cosmic dance

Report Card for the Year of the CONSOLIDATION

2011-12-15T03:04:00.000-08:00

I think i had something in mind when started this year and decided to call it the year of the CONSOLIDATION. This year has been lot different than what was expected of it by many around me. Precisely what i had in my mind is what makes it so different from people's expectations. Having said that i submit the report card for the year of the Consolidation hereby.

I completed my shift from IIM Indore to IIM Ahmedabad in January -February amidst a brief trip home to be with my parents on thier 40th Marriage Anniversary. Only this time i wasnt alone and i was home with my wife, their daughter-in-law. I reaffirmed within me that pleasures of life are not only mostly non-economic they are also emotional in character. Common Sense will tell that Pleasure is an emotion of sort.

The IIMA story has been sort of revelaing itself slowly and the year was defintely less ventful than the year at IIM Indore :). I taught one course (management of agri-inputs) and am teaching another one that i have developed as a new elective - agricultural entrepreneurship.

This is proving to be an interesting journey as it is very cose to grounded theory involving generation of transmitable knowledge as close to the phenomenon as possible. The classes are largely in a workshop mode.

Work apart from teaching saw me fnially get my case on KNIDS green pvt. lts pubslihed at the Indore Management Journal. I am already working on two more cases - one on Jain Irrigation Systems Limited as an Indian company that has gone global. The other case is about a Farm mechanisation project which is a partnership between the DSAG (Development Support Agnecy of Gujarat) , John Deere and NGOs in 4 districts. This might also expand into a bouquet of cases on entrepreneurship, PPP, New Development project managment for NGOs, and tapping of hitherto untapped markets for marketeers and manufacturers.

The year also saw a project proposal on studying the consrvation impact vis-a-vis the water utilisation impact and economic impact of micro irrigation systems being accepted. This is slated to start soon as well but the action will happen in 2012. apart from this the year saw me and my colleague and teacher prof. Gandhi develop three chapters for the India Infrastructure Report for the policy group of IDFC.

This year Also saw me being invited to a group of researchers brought together by Ford Foundation and Prof. MS Sriram inducted me into it to take a closer look at NRLM and it has developed ino a huge learning exercise for me abut government systems, livelihoods and rural management and developemtn as such.

I made some progress finally with the help of Rini in doing data entry for a study on happiness and MBA students which is still in its infancy but shaping well. I also made some progress on a data set in hindi on decision making by farmers. This year also saw two Independent Projects by Students - one on Organic food and elasticity of consumers choices and the second one on the hybrid seed sector using a system dynamics model. The Year also saw a paper presented in a conference in US on development of a framework for anti corruption and transparency led governance change at grassroots in three Eastern States.

On a personal Note, i tried to collect the results of the social project in greetings but the results are incomplete and what has been compiled has not been either stated very crisply by me or it has not clicked with the readers as per their feedback. This year also leaves with a wish left unfulfilled of taming my Temperament and the passionate me is still at unease with the logical me and the fight within continues. I was also unable to connect to as many old friends as i wanted and was unable to take over a 500 year old scroll of genealogy. That sums the year that has gone by and it closed on a note of a ranking of our PGP-ABM (Post Graduate Program in Agri-Business Management) as the best of its kind in the world by Eduniversal.

Overall This was a year to consolidate my development of the past.

Yeh.... Aaj ki Zindagi

2011-11-15T20:31:00.000-08:00

ek khwaish si hai zindagi..
ek aazmaayish si hai zindagi..
kisi hod mein fasi hui si hai zindagi...
rukk ar sisakti si hai zindagi..
daud kar thakti si hai zindagi..
ek aazmayish si hai zindagi ..
ek khwaish si hai zindagi

gar khwaish ho puri ..
to khushi ki fuhaar si hai zindagi...
aazmayish ke baad na ho haath khali...
to aksar ek numaish si hai zindagi...
daud mein niklo aage..
ek tamge mein samayi si hai zindagi..
aur kinara kar ke dekho to..
aksar insaan ki ghulam hai zindagi..

ek nirantar dhara si firbhi hai zindagi..

dhara jaisi khud ko nirantar naya banati hai zindagi..
ek nashe si bhi hai zindagi...
kyun ki har nas nas meni rahti aur bahti hai zindagi...
har din suraj si aati hai ek nayi zindagi..
aur chand si sheetal chandni andhere mein deti hai zindagi..
chandni mein sapne piroti hai yeh zindagi..
ek khwaish si hai yeh zindagi

V.B. 15th November - 20th November, 2011

the field of management and the affective domain ..how insensitive!!!

