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Anna [not the person but the movement] is important, not because he is fighting against corruption or the arrogance of Indian government but because he has ignited several minds. He may not be fighting for something which you believe in, but he has surely shown you a way to protest, to raise your voice against any misrule. He has induced the fighting spirit in this generation of youth. India as a nation is in the midst of a strategic inflection syndrome. Unity and transparency is at utmost importance at this juncture. Compromising on core Indian values can further deteriorate the condition of this country which prides in its historical heritage and cherished culture.

End of corruption, which itself is a herculean task, is not end of the road. This is a curvy road and you have got to deal with these twists and turns. If you wish to stand for a social cause, you can’t ride a cool blow on the back seat. You have to eye the sharp turns and be ready to jump on the bumpers more often.

You may be wondering why the path ahead is so scary. What’s the next big thing? Well, there are many. The first item which may pick momentum is “Right to Service” act. It is required to further cure the corruption and it will make sure that government officials are also responsible for their duties. They can’t take things for granted. In short, there would be a timeline associated with every official task and government employees will be forced to complete that task in given timeline. For example, your passport should be ready in 15 days. If it gets delayed the concerned officials will be punished. This act has already been implemented in Bihar. Rest of India has yet to adopt this.

Right to Recall is another such demand which will empower “aam junta”. This act will makes sure that politicians are not taking things for granted. Public will have power to call them back, anytime. Once elected they cannot be lethargic for five years. They will have to work if they want to continue.

If you are determined to change the system. If you are out on road and if you are willing to fight, be prepared for a long battle. Calm, composed and confident approach is need of the hour. But, don’t succumb to any pressure. Be firm, be sure. It may have short term wins and short term losses but the truth will prevail in the end. As they say – Satyameva Jayate.

Yes, you read it right. History is not always a matter of past. It could be a matter of your future. It could be a decisive factor in taking your future decision and / or shaping your future.

If we look at the recent Ayodhya epic, we understand that history never leaves us with our present. It always comes back to let us know its importance. There might not be much fuss about Ayodhya verdict but it doesn’t mean people have moved ahead of their religious identity. I agree with Rajdeep Sardesai when he says:

The majority community in new India doesn’t want street violence, but is not averse to asserting their religious identity while endorsing the idea of a ‘grand’ Ram temple in Ayodhya. Likewise the minorities would like greater education and job opportunities, but they are also unwilling to ‘surrender’ their claim to a mosque at the disputed site.

Have you ever thought why we have not yet reached to a congenial solution in Kashmir? Why there are so many divergent views? Well, behind everything – there’s History. Or rather say, few historical blunders. How to solve it? Lessons learnt from so many historical mistakes will show the path to a greater and brighter future. Let’s hope to see it soon.

The History is not only the roots of every Indian problem. It is applicable even to an International arena. Look at the on going battle in Afghanistan. Why is it haunting not only America but entire world? If you would delve deep into the root causes – you’ll find your answer in the traumatized History of this landlocked country.

The point which I want to make is, we should always treat History as a precious asset. To avoid any future commotion we should visit an clean this asset again-n-again. Couturiers which have forgotten their history will have no future. So, revisit your History to build a brighter future.

Today morning when I opened The Times of India, on the very first page I read these lines – Two days ago, in an online poll by TOI, 97% of respondents strongly believed the Commonwealth Games organizers had tarnished India’s image. Now, there’s proof that it wasn’t just an outpouring of sentiment. Global rating agency Moody’s says the Game fiasco dented India’s global image and may hurt its reputation as an investment and tourist destination.

I don’t know whom to blame for this but few days back I had read a tweet which said, “Bronze medal 4 corruption goes 2 Sheila Dikshit, Silver to Kalmadi, Gold to Manmohan Singh. Sonia gets Dronacharya best coach award”. Well, I don’t believe in this statement but same time I do not have any other alternative to counter this.

When we look at the statistics related to Delhi Commonwealth games we find many bitter facts and the most depressing fact is withdrawal. Let’s look at few of the sports celebrities who have withdrawn their names from the game. Usain Bolt, Olympic champian and world record holder in 100m and 200m has widthrawn his name from the games. Others who followed it are Asafa Powell, second fastest man on this earth after bolt; Dani Samuels, world discus champion; David Rudish, world record holder in 800m; Asbel Kiprop, Olympipc gold medalist in 150m; Linet Masai, world champion in 10,000m; Christine Ohuruogu, Olympic 400 metres champion; and many more. This list also include the much awaited Australian swimmer Stephanie Rice.

