree to the fact that this team is the strongest team that comes in to the World Cup.

Pros:

I am sure (although I haven’t analysed other teams stats), that no other team that comes in to this world cup(even in the past) would have a aggregate of 51000 runs being scored by all of its players in ODI’s. I bet it wouldn’t be even close to 40k. And I wouldn’t even agree if someone posted a comment that all these runs came in the subcontinent. Nobody can deny the fact that Sachin, Rahul, Saurav and Sehwag have dominated or at least proved there stature in almost all the countries they have toured around the world. As always the bowling looks a little crippled. But then we have the best spinners in the world. Our two spinners together have 500 wickets. Again I want to challenge this figure against any other team.

Cons:

I will start with the word “Consistency”. This is where, the figures 51000 and 1470 look SMALL.

Batting

Top Order: When Saurav is in form, Sehwag isn’t and the vice-versa.

Top Order: When Dravid is in form, Sachin isn’t and the vice-versa.

Middle Order: When Dinesh karthik is in form Yuvraj isn’t.

Middle order: When Dhoni is in form he is required to play a slow innings since all the above perished :).

Bowling

Top Order: When Zaheer is consistent Sreesanth is not and the vice versa.

Top order: When Ajit agarkar is in form he is denied a team place and when Munaf is in form he

is out of the team as well. Alternatively when Ajit agarkar has lost his touch he is into the team and when Munaf is injured he is the striking bowler. Striking to him means lazy :).

X Order: I didn’t know if Irfan is a top order bowler or a middle order bowler or a batsman or a hitter. Dear reader please help me :)

Spinners: This is were India rocks. Irrespective of the track Indian spinners always bring in wickets. And hardly I have seen Bhajji or kumble give more than 6-7 runs per over even in crunch matches around the world.

Verdict:

On paper as always India has the best team. In batting we have the cushion to ignore the form of players. But in bowling I will want to advocate two spinners for all matches. Sachin or sehwag can add if spinners are exceedingly successful in a game. Zaheer and Ajit agarkar need to be two static seamers and the fifth spot for bowling can be Irfan/Sreesanth/None.

To finish I would say “If Indians cannot win the World Cup with this team they can not win the World cup for another 12 years atleast”.

Final words: Rely on Experience and aim for Consistency.

Celebrating Silence-Part2-The Finale.

As always I had two motivating forces behind sitting down and finishing this blog. One was a movie, Mr. and Mrs. Iyer, I watched yesterday night and other was the excellent thought I read yesterday in Orkut. As the previous one I will start this one, with a thought as well.

“Simplicity of character is the natural result of profound thought”

Simplicity breeds character. Many great people are admired for their simplicity. Simplicity erodes the Ego within the self. Great Saint’s living in this country, start cultivating this trait, and slowly start to realize one by one of the worldly truths and end up believing in nothingness!! A paradox -Realisation leads to nothingness. :)

Money is the source of Egotism. A man feels insecure without money, feels slightly secure with little money, plans for more security with more money, and again starts to feel insecure with more and more money. It’s an interesting circle with no specific radius. The more is the radius the more is the hollowness. The least the radius(dot) the more is the focus.

I remember an article I read about one of the leading Businessman in India. His market capitalization is around 10b$. And for all those who aren’t amazed at this figure, I am talking about an individual born and living in this country and is worth 45000 crore rupees. But his man still doesn’t believe in profligacy. He is one guy who will fit very well in the ambit of this topic “Celebrating silence”. When someone asked him how does he feel when someone quotes he is the Richest Indian? He replied instantly that “It means Nothing”. It means Great or Ordinary only to one who keeps this thought running through his mind Day In Day Out.

Only when someone thinks profoundly he would realise this world and his duties. And to think profoundly you need to simple. You need to shed all your Ego. Of wealth, position etc. Simplicity comes from Maturity, Maturity of thought. Maturity comes from Experience. Experience come by Age, it comes by realization and by shedding your Ego. And age isn’t fixed. Certain people feel matured in their age of 20’s like Swami Vivekananda, certain people feel it after grihastha, like Saint Thiruvaluvar, many people feel it in their 60’s. But sadly few don’t feel it until their death. And what would I say about them? Just that they didn’t shed their Ego. They didn’t grow to become experienced, Matured, Simple and above all Noble.

Thanks for your Time. Remember

"Keep money in the banks and not in your Mind..."

Spurious Inflation

Spurious Inflation

Recently for the past one year there has been a lot of debate about Inflation hitting the economy hard. While it’s been heartening to note that the country’s GDP is growing at 9-10%, inflation is slowly inching towards 6-7%. So effectively it’s not a good symptom of growth. Even naïve economists will accept that a 2-3% difference in GDP and Inflation is not healthy signs. We can to some extent comment that the economy is effectively growing only at 2-3% !!!

To dig a little further I want to get down at basics. Basics meaning essential common man’s understanding of Economic growth. I was born in 1983 and since 2000(When i was 17 and in my first year of engg.) I am aware of what is the economic scene in India.I want to breakdown upon what was the cost of essential commodities in 2000 and what is the cost today….

Food

1)Since 2000 a litre of aavin milk in Chennai, has not gone up by even a single rupee. It remains static at 13 rupees. A period of time when inflation has been around 4-5% on an average Year on Year(YOY). Even private milk is sold at the same price. Means, they are definitely not incurring losses.

2) The cost of a kilo of ponni rice (one of the finest quality of rice) in 2000 was around 15 rupees. The same is now available for 18-20 rupees.

3) The cost of wheat today is 18 rupees per Kg, again a marginal increase over 6 years.

4) Sugar is now costing 22-23 rupees against 15-16 rupees in 2000. Also most of dhall varieties haven’t had substantial price rise.

5) Even today a kilo of tomato is around 10 rupees, a kilo of lady’s finger is 10-15 rupees, a kilo of onion is around 15 rupees. A week’s vegetable cost for a family of four wouldn’t cross 50 rupees(1$) for sure.!!!

Caution: I am talking about a period of 6 years where the economy has had inflation of 4-5 % YOY and hence let the reader not assume I am presenting a biased opinion in the above statements. I am just comparing the prices relative to the inflation and time.

To Sum Up: Almost all the above mentioned food items, are not cost controlled by the government. And neither has there been a scarcity for procuring them by and large over the years.

Clothing

1) Clothing is one sector which has burgeoned both in terms of choice and availability. Cotton is still cheap and plenty in availability with few takers. Polyester rules and today in Chennai you can buy a Men’s formal wear from 500 to 50000 or even more. We are not bothered about 50000. Still at 500-600 you get decent clothes that will satisfy the middle class.