2011-09-21T21:38:00.000-07:00

We talk about professionals need to be logic oriented and not emotional.. and then we only crib that they don't bring any "passion" into their job..
tell me o wise businessman and academicians.. when did 'passion' cease to be an emotion ?

ek aane ka sach..

2011-09-14T23:15:00.000-07:00

main sirf ek aana hoon.. aaj ka zamana rupye aur paison ka hai.. main isme ak aana hoon...
aise to zamane ko meri koi zaroorat nahi mehsoos hoti lekin jab logon ke paas kisi naye shahar mein thoda samay hota hai to museum mein jakar mujhe dekhna man kafi khushi hoti hai.. mujhe dekhte hue.. nawvadhu ka haath uska pati pakd leta hai aur dono mein romance ho jata hai..
mujhe dekhte hue gusse se alag thalag hue dampatti bhi ekdoosre ke paas akar apni ekta ko jagruk kar gussa pee jate hain ..
mujhe dekhte hue kitne Boyfreind apni girlfreind ko kissa sunate hue "patate" hain...
thik waise hi jaise kisi chote bachche ke ma baap use meri kahani suna kar rijhate hain..

par main ek display mein band item matra hoon.. shanti se ek sthir bhaav se sab kcuh mahsoos karta hoon . dekhte hoon samajhta hoon .. lekin kuch kahta nahi.. gir kar awaaz karta hoon ya takra kar.. lekin use koi na to sunta hai aur na samajhta hai...main chup chap apni jagah mein pada rahoon tabhi achcha hooon...

mere saamne jo aata hai woh meri banavat and dhalti umar ko dekh kar apna man banata hai .. ki main dekhne layak hoon ya uske samay ki barbaadi hoon.. aakhir main sirf ek aana hoon...

waise majboori mein bade kaam ki cheez hoon.. bechne par apni rupye mein keemat se zyada hi laata hoon kyun ki main antique hoon.. aur kafi achche dhatu se bana hoon isliye "thos" hooon ..agar kuch na ho to mujhe bech kar kahin bhi fit kr ke kafi kaam ban sakta hai.. suna hai kayi automatic locks mere kone se ghumne par khul jate hain.. main kaam pade to aise hi tale kholne wali chaabhi hoon.. lekin agar mueseum main qaid hoo to sirf ek item matra hoon.

waise socho to is duniya mein sabhi buddhe aur purane logon ka yahi haal hain. item matra hain.. sab kuch dekhte hain samajhte hain .. lekin kh kuch nahi sakte.. jab tak apni jaagh baithe hue hain tabhi tak achche hain.. uske siwa waqt ki barbaadi hain.. aur haan waqt pade to kafi kaam ki cheez hote hain khas kar jab chote bachchon ko palna ho.. unki dekh rekh karni ho aur unhe kuch sikhana ho..ie automatic locks ke liye main ek mast chabhi hooon.. kyun ki logon ki apni chabhiyan to aaj ki bhag daude mein kab kahan gir kar kho gayi kisi ko bhi pata nahi....

buddha samjho ya antique main sirf ek aana hoon..waise kaam aata hoon to main sirf "anna" hoon

Captain Cool and Public not so cool..!!!

2011-09-12T21:11:00.001-07:00

I have been interested in that phrase called 'Captain Cool' coined for Mahendra Singh Dhoni. He is definitely an icon like no other, sharing space with Tendulkar yet so commanding in his presence that he stands taller. However the recent spate of criticism of Captain Cool has led me to think of why are we as Fans and public not so cool.

The captain was 'cool' when his attitude to risk taking paid off and won us matches , series and tournaments.. He is the one who brought stability to the captaincy of the team and to the team.. do we remember how we had the best individual players and managed to lose so many series and matches when we were poised for victory. He and Saurabh Ganguly are to be credited to make us believe that we can do it as a team. They stand out.. they took some risks and they excelled. Risks by nature will not work out all the time. Ganguly took risks and didnt work out. This series the risks of Dhoni did not seem to work.

Isnt it all part of the plan.. you keep taking risks.. and you keep learnign to take better risks.. and take risks better...but if the personality of the captain is about taking risks .. he will and he should continue to..cause that is what works for him. You stop him from taking risks and we lose one of the best players across the various fromats of the game from the infant T20 to the over aged Tests. A player who probably comes second in consistence to Rahul Dravid in the last half decade. A record of consistency better than even Tendulkars at number 7 down !

for me clearly the captain is cool.. he has give us the team of tomorrow... ajinkya rahane.. murali vijay...suresh raina.... virat kohli....Rohit Sharma....r ashwin ... Ravindra Jadeja...R P Singh..Sreesanth.. and more importantly he has made them play together as one unit.. which was difficult even when the greatest of individual players ramped up the Indian team together in a group of 11.