Philips Idowu, world triple jump champion narrated his views on a social networking site – All the press about bridges collapsing, 23+ people being hurt, uninhabitable living condition put me off. I can’t afford to risk my safety in the slightest.

Canadian sports columnist Stephen Brunt wrote in “The Globe and Mail”, Toronto – … this kind of shortfall was inevitable, eventually. And were it not New Delhi now, it would be somewhere else in the very near future, in a city and country that paid too much, that promised too much, that was unwilling or unable to divert the necessary resources.

There are several other comments from countries like Canada, UK, Australia and even from the countries who are not visible on global map. Do we [Indians] deserve these comments? Why do we need to listen this? Who is responsible for that? Can they ever be caught? Will their be an accountability?

There are lots of questions but the biggest question is – Can we dare to ask these questions to correct people on correct forums?

Democracy is considered as the best form of government and India is the largest democracy of the world. We [ Indians ] are a democratic nation from last 60 years. But,

Why 42% of India still falls below the international poverty line?

Why 34% of India is still uneducated?

Why we have a national crime rate of 167.7%?

In search of these answers I tend to agree more with George Bernard Shaw when he says Democracy is a government of the fools, for the fools, by the fools than Abraham Lincoln’s original thought where he says Democracy is the government of the people, by the people, for the people.

People are core of the democracy but collectively can they form a better government? I doubt. Albert Einstein had once said, "two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the the universe". True. On a large extent people are stupid. They are emotional. They are jerks. Most of them are afraid of themselves, of their own reality; their feelings. They are simple careless. They don’t care. And, if they don’t care you can’t expect them to make a collective wise decision.

In Democratic India, we have seen prime ministers whose names were not known to more than 50% of the public – till the time they became prime minister. I wonder – what kind of democracy is this? Our current Prime Minister doesn’t even bother to go to public and fight an election. He is happy with the blessings of monarchy – which again increases my doubt over the form of democracy we have adopted. 

We have a democratic state like Kashmir, whose problem is getting bigger and bigger. None of the democratic institutions are able to solve this. We have a democracy where more than one million people across 10 different states are fighting against government since past two decades, and our democratic institutions are helpless. 

If we go back in history and see the origin of democracy we’ll find the traces back in India. The place was Vaishali, a city in North Bihar which came into existence around 4th century BC. The famous King Nabhaga abdicated the thorne due to an accusation about Human Rights violation. The city then declared itself a Democratic Republic (Prajatantrik Ganarajya) – first democracy of the world.

The point which I want to make here is – we [Indians] have seen various forms of government in India and democracy has never been a successful form, at least not in last 2500 years of known history. I would not like to comment as what should / could be the alternative but I would surely recommend a revisit to Indian History. Every nation has its own culture, own way of living and own way to govern. We need to understand our way of democracy or rather say government. In stead of blindly following global form of democracy we need to rely more on something which we have learnt from our past.

I know this subject can’t be discussed  in just 500 words. It needs lots of study, lots of facts, lots of brainstorming. Though, I would just like to trigger a discussion which can help us to think on various spectrums of this topic. 

Submitting this post to “Mera Bharat Mahaan” contest of Blogadda and Pringoo

On 7^th August, 1883 when Indian National Congress was 8 years old, Shri Aurobindo has said, “We cannot afford to raise any institution to the rank of a fetish. To do so would be simply to become the slaves of our own machinery.”

Now, when the congress is 124 years old I would repeat the same. There’s a reason why I recalled this famous saying of Shri Aurobindo. I was watching the election outcomes on Saturday when I heard the 5^th generation of Nehru-Gandhi, Mr. Rahul Gandhi, talking to reporters. He was praising the efforts of Advani. He was saying, at 80+ years of age Advani fought with great determination. He also said, “Great Job Done Mr. Advani”. A person, who has served this country for more than 60 years, is getting a pat on his back, from a 5 years old politician, just because he belongs to a particular family, a particular institution. That’s the irony of Indian politics. We must ask ourselves, are we matured enough for a democratic system like this?

This result opens up many dimensions which we must analyze. The first point, which I have already raised, is much bigger than our normal assumption. Why we always go back to a particular family? Can’t we produce a good leader amongst more than 10 billions of our population? Do we still have the slave mentality?