Shelter

1) This is my focus area!. In year 2000 you could get a rented house in suburb for 1000 rupees a month. In the city it was around 2000-2500. Reminder: I am writing everything with a middle class family outlook. Today in 2007 the same house in suburb will cost you 3000 and in city will cost you 10000. A classic 300% increase in suburb and 1000% increase for city. And should I talk about real Estate?? All my readers know the worsening trend. A nice opportunity for me to write a separate article about this.

I will stop here. Till now I wanted to really understand if the inflation has hit the economy hard. For me inflation w.r.t economy hits only the middle class and hence iam writing only about them. The rich class always lived rich. Why bother about them?

I will continue in my next article but I will end the article with few things that have inflated in price enormously over these 6 years. This will perhaps give a cue to what I am driving to when I say “Spurious Inflation”.

What has increased substantially in cost

Cinema tickets in multiplexes, Petrol/Gas, Real Estate, Restaurants, Automobiles, Gold, Swanky Gadgets, to name a few.

Hope my mood is caught :). But I want each of my reader to accept or criticize my views. I will publish my closing blog for this, next week.

Till then Happy Reading. !!!

Think Complicated

Think Complicated

One of my closest friend recently asked me, “What is the most fascinating thing for you about life?” I immediately said it’s the Human thought process. Reasoning out I said “For me the human thought process is the most diverse, innovative, impulsive and hence the most fascinating creation in a human. After all a software engineer will always enjoy only virtual things and not physical/real :).

I thought about writing under this topic after a series of movies I have watched recently. I must say I loved all of them just for the complicated thought process of its maker. I am calling this complicated thought because it’s quite out of common for me. Almost all of us have some thinking patterns oriented towards our fellow men. But only few men stand out, and think bizarre. This, is complicated thought process for me. It’s creative, credible and compulsive.

The films were Page3, Corporate and my ever famous evergreen Kamal haasan’s Anbe Sivam. All the films dealt with one social aspect or the other. But the intricacy of handling was ingenious. I want to express my fascination for each of the films in my subsequent para’s. Meanwhile I want my reader to think about these words in sync with this blog. Complicated, Controversial, unilateral. All these words drive me towards forming one opine which might be correct. The complicated thought process occurs when one challenges a system and tries to portray the system in a negative way, and in the process sow seeds of thought for a tree. This tree can either shower shadow through its branches above the ground or it can also spread its branches under the ground(roots) and destruct the constructions in its neighborhoods. How complicated was that ? :) .

To finish I wanted to express my fascinations at the films. Page 3 was an out and out heroine based movie. Something seen once in a decade in Indian cinemas. A thorough bioscope into the party animals of the high class society and try to hint at their false pretence living. And Corporate, again an madhur bhandarkar movie was hitting at the other upper class, not in society but in the corporate level. The movie was trying to expose the only intention with which corporate’s live, MARGINS!!. They can compromise on anything and everything to ensure their margins are intact and increasing…The third movie is one I have watched for 9th time in succession. A movie which will be among the best movies I have watched in my life time. I will definitely dedicate a separate single blog for anbe sivam when I watch it the next time. Still I wouldn’t be able to express my fullest fascinations for this masterpiece by Kamal. The movie out and out tries to criticize the society that believes that it is God, who does everything and we are just dolls in His puppet show. All along the movie tries to prove a theist wrong and tells him, what is true to him might be false and what is false to him might be true. Communism personified. But Alas not all Communists are Atheist’s :) .

Before I finish this thought struck my mind. Why was such an excellently crafted movie like anbe sivam an utter flop. Was it because it was too complicated for the mass to digest? Or was it because the movie was against the mass feeling of theism? Or as usually said was it because, Kamal or for that matter Lakshmi movie makers weren’t lucky? Luck is a mystical word. More so a divine word :) . Someone who does not believe in God cannot use this word.

Think about this!!! And don’t miss to watch these movies. Thanks for your time. Remember, Think Complicated :).

Celebrating Silence.

Keep money in the banks and not in your Mind..*

Says Sri Sri in his book Celebrating Silence. I am really celebrating silence as I am writing this blog, and more so celebrating Silence in T.Nagar !! I have been reading this book of Sri Sri for some time now. And this is a topic which I wanted to write about since some time, but Sri Sri helped me get a nice intro through his one liner.

How true,*

And how false this world has been transpiring through Ages. Our ancestors never gave value for anything, material. They only valued Humans. Materials were only traded on barter in those days. Only geography of few kms made things precious. For someone in the North Rice was slightly precious and for someone in south rice was in bounty and Wheat was slightly valuable. So equity in stock was maintained through exchange and nothing seemed precious those days. Arguably, how often have we seen our grandparents get weirdly surprised when we said a kilo of rice today costs 25 rupees, a kilo of wheat costs 30 rupees and so on and so forth. That’s purely because those were materials which had no value those days. For that matter even bullion was not valued so high relatively in spite of the demand being high in all times!!

But today it’s not surprisingly, a weird world. Almost everyone values only material possessions and believe anything can be acquired if you have that valuable currency. The currency again related to our needs, is dollars or rupees or euros!

Now let us start sailing in the tributaries :).

I have heard almost everyone say this these days. “I am very absent minded. I forget things in a blip” or “I am just flooded with thoughts and the pressure makes me forget almost everything!”

But how many of us, or those who keep saying any of the above sentences, on the 31st of the month or the 1st of the next month forget to check if our salary has been credited? How many of us in pressure, don’t care to step into that AT M and check if the money is in? and in case it hasn’t call up that banker, call up tom dick and harry and get it sorted out in a jiffy, in spite of not having the need for that money in such urgency? I am sure all of us including me have that urge to ensure that our money is in our account. Interestingly, I have seen so many people out of the ATM on the 1st of a month come to the ATM and take just that account balance statement and walk away smiling!

Honestly you, me or anyone who has a need for Money would have experienced what I wrote above. For someone that money coming in is a few rupees, for someone else it’s a few lakhs and for the third it’s a few crores. But that urge and excitement is almost the same!

Now I want to take this further. For someone who is in that excitement for a few rupees I am sure it’s quite justifiable. After all he can’t live the next day without that but imagine the other two for whom the money is either like water in the well or the water in the ocean. Both are never empty and can never be full!!

Will stop here. This particular article so far, has lesser relevance to what Sri Sri implicitly meant. I would talk about that more. Meanwhile,

Keep Thinking :)

Brutally Frank!

Brutally Frank, is one the most sparkling criticisms I have heard someone say about someone in the recent past. Few minutes before I heard Anu hasan comment on Y.G Mahendra with that one. A nice few hours at work, a nice evening Tea from my grandma, a nice Balaji darshan, a nice Idly Sambhar at Rathna Café, and few nice programs in Vijay TV matched with a fitting Venthaya Mor kozhambu by my MOM for dinner. A very satisfied evening was in fact a worthy motivation to start blogging again after a gap!

