Tuesday, January 20, 2009
New Vice Chancellor
"We had joy, we had fun. We had seasons in the sun."
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Young father
“Now we have become three from two…” his voice was grim and eyes reflected sadness. I wondered how a young man could downplay his fatherhood like that! But by that time, I had done the calculations. What lied in front of me was an economic reality and a human tragedy.
He is one of around 35 security personnel employed in our college. A young man of around 30, he is skinny but fit, sports a thin moustache and has very sharp eyes. He sounds positive, enjoys tea once every afternoon, and has learnt a lot about operating PCs since he has been posted in the computer centre. He is honest, and has returned back my pen-drive that I left in the lab by mistake, two times recently...
The calculation which came out of our chat of about five minutes tells this: His duty for 8 hours a day earns him Rs 130. He does overtime 20 days a month. Hence, (20 days X Rs 260) plus (10 days X Rs 130) equals to Rs 6500 a month. Is that enough? How much does he spend? “We are able to maintain in Rs 2500 a month” he replies. And obviously, he sends the remaining money to his home where his old parents and may be some unwed sisters would depend on him…
“Where do you live?” I asked to confirm. “Where else? In the nearest jhuggi-jhopdi (slum)…” And the house? “It costs Rs 2500 a month… But we share it with five more families; otherwise we can’t afford it…” I am taken aback. To share a one bedroom house with five families! For a young couple with a newly born baby! That is something… And of course the house would be an illegally made structure which would have a leaking roof, with community toilets and no clean drinking water…
The calculation tells that he earns Rs 6500 a month, spends Rs 3000, and sends home Rs 3500 a month. Perhaps his wife would also be working, earning around Rs 3000 a month, and hence both of them would save around 78,000 in a year. Of course this will happen only if there are no health related problems, no absenteeism from work due to any reasons, no threat on life due to regional political parties, and no yearly floods in the city destroying their household…
The economics still makes sense. If the young family is able to save more than fifty thousand rupees at the end of a favourable year, life is still worth carrying on. Is it so?
A deeper analysis tells a different picture. The family of three is able to maintain life in Rs 2500 a month. That means Rs 83 a day. Means Rs 28 a person a day. If all this money is spent on food alone, it means Rs 9 a person a meal (assuming three meals a day). How is this possible? How is this possible in Mumbai? With this tight budget, what will happen if tomorrow his wife is diagnosed with a serious illness? Can he spend Rs 2000 a month on medicines? With this earning, will they educate their child? If yes, then for how long? How can they share a one bedroom house with five more persons? This would happen because they need the house only during night for sleeping; what if two persons become sick at the same time? Where do they keep their savings? Can they ever get a bank account opened in Mumbai, without address proof? What if one of them meets with an accident? What if he is fired from his job? What if there is an urgent need to go to his native place; how many times can they afford railway tickets? At the end of it all, why is it that he is unhappy at the birth of his first child?
What wrong did his newly born baby do that it was born amidst such poverty? Did you ever feel that your life was tough? If life is still worth carrying on for this young father; do you have the right to complain? Also, can we learn something from his life? Can we learn something from life? To begin with: We can neither control our birth, nor our death; but we can certainly control what we do between the two...
He is one of around 35 security personnel employed in our college. A young man of around 30, he is skinny but fit, sports a thin moustache and has very sharp eyes. He sounds positive, enjoys tea once every afternoon, and has learnt a lot about operating PCs since he has been posted in the computer centre. He is honest, and has returned back my pen-drive that I left in the lab by mistake, two times recently...
The calculation which came out of our chat of about five minutes tells this: His duty for 8 hours a day earns him Rs 130. He does overtime 20 days a month. Hence, (20 days X Rs 260) plus (10 days X Rs 130) equals to Rs 6500 a month. Is that enough? How much does he spend? “We are able to maintain in Rs 2500 a month” he replies. And obviously, he sends the remaining money to his home where his old parents and may be some unwed sisters would depend on him…
“Where do you live?” I asked to confirm. “Where else? In the nearest jhuggi-jhopdi (slum)…” And the house? “It costs Rs 2500 a month… But we share it with five more families; otherwise we can’t afford it…” I am taken aback. To share a one bedroom house with five families! For a young couple with a newly born baby! That is something… And of course the house would be an illegally made structure which would have a leaking roof, with community toilets and no clean drinking water…
The calculation tells that he earns Rs 6500 a month, spends Rs 3000, and sends home Rs 3500 a month. Perhaps his wife would also be working, earning around Rs 3000 a month, and hence both of them would save around 78,000 in a year. Of course this will happen only if there are no health related problems, no absenteeism from work due to any reasons, no threat on life due to regional political parties, and no yearly floods in the city destroying their household…
The economics still makes sense. If the young family is able to save more than fifty thousand rupees at the end of a favourable year, life is still worth carrying on. Is it so?
