CSR

I've never quite understood why business organizations should double up as charity organizations by indulging in CSR. In my opinion, CSR is nothing but herd mentality or PR exercise (depending on your POV) at best and i-have-no-clue-what-shit-it-is at worst. Recently, I stumbled upon an article which kinda aligns with my POV. Here it is: http://gurcharandas.blogspot.com/2010/02/remember-money-doesnt-belong-to-you.html

Anniversary speech

Here I'm, a little inebriated, and in the mood for some speed-blogging (which is an euphemism for getting away with writing a paragraph of two hundred odd words instead of a painstaking post). Just completed a full year at IIM Indore. Learnt a lot, forgot some. However, there is no doubt in my mind about the most important learning of all. Which is that oft repeated cliche, "Follow your heart". I mean, kudos to whoever came up with this one liner. If ever someone hit a nail on the head, it was this guy.It is so, so, so, SO correct! Just follow the fucking heart and you'll be a winner in life. The red blooded pump somehow knows what is good for you and what is not. Ignore that idiotic whitish mass of gooey substance you have got holed up inside that cranium. It is as useless as the CPM government in West Bengal.

Another thing I've observed about myself recently is that I've become oh so oblivious of the people around me. I'm not bothered about what people around me think about me. I give a rat's ass about a guy who's in a soup, a kind of soup in which I can offer some unsolicited but useful help. I just don't fuckin care, what the hell.

Of course, things are not as morbid as the above paragraphs suggest. Actually, I feel better off today than I did a year earlier. But, you know, I had to write a post on something. I just did that.

Random Musings III

2nd January, this year. Delhi airport. I find seven people standing in a queue in front of the stall from where you can book 'prepaid taxis'. I position myself as the eighth guy, put down both of my suitcases, rest my shoulder bag on top of one of them and try and make sense of the controlled commotion around me. Within a couple of minutes, I find myself leading the queue. A middle aged man with a 'tere naam' hairstyle and mouth filled with paan masala spews 'Kaha jaana hai ?' I tell him my destination and he furiously types something on the keypad in front of him, as if he has a flight to catch in five minutes. Taxi booked; service time was fifteen seconds give or take a second or two.

Rewind seven days. Dumdum airport, eleven at night. Approximately thirty people are waiting for their turn to prepay and book a taxi. After half an hour, with just five people in front of me, I have a clearer view of the stall and can actually make out what is going on inside. One slender and malnourished person with a thin moustache is slouched on a blue revolving chair, taking in the cool air apewed by the air conditioner. With a smirk on his face, he is making a point to a person who is standing with his back to us. A third guy, looking like a typical labour union leader, with thick glasses and a disgusted expression on his face, is multitasking between casting a disparaging look on the customer in front of him, fiddling on a keyboard, throwing a few points of his own in the intellectually stimulating discussion currently underway about four feet away from him, and forwarding a slip towards the customer using his index and middle fingers. The person standing just in front of me, elbow resting on the handlebar of a trolley on which five big suitcases have been heaved on, rattles off impatiently, 'Dada, ektu taratari korun na!' (Mister, can you speed things up a bit!). All three persons inside the stall stop whatever they are doing. Labour union leader looks up, slowly measures the protestor from top to bottom, and hisses, 'Oto tara thakle ekhan theke chole jaan.' (If you are in such a hurry, get out of here). Kolkata.

iCanvas

A couple of articles written by me for iCanvas are here.

Do take a look around the site, the overall quality (of whatever your eyes see) is very good :)

“Ethics in Business” seminar

8 and 9 August 2009 saw IIM-Indore host the case study based “Ethics in Business” seminar conducted by Mr. Achal Raghavan, a Bangalore-based strategy and business excellence consultant and an alumnus of IIT-Madras and IIM-Ahmedabad.

