Thoughts

In the name of modernity- a Shameful act

2010-03-02T19:57:00.002-05:00

When Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunctioned during the superbowl half-time show in US, the entire USA denounced the act and FCC sprung to action to stop these kind of indecent behavior to be broadcast live on TV in prime time. While in India, where tradition is talked up so high, has been flouted handily by none other than the TV run by people with power! Today they showed a full-featured sexual video in the name of news during prime time. These kind of act should be punished. The network should be fined heavily so they can't operate again in this fashion. However as they are close to power and in the fight to remain relevant as the entire entertainment industry is used in promoting the TV owned by the Chief minister.

When I was in College, there was a huge cry when Discovery channel showed the sexual life of Elephants during an hour documentary on the life of elephants. They objected only to animals, its not objectionable to show humans' activity in prime time. The government banned smoking scenes in movies. They showed this on TV because they were not smoking, they were indulging in lude behavior.

Shame on the these folks who run the TV and people who are in power in Tamil nadu. People in that state don't care as they care only about money.

Copenhagen for India

2009-12-09T01:21:00.002-05:00

Todays reports on the business section mentioned, there is a 61% growth in car sales in this quarter! Even with that, the number of people who can afford/ buy a car is miniscule. With 6 million plus people in chennai alone, with so many people using alternative forms of commuting, there are no roads with proper pavement to support people who walk and people who could use the bi-cycle.

On the eve of the Copenhagen climate summit, I think there has to be a policy level directive for new road layouts. All plans for roads should have plans for a pavement and a bi-cycle path. This will not only be beneficial to the common man (80% of the public) but also will aim at improving our green initiative and saving the planet.

UN body on climate, should build this into the mandatory statute for all countries. Countries should be able to trade such saved Carbon, making it an economic incentive for them to invest in these projects.

Technologically upgraded; Morally degraded

2009-12-09T00:53:00.004-05:00

Wherever you turn there is growth in buildings whether it is on a lake or a regular land. People are a buying binge. Growth is unplanned to the full extent from buildings to roads. People have every technolgoically advanced gizmos that you can think of. You name it, its available in the market here in Chennai and definitely on use in households. They don't think twice to spend on anything. People only think about how to and what to buy. They care neither about how they could use it nor about how you get it? They are ready to go to any extent to make money - however illegal it could be. They don't think twice about taking money from politicians (not just for votes) but now it is institutionalized. When there is a drought or heavy rains, the govt. dolls out money to the public to take care of them during such a calamity. This is distributed not by officials but by politicians (counsillors, panchayat board members etc), a gross mis-use of power. Even people who are wealthy enough get this money. Even the even-minded folks say they take the money otherwise, the person distributing will take the money themselves. So why not me? They don't want to question this process!

Even the recently build flyovers and roads are bumpy (few of them are good too). This is my experience in Chennai. This need not be the case with other towns and cities in Tamil Nadu. However, Chennai is the political capital and normally is a bell-weather for other towns and cities. They may not be as bad as chennai but might be there in a few years time.

Sahasra-namam

2009-09-30T22:39:00.003-05:00

Recently, attended a discource titled "Lalitha Sahasranamam - A vendantic perspective" by Shri. Swami Tattvavidananda, a desciple of Pujya Shri. Dayananda Saraswathi Swami.
The interesting thing in all these Sahasranamams (1000 names or lord / Godess) is that these names belong to the three categories. 1. Mythology (has a story behind), 2. Rituals , 3. Philosophical.
Some names are given to the lord as he took those mythological forms, some for the rituals being performed to make him / her happy and the last is the vedantic or philosophical manifestation of the lord. I recite vishnu sahasranamam, but never thought in terms of these.

Naming Roads after Actors

2009-09-30T22:32:00.002-05:00

Read a recent news item that the TN govt. is planning to name roads after the leading actors Kamal & Rajini. Kamal is a great actor and Rajini is a great human being. However, looking back, doesn't TN have any other person to name the road after? Its not be-littling them, but what examples are we setting to the next generation? Can you name ONE person in the recent past that the govt. named the streets after? Don't we have Dr. M.S Swaminathan? Don't we have Dr.Abdul Kalam? Don't we have Mr. Sujatha - the writer & Scientist? The pathetic state of TN is if you want to be great, then you have to become an actor. Is this what we want our kids to become? The cine industry is having an exorbitant say in the govt. in TN while no other industry / section of the society has such an influence.

Some recent events and my thoughts

2009-09-20T20:33:00.002-05:00

This time, I want to write what my mind went through when I read recent events...
First is the outpour in BJP regarding the book written by Mr. Jaswanth Singh. Whatever he wrote, may be correct or may be wrong but there are certain thing that is better remain unsaid. We all know that RSS and their idelogues (folks in BJP) are so pained by the partition of India and till today they don't agree to it. This was quite evident when a reporter in Pakistan shouted"Pakistan is not complete without Kashmir", Vajpayee retorted saying "India is not complete without Pakistan" during the now infamous Lahore Bus trip. Whether one agrees or not, it is a fact and you need to base your policies on the reality and not on what you would like the situation to be. How long one can mourn the dead. BJP and the leadership rather than beat Jaswanth Singh, should have taken this approach saying "India is not complete without Pakistan" and may be whatever Jaswant says is correct and these are all hypothetical situations. I would say the BJP leadership didn't react in the correct way.
Having said that, there are two reasons for the downward trend facing BJP.
1. Vajpayee did NOT unequivocally come in support of Advani. He should have and in my opinion he has did great injustice to the party. He should openly campaigned for Advani during last election.
2. There are no more second rung leaders to Advani in the same way how Advani served Vajpayee. This is a reality and Advani should have realized this and run the party based on this fact.

The second aspect, that troubled me was the current management of Subiksha losing control of the organization. This was serving as a classical example for a home grown business from an IIT / IIM person. It is sad to see this blowing a death knell to it.

The third is the wonderful game of tennis in the finals of US open. Wow! Del Potro showed off all the qualities of a naive but a hard charging new bee. Federer was showed off that how a champion would play. However, I could see that his game was not the same as he was missing his serves and making unforced errors. We have to wait and see whether Del Potro is a raising star or a one-time anomaly. Good Luck to both as I love tennis.

Achamundu Achamundu

2009-08-27T18:58:00.002-05:00

After a long time, I saw a Tamil movie. It was very good, all the actors involved didn't overact or screw up, a solid story line and no unneccesary jokers, songs, fight etc. Above all, everyone in this generation IT field could easily relate to the family in the story. I felt like seeing another "Kuruthip punal". Folks like Kamal, KB, Cheran, Manirathnam should pay attention and give this team a good support in the future.

Cash for Clunkers - Useless for consumers

2009-08-22T21:10:00.002-05:00

The recent US govt. policy on offering upto 4500 for old cars to induce consumers to buy new fuel efficient cars, is infact useless to the consumers. Couple of months ago, whatever cars that were being sold for 27K are now being sold for 32k. In reality, its the dealers who get this money. Consumers, in fact should have just stayed away from the dealers . They didn't and the dealers took advantage of it. It has definitely increased the economic activity and again the consumers are the losers!

An interesting perspective

2009-08-21T20:56:00.004-05:00

My 2 -1/2 year old son is momy's pet. We can say n-number of reasons why he is mom's boy (she spends more time with him, does whatever his needs are etc.). However, in general son's turn out to be Mom's pet and girls turn out to be Dady's pet. The main reason behind this is, one doesn't call it a bluff on the human being of opposite sex. Dad knows the ins & outs of a boy and he can easily visualize himself as that kid, so he doesn't really buy into the sons' tantrums. Whilst the mom though she understands this, she can't call it a bluff and plays into him. The son thinks, Mom doesn't know and happy that he tricked her into believing him. The fact is she knows whats' happening but somehow is unwilling to play it straight while she has no qualms playing it straight to her daughter. To hide this fact the Mom would come up with umpteen reasons saying its a girl and she would be marrying into another family etc. But all these explanations are vail over the fact that she knows the bluff and calls it a bluff when it comes to girls. This vice versa between Daddys and girls.

Sunglasses

2009-07-07T20:29:00.002-05:00

What a useful piece of equipment it is. I can't believe how this same one caused so much trouble?

I wear glasses all the time and I also carry a prescription sunglass. On the penultimate day, we were outside the whole day and I was driving back with the family after a trip. Around 6:00 PM in Eastern time here in US, while driving on GSP, a heavy thunderstorm started and visibility was pretty much zero. I was literally sitting on the hood and driving the van. I could hardly see the blinkers of the car before me. It became slightly clear whenever we go under a bridge. Thats when I realized, I'm still driving the van with my sunglasses on! I asked my brother to pass on my regular glass. What a difference?

Bing

2009-06-21T20:32:00.003-05:00

I had been trying Bing (Microsoft's new search engine) for the last couple of weeks. I must say that Microsoft finally got it right. First of all, the search returns result that are meaningful to the search term, secondly I like the fact that they store the search history on the left, thridly a preview of the link on the right.

Earlier, everytime I like to search even the microsoft site, I would have to use google to find it, now I can do that from within microsoft! On oneside it was frustrating that you have to go outside of the site you are to find what is inside and on the otherside, I was really worried about Google becoming a monopoly.

Now, we can get ready for a good fight. Hopefully, consumers win this time around.

Habeus Corpus for humanity

2009-06-07T21:09:00.002-05:00

In a recent interview with a former child member of the LTTE, he mentioned that the biggest outcome of LTTE's growth was the killing of the political solution to Tamils' cause. That the terrorist organization is almost no-more should lead to the revival of the political process in Srilanka. No war is welcome & decent especially this one! The episode involving Natesan and Pulithevan alone warrants an independent inquiry into the incident and this gives legitimacy to the various accounts of the living conditions and the killing of scores of people living in the war zone.