Now getting to some serious stuff. It’s been a long time and a much felt gap in writing for me. The reason convincingly being that I had been with my nephew for almost a month. And to justify my laziness, the days I spent with him, I renewed myself with a lot of sumptuous energy. Frankly I never felt a need for creativity and expression while I was with him. I was speaking to him as if I was speaking to my soul, Brutally frank I must say :). Knowing very well that at an age of 1 he wouldn’t understand or even realize what I was talking to him. But both at mind and soul I did a lot of formatting and disk defragmentation of my HDD, my brain!.

I saw a lot of innocence around me in different forms. I wanted to write about them and make my readers think regressively!

Read this,

Innocence is the primary felt evidence of childhood ness. And Innocence for me at childhood is definitely a form of ignorance. If a child sees a dog it doesn’t realize it’s a creature which may bite it, and hence goes and catches its tail. This is in one angle is innocence and indirectly ignorance.

Now as this child grows it grows to realize that a dog may bite it when it holds the Dog with its tail. Hence it goes and gently touches the dog’s body and smiles innocently at its father. This is the transformation of the child’s ignorance to intelligence with the innocence being intact!

Now the child grows further and interacts with the environment. It intuitively thinks and envisages so many instances that happen around it. That’s when the child starts to shed its skin of innocence. The child or now called as a matured individual starts to analyze everything that happens around him/her and develops a syndrome or stigma of thoughts.

Until the innocence was intact the child saw no difference. The world was same for the child who was born to a billionaire and the same to someone who was born to a begger. But once the child shed its innocence or started analysing the interactions outside to him there is a sharp change in his actions..

Hardly we(both as parents and our self) realize that these are the few thoughts that determine our life ahead. After all thought is an interwoven binary of life!

I want to leave it here and want to continue in more detail in my next post! And for those who read until here and thought my first para was quite irrelevant to the post read it again. I have a reason behind annoying you with my satisfaction in life! :)

Unsustainable-Part 2

I picked this topic because I would like to put forward my views on the huge public debt this country(through banks) is forcefully creating. More succinctly, the government no longer needs money from banks and hence the banks are flush with funds. Now the prime role of the banks is to lend to various sectors of the economy and foster growth thereby also ensure that the economy is well insulated and healthy. Now RBI has to make sure the latter is ensured since the banking sector has been well privatized. The banks are not as cautious as the RBI since keeping funds idle is a sin for banks. The government insists that banks lend to the agriculture sector which is limping. Also welcome is lending to real estate sector which will indirectly aid development is so many interdependent industries. But now the banks are lending home loans enormously and what I would call unsustainably in the long run. Lending to agriculture sector always happens forcefully and rarely voluntarily!

The RBI has recently tried to curb risky loans to the commercial real estate sector with indication to banks of a possible threat that looms around home loans too! The repo rate hence has been slightly raised by .25. Dayanidhi maran a few days back had warned the realtors of falsely rising valuations in areas like coimbatore, madurai after Chennai! .

So going forward all these will definitely have impact on the inflation and cause an increase in domestic products. It’s very important that in a Globalised economy falsely hiking prices is prevented in all products so that for the public various essential commodities don’t become too costly. Such situations will drive towards a possible alarm and demand an immediate action from the regulator and perhaps force him to take strict measures. And will possibly induce a passive recession.

After all one might even travel in a highway but will have to slow down when there is an accident that’s happened before him!! :)

Unsustainable

Unsustainable

I want to start this article with information I heard from my father. Few years ago in the pre 90’s India had a considerable shortage for foreign exchange (dollars primarily). During that time people who went to study in US had to get foreign exchange approved by the RBI for them to travel abroad. One such candidate with pretty ordinary academic merits applied for proceeding to study in US and was rejected with reasons being stated that his credentials were far below the acceptable ones and, more so relatively with other candidates. But later this guy managed to politicise the issue and finally did finish his studies and come back to India and is now none other than Mr. Chidambaram himself, the finance minister of India :)

Until the twentieth century the Indian economy operated quiet predictably and to some extent even sluggishly! The government invited savings from people which went to banks and the bank lent to the government, convertible into securities and got a good interest for it as well which it shared with the public. And heights, for some period of time , even the government forced banks to invest a percentage of the savings raised from public in securities. The money was used in capital expenditure and the economy kept following the snail without overtaking it.

But globalisation started changing things, and luckily for India population turned to be an advantage. For two reasons, services industry could operate well here and hence came outsourcing and the other reason was the huge market beckoning. The two ways of taking advantage of people namely, employability and opportunity. Again both are interdependent. The opportunity can be created only when money permeates down the economy and hence increases affordability among the masses.

Now keeping this short period of history in our mind let us analyse Globalised India in the first 6 years of the twenty first century. As more and more services (jobs) started coming in technology started to get more close to people and liquidity also grew. It grew all levels. Every house started buying a TV, Fridge and more ubiquitous was a mobile phone :).

Now in 2006 the same finance minister who faced a forex crunch now has a deluge of forex to manage the economy. The result, there is no dependence on the banks or indirectly the people to save. Saving is seen both by the individual and the government as a sin in a country which once had huge revenue expenditure sizeable portions of which was by paying interest for securities created out of Poepl's savings! Interestingly now liquidity with the people is high and they inevitably keep there money with banks. The reason being (http://syncwithjayaram.blogspot.com/2006/09/rising-salaries-vanishing-workers.html) . The banks now have all time high capital with no borrowers.

I want to temporarily end the article here for two reasons, I don’t like to write lengthy in one go and I want my reader to think. Before ending I want every reader who has reached this point to think what could be the reasoning behind me titling this blog Unsustainable …

Correct guesses will get no prizes, but means the reader is fit to write a blog of his own!

SNIOP

SNIOP

Like many writers I am not going to keep the abbreviation a suspense for long. SNIOP stands for

‘Susceptible to negative influences of people’

I am just recapitulating a training I had attended a year back while @Wipro. The training was all about a video, in which a Man faces a brutal accident. For the doctors in a leading hospital in US his survival seemed impossible, until few days after, he recovers from his coma, and realizes that this was his rebirth. For all the doctors around his survival was a miracle. Even one doctor proclaims that it would have been better had he died, because his life is going to be painful hereon!

This Man could hardly walk,talk,eat,sleep,breathe,move,drink and to sum up he was a dead man alive. But wonder the God’s creation, he could talk to himself. Meaning he could think. He realized from whatever was happening around him that he had a miraculous escape. When the doctor saw tears rolling down his eyes he came up to him and said Be Confident!

This man thought only this. He should not let God down. He believed that God gave him rebirth and he should not waste this attempt of His!