A deeper analysis tells a different picture. The family of three is able to maintain life in Rs 2500 a month. That means Rs 83 a day. Means Rs 28 a person a day. If all this money is spent on food alone, it means Rs 9 a person a meal (assuming three meals a day). How is this possible? How is this possible in Mumbai? With this tight budget, what will happen if tomorrow his wife is diagnosed with a serious illness? Can he spend Rs 2000 a month on medicines? With this earning, will they educate their child? If yes, then for how long? How can they share a one bedroom house with five more persons? This would happen because they need the house only during night for sleeping; what if two persons become sick at the same time? Where do they keep their savings? Can they ever get a bank account opened in Mumbai, without address proof? What if one of them meets with an accident? What if he is fired from his job? What if there is an urgent need to go to his native place; how many times can they afford railway tickets? At the end of it all, why is it that he is unhappy at the birth of his first child?
What wrong did his newly born baby do that it was born amidst such poverty? Did you ever feel that your life was tough? If life is still worth carrying on for this young father; do you have the right to complain? Also, can we learn something from his life? Can we learn something from life? To begin with: We can neither control our birth, nor our death; but we can certainly control what we do between the two...
(Rahul)
How Honest is India?
I would judge someone honest if s/he does good and just even when God is not watching. Judging a nation or place in general is very difficult, because of diversity. Here is an interesting report about honesty in Mumbai/India.
Reader’s Digest came up with a report (Aug’07) on an exercise it carried out in 32 cities across the world. They deliberately mislaid 1000 cell phones, and waited to see how people behave once they see the phones lying unclaimed. And to see how many phones are returned back. At some places they even video-recorded the whole process.
On an average, 30 cell phones were kept in a city. In India, Mumbai was the chosen place. The editor says that he expected to get back only 6 out of the 30 phones left at several places in the city. Some people in the team jokingly said that they weren’t expecting even a single cell-phone back. Do you know how many cell-phones were returned back in Mumbai? 24 out of 30! And do you know how other countries fared? Mumbai stands at World’s No. 5, above Paris, London or Singapore!
Coming to my own personal experience, yes, I have lost one mobile phone while getting into a Mumbai local train. And in one instance, a gang of three guys on a motorbike stopped a friend on mine in Thane and snatched away his phone. He lodged a police complaint but didn’t get it back. But these are cases of crimes and can’t be used to judge if people are honest or not.
The average Mumbaikar who returned the cell-phone back was not of a particular caste, religion or surname. The report tells the story of one Dharmendra Kumar, who had already lost three mobile phones himself in the city, but very promptly returned back the phone he found. He even asked the journalist in disguise: “Just how can you be so careless?” Mumbai is made what it is – good or bad - with the joint effort of both the migrants and the locals.
So what explains such high score on honesty, in case you wonder? We may say that such cases can be the result of general attitude of Mumbaikars to mind their own business, which some times goes to extreme limits. A woman reported in yesterday’s newspaper that a stupid person groped her from behind at a bus-stop but not a single person came to her help. She had to hit him with newspaper and verbally abuse him to get rid of him. But these cases of returning back the mobile phones needed the person to call up a contact from the address book of the phone and enquire and then make arrangements to give the phone back: it needed investment of time and effort. And if 24 out of 30 Mumbaikars still did it, it proves that we really are honest people!
After all, the land of Buddha and Gandhi, where children grow up listening to moral stories from their mothers with every dinner should reflect some times!
Baffling Corporate Decisions
Business decisions are becoming more and more difficult to interpret. What appears apparent in the beginning is not so in reality and many a time we understand them only by looking beyond the obvious. It seems corporate now a days don’t feel any dilemma in what to keep secret and what to drop in the public domain, and are using the power of information technology and media to reach new avenues of strategies and gimmicks. Some of the recent decisions and announcements make an interesting collage.