I want the people (both Tamil & Sinhala) of Srilanka to live together in peace and harmony. I do support the decimation of the terrorist organization and at the same time now that the war is over, all war crimes (whatsoever committed) by the army and the militia need to be investigated and all responsible should be brought to justice.

If common sense doesn't prevail among the leadership in the conflict zone, then we can be sure that another upheavel of this level will occur in the future and that no one can live in peace. It is indeed true that India built up the terrorist organization and withdrew its support when stung by it. Now that it is no-more, there is no incentive for India to continue to support Srilanka for all its deeds. It is in the best interests of India to bring these people ( who committed war crimes) to Justice and work in establishing the equal rights to all the citizens of Srilanka.

India might have a weak personality in its leadership and Srilanka might have a strong personality in its leadership, right now. But its only a matter of time for that to change. In a nations' history 5 or 10 years is a speck.

Hope right sense prevails among the leadership involved in this conflict and a unique justifiable solution is arrived at in the near future.

Welcome to the New CM

2009-05-29T20:35:00.002-05:00

For those who yearn for change, this is a very mild solace. Though you can't deem this as a change in leadership. Any change to the current statusquo is welcome. Unlike his other family members viz. Maaran, Kanimozhi and Azhagiri, Stalin was not thrust upon one fine day. He had been in politics for the last 30 years and now he is being projected. Unlike KK, Stalin is not an Atheist. Though you can call this hardly a change, anybody other than KK and JJ is welcome. Hope some sense prevail among the people.

Deterrent for Officials

2009-04-28T07:45:00.003-05:00

This recent news story of the Indian Bank CMD getting sentenced for 14 years is a classic example for officials not to listen to the politicians. As great leader Kaamaraj used to say that the politicians need to listen to the officials and not the other way around. Politicians are adept in getting themselves out of the mess and even otherwise, they don't have a shame. That is not the case with officials. This should serve as a deterrent for all officials in joining the looting scheme of politicians.

Live within your means.

GPS and My experience

2009-04-25T11:57:00.002-05:00

After much resistance, bought the Garmin nuvi 360. A friend of mine reminded that I might get free maps for a specific period of time. Thus, I set out on the quest to update my new Garmin with the latest ones. To begin with you need to register your product on their website. It was frustrating experience as Garmin's website kept crapping out four-five times and I had to retype my serial number that many time. Then one time it failed with half-saved information. I had to wait few minutes so overall, the registration process alone took 20 minutes! On top of that, you have to upgrade your OS to the latest (5.0) before you attempt to get your maps. This process took 30 minutes. Then the mother-of-all process of updating the maps took 1:45 minutes! The maps was 1.9 GB (big) and in my optimum cable connection @ 500 KBps took little more than an hour and then comes the installation.

After undergoing this pain, I wanted to see whether all this effort is worth? I live in Bridgewater, NJ and tried to find my library under the list of libraries. Before as well as after the update, it failed to list my library in the list. Even if not this library, how many roads gets created a year and how often or how far off do you go? Overall, IMHO its not worth venturing this. May be once in 5 years (you can buy a new better GPS every 5 years rather than going through this pain).

Nano - How did they do it?

2009-03-29T21:49:00.002-05:00

Even though its not an official account of how Tata did it, its worth reading. The quintessential mantra of anyone from the developing world "Is this needed?" is the dirving force in building the Nano. If the world learnt about kaizen and kanban from the Japanese manufacturing and it is "Is this needed" is what anybody has to keep in mind in developing products for the developing world.
http://india-auto-expo.blogspot.com/2008/01/making-of-tata-nano-peoples-car-how-did.html
Hope this product is a success and people from the developing world won't ask "Is this needed?"

Awesome & Funny

2009-03-27T22:24:00.000-05:00

Awesome
http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/481

Funny
http://www.youtube. com/watch? v=KSwhpF9iJSs

Competitive Mortgage Brokers

2009-03-24T14:34:00.002-05:00

In the process of re-financing, found these excellent mortgage pros with great rates
I took mine with Paul. He is a great guy to deal with.
Paul H. Goldstein
Vice President
Bank of America Mortgage
703-472-1001
http://mortgage.bankofamerica.com/paulhgoldstein

Lori Neuhauser, Relationship Manager 908 295 2035 - Lowest rate- nobody has beaten her.
Kevin ZhuBranch ManagerSomerset Hills Bank CorpOffice: 732-516-1212 ex 2201Fax: 732-516-1222Cell: 732-762-8200

Books & Film

2009-02-11T21:20:00.002-05:00

Recently, I read a book "Inside Peter Druckers Brain". This is on the lines of E=mc2. This goes into why Drucker thought that way when he came up with those ideas. I thought that the book would delve deeper into his thought process but I was disappointed with that. Overall, the author did a good job in capturing Drucker's thoughts. Its a good read.

I'm not a movie buff, but my friend forced me to watch a Hindhi Movie "Wednesday". Awesome movie. Nasruddhin shah and Anupem Kher did a wonderful job and the movie is simply great. It has captured the mood of the people.

The zero sum game

2009-01-17T16:25:00.003-05:00

Recently, I listened to a news in NPR that Britain is the highest donor to Sierra Leone. The reason for GB being the big donor is that they were the colonial powers.

That the country is poor and others, mainly GB in particular has the moral responsibility to assist them in the development is leading me to ask a question why was GB there if it was a poor country. The answer may be that it was once rich (minerals, etc) but not any longer leads us to the situation that GB used up all its resources and made it poor now. So this is pay back time for GB. This is the bad Karma for GB.

Thus what did GB achieve by occupying the country? They are paying up (may be with interest) f0r whatever they used in the past. That is exactly true if you consider all things happening around the world. Either its countries UK, France, US in terms of occupying or companies in terms of wrong doing. Citi earned ($1.5 B) less than the amount of fine ($1.9B) it paid in the Enron scandal, and look at the financial mess that the entire world is going through right now! They are paying up more in lossess than what they made by selling those financial assets.

Its a zero sum game that you don't profit from your wronful activities. It only results in increased transactions but the net result remains the same over a period of time. The Period varies from one action to the other.

A wonderful opinion piece

2009-01-02T12:26:00.002-05:00

I couldn't resist blogging when I read the recent opinion piece in NY Times. This is the interesting thought - What and Why a system works? which eludes the intellectual and with no rhyme or reason, it works. What else am I going to talk about? Its INDIA! What a wonder?
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/02/opinion/02das.html?_r=1

Mumbai to Madoff

2008-12-23T20:53:00.002-05:00

That one is a terrorism event while the other is a financial storm doesn't mean they are two disparate events with nothing in common. Though both are events in two different worlds at the heart of it they

Hit the rich & famous
Hit the ones that were under the illusion that they are totally safe
Broke the trust in the regulators & enforcement agencies in the respective worlds
Broke the basic trust in humanity

Both leads us to wonder Why? What is the reason behind? What did they achieve? These are questions that we may or may not have an answer.

Please, mean serious Business

2008-12-05T22:06:00.004-05:00

I, personally was pretty depressed with the turn of recent events in Bombay, India. I'm a news junkie, always wanted to be updated on every single thing but this one, I didn't want to hear / read about this . There are whole bunch of security experts to comment on what need to be done, what happened, how things could be improved yada yada yada.

Whenever the congress party forms the government, it is so lax on the security and is interested only in the muslim vote bank. They think they are doing a service to the muslims but in fact they are doing a great disservice to the community. By saying that by supporting the terrorists, they are supporting the muslims they are thinking muslims are terrorists. In fact, innocent people irrespective of whether they are Hindus, muslims, Christians, Jews... are getting killed. So, What Congress need to do is stop thinking about Terrorists and start thinking about keeping the public safe from the anti-social elements. Treat all anti-social elements whether its an animal, a man, a woman or a Eunuch they should be punished.

To bring back the faith, the government should
1. Execute the death sentence on the terrorist who attacked the Parliament.
2. Bring back the POTA.

Fate of Deers in Garden State(NJ)

2008-11-06T20:58:00.003-05:00

I had been travelling the I-78 Corridor for a year now in NewJersey ever since I moved to Bridgewater. NewJersey being known for its green and the presence of deers in abundance. However it is very pathetic to see so many deers killed and the carcass lying on the roadside. Every living being whether it is a human or a pet, its remains need to be given a proper last rites (a decent burial). It is onething that it is not pleasant to see the dead deers on the roadside; the other thing is not giving due respect to one of the living being.

This is a nice idea of deer repellants.., http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2008/07/essex_installing_roadside_alar.html

Cellphone in water

2008-11-04T19:29:00.004-05:00

Recently, I dropped my cellphone in water. A friend of mine mentioned that if you bury (or cover) the cellphone in rice, rice will absorb all moisture. Last time around, I immediaely switched it off, removed the battery, cleaned and put it in an oven overnight with just the light on and without switching on the oven. I did it this time for an hour and turned it on. Even though the keypad lit up, the screen was bluish green as if somebody punched it. Thus I put it in my rice drum and covered the cell all around with rice. Came back after four hours- Voila! there you go- I got my cell phone back and working.

Good Luck to everyone.

Kalki eBooks

2008-10-30T07:21:00.002-05:00

$700 Bn - Contd.

2008-09-30T16:50:00.003-05:00

I'm writing this in the back-drop of McCain returning to the campaign trail and the house rejecting the first version of the bailout bill.

There is a lot of grouse in the heart of America regarding the bailout. This would have been a Slam dunk if it had been a year earlier as this being an election year. With as many or more than a third of the population being against this, the Congressmen and Senators are very concerned about facing the electorate.

Even among those who support this, they would like to see some pay-back from the wallstreet folks. The regular Joe had seen the high-life of the banking folks during the boom and they would like to see the wallstreet go through pain like everyone else in America when they are in trouble. Its the principle that Adults are responsible for their deeds and a feeling that they are not alone and that everybody pays for their mistakes. Above all, they see that this whole thing is being schemed by Wall-street and being bailed out by people from Wall-street (Hank Paulsen and the Treasury is filled with people from the street).