He went on to Motivate himself day in day out. Few days later he could hear and see. And sad for him he could only hear pessimistic things about his state. But that night he decided he would breathe himself. When he communicated this to his Nurse she did not comply and said No to removing the ventilators. When the nurse was asleep he decided he would remove the ventilators himself and he did it! And Goodness me he could breathe. He cried again thanking God and within few days he could talk. He requested the doctor who was stunned to see his recovery to get a wooden plank to be placed at a cupboard which he could always see. The plank would have the word SNIOP imprinted on it. And everyday he would motivate himself by reading that and convert all the negative energy around him into positive ones!

And 8 months after the accident the Man got discharged from the hospital and walked his way into the Car before revealing to the doctor that SNIOP means “Susceptible to the negative influences of people”. I feel every human being on this earth to watch that movie. And what I have written here just transpires 1% of what I had seen. It was such a powerful movie!

I have so many to infer from this story which was one the best motivation movies I have watched.

1) In times of stress its very important one motivates himself. Infact there’s nothing else that can keep us alive. When we fail to develop this trait we end up becoming sadist’s or end up in a suicide.

2) I heard someone say this, definitely not Sidhu :) “The world is not flat, not circular, Its crooked!”. Negative influence is more that nitrogen in the atmosphere. It’s very important we develop a resistance to this. The only way we can do this is to develop positive attitude and in our own little means spread positive energy around us.

3) If you believe you can, you can and you cant, you can’t. In both ways you are right. This seems so often heard. So I don’t want to write more on this!

4) Always trust in God when you believe in anyone around you. After all there is something definitely mysterious in everybody’s birth,life and death. Not everything is under Human conception. If it was there would have definitely been a prototype of a brain developed by now, considering that there is one for almost every organ in our body!

And to end this article of mine on a philosophical note I remember a kabir’s quote I read when I was in my 6th standard of schooling. The translated version of the saying means to say “All of us remember God in times of distress and none of us when we are happy, but those who remember God in times of happiness will never have a phase of distress in life”

Spread the positive energy!

Sagacious Schumi

Sagacious Schumi

I always didn’t want to make my blog an editorial one! For the simple reason that to report what happened, is done extensively by the media and its stupid for me to do it with little inputs. But I just cannot stop writing about what I saw yesterday. I saw attitude. I saw determination to win. To sum it all up I saw what Success means. Success according to me as I have already written about, means Consistency. Being consistent in whatever you do best.

In the arena of sports if ever a game became dull because someone won repeatedly and the game hence became so predictable ,that game is none other than the invigorating Formula One till 2 years back(Both invigorating and dominating only then :)! .To my knowledge the epitome’s of consistency in sports were 4 Men- Sachin, Tiger woods ,Lance Armstrong and the invincible Schumi. Atleast they are the ones I knew and admired.

And I just want to untiringly admire Schumi in this blog for the simple reason that he retired yesterday. Retired with pride and sense of satisfaction. Satisfaction to both his fans and himself.

I just wanted to analyse what was so special about his Man that he made me write so much about him. Considering the fact that I have been watching Formula One only for the past 2 years. The two years when Schumi’s career started to fade! There are lessons to learn from him here..

Lesson No.1 –Never Give up.

In the last race of his life Schumi to all his fans disappointment started 10th in the grid. As he started the race with just two laps completed he raced to 6th position and before I could even believe his agileness he was behind Fisecella and fighting with him for the fifth place. And Man another misfortune he had his tyres burnt and went to his pit before even finishing 5 laps and had a tyre change. I thought he was going to retire from the race but he came out of the pit and believe me he was the last on the grid and heights he was already a close back marker to the race leader Massa. I just felt so bad because I didn’t want him to retire at such a disgrace. I was 100% sure he would have reached the podium had he not burnt his tyres .I switched off my TV set and started browsing on my laptop.

But although my Man was no way expected to get even any points for his constructor I was still tempted to switch On my TV again and see him for one last time driving. And what was I seeing. Schumi was on 8th position and within minutes threateningly close to becoming 6th on the track racing past raikonen on 7th. And there were 17 people on the track by then. Imagine the grit, from 18th to 8th in some 30 laps consedering 5 of them were laps with safety cars on the track and obviously didnt allow any overtaking!. I just felt in the final few laps that this guy shouldn’t retire and should win next years championship! That’s whom you call a Hero. And that’s why Ganguly isn’t called one.

And as the race ended I was so happy and proud because Schumi ended racing past the guy who was the reason behind his first pit shop. Inspite of never being a race leader this guy was fastest on the circuit twice beating his own time!! From 10 to 6 to 18 to 4. I just don’t have words to express this spirit. I just want to salute this Great sportsman. He just dominated the sport and retired with honour.

Lesson No.2- You should know when to retire with honour.

I think it’s very important to have this skill. I have seen so many people who inspite of being very successful in life ended their career with a disgrace simply because they didn’t know when to call it a day. I have two examples that strike me now! No prizes for guessing the first- Ganguly and the second Vajpayee. And this is one reason I want to admire Schumi. Because its so tempting to quit something you were a leader in. After all the more you play the more you earn!

Lesson No.3 – Fight for a comeback.

Be it yesterday’s race or this formula one season, Schumi for me came from no where. Alonso was becoming slowly but surely the next invincible chap. And imagine the Japan Grand prix that might have given Alonso sleepless nights! Taking pole but schumi was so unlucky. I am saying this because a Ferrari Engine failure was history. But it did happen on the penultimate race of the season and Schumi’s career! But salute to the hero who came back strong and made everyone believe this guy still has potential!

And I don’t want to write about my other heroes –Tiger Woods, Sachin and Lance Armstrong. You know why they are called heroes now!

Riding on the boom

Riding on the boom

Pessimism and spiritualism are the most fashionable thought outlooks today. I know this pretty well but the tinge of pessimism and philosophy is very hard to ignore every time I sit down to write!

News No.1

My dear reader,How on earth do you interpret this? A company called Google buys a company called you tube for 7500 crores!!(1.65B$)

You tube is a company that just has a portal with loads of web multimedia content in its database. It’s a company with a mere 67 employees. It’s a company that started with a venture funding of 3.5 million dollars( 161 crores). 7500 crores for 161 crores ? I just have one word for this, ‘Ridiculous’

This is just a show of opulence and an attempt to exploit the confidence and fame Google has with investors.

News No. 2

Tata plans to buy Corus Steel ,at a deal valued at more than 10B$

Now the same question repeated. How on earth do you interpret this? Tata steel is a 3.5B$ company that aims to buy a steel giant valued at more than 15B$.

Corus Steel is an angle-dutch company with 50000 employees and a turnover of Ten billion pounds. Now is the time to remind my readers about the topic. Why I saw this is riding on the boom? Where will Tata get the money for such a mighty acquisition? Tata plans to source money from investors and plans to float a bond for 2B$. And take a loan of 6B$ from Standard Chartered Bank. Again a show of opulence and a showcase of exploiting investor’s liquidity.