“This interactive seminar would sensitize the attendee students and future managers to ethical issues and develop an ethical perspective”, is how a senior faculty member of the institute summed up the seminar. Indeed, several students remarked that the seminar opened up a completely different line of thinking regarding analysis of business issues and that they were handed an additional tool for all the case analyses they were going to perform in future.

The fourth session began with an overview of the relationship between supplier and consumer in the manufacturing industry and discussion of three theories – the contractual theory, the due care theory and the social cost theory. The case for the session was “The Ford/Firestone debacle”. It elucidated how the two closely related companies ended their relationship over an acrimonious debate on who was to blame for the accidents and deaths that took place when tires, supplied by Firestone for use in the Ford Explorer SUV, malfunctioned. Mr. Raghavan, thereafter, conducted a structured discussion and analysis through the application of the three theories to this case. He skillfully engaged the audience by embellishing his insights with occasional anecdotes. The exhaustive analysis ended with the general consensus that the moral responsibility for the deaths lay with both Ford and Firestone and the reasons behind the same were enumerated.

The case analyzed in the fifth session was “Playing Monopoly: Microsoft”. The three theories were applied to the business practices of Microsoft and a few interesting insights were derived out of the ensuing discussion. Application of the due care theory suggested that Microsoft seemed to have played “big daddy” and affected consumer choice on the pretext of taking the onus of responsibility for assisting the consumer in understanding a product. Audience members with IT work-experience enriched the discussion.

The attending students requested Mr. Raghavan to conduct more such seminars at IIM-Indore in future. Mr. Raghavan eagerly and gracefully gave his assent to the same.

Journey to Excellence

On 30 June 2009, Mr. Gopal Subramanium, who has recently taken over as the Solicitor General of India, delivered a lecture at IIM-Indore. The impeccably dressed Mr. Subramanium displayed his high quality oratory skills while voicing his opinion on several issues. Using clear, concise language he analyzed several matters containing legal components. It would be perfectly right to say that he held the audience spellbound for two hours.

Mr. Subramanium was extremely forthright and highly critical. To such an extent that he didn’t even spare people from his own profession. He had no qualms about speaking of corruption prevalent in the legal system. He narrated a few examples which illustrated the hypocrisy that has partially engulfed civil servants, lawyers and judges, the fallout of which, obviously, has been a loss of faith of the common man in the system. I think that speaks volumes of the courage and attitude of the man. He has an integrity as hard and unyielding as granite. He is a person who wouldn’t back down but stand up and fight against wrongdoing. He delivers justice. He is in a position of power but he is not afraid to relinquish it in the pursuit of the truth.

Highly learned people are often criticized for being too idealistic and proposing solutions which look good on paper but are impractical. However, Mr. Subramanium’s solutions for the burning issues of today were refreshingly practical, realistic and based on sound logic. As an answer to a question put forward by a participant, he opined that capital punishment shouldn’t be done away with. However, a convict should be sentenced to death only after exercising extreme caution and after undertaking a lot of deliberations. I think it is an absolute necessity to cleanse the world of the remorseless terrorists who mercilessly massacre innocent human beings. I appreciate that forgiveness is an excellent attribute to possess, but when confronted with an evil of the scale of that of the terrorists, I think it wouldn’t harm anyone if we take a few stern steps.

Mr. Subramanium blamed the ubiquitous ‘chalta hai’ attitude as the root cause of several problems that plague the country. We Indians in general tend to take things quite lightly. There are times when an individual has to take things seriously and act accordingly with responsibility. There are other times when the same individual may not necessarily be in a switched-on mode but may maintain a casual demeanor and hence avoid stress. The average Indian seems to lose focus often. He longs to be in a casual mode when a particular task requires serious action. The result of this is that when time to relax comes, he can’t clear his mind completely and hence he can’t enjoy himself. He suffers both ways.