I'm confident that eventually, they would come up with a bill and would pass. But the bill should have
1. A Fairness
2. Helping folks on the Main-street
3. A pay-back of somekind from Wall-street
4. Help the good performing banks and let some poor banks go down.

I understand and agree that the US Economy needs government assistance. However, who gets the help, how they get it is what I'm more concerned.

Identify the best institutions that is not affected by this mess and reward them to get more strong by funding them the most;
Identify the financial instruments that without which the economy would go down (not the investors) and support them (like Money market, retirement accounts etc)
Identify the first-time home buyers and the primary residence with a proper income-hom ratio and help them.
The bill should have provision to recover the economy and not the investors per se.

Let the free market take care of the rest. The better ones will survive and the best will thrive.

$700 Billion Question

2008-09-23T21:30:00.003-05:00

I was enraged like everyone else on the proposed bailout by the US govt. for the Wall street. My take on this is that this is one of the necessary evils. This is ridiculous that everyone of the business leaders and the media cheered the wallstreet crowd during the years of the real estate bubble. Between 2001 and 2007 year over year wallstreet investment banking firms like Goldman Sachs (Hank Paulson the Treasury secretary was the CEO till end of 2005) paid record bonuses (12 billion + every year)- http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/dec2006/blan-d22.shtml. In 2006, Godman CEO received $67.9million as bonus.

The whole bailout will make sense if the govt. does two things.
1. Calculate all the bonuses paid out by these firms between 2001 and 2007 and make it mandatory for these firms to pay the entire bonus alone back to the govt, for all the firms that is getting the help from the government.

2. When the govt. eats up the loss of banks so do they eat the loss of Individual homeowner. This bailout is outrageous but it should be fair on all the affected parties and cannot be selective.

Will write more on this

A good talk on economy

2008-09-11T19:48:00.001-05:00

These are good points which I had been reading for the past 10 years plus. You all might have heard of S Gurumurthy - he is the head of the Swadeshi Jagran Manch ( Suthesi vizhipunarvu Iyakkam). I came to know of him through his writings in Thuglak 10 yrs back. He had been suggesting this demise of the Dollar for the past 10years, I didn't get it when I was there but I could see the whole scheme while I came here.

His article "Engae Pogirom?" was an eye opener for me. It was discussing India's Economy since 500 years. How we were doing our day to day business from Education to daily life and how it was screwed by the English invasion. If you guys get a chance get it and read it. Thats why I always felt theres got to be a middleway between Communism and Capitalism and the mid-way is having a strong local economy and there is no doubt. Thats why as he lays out India is in a very good position in terms of the local consumption. The consumption increases the number of transactions, in every transaction atleast three people get benefited (buyer, seller and the agent). Though I don't agree with few of stuff on what he said, I agree with him to the most part. Two issues that I don't agree with him are

1. His take on Thailand PM Thakshin Sinawatra. It is indeed true that he said lets stimulate the local consumption but he was booted out of power because he is a business man and he screwed the government upto 200$ million on taxes to be paid in a recent stock purchase swap of various family held business. So the Army with the blessing of the King stepped in.

2. US having to land first in the moon.... Any country should work towards its advancement and someone or ther other has to do this. The EU is doing this with its own R&D. India is doing its own. Its good that US is leading the charge by pumping money to do this.

The concept is if you kill one person, you goto Jail, but if you kill hundreds (read veerappan) you can get "Pothu Manippu" thats the equivalent of others supporting the $$$$!

and you don't have a choice. Because the only folks who talk in these terms in India is the BJP and people won't put them in power stamping them as communal. So don't worry India like every other country will help protect the $$! So if you have the $, you are safe and if you go down, you are not alone - everybody will be with you in the underground. You can start holding accounts in various currencies to hedge your bet.

Books

2008-06-11T19:15:00.002-05:00

Here are few books I read, couple I'm reading and others that I came across....
1. Blue Ocean Strategy - a great book. Though the book doesn't say anything new in terms of the strategic concepts, it lays out a path to achieve. The strategic concepts that this book address is how to expand your market. Once you reach saturation in your market, this book gives a step by step approach in expanding the market.

2. The strategic Art of WOO - This again is a great book explains how you can Win Others Over, what are the aspects that stops you from doing so and how to do it.

3. Good in a room - not completed yet. But this lays out an approach to do a good pitch of your ideas.

4. Micro Trends - by Mark Penn.

Enjoy reading.

Aruna Sairam Concert in NJ

2008-04-27T22:13:00.003-05:00

After a long time I was able to attend a concert. She and her accompaniments (Vaidhyanathan on mridangam and Baskar on Violin) gave pretty good performance, her matching necklace with silk sari and the single diamond bracelet on the hand she uses for Alabanai didn't go unnoticed either.

The concert had good variety, reaching its peak during the Raagam thaanam Pallavi performance. If the one in memory of Mummoorthygal was the highlight, this was one of her concerts without Thillana! Baskar did a wonderful job with Violin, it literally spoke when she sang "Vishamk Krishnan...". While Vaidhyanathan like Ilayaraja had a separate music for each and every person name(appar, sundarar, thaayumanavar...) in the song "Eppadi paadinaro..."

Though I'm not used to hearing Abangs & Bajans, the selection was a good mix of Keerthans, Abangs, Bajans & Tamil songs. Overall this was a memorable one for its Raagam thaanam Pallavi.

Karunanidhi and our Heritage

2008-04-15T20:46:00.002-05:00

Time and Time again Tamil Nadu CM Karunanidhi has proven that he really hates our heritage and will do everything to destroy our culture. The Indian culture is age old and is well thought out by our forefathers. The current western generation may be ahead of their counterparts in the East (India) in life style and scientific developments but they were pretty much in stone age during our forefathers era. By the time was sentenced to death for proposing that Earth was round, thousands of years back our forefathers have established not only that the Earth is round, but also the myriad astronomical calculations. Is he saying that these folks are stupid or is he?
So Karunanidhi thinking that he is stupid and so is his father and his father. Well he has every right to think however low of himself he wants, but he doesn't have the right to say the same thing about his and our forefathers. There is a reason for everything that is laid out including the New year. If we don't know something then the best way is to learn it and the easy way is to ridicule it. Well, He has chose the later.

Looks like there are no leaders available in TamilNadu.

Oh GOD! Please restore sanity to the leaders of TamilNadu.

Couple of Books

2008-04-15T20:39:00.002-05:00

Who is your City? By Richard Florida. Businessweek has mentioned that this as a contrast to "The world is Flat" By Friedman.
The art of Woo- G.Richard Shell & Mario Moussa. I read part of this book and this is really good, states you a step by step approach to convince others on your views. The first explanation for "WOO" caught my attention - Winning Others Over. A good one to read

Recent thoughts

2008-03-07T00:36:00.004-05:00

Had been off blogging for a while. Now, these activities / events made me write.

The Indian budget for the current fiscal year is a classic Congress method for the past 60 years! A nice squandering of 60,000 crores that is not going to solve the real problem. The intention is not to solve the problem but to create a spell as if the problem is solved. This is the same congress that stopped Rajiv from implementing the "Liberalization" during his first term. This again convinces me that Congress cannot restore India's Greatness. They lack the will-power that BJP showed (from Pokhran to POTA to saying "no" to Karunanidhi for Dayanidhi maran). BJP puts National interest first to petty politics. Thats why India got its groove back during BJP's regim for five years that Congress couldn't do in 50 years.

On my trip from US to India, I watched the movie "Gandhi My Father" - a nice portrayal of father / son relationship between The Mahatma and his eldest son Hari lal. Even though my son is just a year old, of late I could see the world from a fathers' perspective of the things that play out. Its really painful to feel how Mahatma felt about his inability to convince his own son. A sense of failure - a tough one for any dad.

Since my Undergraduate days, I had been dreaming about providing everything that a company needs as a service . That thought has evolved in to a niche "services for SMBs". A recent press release from TCS confirms that this is a market that they have started concentrating.
http://www.tcs.com/offerings/small_med_business/Pages/default.aspx.
Any interested parties can talk to me on this.

Communists O! I love thee

2008-01-19T21:58:00.000-05:00

Being a political junkie, I wondered how come communists rule West Bengal for so long. I have read and also accept that Communists have the most rare breed of politicians who are not corrupt. See Nallakkannu.
http://www.rediff.com/news/2008/jan/03nandi.htm

Now, I understand why communists rule so long! Its the ability of the political leadership to accept reality, accept mistakes and make corrective measures. We can only dream of such leadership in Tamil Nadu.

Indian Realestate

2008-01-19T21:54:00.000-05:00

With all the other cities already saturated w.r.t to the real estate market, Chennai being at its top still, I'm not sure how far this story will hold.
http://www.rediff.com/money/2008/jan/19realty.htm

Vadagalai vs. Thengalai

2007-10-31T21:48:00.000-05:00

For a longtime, I wanted to know the difference between the two sects of Vaishanavites and it happened yesterday. I'm trying to get to continue the practice of reading Paramacharyas' - "Theivathin kural" few pages a day. He has mentioned this in the Second volume of the Seven volume series.

Its the difference in the way one surrenders to GOD ("Saranagathi"). Vadagalai proposes that one should hold on to GOD (like a monkey holding onto its mother) and shouldn't leave until he accepts while Thengalai proposes that one should let GOD handle it (like a cat carrying its baby) and guide one through and the individual doesn't have to do anything - just wait for it to happen.

Navarathiri Kolu

2007-10-21T09:41:00.000-05:00

The quintessence of South Indian culture during Navarathiri is the Kolu, the beautification of the home and inviting people over to the home and visiting others to exchange pleasantaries and wishes. I started this process last year when my wife expressed desire to do this. Being an ardent fan of old traditions, I was thrilled to assist her by just letting her do what she wants rather than doing things that might derail the whole effort.