That poor fellow was scary of investing in stocks and preferred to open a FD with Standard Chartered Bank. Look where his money eventually goes :) .Philosophy not missed in this article!

Back on track,

I am just striking at some illogical valuations and some illogical acquisitions. Why on earth can’t someone be pessimistic if such deals happen around us. And you have another fashionable word discovered with justifies all these acquisitions. And the word is Consolidation.

Consolidation in one industry that relies heavily on a depleting Natural resource and Consolidation in another industry that relies on Open source data.

Where are we heading. Are the investors being fooled.. Are we riding on a boom that’s gonna become unsustainable because we rode rashly and lost our balance in the process?

Sorry I tried to be neutral but the pessimism seems to peep so very often. I will write more about this!

Beware my dear investors :( .Drive safe and drive with a smile!

America is living beyond its means- Larry Elliot,The Guardian.

I read a excellent article about the fate of US econmy.Posting it below. Read it repeatedly!

America is living beyond its means

China and India will be calling the shots when the US is no longer top dollar

Larry Elliott, economics editor,The Guardian

It's 2056. After a coup in Saudi Arabia, the new government announces it is cutting off supplies of its dwindling stock of oil to the United States. The White House responds by sending in the troops, but is forced to withdraw after Beijing says it will only continue shoring up the dollar if the military action is called off.

Marking the 100th anniversary of Suez, the Americans have no choice but to comply. Fanciful? Ludicrous? Certainly, that would have been the reaction of the traders on Wall Street who last week sent the Dow Jones industrial average to within a whisker of its all-time high. But even if the US can avoid a hard landing in the short term, as equity dealers believe it can, the medium and long-term risks to the economy remain.

Optimism seems to be inspired by falling oil prices and the expectation that the next move in interest rates from the Federal Reserve will be down. It is an optimism not shared by the bond market, which is sending out clear warnings of impending recession. It is possible those who have pushed the Dow back well over 11,000 points have got it right. Many economists believe, however, that the equity market has got it wrong. They can hear the sound of fluttering wings as the chickens come home to roost.

Stephen King, chief economist at HSBC, has downgraded his forecast of US growth next year to 1.9%, and believes that by the end of 2007 the economy will be expanding at only just over 1% a year. That, by US standards, is very slow growth and would certainly lead to a sharp jump in unemployment. The Fed would be cutting rates by this time next year in an attempt to get the economy going again. It may not be that simple. For one thing, the downturn in the housing market looks like it has a lot further to run. Activity and prices may continue falling for another year, and with US consumers already drowning in a sea of debt it's not obvious that they will be prepared to load up on any extra borrowing, whatever the level of interest rates. And the wisdom of curing the hangover from one bubble by another binge has to be questioned.
Consumers have been using their homes like ATMs - borrowing against rising prices - but this cannot go on forever. The US economy needs quite a prolonged period in which consumer spending grows more slowly than the economy: that is the only way that the trade deficit is going to be reduced. There are those who say that the trade deficit is not a problem for the US. They argue that it is perfectly sustainable to run sizeable deficits in perpetuity because the dollar's status as a reserve currency means that there will always be demand for US assets. But there are two points here. First, running a permanent trade deficit affects the structure of your economy. It means fewer manufacturing jobs where productivity tends to be higher and more jobs in the service sector, where productivity tends to be lower.

The US has struck a Faustian bargain with its trading partners, particularly China, responsible for about one third of the $700bn-plus trade total last year. As the American economist Tom Palley puts it: "US consumers get lots of cheap goods in return for which they give over paper IOUs that cost less to print. Meanwhile, China creates millions of jobs and builds modern factories that are transforming it into an industrial superpower, and it also accumulates billions of dollars in financial claims against the US. From this perspective, trade deficits don't matter because there are no limits to either government or private borrowing, and because manufacturing doesn't matter either." The logic of this, Palley notes drily, is that the US would benefit even further if China devalued its exchange rate and ran a larger trade surplus. The second point is potentially much more explosive: it is the one sketched out in the crystal ball gazing at the top of this piece. What would happen if, as a result of global developments over the coming decades, the dollar ceased to be the reserve currency of choice. This was a point raised by Avinash Persaud, one of the financial sector's more original thinkers, in a recent lecture in New York. Persaud's argument is as follows.

Throughout history, there has always tended to be one dominant reserve currency along with a host of lesser rivals. In the 19th century Britain was the pre-eminent economy and sterling was the main reserve currency. Yet currencies don't retain their dominance forever; part of Britain's problem at the time of Suez was that it was struggling to adjust to a world in which it was no longer the top-dog currency but the creditors came knocking at the door asking for their cheques to be cashed. The US is living beyond its means, hoping that nobody cashes the cheques it has been merrily writing as the current account has gone deeper into the red. That's the advantage of being a reserve currency, even though, as Persaud notes, there is no rule which says that you have to run current account deficits simply because you are a reserve currency.
Britain didn't a century ago. In the decade or so up to the first world war it had a trade surplus of 5% of GDP. "That is a mirror image of the US today. The UK was in surplus by as much as the US is in deficit." That deficit has enabled the Chinese to build up their industrial strength at a rapid rate, so much so that it is probable that China - and perhaps India - will have overtaken the US as the world's largest economy (on a purchasing power parity basis, at least) by 2050. Persaud thinks that the upshot of this will be that in the next few decades the dollar will start to lose its reserve status just as sterling did in the last century. "In the case of sterling's loss of reserve status, world war one and two accelerated a process that had begun more slowly before and ended abruptly with debt and inflation."

Today the process is also being accelerated - by wars where the end is as elusive as the enemy and by a consumerism built on a property bubble. Perhaps we will not have to wait until 2050. In my lifetime, the dollar will start to lose its reserve currency status, not to the euro but to the renminbi or the rupee. This would clearly have massive economic and geopolitical consequences. As Persaud rightly says: "If it was economically and politically painful for the UK, even though its international financial position did not begin from a position of heavy deficit, what will it be like for the US which has become the world's largest debtor. There will be an avalanche of cheques coming home to be paid when the dollar begins to lose its status."

And this "avalanche of cheques" is likely to make for the most horrendous geo-political tension. The idea that the US will give up global financial hegemony without a fight seems fanciful in the extreme.

SIP- The key to Convergence

SIP- The key to Convergence

With the advent of IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) Architecture, SIP is largely going to change the way the world will communicate. Inspite of the emerging RFC’s day-in day-out SIP will eventually be throned as the most versatile End to End VOIP protocol.

Although SIP only does call setup and signaling it establishes good connectivity with PSTN through gateways and going forward RTP(Real time protocol) and RTCP(Real time control protocol are going to make streaming data a easy reality. RTCP will also manage QOS and enable the user to receive some very high quality data transmission. One more favourable feature of SIP is ,it can act as a carrier for many protocols. For example in media sessions, SIP acts as a carrier for SDP(Session Description protocol) and RTP.