Reliance – proposals and disposals
Back in March, Reliance Industries had decided to close down all the 1432 petrol stations it had opened across India. The company had invested some 4000 Crore rupees in setting up these stations and employed 55000 people. Reason was that government had not agreed to pass on the same subsidies to the company as what it had granted to the public sector oil firms. On one side, it made me wonder: how could Reliance be so buoyant at the business planning stage that it believed the government would grant it the same subsidies that PSUs get in order to survive? I tried to calm down my bewilderment by asking myself to wait and watch; may be Ambanis had some hidden Plan-B’s. But any good news in the regard is not coming in. On the other side, we didn’t realise that when Reliance closed its petrol stations, all its sales went to the PSU oil firms, thereby requiring the Govt of India to churn out Rs 4000 Crores extra in the form of additional subsidies! Interesting? So the decision of the Govt not to give the same subsidies to Reliance still resulted in a loss of Rs 4000 crore to the govt! Now it is evident that Reliance was sending a message across by its decision to close down.
Reliance Retail – Sending message @ speed of Fire
The first thing Reliance Retail did after public and political opposition to its setting up organised retail stores in Uttar Pradesh was to send termination letters to its 1200 employees it had hired, and announcement of closing down 20 stores. Did this decision to fire employees and bad press coverage cause it any harm? No! Actually it sent a strong signal that the opposition to organised retail in UP was actually resulting in loss of employment rather than save some! A very fine example of sending the right message with a bad news…
The Nano – and the Grand dreams
We all know about the fate of Tata Nano project in West Bengal. Knowing the state of industries there because of trade unions and labour protection policies, I wondered why Singur was Tata’s first choice. Later on I understood that the strategic port location, presence of huge middle class customer base in the vicinity and the favourable sops offered by the state government were the reasons behind its selection. But what about the long term sustainability? In a communist state where public life stands still at the call of frequent bandhs by any political party, starting a project there, which was so very critical for the company and for the nation was questionable. The same is true about communist ruled Kerala. Harsh Mariwala, Chairman and MD of Marico who visited our campus told how everyone laughed at him when he decided to put up a plant in Kerala. And successfully managing it despite all odds can still be called one of his major achievements. The public announcements made by Ratan Tata, whether at the negotiating stage or to pull out of the state can be understood because the situation was all political. Right communication by the company was very important because the whole world was watching them and their baby Nano. (Though some suspect the Govt of West Bengal of killing the political career of victorious Mamta Banerjee by not trying too hard to calm the situation with some real sops and compensations for the farmers. If we see it this way, then the defeat of the ruling party in the state in retaining the Nano project was actually its victory in insuring their rule for next two or three decades.)
Jet Airways firing and flip-flop
The case of Jet Airways firing 1100 employees and then inducting them back with some touching and emotional statements made by the Chairman and CEO Naresh Goyal calling company the mother and all employees as her children was an interesting one. No emotional speeches were able to douse the bad press it got, and this episode would definitely leave some bad impressions for the company as an employer for a long time to come. But this whole episode can be seen as an attempt by the Indian airlines industry to wake up the government and get some favourable policies and subsidies in order to survive…
State of Indian economy - Pessimism or Propaganda?
Front page of HT on Nov 12 carries a news title, “No more acquisitions, Tata tells his firms”. The news report had quoted Ratan Tata’s email to the top management of Tata Group firms! Should this email have been kept a secret? Not necessarily so. The decision to make it public is understandable. Due to Indian economy in bad shape – partly due to global financial meltdown and more critically due to failure of the Indian economic planners – private firms are the first to get the beating. Their survival is questionable as the raw material costs are going high on one hand, and the competition is merciless on the other. In such a situation, sending panic messages in the markets, raising questions about the sustainability of Indian growth story, making employment an issue in a country with 7.2% unemployment rate, the message is clear – the government has to act and give more breathing space for the private firms. But after a limit, it seems that the general pessimism and the panic that is created in India by the private firms is more in the air than on the ground. India is still not that much affected by the global financial crisis, but companies are making use of this gloomy situation to achieve some difficult goals. Some companies are using the situation to fire employees, cut down salaries, and stopping all perks, even if they are in the business of selling chocolates, which is mostly unaffected.