The important thing to Kolu is the Kolu-Stand - a piece of furniture that resembles steps in the ladder. I scrambled to find an equivalent in the north-american stores and the one thing that came close to it was in Crate & Barrel. But it was not exactly what we were looking for. Thus with no time left, we decided to use packaging boxes and created three steps.

This year I started in earnest, started shopping around in NJ, there is an Indian store and takes order and delivers Kolu stand but I found that is bit expensive. Finally, I found a posting in the Internet (aha! where else?) as to how to make a Kolu stand? I went to Lowes, bought two Stair Raisers (I couldn't find this in Home depot), three 8 feet (2inch thick & 8 inch wide) wooden plank got it cut 3 feet each and voila I've a 5-step kolu stand for under $40!

Happy Navarathiri - Dussera.

Fanwood Community Railway Station

2007-09-19T21:25:00.000-05:00

I couldn't resist writing about this little town in the Central New Jersey. I live closeby and happened to use the NJ transit for the past couple of days to commute to NYC. This is no Metropark or Edison two major commuting stations on the NE corridor of NJT. This is one little cozy train station with limited parking on both sides of the track and a box like Ticketing & waiting office. Inside the office, you have a small book shelf with books -Commuters' library. What a fantastic idea? People donate books, could pickup books to read during commute and drop it back once they are done. There is no coffee shop inside or any other store for that matter. All these small things keep it simple, nice and calm.

This is a community railway station rather than a commuting railway station.

NYC VSLive 2007

2007-09-19T21:19:00.000-05:00

NYC VSLive 2007 Sep 16 – Sep 19 2007

Well, this is no product launch and no free software doled out like other Microsoft events.

The keynote speakers were good and the demos are Microsoft quality! (products tooJ). The technology at the forefront of these few days was .NET 3.0 (mainly WPF, Silverlight, WCF, WWF) and SqlServer 2008. WPF & Silverlight (www.silverlight.net) are the Jazzy UI while the WPF catered to the Desktop apps, the silverlight catered to the web; The WCF (replaces the webservices & .net remoting) lays the foundation for the underlying communication between two disparate systems opening up myriad possibilities for the protocols and WWF caters to the workflow (I couldn’t attend any of these sessions as there were overlaps). Silverlight is being built as a cross-browser cross-platform solution. It would work on IE, firefox, Safari and both windows & Mac. Novell is developing the Silverlight for Unix / Linux. The session towards Ajax & Sql 2005 were pretty much what we are using and not that great. Except for one new thing on Caching in Sql Server might be useful to us.

Apart from the stuff that are useful, certain sessions helped clear the doubts on things that are better not used like the webservice factory (a code generator) CLR (read .NET) based SQL queries. The code generator for webservice factory was cumbersome at the best and CLR based SQL is more overhead for database queries. However the CLR based stuff eases development by providing the .net constructs for database programming. The newer version of the webserver (IIS 7.0) makes it easier for the webmasters & web administrators to manage websites by making it more modular, flexible and moving the configuration to the host.config file.

In addition to the MS technologies & concepts, there was a speaker from Amazon (Mike Culver) talking about their Storage; access to a ton of code samples that would helps us to develop stuff faster.

The highlights of this event are

Except for the keynote speakers not many people used Vista! Only three out of Ten speakers had a vista machine and even one of them was complaining its utility.
Every speaker used Google.com for search and not Microsoft live.com
IBM is competing with Microsoft in the freeware market by coming up with a free database DB2 Express on the lines of SQL Express. But when I pressed the sales guy on how different it is from SQL express, he didn’t know! (I saw him sitting in the SQL workshop on the final day taking notes)
Even though the demos were very good, the tools that had to be used to develop these (WPF & Silverlight) are quite not ready yet and they are clunky at best (even the speaker on WPF admitted this) and good that we decided not to use WPF now.

The toughest part of this whole exercise was not sitting in some of these boring sessions but it is the commute to the city all three days!

Hey Ram. Oh Mother India!

2007-09-14T10:40:00.000-05:00

Though I read a lot if interesting stuff (less that what I prefer to), Life was keeping me busy and nothing that made me really write but for the recent activity in the Supreme court of INDIA. I could not resist this dastardly and an open salvo against the sentiments of the majority Indians. Yes, I'm talking about the Affidavit filed by the ASI chief in the Supreme court on Lord Ram. There are so many things that we don't have proof of and if we start denying each and everything then we will be left with nothing - soonyam!

This is a blatant act on the part of the Left. We can't blame Sonia in this as she wouldn't know the significance of Lord Ram or for that matter anything that weaves the Ancient India to this day. Thats why she can't be the Prime Minister of India. Since British Raj and continued after Indian independence, the various institutions are filled with left leaning people. Communists don't believe in GOD. This is the same set of folks who subscribed to British propaganda that India was populated with Aryan invasion through Kybher pass(Arcticle) British recently disowned that theory. People of the same color are now denying Ram.

A nice ariticle by Tarun Vijay in rediff - Denying Ram is Denying India

Gandhi's soul @ Rajghat would squirm now.

Hey Ram!

This weeks' thoughts

2007-06-24T10:16:00.001-05:00

I was driving by yesterday and listening to npr as usual, but this time to an interview by Ben Kingsley ( who acted as Gandhi). His birth name is Krishna Banji! He was born and raised in England. When he went to his initial audition as Krishna Banji, he was rejected. A week later his dad suggested him to change his name to an Anglical sounding one. He went to a theatre 30 kms from last week as Ben Kingsley and he got it!
He mentioned that what an Irony? Krishna Banji has to become Ben Kingsley to act as Gandhi!

http://everything2.com/index.pl?node=Ben%20Kingsley

My next one is the cover story of this weeks' businessweek which confirms that my ideas of the third phase of globalization is taking roots. In the next few decades, it wouldn't matter where one live or work, the globe will share a lifestyle!
You could read them in www.businessweek.com

Interesting thoughts & links

2007-06-02T09:43:00.000-05:00

I don't read Fortune that much, but this one is good. If this trend grows then it would blow a death toll to America's leadership role.
Disrespect of Education in US - a growing alarming trend

I keep reading book reviews of business books, nothing came up that interesting. But this book looks like a good one and I would like to read it. If any of you read about it, you could let me know
Upside - The 7 strategies for Turning Big Threats into Growth Breakthroughs

Jack & Suzy welch on Entreprenuership

Qualities - Not for a leader

2007-06-02T09:10:00.000-05:00

In my last posting I wrote about the qualities a leader should have. Now, after the SunTV, Dinakaran, DMK, I couldn't resist writing about qualities a leader should not have.
1. Supporting & Justifying violence - A leader can not do this even in his / her mind. The moment you start understanding the reasons behind a violence, your mind would start justifying (rationalizing) it. Human mind is so powerful, it can justify anything.
2. Inferiority complex - A leader can feel inferior of himself only to improve in any specific area. However he / she can not have an inferiority complex.

In the criminal activities that went on in Madurai recently, three innocent lives were lost. When asked to the chief minister about when would police arrest the prime suspect (in this case his own son), he was angry and said it is you who committed the crime and do you have any proof to that aspect.

If a father could feel so much angry to arrest his son, won't he know how much angry the parents of the three innocent persons who lost their lives feel? This is just one example where he justifies violence. He has a history of supporting violence not only if it is done against his opponents or by his own supporters but also towards veerappan, naxalites and we can go on to quote instances.

Coming to the second quality, when a reporter asked him why Raja was recommended for a cabinet minister, he said because he belonged to the Scheduled caste! Did Raja convert to Schedule caste just now? Wasn't he belong to schedule caste since his birth? So why didn't he recommend Raja three years back. Because at that time he had his own family member to take care of and he recommended Dayanidhi! Now there is no family member available (Kanimozhi will be available only after getting elected to Rajya Sabha), so scheduled caste came to picture. This is not just one occasion but Whenever somebody berates him and he got no valid answer he would resort to this. Thus for whatsoever reason, even though he is so successfull in life (from nowhere to the CM and a sea of wealth) there is an underlying anxiety for him that he doesn't belong to the higher caste! This reminds of Gandhi in his days in South Africa he mentioned "Nobody can berate you unless you berate yourself".

Unless Karunanidhi overcomes these two he is a leader unfit for the job.

Tony Blair

2007-05-19T19:41:00.000-05:00

The real leader with all the leadership qualities. If you want to define his leadership in one word, then it is "The Passion". I remember reading an interview by C.Subramaniam , yes the great minister who brought green revolution. After Blair took office the first time, C.S visited and met him and said that Blair has a real vision for Britain and every country needs a young energetic leader like Tony Blair. He would think through it, believes in it, takes a position and becomes one with it. The way he explains an issue you can't but believe him.

Ofcourse every one has a black mark and this one is indelible, Yest it is IRAQ. It is one issue where I don't believe him. He went into Iraq knowingly that there is no reason for it.

Thus he is an example for future leaders on how to do things and not to do things as well.

Thank You Mr.Blair.

Find Stuff in your area

2007-04-30T07:56:00.000-05:00

I like the Tech review of Stephen.H. Wilsdstrom in Businessweek and pretty much read it without failure. A few weeks ago, he wrote about the difficulty in finding businesses located in a zip code (Where Search Stumbles)
Yesterday, my brother asked me the same and I referred him to Ask.com (which came close to what Wilsdstrom wanted) but he wasn't satisfied. He went on his quest to find what he wanted. Voila! he found it . It is not one of the top search engines, but www.mapquest.com. Type in the address & hit search. Once you have the map of the area, you could either search by name of the business or by Category. Let us say you want to know all grocery stores in the address you typed, select Grocery stores from the drop down list box and hit search. It will return you a map and on the right with a list of all Grocery stores with Address, phone etc.

Intellectual Powow...

2007-03-25T18:21:00.000-05:00

Recently my brother forwarded me a link in the quintessential video blogsite you-tube. Its a recorded program broadcast in JayaTV. Its Hariharan's music program. What is so special to mention about this one is (as the indian tv channels have nothing other than Cinema) that the audience were all (pretty much) folks who are well-versed in Music. Hariharan was exploring / extrapolating various popular songs in different sruthis / raagas and all of them (chithra, kushbu, suhasini....) were immersed in the variations and enjoying the program.