SIP Messages are very easily decodable. Following are examples of few message responses in a SIP call flow. Any user can understand the call flow in the network.

1xx—Informational Responses (100 Trying , 180 Ringing ,181 Call Is Being Forwarded ,182 Queued ,183 Session Progress)

2xx—Successful Responses (200 OK ,202 accepted: Used for referrals)

3xx—Redirection Responses (300 Multiple Choices,301 Moved Permanently,302 Moved Temporarily,305 Use Proxy,380 Alternative Service)

4xx—Client Failure Responses (400 Bad Request,401 Unauthorized: Used only by registrars. Proxys should use proxy authorization 407,402 Payment Required (Reserved for future use) ,403 Forbidden ,404 Not Found: User not found)

And now some gyan on what are the typical request messages in SIP,

INIVITE,ACK,BYE,CANCEL,SUBSCRIBE,NOTIFY.

(Source :Wiki)

To sum up this beginner level article,

SIP is similar to SS7(Signaling system 7). But SS7 is a much versatile protocol as it interacts with the entire system. SIP can be classified as a peer to peer Protocol and this makes it scalable and adaptive. The key to success these days is De-centralisation :) (The seed for my blog is already here). This also ensures this protocol is here to stay!

Much detailed architecture explanations will continue some time later!

Rising salaries Vanishing workers!

Rising salaries Vanishing workers!

Recently I heard from one my colleagues who had been to our office in Romania. On his first day at the office they proceeded to have lunch at the canteen. Interestingly one lady who was a Romanian working for Alcatel, Romania called upon them and asked if he was an Indian? On immediately saying yes the lady prompted saying

“You Indians keep changing your employer every year is it?”

Embarrassing for the country at least!

And who can forget the Hari Sadu. H for Hitler, A for Arrogant, R for rascal and I for Idiot ad by Naukri.com. :)

So where are we heading? Are we getting too much carried away by the sudden Buzz that’s around the Indian industry? Are we getting too ambitious and tantalisingly over-confident? Where is the maturity and Ethics for which Indians are known all over the world?

Somebody asked me “How different it is to changes jobs every year from changing wives every year?”. No prizes for guessing that he was a HR. You obviously promise commitment in the relationship with your employer as you do to your wife. Just because you find a girl richer than your wife you cannot divorce your wife! If yes then why do you divorce your job? If no, you better be less influenced by people around you who like kangaroos keep hopping.

Hang On! My subconscious mind now is forcing me to write what is so called practical! And I will not disappoint him. :)

What’s wrong in switching jobs? After all my parents never thought about one because they were secured by their employer with pension but I will never be. Also because my parents never re-skilled themselves, never were ambitious but I am. Concisely they didn’t see growth inside or around them. I don’t have any security in life. I am seeing so many growth opportunities blooming around me. So I will seek a high paying employer and hug him as long as the high becomes mediocre!

Someone I talked to two days back exclaimed “WOW an ISB grad got a 1 crore package!!” and someone I talked to yesterday regarding the same issue said “Did you know how worthy that individual was. She deserved such a pay because she was an IIT Grad with some promising exp and a ISB MBA” . So what am I trying to say here?

The person I talked to first was more carried away by that money. The person I talked to second was more carried away by that person and who got that money! Now slightly tuning my statement we seldom look at the company. We often look things monetarily.

On further insights I think we are very myopic in our views. We need to think long term and plan for a period of life rather than plan for short periods of time. And if you still thought you need to hop then its pretty logical and an intelligent move.

So the next time, at least the next time you type that resignation letter weigh the pros and cons, on a short term and on a long term. Do a SWOT. Do a PEST.Remember that if you still felt you should get out of this job, the last time you did a SWOT you miserably failed. So you could fail this time as well :) .

Remember,

"What we are today is the result of our own past actions. Whatever we wish to be in the future depends on our present actions. Decide how you have to act now."

Caution: The writer quit his job recently!

The letter I wrote to Mr.Azim Premji- My Chairman!

AHP(Azim Hashan Premji) writes to us once a month. I had once replied to his mail and underneath you will find both his address and my feedback about his thoughts!.

Memorable days those! :(

Dear Wiproite,

I delivered a speech at India Leadership Forum organized by NASSCOM, Mumbai- India . I am happy to share the same thoughts with you. Globalization seems to have descended upon Indian organizations in a way that would look like a dream come true. Apart from the well known role of IT in the global arena, many other industries are now moving swiftly into it. These include diverse sectors of the economy such as engineering services, hospitality and health services, tourism, medical transcription and education. The future therefore holds in front a new mirror, in which both hard and soft elements of leadership are visible. On the hard side, we see that global strategies are being heavily served by information technology and enterprise wide planning that includes suppliers and customers into the firm's strategy. On the soft side, we see that effective cultural integration involves learning in context and behaving in a manner that elicits continued business engagement.

The recent NASSCOM estimates show that the IT Software Services and ITES in India are estimated to reach a little over USD 17 billion by the end of March 2005. This represents an overall blended growth rate for Software and ITES exports is 35% over last year's revised estimate. IT in India is known more for exports to overseas countries. But it has an equally important role within the country as an engine of economic expansion. IT has been contributing significantly to the growth of nations in the global economy. A 2001 study of major technological revolutions over the last three centuries by the IMF has revealed that IT enhanced the growth rate of the US economy by 1.8% per annum between 1995 and 2000 and contributed to 7.9% of its GDP. In Japan , IT accounts for 9.7% and makes up 9.6% of UK 's GDP. If you were to consider India , our IT industry size was $20.6 billion in 2003-04 and it constitutes 3.3% of the Indian GDP. Indian IT exports have the potential to grow to 7% of the GDP by 2008. Some of the enablers that have aided India 's march in the global race are cultural enablers.

First, is the respect for knowledge. Indian society since ancient times has recognized the importance of knowledge. Even Kings have paid homage to the knowledgeable sage. The trend continues to be visible in Indian society. Successful companies have capitalized on this long-standing strength of Indian culture.

Second, is the educational rigour. Indian professionals have gone through the grind of competitive educational systems, from nursery schooling to professional college education, and the hustle and bustle of corporate life. The Indian society seems to have become adept at filtering talent progressively. Competition has pervaded educational spheres as early as school and assumes significant force for professional courses. In corporate reality, this has implied that only few can reach the top management levels.

Third, is the tolerance for ambiguity. Ever since the institution of the Indian joint family, tolerance for diverse opinions has been in the Indian social fabric. Fathers and sons, uncles and nephews within the same joint family would debate over complex family issues and still remain undivided. A similar spirit of accommodation of viewpoints prevails in successful organizations.

