Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus but rationalists among them are still searching their origin

Rrrrnnnnnggggg…….

The phone rang shattering that dream… I said myself, ‘Who the f**k is that?’

Hello…

Ya Hello…

It was my friend.

What’s up man? I asked

Hey it’s snowing heavily outside. Just have a look at the outside world through your window.

I said Ok and disconnected the call.

Today was my first ‘The White Day’ in life. ‘A beautiful morning with city being covered with sheets of snow, showcasing its power to erode away all your worries’ I could see my friends playing with snow, throwing it at each other, trying to find out the exact dimension and shape of the fall and frequently asking each other about ‘Why the shape being like that?’. As I watched them being so expressive and happy, one of my friends rushed to me and made a statement, ‘You are not enjoying your life’.

Nope, you are wrong. I immediately replied.

On the way to office, the same question was haunting me. ‘Why the hell people think that I am not enjoying my life?’

What is enjoyment in generic terms?

What you have to be in order to make people feel that you are happy?

Retrospect drove me into a basket of further more questions?

‘What’s my happiness?’

I could easily conclude that, it’s the approach of using rationality made me happy always.

But why people have a different attitude towards rationalist people?

Rationalism prompts people to think all the activities in terms of numbers or derived practicality. When one side of the world calls for looking life and its difficulties through irrational eyes, very few could solve those problems irrationally. If driven with a constant effort to think people to come up with solutions for day today problems, all solutions directly or indirectly pin point or slide into the mentioned segment.

So now the question arises, what is the optimal point where these two approaches take deviation? I could figure out that the success of a person or an organization lie in the extent to which he or it can separate these two approaches. The more you separate these two with in an individual or an organization, the more successful he or the organization appears to the outside world. When I mention that ‘it appears to the outside world’, there is a significant point to the grabbed from that. But the same could not shed any light on the state of an organization or person irrespective of the way it appears to the outside world.

This statement could easily provoke anyone to ask a question. Does success or happiness needs to be showcased? Doesn’t success or happiness proclaim itself that ‘Only Success can hide successes?

You are absolutely correct. Success or happiness need not be show cased. But success or happiness doesn’t have the power to showcase themselves when the definition varies dramatically. This is where the point I mentioned about the separation comes into picture. So separation seems to make an organization or a person look like one among every other just because the rate of variation in rationality seems to be too high compared to the variation in irrationality. The more a person separates rational approach at any point of time; it seems he is one among us.

In contrast to the way you are born with irrationalism, most of the time rationalism is enforced in you by external factors. One of the contributing factors can be the surroundings in which you were brought up, for example many people who are brought up in a business family tent to think rationally than the people who are brought up in a rich agricultural family.

In simple words, these two approaches should be adopted to be applied from opposite sides rather than preferring to be mixed up and sorted out when each problem arises.

May be the incorrect separation of both, is leading people to think that I am unhappy.

Or may be……

Hey Vimal, you have to get down at this stop.

Oh! So fast!

Ya, you were dreaming. Stupid dreamer! By the way where is your book?

Ya, I finished that.

Good, get a new one, otherwise you may get down at the next BOSCH office tomorrow.

Ya, that’s true.

With a self imposed statement I reluctantly logged into to attend my daily status meeting.

‘May be those one percent of rationalists might be responsible for the happiness of at least fifty percent of the people in this world’

The power of rationalist approach to evade human mind

I happen to see a debate in CNN-IBN on which people from different sectors of the society were debating regarding the problems that hinder our growth to a super power status. One strange pattern I noticed was the degree of rationality that was used in the debate. What do you understand by being a super power? Why too much rationality is used across all sectors when the layman associates his life in a completely irrational manner? How people gain so much energy taking about the numbers when more than half of our children are malnutrition-ed, more than half of our population lives in acute poverty and when our social infrastructure development is crawling at snail’s pace. Then why is this government concentrating more on numbers?

Recently I happen to speak to my uncle who retired as a deputy general manger from Nabard. We had a discussion for more than one hour regarding the social infrastructure available across our country. The debate started with my complaint of lack of world class roads in my state. More over I was overwhelmed by the great social development in my state and the failure of the government to use it for the next economic revolution. But he steered my attention to the increased income and standard of living of the people in my state. As he mentioned, there are no world class MNCs or corporate giants in my state, but we are the state with the highest per capita income in India, with the highest literacy rate, with highest road density, with highest telephone density and with high quality social life. Here a daily worker earns 400rs per day, which is way higher than the national standards. People here enjoy a wonderful life compared to all other states. Two of our big cities are turning into the most livable cities in India with wide roads, less pollution, and with smiling auto drivers at your service. Our social life is comparable to the Japanese and our vehicle penetration is comparable to the Americans. If state wise growth is counted, we would be first among the states which could be declared as developed in the next couple of decade.