What is so significant is that this provided a platform for the intellectuals in the music world to feed their ego and this would lead to the development of the music world. This is not just for music, every other field should have events & conferences like these and allow the exchange & proliferation of ideas. Not only these intellectuals but all these events should have participation from budding intellectuals and enthusiasts. This would lead to the development in all areas and the society in turn would flourish.

Here are the links I'm talking about
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xix1xdI7KA - Watch from 5:58 Minutes through the complete video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cH-qTnKoQ1Q&NR – Watch completely for Vennilavae Vennilavae Vinnai Thaandi Varuvaya and Nila Kaigiradhu and Uyirae Uyirae

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2w8ocxn2fJ4 – This one is from SPB singing the telugu version of Anjali Anjali Pushpanjali. A must listen for anyone and everyone. Amazing rendition by ace singer.

Hello - Zillow!

2007-02-11T21:34:00.000-05:00

This new company offers various products - information on houses (which in econospeak causes the trade to happen), listing houses for sale, house prices, estimates, Make me move etc. But above all, it introduces a paradigm shift of liquifying hard assets by creating an institution similar to stock trading. Yes, this is the holy grail - a way to smoothen out the difficulties and create efficiencies in the $2.6 trillion real estate market.

To give you a peek into what this is all about Make-Me-Move. A house owner could put a price on his / her house even though the person is not ready to sell it. Another interested party could search for such houses and make a counter offer (what price would make him / her move into that house). By doing this it creates a bunch of quotes like realtime stock-quotes ( not happening right now - but has the potential).

Read all about it. Normally I don't read fortune articles as they are not written crisp to the point but this one I liked because of this interesting concept.

Interesting articles

2007-01-30T22:24:00.000-05:00

Outsmarting The Market
- How Barclays the global financial company is innovative in seeking the "Alpha" seeking higher returns. Anyone could read this article and benefit. Folks who are students and interested in Economics / Finance could see what the finance companies are seeking and to be on the bleeding edge of the Research. The folks who are looking to grow their investment could look at funds managed by Barclays to seek higher returns.

Jeff Bezos' Risky Bet
- I like the new business model of Amazon and I think this is an interesting and as well as has a very good future.

India Joins the Investment-Grade Club

Another article - Why Interest rates might stay lower

Aruthra Darshanam

2007-01-02T20:52:00.000-05:00

Every year in the Tamil month of Margazhi ( December / Jan) the star Thiruvathirai is celebrated as an auspicious day as it is the birth star of Lord Siva. For more information on this day, read the following link
http://www.geocities.com/shivaperuman/aruthra.html

Certain Recent Events

2006-12-29T17:59:00.000-05:00

Certain recent events made me write this. Though they are distinct and separate incidents, both could not be ignored. First of it, is the Encounter death of Saddam Hussein. Yes! the so called Trial by any count can not be justified in any form. Yes Saddam committed those atrocities and there is no two things about him being punished. But this whole tribunal business, looks like this is the only task the so called Iraqi Government achieved. Every day people are getting killed in droves, no business is happening, no new improvements in the lives of the people of Iraq. Now, they (the US & Iraqi govt.) say that the Judgement is handed and they are just implementing the Judgement. Why wait so long? Just the troops could have shot him outside the hole he came out of . This is nothing but an encounter killing. But Justice will be done.

The second incident is that of Steve Jobs of Apple. The story is that Jobs chose dates in the past to benefit him. Apple conducted an internal review and has cleared Jobs of any wrong doing. According to them, even though, he picked the dates of the option grants, he didn't benefit from it by selling the stock! Come on. Who are they trying to fool? In the end, Jobs may be forced to give up his role in Apple because of this stupid mistake. This reminds me of the Insider Trading story of Waksal of Imclone.

It is Time for Indian Silver Screen to evolve

2006-12-12T21:58:00.000-05:00

The other day I was listening to a report on Tsunami reconstruction in Banda Aceh, Indonesia in NPR, the report started with people in temporary tents watching a dubbed Bollywood movie. Another day on a report on Afghanistan, the report started with a dubbed Bollywood movie. I've heard similar reports as far as the Gulf to the borders of Africa. The teritory from Africa / Arabia to east asia, there is no other big Entertainment Industry. The other big countries China / Japan has a film industry. We could say that probably Japanese film industry produces some quality movies. Being a communist country, China lacks the creative class. But on shear volume basis, no other film industry comes close to the Indian entertainment industry in Asia. China is slowly opening up but its a long way for the people of china to develop a free mindset and for an industry to grow. Thus it is high time that the indian goverment lays out a path to recognize the film development as an industry. Even though I'm personally skeptical about managing creation / innovation, various management gurus and academics have come up with frameworks. The western world is operating the film development as a industry (succesfully to a major extent). Lets brace the inevitable.

Book of Interest

2006-12-12T21:40:00.000-05:00

The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More (Hyperion , 2006)
The book talks about the latest management fad of concentrating on the Niches to make money. The usual 80/20 rule applies to any business and the Long Tail approach is to concentrate on the 20 and increase the target market rather than concentrating on the 80 where the margins are so thin.

Interesting Articles

2006-10-28T14:13:00.000-05:00

Karma Capitalism
If the above link doesn't work, copy paste the following URL in the address bar
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine
/content/06_44/b4007091.htm?chan=search

Book Review about Premji

Political Science

2006-09-14T21:47:00.000-05:00

A recent headline caught my attention "Pluto loses status as a planet" ( http://www.physorg.com/news75645703.html)

So there is only eight planets and pluto got reduced to a status of a dwarf planet. Bunch of scientists (people) got together, discussed; some of them proposed another planet as a tenth planet. Since majority of them (now the buzz word is democracy) felt that the tenth object didn't quite fit the definition of a planet, they all agreed to change the definition! Thus when all the planets were revisited, the other group argued that even Pluto is not a planet according to the new definition. Nobody could come to a consensus, but anyway we need not worry - we all have democracy. Hence they conducted a polling of the scientific folks and thus pluto lost its position! Poor Pluto, didn't have enough time to muster (indulge in horse trading) support.

According to the Hindu civilization there are nine planets (two of them actually are not planets -Raghu, Kethu). While the western (current scientific community) scientists were fighting over earth was flat, thousands of years before that - a thousand miles away there was a vibrant civilization with great advancements in all fields including astronomy. They knew not only that the earth is round but also knew about the solar system and each of the planets positions etc.

In the eastern thought process (Asia), if someone doesn't understand an issue explained by a second person, then that someone is deemed "not shrewed enough". However what I noticed in my experience with the western thought process, the second one is deemed "not shrewed enough"! Since the western scientific community could not understand the eastern philosophy, they term that concept as "idiotic"! It should be the otherway around.

All that is required by us or current civilizations is to affirm what was discussed in the Hindu civilization. Either there are only seven planets or there are nine. The task for the scientific community is to knock one more planet or agree on the ninth one!

Is this called Political Science?

India’s Diabetes problem

2006-09-14T21:14:00.000-05:00

"Rich man's disease" is really becoming a disease of the Rich! NY Times had an elaborate article on this exploring the genetic aspect Sept 13th (that Indian genes are attuned to retaining fat to take care of famine times than process them when they get it). Since historically India faced food shortage over generations, our Genes are attuned to storing fat for famine times and processing less of the fat. Thus with the economic growth, more people are having more wealth, reduced physical work and enjoying more. Thats the reason that diabetes is growing more among the Indians in america too! This is leading to the onset of diabetes. Folks with few years into the work-life 26, 28 years old are developing diabetes. Diabetes is also growing faster among the Indian american community here.

For a comprehensive story either click the following link or copy paste the URL in the address bar.

Modern Ways Open India's Doors to Diabetes

http://www.nytimes. com/2006/ 09/13/world/ asia/13diabetes. html?ei=5087% 0A&en=6077926f386d5e42&ex=1158379200&pagewanted=print

Vishnu Sahasra namah Meaning

2006-09-02T18:33:00.000-05:00

Adi Sankaracharya's meaning for Vishnu Sahasranamam
I stumbled upon this wonderful jewel when my wife insisted on knowing the meaning of vishnu sahasranamam to recite. You never know what you could find in Internet! This is the first work of Shri Adi Sankara in his quest to compile the vedic works. His Guru Shri Govindapadar instituted Adi Sankara to perform this work to evaluate his readiness to begin his Journey of Life. By reading this, one doesn't get just the meaning or gist of Sahasra Namam but also the meaning for simplistic rituals / procedure we perform on a daily basis. To quote one, Why do we touch our ears followed by our toe to do a namaskaram / abhivadhayae? Because while doing our nithya karma (Sandhyavandanam, reciting vishnu sahasranamam) we install GOD on our body and if we have to do a namaskaram to GOD, basically you have to do it for ourself as GOD is installed on ourselves!

Apart from the Shri Adi Sankara's work, by far the person has done a wonderful translation to English and I've never come across one such work before.

Interesting articles

2006-08-12T19:56:00.000-05:00

My feeling on why medical care is expensive. Now a researcher in MIT is working on the same!

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_33/b3997089.htm

Quicken - Medical finance software - I liked the following line in the article. What is needed to sell your ideas. "Now, they know what to do with a bill they receive in their mail box".

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_33/b3997087

Globalizing the local

2006-07-29T23:19:00.000-05:00

I love the concept of "Microcredit" made famous by Muhammad Yunus of Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. I was just thinking that we should be able to do this on a large scale. Basically unshackle the people from the clutches of high interest rate (either from the local lords or banks) and democratize the capital. Oflate, I read couple of articles that talked about 4-5 websites that do this, a significant one is www.kiva.org. (http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/
content/06_31/b3995088.htm?chan=search)

I was listening to the interview of Tom Friedman by Tim Russert today. During the conversation, Friedman, explained that the current phase of globalization as "Globalizing the local"!