Fourth, is the exposure to multiculturalism. The Indian educational setup has the three language formula, which has implied a multilingual dimension to the Indian workforce. Diverse Indian languages make for a natural adaptation right from school to work life. The key in all such adaptations has been tolerance for diversity and the capacity to learn in different situations. In work context, this has guided creation of harmonious business relationships.

Fifth, has been the quality of processes. This has been more apparent in the Information Technology area where companies have pursued rigorous Quality standards such as SEI- CMM. Some of them have achieved the highest level in these models and related models like the People CMM. The rigour has been even stronger in companies that followed simultaneously other approaches like the Six Sigma. This has ensured quality output for the client even as development cycle times were crashed on a continual basis. An important cause of success of these initiatives has been the commitment from top management in process initiatives.

Looking forward, there is optimism in the air when analysts speak about India . According to one of them, India could well be the world's third largest economy in less than 30 years from now, after the United States and China . In fact, India could grow the fastest among all countries at an average 6 per cent, going past Italy , Germany and France in the 2015-2025 time frame and past Japan in 2032. Even post-2050, India may continue to clock some of the highest growth rates in the world. But achieving this is not going to be easy. We need leadership that is not only transactional or one that moves from task to task. We need leaders who are truly transformational.

Transformational leaders do not depend on authority or charisma. The attributes needed are more intrinsic to the personality of the leader. I would like to briefly mention some of these.

First, transformational leaders identify themselves as change agents. They are not content to let things remain as they are even if it seems very comfortable.

Second, they are courageous and value driven. They are willing to look ahead and work towards creating a better future. Their vision creates a sense of purpose both for them and their organizations.

Third, they are lifelong learners. They pick up the ability to deal with complexity and uncertainty. They are also able to guide others when they are lost in the maze of ambiguity.

Fourth, transformational leaders communicate high expectations and express important ideas in simple ways. They give individual consideration, personal attention and continuously coach and advise their team members.

Also, they delegate enough to promote a culture of pro-activeness in problem solving. They anticipate many problems before they happen and do not wait for one crisis to strike after another.

In order to achieve business leadership, we must realize that IT is not an end in itself but a means to impacting the Customer's business. The challenge is to target IT applications in such a manner that it impacts business. And this is where both the Customer organizations and the IT Solutions provider have an important role to play.

First, we must identify what really drives productivity in the Customer organization. Is it the numerator, number of units or Value or the denominator, cost and effort? We must focus on what matters the most. This needs in-depth Customer knowledge. This also means understanding the Customer's business model and priorities. This varies not only from industry to industry, but also between organizations in the same industry. We must not be trapped by generalizations about industries as they could be misleading.

Second, we must have a holistic view on prioritizing investments for our Customers and also help them find value in sunken IT investments. IT investments are built on one another, often in complex ways. Many companies with apparently lifeless IT investments may be missing one final piece of technology that needs to be found. This is an interesting opportunity. If IT companies can help the Customer in a systematic manner to find the missing link, it could lead to unleashing enormous benefits for both. Identifying such links and building on them could be an enormous transformation tool.

Third, we must ensure that technological and managerial innovation go hand in hand. Many companies have discovered that when technology innovations outstrip managerial innovations, the benefits fall through the crack in between. It is like a car with a powerful engine but a wobbly chassis. It cannot get far. For customers to achieve higher returns on their IT investments, organizational structures and business processes need critical improvements. Partnering with IT vendors, who have tremendous managerial depth and understanding of business process changes, will help customers maximize on their ROI.

Finally, we must realize that there cannot be a silver bullet to achieve leadership. Out of the myriad opportunities ahead, we must decide what to focus on and what we should ignore. If we chase after a wrong goal, we will end up getting exhausted. Let me end with a parable that makes this clear.

A small kitten had just returned from cat philosophy school. He was running around in circles, trying to catch his tail. A seasoned old alley cat looked on and asked the kitten what she was doing.

"I have learnt that happiness is in the tip of your tail, and I am trying to catch mine, so that I will always be happy."

The old Tom replied: "You have learnt well. I never received a fancy education, but I too have heard that happiness is in the tip of my tail.

What I have also discovered is that if you forget about trying to catch it, it will follow you wherever you go."

Thank you once again for giving me the opportunity to share my thoughts.

Azim Premji

My mail to AHP
15-3-2005

Be it yesterday when in train I was reading Louis V. Gerstner Jr ‘s “Who said elephants can’t dance” or today as I am reading through the transcript of your speech at NASSCOM I am amazed at the Simplicity and continuous Sanguineness that leaders like Louis V. Gerstner Jr and Azim Premji deliver through their speeches.

Dear Sir,

As I am writing to you I might have read the speech transcript you had sent to employees a nine times in completeness. And to extract every drop of juice of your Sugarcane Speech I have rolled it over and over from top to bottom a dozen times.

As I thought I had got 50-60% of the message into my mind ,I decided I must write to you my emotions and thoughts on your Speech. But I am sure that tonight your thought mosquitoes bit me more than live ones as I am drafting my views to you.

As rightly started ,Globalisation has been the Ubiquitous word in the industry. In my view the most globalised thing since 1991 has been the word Globalisation in India. Every effect of it and every moment since has been researched.

It has been quite comical to note the change of events since globalisation in two parts of the world. As America the nation that indirectly forced India to liberalise stands at a precipice amidst huge Trade and Fiscal Deficit ,a local laborer at Tirupur down South in India who at his age of 40 headed the movement against Globalisation now at his 60’s is a Millionaire and says that he has a potential to double his wealth every 2-3 years. He (a illiterate then) now is worried about the depreciating rupee and writes to the finance minister. This is globalization of Mind…!

Your second paragraph emphasizing on Statistics surrounding the IT industry takes me to the times of Late Dewang Mehta who projected the software industry to earn 88b$ by 2008. But there has been a lot of stability and pruning that has effected the industry since then and the earnings are now(2005) at a modest and realistic 17 b$. I foresee a similar stabilisation to occur across countries of the world post globalization.

Further I would like to focus the statistics away from GDP. Rather than looking at what percentage IT contributes to GDP ,we should look at what percentage of various sector's contribution to industry is done by IT. For instance IT will win, if in agriculture that contributes close to 35% of GDP ,IT is responsible for 4-5% of agri sector's growth. Similarly IT should be seen as a partner in every sectors growth rather than being looked upon as a separate one.


With regard to your usual way of Enumerating points to the reader, I was making a classical analysis of the parameters that you had quoted as cultural enablers.

With regard to the respect for knowledge I believe our ancestors had a foccused array of thoughts which influenced every following generation. This was the success of Indian gene that produced very smart and capable pass outs against western compatriots.

With regard to the education rigour I believe that our educational system failed to channelise the rich cultural repository that India is known for .As a result today be it the IT industry or as a Nation we have a abundant resource of technical talent but very few leaders. This is because of the absence of case studies and motivational tonics which did not supplement our well known tech. adept Curriculum.