As we look at it, some decisions and communications by the Indian companies raise questions about their prudence at first, but eventually the real picture comes out as very different… Let us keep the faith on the board of directors who decide the salaries of the CEOs :)
Reliance – proposals and disposals
Back in March, Reliance Industries had decided to close down all the 1432 petrol stations it had opened across India. The company had invested some 4000 Crore rupees in setting up these stations and employed 55000 people. Reason was that government had not agreed to pass on the same subsidies to the company as what it had granted to the public sector oil firms. On one side, it made me wonder: how could Reliance be so buoyant at the business planning stage that it believed the government would grant it the same subsidies that PSUs get in order to survive? I tried to calm down my bewilderment by asking myself to wait and watch; may be Ambanis had some hidden Plan-B’s. But any good news in the regard is not coming in. On the other side, we didn’t realise that when Reliance closed its petrol stations, all its sales went to the PSU oil firms, thereby requiring the Govt of India to churn out Rs 4000 Crores extra in the form of additional subsidies! Interesting? So the decision of the Govt not to give the same subsidies to Reliance still resulted in a loss of Rs 4000 crore to the govt! Now it is evident that Reliance was sending a message across by its decision to close down.
Reliance Retail – Sending message @ speed of Fire
The first thing Reliance Retail did after public and political opposition to its setting up organised retail stores in Uttar Pradesh was to send termination letters to its 1200 employees it had hired, and announcement of closing down 20 stores. Did this decision to fire employees and bad press coverage cause it any harm? No! Actually it sent a strong signal that the opposition to organised retail in UP was actually resulting in loss of employment rather than save some! A very fine example of sending the right message with a bad news…
The Nano – and the Grand dreams
We all know about the fate of Tata Nano project in West Bengal. Knowing the state of industries there because of trade unions and labour protection policies, I wondered why Singur was Tata’s first choice. Later on I understood that the strategic port location, presence of huge middle class customer base in the vicinity and the favourable sops offered by the state government were the reasons behind its selection. But what about the long term sustainability? In a communist state where public life stands still at the call of frequent bandhs by any political party, starting a project there, which was so very critical for the company and for the nation was questionable. The same is true about communist ruled Kerala. Harsh Mariwala, Chairman and MD of Marico who visited our campus told how everyone laughed at him when he decided to put up a plant in Kerala. And successfully managing it despite all odds can still be called one of his major achievements. The public announcements made by Ratan Tata, whether at the negotiating stage or to pull out of the state can be understood because the situation was all political. Right communication by the company was very important because the whole world was watching them and their baby Nano. (Though some suspect the Govt of West Bengal of killing the political career of victorious Mamta Banerjee by not trying too hard to calm the situation with some real sops and compensations for the farmers. If we see it this way, then the defeat of the ruling party in the state in retaining the Nano project was actually its victory in insuring their rule for next two or three decades.)
Jet Airways firing and flip-flop
The case of Jet Airways firing 1100 employees and then inducting them back with some touching and emotional statements made by the Chairman and CEO Naresh Goyal calling company the mother and all employees as her children was an interesting one. No emotional speeches were able to douse the bad press it got, and this episode would definitely leave some bad impressions for the company as an employer for a long time to come. But this whole episode can be seen as an attempt by the Indian airlines industry to wake up the government and get some favourable policies and subsidies in order to survive…
State of Indian economy - Pessimism or Propaganda?
Front page of HT on Nov 12 carries a news title, “No more acquisitions, Tata tells his firms”. The news report had quoted Ratan Tata’s email to the top management of Tata Group firms! Should this email have been kept a secret? Not necessarily so. The decision to make it public is understandable. Due to Indian economy in bad shape – partly due to global financial meltdown and more critically due to failure of the Indian economic planners – private firms are the first to get the beating. Their survival is questionable as the raw material costs are going high on one hand, and the competition is merciless on the other. In such a situation, sending panic messages in the markets, raising questions about the sustainability of Indian growth story, making employment an issue in a country with 7.2% unemployment rate, the message is clear – the government has to act and give more breathing space for the private firms. But after a limit, it seems that the general pessimism and the panic that is created in India by the private firms is more in the air than on the ground. India is still not that much affected by the global financial crisis, but companies are making use of this gloomy situation to achieve some difficult goals. Some companies are using the situation to fire employees, cut down salaries, and stopping all perks, even if they are in the business of selling chocolates, which is mostly unaffected.
As we look at it, some decisions and communications by the Indian companies raise questions about their prudence at first, but eventually the real picture comes out as very different… Let us keep the faith on the board of directors who decide the salaries of the CEOs :)
AlumniNM Blog - New posts
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Invitation to Alumni Meets – January 2009
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Remembering late Prof. Pratap Sirur
Invitation to Alumni Meets – January 2009
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Remembering late Prof. Pratap Sirur
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