Perhaps the illuminating lecture reached a crescendo when Mr. Subramanium, in his own words, ‘tried to make us uncomfortable’. Thereafter, he went on to present a brilliant argument. At the end of it, uncomfortable we were. An IIM graduate is reputedly a dab hand at formulating brilliant strategies and implementing them to earn billions for his organization. Obviously, the organization pampers him with fat paychecks and opportunity to work at exotic locations. He can afford an extravagant lifestyle and be the subject of envy for his peers. That explains the present rush in the student community to get an IIM degree. But what about turning our eyes away from the glitz and glamour for a moment and focusing on some of the behemoth of problems our country is facing. After all, India is a third world country. Millions of people still live below the poverty line. They still can’t afford to feed themselves enough to sustain their livelihood. Not to mention the absence of a roof above their heads. What about initiating steps to help the Vidarbha farmer who has been crippled by debt and devastated by drought ? Surely, an IIM graduate can develop a strategy to increase the farmer’s income by, say, a meagre four figure yearly amount. That would enable the poor man to buy his family two square meals per day. Now, it is a fact that very few IIM graduates actually choose this path. One of the reasons could be that increasing the salary of the poorest of the poor by a yearly three or four figure amount is more difficult than increasing the yearly revenue of a billion dollar company by an eight digit amount. But if that is the case, shouldn’t the world beaters of the world renowned IIMs concentrate more on coming up with solutions of the problem that seems more challenging ? The fact that they don’t may give rise to suspicion that their outward hubris masks a feeling of escapism they have deep down inside. Maybe it is this escapism that forces them to choose plum offers from foreign companies so that they can escape from the country’s myriad complex problems which they are incapable of handling. For a person who was about to embark on a blessed journey at the prestigious IIM-I, these were disturbing questions. These questions made me uncomfortable. Mr. Subramanium exhorted us not to run away from these questions, but to confront them and think deeply about them. I urge the reader to do the same.

Planet-I

I.


The preceeding paragraph/ sentence/ word/ letter (ah, let’s call it entity-I for clarity’s sake) may be any one of – well – paragraph, sentence, word and letter. Regarding its exact identity, however, opinion would vary. It would be difficult to reach a consensus because some people, who claim to see things others don’t see, would claim to have seen a paragraph. As if to see a few tiny, white dots on a clear night sky is to see the universe. Some people would be a bit conservative and opine that entity-I is nothing but a complete sentence which is logically structured and making a point. There would be people who would be confused as to whether entity-I is a word or a letter. A particularly knowledgeable and affable class of people, going around by the appellation ‘cynics’, would perform their usual tsk-tsk ritual and putting on an all-knowing expression on their faces would state that entity-I is nothing but a gimmick (marketing, probably ? ). Communists would sermonize that entity-I is a threat to egalitarian society and that it is a nefarious product of the imperialist Americans (and six months later would admit that adopting this line of thinking was a historical blunder). Some other group of people with vested interests may put forward some other point-of-view.


Well, there cannot be a debate on the fact that the preceeding paragraph is just that – a paragraph. And the paragraph makes a clear, singular point – that there exist multiple POVs on a single issue. In other words, an issue is like a kaleidoscope; what you see depends on the manner in which you hold the thing and different persons hold it in different ways. How interesting ! Without any more digressing from the real issue, let me now propose a groundbreaking idea that would alter the rotational axis (if any) of the earth and would force Stephen Hawking to admit that a black hole is nothing but a much more mundane and a much more desirable thing. The idea here is that – hold your breath – the entity-I better known as Planet-I can have numerous interpretations. As I’m no creative writer, I’m unfortunate enough to have only one interpretation up my sleeve. Which is the following :


If you observe the word “PLANET” very closely, with the aid of a magnifier perhaps, you will not find it mentally taxing to discover that the word has resulted from a merger of two different words “PLAN” and “NET” to create synergy. Notice that both “PLAN” and “NET” are managerial words. The glorious history of humankind would dutifully attest to the fact that managers are great planners. If you are aware of the prevailing great recession that was planned and executed to perfection, you shouldn’t have a second thought. “NET” is perhaps the most used word in managerial jargon. If you aren’t networking, you aren’t managing a damn thing. And if you cannot use the internet, shame on you, you are as useless as the times when there used to be no internet, because you cannot do, among other things some of which are noble and some of which are not-so-noble, social networking. Probably that is the reason why someone has incorporated the word “LAN” in the word “PLAN”.