What were the contributing factors for this? First I would like to ask each and every one of you, what do you understand by development? Is it the presence of multinationals, those multiplexes, and shopping malls in your state capital or improving your people’s living standard? This matters to a minority like you and me. Yes the answer lies in the irrational approach of development, to invest in social development including schools, hospitals, rural banks, proper distribution system, farmer education etc. And it’s nothing but the stress on above mentioned approach made my state economically forward. This could form the basement for accelerating our economic development. Being little more rational, our current policies are benefitting only 6% of the total population i.e. 94% of the population are growing at below 1% when Indian GDP grows at 9%. This statistics could reveal the scary situation of income disparity in our country.

But what led to this? Yes it’s nothing but the power of rationalist approach to mesmerize our mind. Or moreover it’s the success of the government to make people think in such a manner. What a 12 billion dollar steel factory can do in Orissa where the people can associate the presence of Indian government with only one rail line that goes to an iron ore mine and that is nothing but a private rail line of a big MNC. Can you blame them for not giving up their land for the multibillion dollar mega industry? Can it change their life? Of course not!! What they need is nothing but good food, medical facility, schools, and banks to make them feel connected to the external world. And we blame them for blocking our race to that double digit growth.

Further strengthening the statement, success of non rationalist approach can be found in many successful corporate worldwide. This includes IBM, P&G, J&J, HP, DuPont, Intel and many more. Can the strategy of ‘share holder first’ make any sense to the employees? How can he associate his life with the daily fluctuation of his company shares? And if you are one of those who believe in this, it well buttresses that you belong to that upper segment of social life. If you drill down the strategies in these companies, you would find that the companies with the best social environment inside were able to tide over all the market bounce backs, recessions and those lobbies that work against them in long run. They concentrate more on the small things rather than mesmerizing the employees with corporate numbers. But at the same time it cannot be ruled out that there are hundreds out there for whom the numbers can be stress busters.

It’s time for each one of us to realize that it’s not the rationality that resolves day today problems but it’s the overall involvement of people in small things that matters. This holds true for both the corporate and in governance. It’s nothing but concentrating on things that matters to him, that can improve his productivity, his creativity, his feeling of belonging to that part which matters him the most.

Forced Obsolescence

When was the last time you moved one of your hidden talents to a 'Forced Obsolescence' state. It was not long ago right. You were always a good artist and you finally end up in becoming a banker, you were always a good athlete and you end up in becoming a manager, you were always a good investor and you end up in becoming an engineer. In retrospect it was you who made all those obsolete. Yes ‘Forced Obsolescence’ has become a major problem of the 21st century youth. The surprising factor is that most of the time it’s inducted in you even without your knowledge or more precisely there is always an external factor.

Your personal circumstances or change in priorities could act as the villain and I am not going to talk about that. But I am going to talk about those who make deliberate attempts to induct the same in you. Villain is none other than the marketing strategies used by corporate or these established conglomerates.

During the first half of 20th century the businesses were mostly dominated by the so called monopolies of the time. But the massive spread of entrepreneurial benefits and the prospects of massive profits led many small and medium players to enter into the business that was dominated by these monopolies for decades. These small players of the time were able to provide goods and services of better quality at a very competitive price. The fierce competition prompted mega business empires to come up with a marketing strategy that would always force people to consume. They came up with a strategy that would induct a feeling of obsolescence in consumer and prompt him to consume more. I have a question for you? Will you ever consider buying a new mobile if a new version of the existing one is not released? Yes this is the strategy that made you feel that your consumer durable is obsolete even if it’s just six months old.

Lets consider an example here, it was stated in a newspaper that last year alone 30 million mobile phones became obsolete in India, most of which are in perfect working condition. I own a very good mobile phone which is just 2 years old. Last week I was considering an HTC phone that was released in last winter. It is as powerful as a computer of the previous decade but I still didn’t consider it just because the phone was carrying an Android 1.6 version. I was informed by one of the Google website that new version is due for release by the mid summer. Just two weeks back I considered the phone to be the best in the market. But in no time it became obsolete for me. Was the phone obsolete? No. It’s still the foremost in the market but since I was more informed I moved it a ‘Forced obsolete’ state.

And the weakness is still the reason why you see that new version of iPhone or iPad every spring. There is always something which is left unnoticed, the environmental impact. Even though these consumer durables carry a recycle tag, data is not available to state the exact figure that is recycled. These conglomerates are capable to tide over all the protest that could arise by lobbying the so called Super officials of the states.