The second point is talking about Indian vision. We all agree to the fact that as a country India has its own set of problems and to solve them we need our own solutions. We have a different culture, different tradition, and different demography and we need a different strategy to tackle them. We can’t run our country on the same model US, UK or any other country is following. We need a political system which addresses an “India-centric-vision”. When our people will understand “who we are”? When we will realize that there’s more to think than few emotional issues? When we would start talking rationally?

Next item to be discussed is what kind of politics we want in our country? I can see more than 100 secular parties which ask for vote because they are secular. It looks strange to me. When that is the only criteria to ask vote then why we need 100+ parties. We can have just one secular party? If there’s any other difference, let’s talk about them? Indian politics is revolving around this secular and communal philosophy which looks absurd to me.  We need parties with vision and not parties with religion. Let’s talk about issues like connecting cities, connecting rivers and connecting people. I get few arguments, if we have issues why don’t we talk on them. Yes, I agree we have issues but there’s no need to politicize them. There are other platforms to tackle those issues.

There are few good outcomes also from this election. Declination of caste politics from north India, especially from UP and Bihar, is one of them. The defeat of almost all “bahubalis” is a great thing for Indian politics. Though there are few wrong traditions also popping up, like, emergence of MNS. Mumbai went through a bad phase last year. People came forward and chanted the national anthem in one voice but few of them voted for a hard-core regional force. We made some good progress in this election but there’s a long way to go. I hope we’ll have more awareness towards this. I hope we’ll get better maturity from voters in coming future. I hope we would realize our real issues and our real leaders.

A CD has created ripples in Indian politics. We all are talking about that, some words which are spoken by Varun Gandhi (not proved or authorized yet). We all know that words mentioned or said in that CD is not right, it’s wrong. But the question is why so much of media hype? Why everybody is trying to single out Varun Gandhi? What happened to Sajjan Kumar? What happened to Jagdish Titler, Sanjay Dutt, Abu Aajmi, Raj Thackrey, Pappu Yadav, Mh. Shahabuddin, Mh. Taslimuddin and many such politicians?

Is it because he has a surname called “Gandhi”? If that’s the case, are we still living in democracy? The point is, the entire political system in India needs a radical and thoughtful change.

I didn’t want to make any comment on this as there’s no point highlighting something which has no significance as far as masses of India is concerned. Normal Indians are still bothered about food, clothes and shelter regardless of religion, region and caste. But the politics or rather say politicians have something else in mind. They want to divert issues. They know that they have no better issues than hate speeches, religion and caste. They know that a normal Indian is very emotional, very sensitive. They know that their faces are colored when take bath in religious and regional streams and their tainted faces are grimly hidden behind those colors.

In theory, we are the largest democracy of the world, but, in practical, we are still not a mature democracy. We are largest because we have people and we are immature because we have uneducated, unaware, unconcerned people. When I say uneducated I mean the education which injects a nationalistic approach and not the education which teaches A, B, C, D.

When we want to understand India, and the Indian politics in whole, we should ask few questions to ourselves.

• Who are we?
• Before 1947, what was the concept of country, nation and Rashtra?
• What happened after 1947?
• Why Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and why not a single Bharat?
• Why Mahatma Gandhi was killed?
• What went behind injecting “secular” word in Indian constitution?
• Why reservation, what purpose it solves and how long it will go?

Before we talk on politics in today’s India, we should ask few questions to ourselves.

• What is Congress and why the name Congress?
• Why BJP is communal and why parties like SP, BSP, and RJD secular?
• Are we satisfied with issues like religion, region, and caste or we need issues like Economic Policies, Foreign Policies, Rural Development, Infrastructure, Security and Prosperity?
• We need regular politicians or we need part time politicians?
• We need national parties or regional parties?
• Do we need some changes in our political system?

Thinking on these questions will certainly give a better understanding of Indian Politics and it would surely have a long term impact. Let’s learn from our past and look for a bright future. Let’s enjoy the fruits of democracy and let’s throw unnecessary elements out of this system.

Whenever I see an MBA course curriculum in India or whenever I talk to any fresh MBA student coming out of an Indian B-School, I wonder, what are they (B-Schools) trying to produce? They claim, we are producing future managers / business leaders. They again say, these bunches of students are specialized in Finance, these are in Systems and these are in Marketing. I again wonder, are they really managers? Are they really business leaders? Or, just domain experts?