Actually, Kiva.org is one such instrument it globalizes the capital needs of the local.

There may be many people with many ideas but only a few has to courage to make it happen and these guys have done it.

What does work? Good question.

2006-07-21T20:53:00.000-05:00

The recent escalation of violence in the middle-east makes me ponder over the meaning of life & reason for existence. Yes, Hizbollah started the conflict, but if you look at the 300 + lebanese & Israeli individual lives that were lost, what did they do? why should they die at this time? In what looked like a six year peace in lebanon and no reason pointing to the contrary, suddenly things changed and so many lives are being lost! What did they (the individuals) do?

In an Interview during his visit to India, Donal Rumsfield mentioned that India could do in Pakistan what US did in Afghanistan, if it had the means to do. Thus, the recent American foreign policy furthered by the defence policy is that one country should do "Whatever that works".

Israel had occupied and fought a deadly losing war in Lebanon for 12 years ending in 2000. Israel had been fighting militarily, the so called militancy in the palestine ever since Israel gained Independence. Till date, it is not successfull. Israel had been talking to Lebanon, Palestine and for that matter to the rest of the world ever since its Independence. However, it still is facing the violence everyday and using violence everyday. Thus clearly both military and talks as well, hasn't worked. So What does work ?

Or is this is what is meant by working? (by the world order)

A Good article for anyone to read

2006-06-21T15:12:00.000-05:00

This is especially for all the students graduating and entering the work-force this year and as well as for those who don't get it. Jack Welch has been writing in BW for a while, but this one is straight from the gut!
Dear Graduate

Would soon Breast milk be on the Supermarket Isle?

2006-05-16T21:02:00.000-05:00

Like any other day, I was listening to the NPR and this story in its marketplace (a serial) attracted my attention and infact, I was surprised by it. There are nine breast milk banks associated with non-profit Human Milk Bank Association of North America. How it works is explained in the following article. You could either read it or listen to it.
I thought, what an altruistic work in a capitalistic country! But there is a new development that I feel is atrotious. The milk banks are selling it to a company called Prolacta and they in turn are marketing it @ $3 a milliliter.

Story on Breast Milk in NPR

http://marketplace.publicradio.org/shows/2006/05/16/PM200605165.html

Interesting Links

2006-05-14T18:57:00.000-05:00

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/index.html
It feels like 1998 all over again! - This article talks about come back of the dot com bubble. I still don't see this coming. Even if that is the case, In my opnion it would take 2 years from now to burst. So if you want to play and take risks, you could do so till next year and a half.

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_18/b3982001.htm
This is interesting and I can't understand how people do this?

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_18/b3982075.htm
A good one.

Recently read the book "Athanaikkum Asaip padu" - Vikatan Press - Jaggi Vasudev. He takes a contrarian approach to explain the vedantic concepts. A very good one.

Whose money is it anyway?

2006-05-13T13:56:00.000-05:00

The economy in India, esp. Tamilnadu is very good. There is not a single day passes by without a headline regarding an investment in and around Chennai (no where else...). With investment, employment grows and the government taxes as well. The only class that pays taxes in India is the working class. Those who have enough money doesn't pay (their part) anyway and the person who doesn't have anything is not bothered. In the run-up to the polls, both DMK and AIADMK announced freebies. Guess what? The front-runner of the globalization policy Mr. P. chidambaram (also fondly known as leader without any follower) subscribed to it!

Shame on the working class. Because they are the ones who have made this possible. In other parts of the world, the tax-payers dictate policies implemented by politicians. Here, the taxpayers just pay, they forget their responsibilities (they don't vote). They let the politicians dictate the policies. The tooth-less taxpayers shamelessly watch the politicians loot money from their pockets and waste money on these freebies. When the economy is good, tax revenues are better, the government should plan for policies that further that growth rather than throwing away money. So what difference is between Veerappan and these politicians? He too looted money from the haves' and gave it to the have-nots.

Thank GOD, not everyone lost their senses. There were other parties such as BJP, Vijayakanth who were against these policies. One good outcome is that Vijayakanth was able to garner enough percentage of votes (8%) even though he spoke sensible words!

There is a small light at the end of the tunnel.

Why is it?

2006-04-23T21:11:00.000-05:00

Pramod Mahajan Shot! - Why is this happening to India? Why India keeps losing young, energetic and leaders with a can do attitude. It lost Rajesh Pilot, Ranga, Madav rao Scindia... All of them in quick succession to fate. However they are all over the political spectrum. One thing connecting them is their love for what they do. When things come along pretty good, GOD places a check mate! ippo enna pannuvae? It feels like somebody so meticulously planning to take these people out of the picture. There is no news in it, but I felt like sharing my thoughts.

Reservations.Too Touchy? Not really.

2006-04-16T08:09:00.000-05:00

The recent policy decision, raked in by Mr.Arjun Singh is becoming a hot controvertial topic. On one side Hon. Pres. APJ is evangelising his Vision 2020 Plan, wherein he is harping on meritrocracy and creating an environment of knowledge powerhouse and on the otherside, the politicians are going their own merry way of attracting votes! Both reservation and meritocracy could go hand-in-hand and result in building a strong India if done effectively.

Reservation policy or for that matter any policy is not controversial if we could look at it more objectively with no emotion. This policy is a wonderful tool by which that part of the society which was being kept out of the system (education, jobs, decision making etc.) is given the extra hand to create a level playing field. But look what is happening now? Since this policy started, people who benefited from the policy are using it over and over. When I was studying, a friend of mine walked in asking us to help him with only 10 questions out of 40 as he belonged to MBC and it is enough for him to answer that many to get in. This is not helping the downtrodden anyway. This is called the "Crowding out " effect. The number of people (crowd) who already benefitted out of this policy is increasing and there are only so many seats that new folks can't get in!

What do I mean by "Already benefitted"? The policy is to bring those who are not part of the system into the system. Thus, if a person is educated, having a government (or any decent paying) job, his child used this policy to get educated, he / she is into the system already and they are no longer outside the system. Since the parents are well educated, financially better-off, socially better-off, how can they be considered "downtrodden"? Isn't this the reservation policy is meant to achieve? Thus it has served its purpose for the people - it has brought them mainstream. It is the duty of these folks to realize their duty to the society to let others benefit from the policy and bring them to the mainstream life.

What are the repurcussions of this "Crowding out" effect?
1. There would be a new class of "downtrodden" created and they could never become part of the system.
2. In the longer-run, these downtrodden would raise against the better-off! (like what hapened before)
3. This would undermine the potential of the benefitted folks (a person capapble of performing better wouldn't look only to answer 10 questions).
4. This will create a society of "mediocrity" and not "meritocrity".

Like our forefathers (who wrote the constitution) We have a responsibility to pass on a better-world to our next generations. Thank GOD that they were not selfish leaders like now and they did think and stipulated any reservations to 50%.

Higher reservation in a system is not good for that system. It is criminal for the us or for our leaders to think that we are incapable! This is exactly what the Britishers did when they were ruling India (they thought that the Indians are incapable of governing themselves).

So what should we do?
1. Keep the reservations low, much lower than what it is proposed now (49.5%). Let us have a healthy debate and arrive at a proper figure. We learnt in our project planning that adding more people would not neccessarily speed up the project! We need to find the optimal number(%).
2. Restrict and define for whom it applies. Restrict it to say two (or three generations). A Father / mother and their Son/daughter (grand kids). The generations after that are capable of competing in the open world. A country cannot become a developed country with a vast majority of the society having an "Inferiority Complex" that they are incapable.
3. Specify a timeframe for the retirement of the policy. After which everybody would be part of the mainstream society and we don't need it anymore.

Let us learn. Let us spread knowledge. Let us build a stronger India.

Touring Kerala

2006-04-14T09:06:00.000-05:00

Mr. Sunil
City Tours & Travels
email : citytourkerala@yahoo.com
Cell : (+91) 9447597942

Excellent service. All the arrangements (hotels /food/travel) were excellent. Mr.Sunil did it with a passion and proffessionalism.

I would recomment him to anybody who wants to travel Kerala.

Disruptive Econometrics

2006-02-10T22:34:00.000-05:00

The New Economy
This is the coverstory of BW last week. This is one of my favourite topic - the economy. This lays out in detail the transition going on in the US government in the perspective of tracking the growth (economy). The faculty of statistically tracking the economy is called Econometrics. The basis of this article is that the various metrics (GDP, inflation etc.) that are being used to see the pulse of the economy are age-old and needs to be changed to reflect the current Knowledge economy. I agree with it to some extent on the various ideas discussed. However, some of the ideas are flawed and the few others need to be seen deeply to understand the reality. I agree with the point of view that the money spent on kid's education by the parents is an investment and that Apple need to be looked upon as an innovative powerhouse (the spending on desing & brand building) rather than a hardware reseller. However, one cannot go to the extent of considering teacher's salaries as government investment. It goes on to compare US spending on teachers' salary to Japanese salary saying it is 6% in US vs. 4.2% in Japan. We have to see the exact dollar terms per student and the cost of living. Everyone would agree that the cost of a service offering is way too high in the US when compared to other countries. That is the basic reason that the quality of life in US is better than the comparable countries. The government's eagerness to provide a level playing field and that everyone would have be able to earn a decent living no matter what kind of job he/she is doing (The recent strike by MTA worker highlighted the fact that a NYC bus driver is earning 60,000 USD a year).

Philosphically, we can consider everything as an investment. However econometrically, we can't do that. But this is a good thing that a debate is going on in the government machinery to change the way the metrics are calculated. We need to change from the way we do things since the 1930s. This period could be termed "Disruptive Econometrics" like Disruptive technology.

When we don't see what we expect as defined, Change the definition!