‘We all are dead in the long run’, as Keynes stated this, he knew where we are heading for. The road would lead either to the complete destruction of environment or an unrecoverable burst of the economic policies. I would always ask you to keep this in mind the next time you go for a new product, ‘the world has enough to satisfy everyone’s need but not for everyone’s greed’.

WAR IS HELL

War, history reveals that it was always fought for two reasons ‘Land and Love’. As men moved on, his purpose of war and motivation for the same started changing. A major stride towards this happened in the middle of 19th century with the evolution of imperialist concepts for the prosperity of developed nations. The rapid industrialization in the western world accelerated the rate of colonization for the control of natural resources. In no time the western world realized the necessity of a huge military for reinforcing their dominance in this small divided world. Many new concepts emerged with the extinction of many old, but human love for power and money remains omnipotent till date.

With the advent of modern science and technology, humans found many new mechanisms for mass destruction. The evolution of fighter planes, satellites, nuclear bombs, nuclear powered super carriers, ballistic missiles, all makes the statement concrete. 2009 saw the world spending 2 trillion for building up their military. Major chunk has been spent for the procurement of new weapons.

We saw World War I and II killing almost 30 million with another million added by the follow up wars created by Cold War power projection and conflict between communist and capitalist countries. We have seen many leaders coming up with new strategies for peace, most of which have never seen the light of the day. The destructive power of the modern war was revealed in the German Genocide of the Jews, American usage of Little Boy, biological weapons in Vietnam and Cluster bombs in Afghanistan. Never before, humans preferred mass destruction to bring an end to the war soon.

In a more disturbing scenario, industrial countries are competing for the establishment of Military Industrial complex which generally involve in arms export to third world countries. This is evident from the recent war on terror where Taliban fought Americans with arms produced in America. This has happened in the past and will happen in future. Have you ever imagined how these terrorists are supplied with high precision weapons or how the revolutionist happened to gain control of highly secured government armory? The close observation reveals that illegal arms export generally happens with the knowledge of the involved countries. The simple fact is that it’s their duty to keep markets open for these military industrial complexes whose major stake holders constitute the top government officials. Also the revenue these arms exports contribute to government is simply not negligible.

Furthermore, ‘Minimum Deterrence’, as the reason for arms race has been regularly communicated through media. They are well aware that people never know what the level of minimum deterrence is. It’s an adage that ‘War is Hell’, something which we speak and realize daily in our life. But we sympathize with those affected by realizing that ‘Humans fought wars, Humans are fighting wars and Humans will fight war’. But what needs to be understood is, as Jimi Hendrix said ‘When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace’.

Why Resource Rich States are Poor in India?

Hey its old news! My colleague was little lethargic when he replied his friend who mentioned that more than 500million Indians cannot afford food three times a day. It’s true that the statement is old, but what sector forms this 500 million. Are they Farmers, urban, rural, or how do you segregate them to find an exact figure? Statistics state that Bihar, MP, UP, and Orissa are the poorest states in the country. But a close observation reveals that these are the most resource rich states in the country. The enigma pertains to a ‘why and how’. And as an answer to this, we could find many obvious as well as hidden reasons.

One of the major factors that curtail the growth of these states is ‘Improper Rehabilitation policy’. Most of the natural resource centers are densely populated, with agriculture being their primary occupation of the people. Even though most politicians point at their own people being responsible for the slow development, there is a dissonance regarding the same. Lack of proper rehabilitation policy makes people uncertain about their future when most promises made in the past just vanished into thin air. Inability of the government to convince people with a well implemented example also makes the problem acute. Its time that government find an immediate solution for this problem as most of the core industries can be set up only in and around the natural resource centers. The most affected are the steel and mining industry which still could not acquire land for almost 30 billion dollar investment they proposed way back in 2005.

Being an agricultural society also adds to the misery of low industrial penetration in these states. In India, 60% of population depends on agriculture for their living and contribute almost 20 to 25% to the GDP. Often a healthy economy has to have an agriculture sector that contributes less to the country’s GDP. That means a country grows when it is successful in bringing out more and more people out of agriculture while increasing the productivity. The failure to implement the same resulted in people being reluctant to move away from their farm land.

The above stated reasons are also accompanied by the bureaucratic delay imposed on various projects in execution by the political despots who fear the loss of vote bank. One such example could be found in a recent incident in Nandigram district of West Bengal which resulted in the 350 million investments being grabbed by another state. Instead of finding a viable solution to keep the investment, people backed by political despots called for deindustrialization. The inability of State Governments to undertake mega scale projects also results in the backing off of private investors who generally cannot delay a proposed project as it can heavily impact their market performance. Also the poor social environment in these states brings out the defiance against the Government.