Coming back to my point – how does this exquisite merger create synergy ? Well, let me explain. Sit on a chair, in a comfortable posture, close your eyes and cleanse your mind of all the dirty thoughts (you must have had a few). Relax your breathing. Focus on an imaginary point somewhere. Now think of the word PLANET. What do you see ? A neat, polished, innocuous, rounded object. Aka, a “GLOBE”. Yes, yes, now you’ve got it (I almost fell from my chair in unbridled joy). You are now able to visualise what is by far the single most important concept that forms the central tenet, the basic premise and what not of the field of management. See, you started with two little insignificant managerial words, and here you are. If that is not synergy, I don’t know what is.


It is a no-brainer that with so many managerial aspects this PLANET must be some kind of a management institute. But, in recent times, so many management institutes have sprouted all over India. Which management school does this PLANET-I refer to ? We need some specific information. That is where I, and let us have no argument on the fact that it is just a letter and nothing else, comes into the picture.


The extremely egotistic and megalomaniac I is one of the most common letters of the English alphabet. And no wonder. Everyone wants to talk about themselves and I am no exception. If you are already confused between the ‘I’ of PLANET-I and the ‘I’ which means, well, I, don’t be. The world around us is confusing. It is evil. And it is egotistical. (for cynics) Ego is the fountainhead of human progress (basically it is a handy thing to possess) as spake the great philosopher Ayn Rand in her legendary book aptly entitled “The Fountainhead” which by the way everybody reads and nobody understands (much like yours truly). Maybe this is precisely the interpretation; that the I of Planet-I signifies progress. Looked at in another way, the I symbolises realisation of the true potential of a human being. Shove in two I’s, and grander things are envisaged. All of this happens via M for management. No wonder PLANET-I is better known to the world as an IIM.


PLANET-I is a cute little nickname lovingly bestowed upon IIM-Indore. It is one of the best business schools in India. Situated some distance away from the dusty, developing city of Indore, PLANET-I is an enigmatic planet, completely different from what lies around it. The breathtaking beauty of the campus and the erudition of the professors notwithstanding, what gives PLANET-I its true identity is the community of the inhabitants. I, a proud inhabitant of the planet, humbly put forward this write-up by starting and ending with the letter ‘I’.

Random musings II

As the nightmare moves toward its climax, you somehow escape from it and jolt yourself out of sleep. It was meant to be a harmless, lazy evening slumber. Hence you are astonished to find a viscous sadness gradually flowing down your throat and gnawing at your heart. You are not sure what is happening and you are beginning to have a vague idea. Several times you have heard the cliche "There's a hole in your soul". You can feel it now.

The darkness inside the room seamlessly merges with the darkness outside. Must be the sinister night sky, you say to yourself, which has sucked out all the light. Modus operandi of a black hole. As you blink a few times, the haziness subsides. Through the window, as your glance sweeps from left to right, you see the blackness slowly giving way to a cloud, red with embarrassment and pregnant with rain. Suddenly you realise what is wrong with you. Your heart has always wanted 'it'. It needs 'it', it knows it can never get 'it' and has learnt to live without 'it'. Nevertheless, in a typical childish manner, the heart sometimes cries out for 'it', knowing fully well that it is an exercise in futility. The heart can't help it, it hasn't got a brain.