Creativity Loves Constraints
http://www.businessweek.com/@@ePrOD2UQAfeDMAwA/premium/
content/06_07/b3971144.htm.
Copy and paste the above URL. If can't get it, write me, I'll get it for you.

Links - Latest

2006-01-22T21:53:00.000-05:00

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8004343747717655794
About IIT

From cost-cutting to a must-have for competitiveness
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/toc/06_05/
B39690605outsourcing.htm

Dr. A.P.J Abdhul Kalam's Inaugral Speech in the CII's partnership Summit. An execution plan for a developed India.
http://in.rediff.com/money/2006/jan/18spec.htm

Link this with the Lead User Methodology discussed in my books sections. Developing nations are brimming with Lead Users. Here is an article.
Business Propfet - C.K.Prahalad

Interesting. Intriguing. Why India has a good chance because of its Math prowess?
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_04/b3968001.htm

Another good view point...
What Innovation Advantage?

Free phone calls anywhere in the world!!
A new wifi phone from Netgear with Skype software enabling one to make a call wherever there is an Accesspoint.

http://www.netgear.com/pressroom/press_releasesdetail.php?id=305

Some important stories missed by the mainstream media.http://ia.rediff.com/news/2006/jan/06rajeev.htm?q=np&file=.htmA Blue card? Reverse Brain drain? A Significant storyhttp://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/index.htmlJetBlue - A nice story
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/1342.cfm

The telecom executives are talking about the internet bandwidth being theirs! Its not. Once the consumer pays (rent) for it, the bandwidth is consumers'.

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_52/b3965067.htm

Clause 49: India's Answer to SarbOx?
But the only way to lead is to let others question and answer.
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/1332.cfm

The third phase of globalization!
Phase 1: Developed countries benefited by gaining access to the consumer market
Phase 2: Emerging countries benefitting by gaining access to the producer market
Phase 3: Geography doesn't matter. There will be several Mesa del Sols'. A person sitting in Koundampalayam / Thotilpaalam / Mesa del Sol could be finishing up the task for any MNC.
http://www.businessweek.com/@@tmRalIcQAs6DMAwA/
magazine/content/05_50/b3963137.htm
(copy paste the above URL)

Please email me (4rajesh@gmail.com) with your email id if you would like to get notified whenever there is a new post in my blog. I intend to write atleast once a week but either due to lack of ideas that are of interest or laziness (one or the other) I don't. So, intimating the readers of any new post would be a good thing.

Movies & its impact

2006-01-15T16:21:00.000-05:00

Of late I started catching up with movies that I wanted to watch in the past. I watched one of them "Motorcycle Diaries", this week and the other one is a usual flick - After the sunset (Pears Brosnen & Salma Hayek, seen for the later). The former one is a spanish language film made in south america about "Che" Guevera - the rebel behind Cuban revolution and assasinated in 1967 with the help of CIA. Movies / literary works such as this one that shows the "making of" the personality interests me a lot. The book E=mc2 by David Bodanis is one such thing about the formula in itself.

The dialogues "what made the invaders to destroy this to build this" in the ruins of machu pichu (Peru) and another one "the indegenous people knew astrology, science, medicine but the invaders had gun-powder" reflect on the early days of his revolutionary mind. This is in fact true in the case of India too. So what made the indeginous people lose the lead to the euorpeans is the gun-powder. But in the course of time, what they lost is themselves! Both the Indians as well as the south american natives identified things with nature, understood the meaning of life and was once a fledgling civilization. They lost their culture to the colonial powers, started thinking their knowledge is always inferior to the colonials over period of time and lost themselves! Its a cycle of thousands of years and what goes up, comes down and that is the only thing that is constant.

Vaikunta Ekadesi and my memoirs

2006-01-09T21:23:00.000-05:00

Today being vaikuta edadesi, (for details click -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaikunta_Ekadasi), I went to the Bridgewater temple in New Jersey and went through the "Sorga vaasal". I was thinking about how this became a practice for me over the years. I was reminded of my days in Erode, Kumbakonam and Pondicherry. My father would take all of us to the Perumal temple every year. When we continued the practice in Kumbakonam, we were surprised to find no "Sorga vaasal" and on enquiry it turned out to be that Kumbakonam is also called "Bhoologa Sorgam" and hence no perumal temple in Kumbakonam have one.

Parents take kids to the activities, which they feel the kids should be exposed to and by taking them to places they communicate the significance of those specific activities. In the companies, if the manager wants to show how much importance he / she attaches to a programme, the manager expressed it through the physical presence and incentives. Until the kids can understand the importance of various things, the parents repetitively expose kids to the activities of their interest and this way the culture, values, customs gets communicated and reinforced generations after generation.

People from Srirangam, Triplicane and Tirupathi will have their own experiences. You are welcome to share.

Recent Books... Updated

2006-01-06T20:24:00.000-05:00

Democratizing Innovation - Eric von Hippel, an MIT professor.
Read a review of this book and writers' interview. Like to read this book as the author expands on the paper I read as part of my MBA (Rutgers) known as Lead User Methodology and talks about getting rid of Marketing research. How to come up with innovative products? One way is the visionary world like Apple iPod and the another way that is being used widely, is this Lead User Method. A Lead User is one who takes a product, modifies to fit his needs and probably uses it to satisfy a need that it is not intended to.

Haven't been paying much attention to the books of late. Today, I forced myself to Barnes & Nobles. Found a bunch of interesting books in the management / business area.

"Search" - about Google and the ilk. This book explores the search process in the current soceity; forsees a era of semantic or AI enabled search and how various internet media companies esp. Google goes about doing this. I'm not convinced that a human mind could be mechanized!

"iCon" - about Apple Steve Jobs second round. I love this company.

Recently read an english translation of Bhagavad Gita by Barbara Stoler Miller. Its written in amazingly simple english. I felt that she has brought the essence of the words of Gita in a beautiful poetic form.

enjoy reading.

Value?

2005-12-23T21:53:00.000-05:00

What is it? - worthiness to the society. Let us look at three scenarios in my interactions with friends, relatives, colleagues and TV Talk shows. I'm sure you too would have had your own.

Downloading/copying/bootleg movies, everybody complained about pricing that it is too much. The acceptable price range is between $3 and $5. I'm sure you too would have had such discussions and come up with an acceptable range.
Regd. NY MTA workers' strike, lot of them complained that $60,000 salary for a bus driver is too much! This is the average pay of an MTA worker (not that everybody earns this much).
People in the outsourcing world would be facing this from the client - the price pressure, expecting you to quote lesser and lesser per hour (say $12 an hour - $8 an hour).

But what is the value and how much is it worth? Should we be looking at this as how much the soceity pay for a particular functionality or should we be looking at it in the context of people (who are part of the very same soceity) accomplishing that functionality. Because the perception of this value is what is used to sustain the soceity.

There are so many layers and the doers' share as a percentage (max 12%) of the price is negligible (http://www.music-law.com/contractbasics.html). This is the same issue with the Non-profit organizations. A good Non-profit organization needs 30% of the donation to support itself and passes only 70% to the people in need. The infrastructure (Sony, BMG etc. in the music industry, Accenture, Infosys, Wipro, etc. in the outsourcing industry) needed to support the base takes up anywhere between 30 to 90 percent depending on the industry from creative artists to outsourcing industry to the public workers. In the case of public workers they are the nuts & bolts of the government who help to execute.

Probably, People develop a cost-based perception of the functionality when it becomes routine, ubiquous and that could be easily replaceable.

The infrastructure is a necessary evil. Like any other setup, we need to find innovative process model to reduce the evil to enable an equitable share of the value between the producers and consumers.

"Shame on us"

2005-12-23T17:01:00.000-05:00

We keep hearing these words often recently from all quarters of the soceity in different parts of the world.

First from the media and the so called culturalists on the Kushbhu episode.
Secondly from the so called honourable members of Parliament on the "few members of the parliament" caught on tape accepting money.
Finally by Michael Bloomberg (NY mayor) and George Pataki (NY Governor) on striking MTA workers.

Shame on - what for? on Kushbhu/Suhasini for speaking the truth or the rest who doesn't want to?
On MPs accepting money or for getting caught? Because this is going on for years and these leaders are speaking now as if they don't know.
Bloomberg and Pataki as recently as october settled with other unions (sanitary workers, teachers etc..) and got their support for them because they were up for relection! Pataki is planning to run for President in 2008. Since people in America like leaders who just stick to what they say (it doesn't matter whether it is stupidity or good) rather than who sees reality and change with it, Pataki is branding himself as a strong leader by speaking tough words. Strong leader = be Obstinate.

So Shame on who? The media! The MPs! Bloomberg & Pataki! Shame on those who doesn't want to and doesn't have guts to face the reality.

Hypocrites - is it another name for Politicians?

modern kootuk Kudumbam

2005-11-26T12:43:00.000-05:00

That the family members and relatives living in far-off places (US, UK, India, Australia) becoming the norm, doesn't stop us from living together! This which might sound strange occured to me when my sister-in-law was looking after me recovering from the ACL surgery for the past ten days. The moment my brother walks into his house in Atlanta would log on to skype and we would do the same in NJ. The quality of the chatter is so clear that we would leave it connected in one room and would be walking all over the house and he would be able to hear us and vice versa. The whole ten days I felt like my brother living next door. We would cook together, eat together (at the same time) , share our thoughts and tease each other. This is exactly what we would do back home when we all lived together with our uncles and cousins in one home. I plan to take broadband connection in my parents' place and thus we would be living together even though the parents are in India, one brother in Atlanta and myself over here. While we are on skype, it would be like sitting and yaping in the living hall in my childhood days.

As an offshoot, I tried to use more of the wireless technology, I found the following information. This might be useful to the readers as and when they think of trying this.