It’s crystal clear that the only solution to bring down the poverty index in India is to bring in prosperity to these poor states, to bring in new policies which can benefit both perspectives in parallel, to show people by example and by bringing in people participation by winning their heart.

The penetration of multinationals and its cultural impacts in the emerging economies

Love of economics has always resulted in positive changes in the last century, but time has proved that love of accepting the predictions can result in unprecedented effects. Both mentioned above are no different i.e. severance is never applicable for both these loves when it comes to the passion or in fact the human greed for making money. And the same greed has prompted multinationals to peep into any opportunity that a new market creates. Thus created the jargon, ‘Emerging markets’, in the later quarter of 20^th century. The failure of socialist policies to make changes in the living standard of people and the envy that originated out of the high growth of countries following free market principles resulted in the opening up of major socialist markets to the multinationals.In no time the multinationals rushed in to grab the major pie of the mass market as 60 percent of the world population live in these Emerging countries. Along with them they brought in another mechanism to reinforce their world dominance, ‘Reinforce their status as the major soft power’ which started creating a huge cultural impact in these countries.

As we look around we cannot find a better award than Oscar, we cannot find a better language than English, we cannot find a better acceptance of restaurant chain than the acceptance of McDonalds, we cannot find a better movie than Hollywood movies, and we cannot find better music than western music. Yes, it true that they have dominated this world as the biggest soft power. Now they have the power such that if any news is communicated to the world through CNN or BBC, people believe it. The funniest thing is that people are hypnotized to believe so, even when a second thought reveals that this is not the fact. Now they have the power to enforce that what ever they have done in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq is for everyone’s goodwill when the fact remained deeply buried under. Whom we should blame for this, the people in these developing countries or the penetration of multinationals or both?

In developed countries, multinationals are backed by their foreign affairs ministry which is well aware that invasion of culture is the new mode of imperialism. At the same time we cannot ignore the benefits that these multinationals brought in through their strategy of free market and business development. Their role in wealth creation is indispensible. So we have arrived at a point where we have to decide on how we go with both these perspectives.

When we talk about cultural impacts, there is another side that helps in creating a balanced multi cultural and multi lingual society where a high cultural tolerance is observed. These corporate often have a unique working model where multi cultural and multi lingual people collaborate for the attainment of a unique goal. This often inducts a self learning of other cultures and tolerances bringing up a highly cosmopolitan society. Moreover this is more beneficial for a society like India where people tend to identify themselves based on the language they speak. But in yet another emerging market, Russia, these cultural conflicts with western world is often seen as the imposing of dominant fantasies on a failed state.

In an opposite perspective, the establishments of multinationals in these historical countries help these countries to bring up themselves as an emerging soft power by impacting the way in which these multinationals generally do business. This is evident from the western representation of doing business in Japan as ‘Doing business in Japan is easy, but only if you do it in Japanese way’. It is a general tendency in Japan that your promotions are associated with your age, if someone below your age got a promotion as your manager, it’s usual that you immediately resign. This prompted the western companies to change their strategy of hiring and adapt themselves to the Japanese culture.

As we all know that there is no reverting of the economic policies we have already put in place for the benefit of our society, but we have to decide on how to reduce its impact on the millennium old culture of most emerging markets. Moreover, the discussion about cultural impacts has to be tweaked to discuss about, learning each others culture to create a world harmony.

Infrastructure in Kerala: An insight

Kerala, Gods own country, a connotation for the success in social development in India. You look around, you find a state rich in natural diversity, highly skilled people, lowest poverty index in India, highest sex ratio, multi religious state where the national minorities constitute 40% of the population. Ok, you have achieved all this. Good. But now what? Where do you want to go from here? May be this is the most confusing question that has become so pervasive these days. And what our public sector and Government is doing to find an answer for that? And where are those people who fought to bring in the highest social development, and why they lack an answer?

Each time I visit other south Indian states, I realize about the huge wall that block the economic development in my state. That huge wall is nothing but the lack of awareness of economic development and how it can impact and degrade the status that each Keralite enjoy because of their social development. The call has to be made for a second revolution in the state, a revolution for economic development. Our so called people friendly Government proclaim that they have brought in roughly around 7 billion dollar investments in the past ten years. But they never mention how these investments are flowing in and what percentage of that in infrastructure, and how low it is for a state with 35 million populations. A state, 26% of which is forest land and where 35 million people live, government and people are not realizing the need for good infrastructure. Statistics are scary as it reveals the chaos it can create in the state after 10 to 15 years. How long can a state rely completely on its remittances when economic planning cannot be done based on the same? Out of the total 55 billion dollar that came to India in 2009, 11 billion flew into our small state of Kerala.