You become aware of your surroundings. You remember the things you have got to do. This resuscitation has been expedited by the presence of a few faces around you. These are faces suspended in thin air. These faces have no bodies, no identity and no expression. These faces mirror the smoke that fills their brains. Their brains have been eaten away by parasites long ago and hence are dysfunctional. The faces are hazy, confused and nervous. They are not here to help you. They are here because society tells them it's a bad thing not to do the same. You feel a negatively charged cloud advancing toward you, slowly but surely, with the sole motive of engulfing your entire brain and unleashing the parasites that would like to feed on your vibrant brain cells. You know what's wrong with these faces. These faces, once upon a time, were identified by the bodies attached to them. Just like you are now. They were meant to give 'it' to you. Which they didn't. The negatively charged cloud is to blame.

You look around you. You see three receptacles. They have engulfed all your belongings. You're astonished at your meagre networth. You feel small, you feel you're being exiled for good. You feel terribly lonely. You want to cry out loud, but the cry just wont come out. You don't know what lies ahead, the only entity with which you can establish a one-to-one connection is darkness. The darkness which seems to engulf you, slowly but surely. As you stand, incapacitated, you realize what is 'it'. Love.

The Autowallah

You know how autowallahs in Kolkata are like. The owners of these overpriced public transport vehicles called autorickshaws are always in a hurry, swearing at passengers, at pedestrians if they can and of course at passing vehicles. They have a disgusting habit of charging a premium from a hapless passenger who doesn't know the exact fare from point A to point B ( to such an extent that to cut my losses, whenever I ply a route the fare of which I don't know or don't remember, on disembarking I simply hand the swine a ten/twenty rupee note and put on a "I'm a busy guy, just hand me the change, sucker, and make it fast" expression ). Abide by the traffic rules ? Thank you, but they are autowallahs, you know.....

Yesterday, en route to the local bus stop, I spotted an auto. The driver ( autowallah ) was about my age, about six feet tall, skinny. He was smoking a bidi ( poor man's fag, probably causes cancer but Ramadoss knows better ). I enquired whether he would ( be kind enough to ) steer his stuttering and spluttering automatic rickshaw, with me inside of course, all the way to Jadavpur.

Subsequently, this is what I heard:
Dekhun dada, ami to bhabchilam South City obdhi jabo, aapni 8B jaaben jokhon boshun, dekhi ar kono passenger pai kina.
( See, mister, I was planning to go only as far as the south city mall; since you're going to 8B let me see if I can get any more passengers )
After this un-autowallah like reply, he started shouting/ screaming "Et-Bee Jawobpur Thana Et-Bee Et-Bee !"

Later on, somewhere in the middle of the stretch that is the Prince Anwar Shah road, an old man made a Congress-like hand gesture to stop the auto and mumbled his destination. Unable to comprehend, the autowallah spoke to the septuagenarian, "Ki bollen thik shunte pelam na. Ami 8B obdhi jacchi. Aapni ki jaaben ? "
(Couldn't hear you properly. I'm going to 8B but not beyond that. Would you like to hop in ? )

Wow. I mean, I didn't believe that there existed in Kolkata a well-mannered autowallah, until then. Autowallahs never tweak their predetermined route, not at the request of a passenger anyway. They are advocates of the "my-way-or-the-high-way" policy. Have a polite conversation with a passenger ? Impossible. Be a little considerate toward an old man whose agility has been somewhat eroded by age ? No chance in hell, get real. This young autowallah was, therefore, a breath of fresh air, a delight. He was a paragon for his collegues. He was, quite obviously, testimony to the fact that there's no particular cause and necessity for the high-handed behaviour meted out by his fellow-men. In a nutshell, a very rare commodity indeed.

Nothing in particular

Ok, this is the most important piece of work that I've done in the last 7 days - I've changed the title and description of this blog from something which was totally arbit (some would say pseudo-intellectual, but I'm not sure what that means) to something which is more meaningful and probably accurate in capturing in a few words the nature of the content of this blog. That tells you a thing explicitly and another thing implicitly. i) This blog is useless, as stated explicitly in the current blog description. ii) I'm totally jobless; this has been said implicitly and if you've spotted it, you're good at critcal reasoning which again implies that you should take CAT or GMAT and become a manager.