Minimizing Bluetooth Interference
http://www.wi-fiplanet.com/tutorials/article.php/1379911

I saw that my Toshiba Techra A3 laptop has a built-in bluetooth antenna, hence bought a plantronics bluetooth headset in the Blackfriday sale for $9.99. I tried to use it to unleash myself . After much trial and calls to Toshiba, I found that it needs an optional bluetooth mobile toolkit to carry the signals picked up by the antenna into the cpu?!!! I decided to buy an external USB blue tooth adapter from buy.com for free. After that I would test and see whether I experience whatever I read in the above article.

What goes comes over. Let us re-invent the wheel.

This week articles

2005-11-10T20:42:00.000-05:00

This is a tactical move - IBM Lenovo's retail move
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/nov2005/
tc20051103_908972.htm?link_position=link1&campaign_id=
nws_tech_Nov4

This is a strategic move - Sprint-Nextel-Cable wireless
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/nov2005/
tc20051103_235560.htm?link_position=link2&campaign_id=
nws_tech_Nov4

Beware of - Online stock hackers
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/nov2005/
tc20051103_565150.htm?link_position=link10&campaign_id=
nws_tech_Nov4

I think a lot of folks would agree with this
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/1292.cfm

Why Shoot the messenger?

2005-11-08T20:34:00.000-05:00

Paul Vocker, former US Federal Bank President (before Alan Greenspan) is a distinguished gentleman and definitely not a politician. He has done his job as professionaly as possible. As recently as the Enron scandal, he conducted investigation into Arthur Andersen consulting and this time around the UN's Iraq Oil for Food program.

A little background will help understand the Natwar singh link. While Iraq was banished by the UN security council, a little commercial window was opened by the UN. The little window let Iraq barter Oil for Food at a price determined by UN. Since the little window was not enough for Iraq, the president of the country, in Capitalism terms cut deals with various traders who were hungry for oil. As the rest of the world is cut out of the Iraqi oil right now, the US traders were out of the Iraqi oil then. The political power brokers or the lobby groups always serve in the middle ground between businessmen of the world and the respective governments.

The US govt. cut out of Iraqi oil business in the last decade was gunning for some reason to get in and in the pre-text of WMD, they eventually got in. Now that the reason is not valid anymore the US government was looking for some other reason to throw at the world. So they dug this up and hence the report. However this wouldn't justify Iraqi Invasion. Who will dig the current spate of contracts being handed out by the US backed Iraqi government? There got to be another conqueror to do that! We all know that Winners write history. This is exactly what is happening in the saga of Paul Vocker report and Natwar Singh.

Even if Natwar singh or whoever is accused of in the report has done some deals, it is only as condemnable as the current political power (both Iraq and US). They are businessmen, lobbyists and politicians and they play their role according to the situation. In US terms they are power brokers and entrepreuners.

Why shoot the messenger or blame the bearer of bad tidings?

Links

2005-10-22T20:30:00.000-05:00

http://del.icio.us/4rajesh
This is a like a bookmark of my favourite web sites. may be useful to you guyz

Do you have a plan?

2005-10-15T19:28:00.000-05:00

There are two types of people emphasized by Dr. A.P.J.Abdul Kalam in his book "Wings of Fire" and in the movie "Signs" -M.Night Shyamalan.

Simply put, the first type of people take things as it comes and the second type believe that things could be better and strive to change it. According to Dr.Kalam, it is because of the second type of people that the world moves forward. However if you look detached from the issue at hand, either type of people experience the pain. The first type take the status quo as it is and suffer rather than change it for a better life. Whereas the second type don't agree with the current state of affairs and suffer in changing the status quo for a better life.

What is good / right for you? to be of type I or II? Life is a balancing act. But in order to know whether it is worth the effort, one needs to attempt. Without an attempt you would never know. So here comes the question when would one attempt, in what scenarios? There is a worldly order and everyone should grasp their role in that. Everthing on this earth has a meaning. One should identify oneself in the worldly order and how he/she fits in it. This is very subtle but this is the basis of when one should be type I or II. So the answer is not what but when? Once a person understands and gets the big picture and his / her role in the worldly order then the person would know and go with the flow of the order.

Based on your understanding of the big picture and your role in the worldly order you should make a plan for your life. In an interview in NPR by a woman who received a honorary award for community development in brooklyn, NY she mentioned "When you don't have a plan for your community; Believe me, There are others waiting with a plan for your community. So better you decide how you want your community to be."

This applies to every individual as well. So, do you have a plan?

Metrics & Accountability

2005-10-04T17:45:00.000-05:00

On a lazy october evening, I was watching the "Cramer mad money" a show in CNBC here in America. I do not like the mannerisms of Cramer and normally do not watch this show. This time, he talked about a topic that first caught my attention four years back- the Metrics. Proper metrics are the basis point of Accountability. Without accountability, there cannot be order in any system or one cannot enforce order in any system. I mention this because I adore how accountability is built into the governing system and soceity here in US.
The very first metric that caught my attention here is the "retail sales per sq.ft" for measuring how good a business a particular retailer is doing?
Every industrial sector has few important metrics. The companies with the best metric would be the best performing company in that sector. Some of the metrics mentioned by Cramer in this show are as follows

Cable C0mpanies (Comcast, optimum etc.)
enterprise value / no. of subscribers . enterprise value is basically the market value.
Hotel
avg revenue/ room
Airline companies (advised by him as something not to buy)
avg revenue/seat
Retailers / restaurants
samestore sales
Tech stock
gross margin/product sold - best gross margin stock. Eg. Microsoft, Intel has the highest gross margins.

Bandh New Process

2005-10-02T07:37:00.000-05:00

The concept of Bandh has lost its value and meaning. Like every other thing this also has become a ritualistic effort. The proponents of the recent bandh, the Leftists are so backward as their ideals. Only those who adapt with the changing times could lead and prosper. Even though the communist principles have died all over the world the Leftists in our country keep repeating the same "against privatisation". So why do they lure private investors & industrialists in communists ruled states?

Here is an idea for Communists. Like Deepawali, we should have a day for Bandh. Whoever wants to conduct a bandh should assign their reasons to that day. In the management jargon, this methodlogy is called the "Product Train" principle. The software product companies follow this technique for product releases. Here is what they do. The company defines release dates, say first day of every quarter and assigns features that should be released on that day. Whether all those features are ready or not, the release will happen with whatever features that are ready. Irrespective of whether a particular feature is ready or not the Product train would leave the company as scheduled. The features that are left will join the next train(release). This is the new way of managing releases. In this fast paced world one expects change on an ongoing basis. In order to satisfy the urge and necessity to satisfy customers, companies have devised this methodology and running it pretty much successfull. One of the companies that I personally know that follows this is Juniper Networks. I'm trying to implement this in my company.

The predecessor to this methodology is called "The Stage Gate Process". This is mainly followed in new product development with five phases or gates. First being the identification and the last being release. Folks interested to know more about this could contact me for further reading or information.

Happy Bandhing for Communists. Happy working for the rest.

Leadership

2005-09-24T08:56:00.000-05:00

The recent ongoing events in the BCCI and BJP made me blog this. What is at stake? Is it the person or the institution. Majority of the public as well as the people involved think it is the former and that is the root of the problem. The question is not Ganguly / Chappel and Khurana / Vajpayee / Advani. It is the position as a coach/captain and President / member. The moment Ganguly spoke in public about what transpired between him and the coach, he is lost. Remove Ganguly and Chappel from the picture, is a person of this stature (whatever is said in the chappel's email is right/ whatever Ganguly's complaint against Chappel) is good for Indian Cricket or for the cricket world in itself?
Nobody could dispute the role played by various members (Advani, Vajpayee,Khurana, Sinha) what BJP is today? But where were these people or do the general wider constituents (not just few states in north India) know these men before 1989? It is Advani's leadership (not Advani) that developed BJP from a two MP party to 87 and then 200 MPs. Is Advani only a proponent of discipline when he says it? No, he is a disciplined person in himself. Could we forget the discipline he followed as a Deputy PM. He maintained silence outside even when he didn't agree to what Vajpayee is doing, because the government is running under Vajpayee's leadership not him. That is with the same discipline he developed the party base. When BJP was in disarray after the elections, it is the BJP that wanted Advani's discipline back, so annointed him back to the post. No matter what or what is the stature of the person (senior / junior), they are junior to the party president. If one ought to run the party as one wishes, then he/she has to be the party president to do it. Otherwise, they have to wait for their turn or could go out. Because if something goes wrong it is the party president who is responsible and not this member.

So what changed these people (Vajpayee, Khurana, Yashwant Sinha....), the taste of Power! Ganguly doesn't want to leave Captainship (it is the power) and doesn't care whether he is fit or unfit.

I'm reminded of a dialogue in the film "The Matrix", the character Oracle would say "What men of power wants? More POWER".

Limit of democracy

2005-09-19T13:23:00.000-05:00

I listen to npr almost everyday. The thing that caught my attention today was a BBC report on the definition of "democracy". It was mentioned that orange county in California democratized almost everything that the local water board chief is also elected. None of the people interviewed knew who that is but he is an elected person!
This is going to lead to a day when the govt. is going to keep on pushing the citizens asking them what to do next? Come on guyz, just do it and there is a limit.
Next the reporter was pondering why "democracy" is so popular in the past 50 years? Why is that everybody wants democracy.
My answer is "that is most marketed product in the world", backed by the richest country in the world!
I can't digest that judges are being elected... People are buying justice, not getting it.

Intro

2004-12-10T11:51:00.000-05:00

hey,
This is my experiment with this new technology/ media. I hope i'll enjoy this. I chose the word 'saamanian' for the url, which in my native language tamil means 'an ordinary person'. I would like to post my views (an ordinary persons) view of things happening around. With the world going through dramatic changes as it goes, would like to add my opinions on certain aspects of life and people. Should we spend time lamenting on things happening or take things at face value and proceed to live the life we want in the way we want? Being a business student and an avid current affairs honcho, I would be sharing my views on various companies - their strategies, what they should do / should not do (ofcourse my opinion), my experiments with various products etc..
Hope I'll enjoy this. Hope whoever reads this will enjoy too.
Welcome,
R.R