I believe, there are two aspects of a manger. First is technical aspect, which includes the knowledge of domain, business and the second aspect is, behavioral aspect , which includes, understanding human behavior, interpersonal skills, informational expertise, decisional skills, etc. I also believe that achieving technical aspects of management is easier than achieving behavioral aspects of management.

My intention is not to blame the entire education system of India but just to emphasize on few things which should be given more importance. Let’s see how we can incorporate these behavioral aspects in our MBA course curriculum.

 When we say interpersonal skills, it includes day-to-day interaction with employees, motivation, direction and organization. The course should concentrate more on case studies, games, and scenario based role-plays to develop this skill. These techniques would be more effective than giving lectures on a particular topic.

When we say information expertise, it includes information elicitation, requirement gathering. It may be within organization, and also from outside organization. To develop this expertise, students need to be motivated towards reading, reading some good books, be selective in choosing these books, talking to different people at different level, getting a feel of competitors plan, monitoring the business scenarios. Some games can also be developed to get a real feel on all this.

The last and most important skill could be decisional skill. It includes entrepreneurship development, developing a zeal for initiating new things, developing responsibility and ownership, developing mindset towards hunting / searching for new opportunities, distributing responsibilities to balance the work, risk analysis, going for corrective action, change management, resource allocation, resource management, human skills, cultural influence, conflict management, staffing, socializing, planning, etc. There are few other trend setter decision making techniques like Snap Decisions, Grid Analysis, Pareto Analysis, Six Thinking Hats, etc. All of these skills can be developed through mental games, case studies and several scenario based role-plays.  B-Schools must try to focus on these techniques rather than going for normal classroom based lectures.

Few B-Schools have already realized this and they are transforming their curriculum. I hope to see more such new teaching technique embedment.  

Global economic meltdown has concerned many countries. People are coming up with their own views as what would be the impact? There are lots of data, statistics given on different forums. Top politicians, businessmen, and media, everybody is talking about it. I looked at different blogs, forums and noticed some interesting debates about impact on India Inc. Here are my thoughts as how India Inc should / will deal with this?

I would prefer to say India Inc 2.0 as I believe India Inc 1.0 got over after Y2K and .Dot doom. India started looking into new business dimensions and its economy grew like anything. So, let’s see how India Inc 2.0 should / will deal with this recent economical crisis.

Majority of Indian IT business derive it’s more than 70% of revenue from US economy and they are bound to hit. They will feel the heat as their clients in US will not go for more projects and more work. What could be the impact? Few Indian companies will go for cost cutting, job cutting, and few will prefer to explore new avenues. This might boost the IT product initiative in India. And if it happens, it would create a better prospect for IT business in India.

Tourism is the other sector which is likely to see the impact of this global recession. Everybody is on cost cutting path and the first thing which comes in mind is to cut the traveling and vacation cost. How the industry should deal with this? Ok, if the scenario is not cooperative enough to motivate people then how about going for some innovative things. Let’s consider some innovative ideas for tourism industry. How about promoting health tourism, spiritual tourism, and cultural tourism? Yoga, Meditation, Ashrams, Gurus, Pundits, Bodhgaya, Hrishikesh, Dharamsala, etc. could be few significant words to consider.

More than 50% of India’s workforce is still employed in Agriculture, a sector which is likely to be untouched. These are the people who are least bothered about what’s happening in urban India or the Global village. They would continue doing their regular work and their lifestyle will remain same. India Inc 2.0 can see this global meltdown as an opportunity to enter Agriculture sector. They can come up with a plan which would help this sector to grow and also to enhance the lifestyle of these people. There are multiple problems in this sector and most of them are because of lack of knowledge / information. Some initiatives have been taken by Government / Private sector companies but this recession could act as a booster for making more such investments.

Web 2.0 is another area which can help in combating this recession era. India Inc 2.0 must consider this as an opportunity to build a broader IT enabled business network. Around 10% of Indian population uses Internet and a business model based on recent happenings of Internet can surely create more jobs, more money. It would also help other sectors by providing information / infrastructure to deal with their issues in much better way.

Innovation with technology, Innovation with business model and engaging more people with growth cycle will be crucial for the next business boom. I hope to see a more confident, independent and robust India Inc 3.0.