Seriously speaking , I'm thinking about creating a blog whose content would be of some value, however small, so that there would be at least someone out there who, after going through the blog, would NOT say "Ewwwww!! That was more disgusting than puke!" Haven't come up with any ideas yet, but you can't say I'm not trying.

Cartoon controversy

30 September, 2005:
The Danish daily newspaper Jyllands-Posten published twelve cartoons depicting the Islamic prophet Muhammed. Later a number of newspapers around the world too published these cartoons. This subsequently snowballed into a raging controversy and led to widespread anger and resentment throughout the Islamic world. There were demonstrations in countries which are far away from Denmark, viz. India and Pakistan among others.

In London, more than 500 people led by a few radical Islamic extremists marched toward the Danish embassy. They carried banners containing hate messages, exhorted the Muslim community to retaliate and chanted: "Britain, you will pay, 7/7 on its way."

I do not believe that the publishers of the newspaper were unaware of the fact that the cartoons would lead to a conflagration which may result in law and order problems and in the extreme case, jihadi terrorist attacks. Were the actions of the publishers based on the premise of "freedom of speech" or were they just playing mischief to attract attention ? Nobody knows.

Whatever be the motive, there is no doubting that this was clearly a case of taking things too far in the name of freedom of speech. Freedom of speech is one of the tenets of democracy; it gives people the right to speak out, to voice their criticism and protest against any wrongdoing. However, a rigorous definition of the term "freedom of speech" doesn't exist; there are a few gray areas. Which gives rise to a problem: people with malicious intent can exploit the ambiguous aspects to suit their purposes. When that happens, society should take a stand against these elements in a truly democratic fashion. Freedom of speech is not freedom of exploiting/hurting other's sentiments/doing anything without any accountability. Freedom of speech blended with common sense and accountability is the perfect cocktail.

Cycling

Cycling is my hobby. And for a good reason. Cycling is the only activity that I can remain engaged in for two hours without getting exhausted or feeling bored.

I learned the art of cycling when I was about 10 years old. It was by no means achieved easily, though. Around 15 being-off-kilter-and-falling-off-the-bicycle, 12 ramming-into-neighbour's-Maruti-800 and 20 skidding-and-falling-while-taking-an-illegal-U-turn resulted in 37 cuts, 23 bruises and 2 stitches. The pain was worth it. One day I woke up feeling great and suddenly discovered to my astonishment that I had the confidence to ride my bike to any nook-and-corner of this damn city without gettting involved in an accident. I knew how to ride a bike.

Recently, I've got myself another one of those "lean mean bastards" [:-)], primarily because I'm bigger now than I was 12 years ago. The pleasure and excitement that accompanies cycling, however, hasn't diminished one bit. The joy of rapidly moving ahead is immense. You know you are free to go anywhere, and neither you've to take the ramshackle bus nor you've to hop into the claustrophobic inside of one of those kaata-tel powered ( and hence immensely polluting ) autorickshaws that bludgeon their way through the overcrowded Kolkata streets. You wont get bored while stuck in a traffic jam. You just decide where to go, and off you go. That gives you a feeling of being independent.

I always prefer cycling over running. I'm the type of guy whom you may sometimes find drooping down, hands on my knees, inhaling 10,000 shots of air a minute, the hanging tongue receiving droplets of saline sweat steadily streaming down my forehead. All of this because I've just finished running 1 kilometre non-stop. Yet, you give me a bike and then watch me go. 25 Km is pretty much no-problem stuff. The primary reason for this is that while cycling if I'm out of breath I can coast for some time to bring my breath back. Also, running is more-or-less at a constant speed throughout, while cycling enables a much larger variation in speed. So there you go, covering 25 Km is much more fun than running a kilometre down the road which you take everyday en-route to university. Off I go now, pedalling hard, eyes firmly on the road ahead !