With regard to the tolerance for ambiguity that you have specified as a cultural enabler, I believe this gain flows from our Ancestors. This comes from the quality of Simplicity. This one quality is fast eroding in Organizations as people begin to live false lives and develop ego ,amidst their peers at work and Siblings in their family. The ordeal of simplicity and down to earth thinking must be imbibed into minds to nurture this rare quality of tolerance to ambiguity.

With regard to Quality, I have always found that quality comes with age. The quality that we believe we have gained before age is later realised to be just a mirage. As we grow we understand the efficiencies of people around us and start to re-engineer ourselves continuously until we become benchmarks for others to follow and this seamlessly improves this world.

Before I close I would like to thank you for the patience you have shown to read this amateur’s writing and I hope I get a feedback for my efforts as you did from me.

Finally on your optimism of India becoming a superpower I believe we should be maturely aiming for it by 2050, to escape from being another Dewang Mehta. :)

Best regards

Your Proud Employee,

Jayaram Mahalingam

NAM –India striking its neutralism

NAM –India striking its neutralism

I hardly derive admiration for a communist. But communism is one topic that can shake anybody’s will. People who preach or follow communism are always very erudite thinkers. They don’t get carried away by the misleading optimism that is present both in a society and economy. They always predict and warn about a imminent defects of a cosmopolitan society and economy. I am drawing so much praise for communism after following closely a person and his ideologies. This person when he met our prime minister a few days back said few words which need to be closely assimilated and thought about.

“The financial system was faced with uncertainty with countries like the United States absorbing the bulk of the world's savings”

I remember Sudharsan of RSS also say this a while back. The world is investing a lot of its wealth in US treasury without thinking how US economy would transpire. The US economy is already reeling under some mighty Current account deficit. What if the deficit becomes unmanageable? What if the currency weakens? It would be counter productive for every other economy and particularly the Asian countries like Japan,China and India which have a major chuck of their Forex reserves in Uncle Sam’s kitty!

The Asian economies should stop supporting the US fiasco at large. The economies need to be insulated from a possible American depression influence. In the current scenario it seems like the Asian economy will just slither like a pack of cards in case an American downfall happens. And this is exactly what, the great thinker Fidel Castro is hinting at. Food for thought :)

Hats off to India for striking its neutralism and participating in dialogues with countries like Cuba, which always hated American Hegemony!

I would intensively follow this topic in my future blogs….

Hare and Tortoise story Retold

Hare and Tortoise story Retold

Once upon a time a tortoise and a hare had an argument about who was faster. They decided to settle the argument with a race. They agreed on a route and started off the race. The hare shot ahead and ran briskly for some time. Then seeing that he was far ahead of the tortoise, he thought he'd sit under a tree for some time and relax before continuing the race. He sat under the tree and soon fell asleep. The tortoise plodding on overtook him and soon finished the race, emerging as the undisputed champ. The hare woke up and realised that he'd lost the race. The moral of the story is that slow and steady wins the race.

This is the version of the story that we've all grown up with. But then recently, someone told me a more interesting version of this story. It continues.

The hare was disappointed at losing the race and he did some soul-searching. He realised that he'd lost the race only because he had been overconfident, careless and lax. If he had not taken things for granted, there's no way the tortoise could have beaten him. So he challenged the tortoise to another race. The tortoise agreed.

This time, the hare went all out and ran without stopping from start to finish. He won by several miles. The moral of the story? Fast and consistent will always beat the slow and steady. If you have two people in your organisation, one slow, methodical and reliable, and the other fast and still reliable at what he does, the fast and reliable chap will consistently climb the organisational ladder faster than the slow, methodical chap. It's good to be slow and steady; but it's better to be fast and reliable.

But the story doesn't end here. The tortoise did some thinking this time, and realised that there's no way he can beat the hare in a race the way it was currently formatted. He thought for a while, and then challenged the hare to another race, but on a slightly different route. The hare agreed. They started off. In keeping with his self-made commitment to be consistently fast, the hare took off and ran at top speed — until he came to a broad river. The finishing line was a couple of kilometres on the other side of the river. The hare sat there wondering what to do. In the meantime the tortoise trundled along, got into the river, swam to the opposite bank, continued walking and finished the race. The moral of the story? First identify your core competency and then change the playing field to suit your core competency.

In an organisation, if you are a good speaker, make sure you create opportunities to give presentations that enable senior management to notice you. If your strength is analysis, make sure you do some sort of research, make a report and send it upstairs. Working to your strengths will not only get you noticed, but will also create opportunities for growth and advancement.

The story still hasn't ended. The hare and the tortoise, by this time, had become pretty good friends and they did some thinking together. Both realised that the last race could have been run much better. So they decided to do the last race again, but to run as a team this time. They started off, and this time the hare carried the tortoise till the riverbank. There, the tortoise took over and swam across with the hare on his back. On the opposite bank, the hare again carried the tortoise and they reached the finishing line together. They both felt a greater sense of satisfaction than they'd felt earlier.

The moral of the story? It's good to be individually brilliant and to have strong core competencies; but unless you're able to work in a team and harness each other's core competencies, you'll always perform below par because there will always be situations at which you'll do poorly and someone else does well. Teamwork is mainly about situational leadership, letting the person with the relevant core competency for a situation take leadership.
There are more lessons to be learnt from this story. Note that neither the hare nor the tortoise gave up after failures. The hare decided to work harder and put in more effort after his failure. The tortoise changed his strategy because he was already working as hard as he could. In life, when faced with failure, sometimes it is appropriate to work harder and put in more effort. Sometimes it is appropriate to change strategy and try something different. And sometimes it is appropriate to do both.

The hare and the tortoise also learnt another vital lesson. When we stop competing against a rival and instead start competing against the situation, we perform far better. When Roberto Goizueta took over as CEO of Coca Cola in the 1980s, he was faced with intense competition from Pepsi that was eating into Coke's growth. His executives were Pepsi-focussed and intent on increasing market share 0.1 per cent a time.

Goizueta decided to stop competing against Pepsi and instead compete against the situation of 0.1 per cent growth. He asked his executives what was the average fluid intake of an American per day? The answer was 14 ounces. What was Coke's share of that? Two ounces. Goizueta said Coke needed a larger share of that market. The competition wasn't Pepsi. It was the water, tea, coffee, milk and fruit juices that went into the remaining 12 ounces. The public should reach for a coke whenever they felt like drinking something. To this end, coke put up vending machines at every street corner. Sales took a quantum jump and Pepsi has never quite caught up since.
To sum up, the story of the hare and tortoise teaches us many things. Chief among them are that fast and consistent will always beat slow and steady; work to your competencies; pooling resources and working as a team will always beat individual performers; never give up when faced with failure; and finally, compete against the situation not against a rival.