People who have travelled across states could identify that roads in Kerala are lacking something. They look for potholes. Nope, nothing is there!! Perfect. But where is the quality. In retrospect, I could identify that many of the major roads were not resurfaced for the past one decade. Out of curiosity I decided to meet my friend who is working in the public works department in the capital city of Trivandrum. I have asked about the tender that was issued for the resurfacing of a major city side NH road. He revealed the shocking news that, the tender has been issued last year for resurfacing, but they do minor patch works and claim the bill for complete resurfacing. He revealed that most people in the department are corrupted and as he is against that, he is expecting a transfer quite soon. Further more, I was wondering how our state claims to be the least corrupted among all other states in India, most of which are competing against each other in building up the infrastructure which could soon become the life line of most.

In another incident that came to my notice was the construction of a small flyover in the capital city of Trivandrum. I still remember the fiscal in which the construction started as it coincided with the fiscal in which the famous Bandra Worli sea link work started. It’s been almost 6 months since the sea link was opened to the public, the small flyover for the Trivandrum city people still remain a distant dream. This was also backed by an unfortunate incident where the contractor who won the tender committed suicide in Singapore due to the inability of the government to clear his bill.

All these incidents again point to the question of ‘Where are those bold people who were holding strong for the implementation of social polices? Why are they not pointing their fingers at the government for the slow pace of economic development? Why are our schools and colleges not educating our students for the need for economic development?

The call is not for an economic model followed by our neighboring states, but to build a new economic model which can suits our social environment. Identify our strengths, and to build out economy which is backed up by a world class infrastructure. And all these reforms have to be backed by a call to make people aware of the importance of infrastructure development.

Capitalism: The biggest humanitarian effort

Corporate revenues projected in billions and millions had become the headline of today’s daily news. When most never bother to care for that, quite a few looks up on it like a hawk waiting to snatch the opportunity hidden behind it. For the above mentioned ‘Most’, the corporate projection of revenues are linked to huge profits often exploiting humanitarian reasons and causes. As they look upon the corporate with their altruistic eyes, the most important still resides in the abyss.

Even though many have tried to come up with a statistics in the past, the fact still remain in the dark. Moreover the political or social environment doesn’t want to reveal that for its own reason. The fact is that Capitalism or Capitalism lead corporate innovation and policies are the single largest humanitarian effort in the world than any other. The rate at which Capitalism can bring out people from poverty is unimaginable. We would consider an example. In India, the rate at which people are coming out of poverty after 1991 when the economy was liberated is considerably high compared to the period we followed Nehruvian policies. The rate at which the farm sector is subsidized is made possible by the taxes it collects in the form of corporate tax. And when people argue for the reliability and inequality in the society, it was not communicated that it is because of the improper implementation of Capitalism.

The revolution brought in by the hospital and automobile sector saving hundreds of thousands of human lives, is another significant indirect humanitarian effort which Capitalism brought in. Obviously there are a few places where the humanitarian approach can create disaster. One such example is how we approach the social menace of begging. In layman’s terms it’s helping the poor. But there comes the capitalist exploitation of humanitarian values, which can worsen the economic situation by increasing the number of beggars within the potential social environment instead of prompting him to find a job. Even this kind of approach is communicated as stupid capitalist thoughts.

It is another misconception that the monopoly the corporate or other world trading bodies has, can create disaster by leading people to poverty. But the fact is that, in a clear capitalist implementation, nobody is GOD, even the monopolistic organization has to follow the market rules, which in turn benefits the poor. It was a wide misconception that OPEC can decide on how world economies run, in the late 60s and early 70s. But when OPEC started to control the market, the market in turn adapted by increasing the productivity of the human resources, i.e. the worlds consumption of oil in producing one GNP unit, decreased drastically by 26% before the oil crisis. This lead to the steady decline in the oil consumption and world saw the fall of oil prices to the pre-depression period. But who finally benefited were the people who increased their productivity and their market value, in turn leading to a more money flow to the people below poverty line.

We all know that no economic or social policies are flawless. It just runs in equilibrium as of now. What needs to be communicated is, what can create a bigger change, how can it impacts the people, how we can bring those millions of poor people out of poverty, how we can educate them and how we can provide a better future for our children where nobody talks about policies but talks about people and what ever you do daily become humanitarian.