To me the captain has a more long term focus than most critics and analysts of the game can have.. he has made us think.. what beyond the world cups and the best coaches and the best individuals players... ask yourself .. Do you think Team India can be a world winning side without Tendulkar / Dravid and Srinath and who takes the credit for enabling that..

Take it from me.. The Captain is Cool.

Hope is a subtle glutton

2011-08-27T08:39:00.000-07:00

Emily Dickinson had written

"Hope is a subtle Glutton
He feeds upon the fair;
And yet, inspected closely,
What abstinence is there!

His is the halcyon table
That never seats but one,
And whatsoever is consumed
The same amount remains"

Little did i expect to see a mass explanation of this ever in my life. But i am only lucky to see it so. How many of us had ever expected this to be the result of the movement against corruption led by Anna Hazare vouching for the Lokpal bill ?
Yes the answer is not that we had not, But not so surprisingly the answer is that yes most of the common man worried about corruption had thought that this will happen - a middle path shall emerge and the country shall stand united against corruption.

There is no point to doubt that the country today and actually the society stands united against corruption. whether we are or we are not for or we are still considering where to be for on the lokpall bill, we are all definitely against corruption and stand united in an effort to take the first step. An Individual taking a step ahead had no hope but a huge mass of people like India (which is practically like a continent in itself given the diversity and vastness we have) move together .. who will feel afraid? being on in such a mass can only give hope.
Gandhiji was the first one to realise the combined power of mass of people and non-violence. Anna ji has proved that it is not a ghost of the past but a living giant of the present times and of probably many more centuries to coming ahead.

Hope it was that bound us together in this movement from a corrupt society where the head is not held high to a society where the head is not only held high but also is allowed to work in peace. This is the dream of hope.

Hope is that we will be able to create the space and willingness towards this goal / dream. Hope is that we will be able to stand tall and hold hands together and not let this huge movement go in vain. Hope lies in our collective being and collective fate as in Ramlila ground we saw not only young IIM and IRMA alumni from metropolitan cities rub shoulders with illiterate and octogenarian members of the movement from hinterlands like Gorakhpur and Nalanda. In this Hope against corruption , i have hope for the disappearance of the differences that fissure our society into oneness of holding our head high.

So this is a toast to Hope, Oneness in society ( India) and ability to connect between different Indians (members of society).

Another Day of Rain and Another Terrible Night..

2011-08-12T07:28:00.001-07:00

As it continues to rain continuously for the 4th day in ahmedabad.. almost incessant rain..i am happy to be in at home..and as i sip that one wisp of smoking sip of tea from my saucer .. i am transported back to one eventful night which changed many things in my life.. it is that one night that movies are made on and this story is no less..only this night and story won't get people to pay money to watch as a movie until shyam benegal steps in ..

i was a young kid wanting to do something in this world and wanted to work on the set of rural problems as the world was gearing to move into the next century based on IT and computers..i had taken admission into IRMA (Institute of Rural Management Anand.. http://www.irma.ac.in/) and was promptly as per schedule left in a village for a week to learn about the environment that IRMAns are supposed to work for and understand if i could survive. I was alotted to stay with Haribhai in his village .. in his home.. and this home was a kuccha hut made of cow dung with two cots and a few utensils and clothes.. haribhai worked as an agricultural labourer and did not own farming implements. He was the only one in bhangi colony of the village who had successfully passed the high school exam but owned no land. His father decided to give all his landholding which was very meagre to his elder brother who was illiterate thinking haribhai would land a job. he landed none and was forced to work as an agri labourer.

The first night was alsmot like eco-tourism as in the gujarati hot summer night i got to sleep on a cot under a neem tree with the breeze soothing me.. i knew i had made the right choice to join IRMA and work for the rural areas of the country.

The second night was more eventful, we started on our cots outside the hut and under the neem tree but the breeze was cooler and more moist. after about an hour when i had barely slept for about half an hour.. there was a drop that fell on me..i was so pleased.. i have always been fond of getting drenched in the rain on every opportunity irrespective of whether health allowed it or not. i still continue to be so. My happiness increased porportionally to the number of drops falling on me and my heart was ever so romantic and i wanted to write a poem.

Five minutes later as the rain got more dense and the droplets increased in size my host came running and haribhai called out "lets take the cot inside you wont survive a night full of rain outside gettign wet!".

and then it hit me.. and do you know what hit me.. take a moment to think about it.. feel it and imagine yourself there..

A night with nowhere to go and take shelter.. and its raining.. all drenched all night long.. no warm cozy room or heater .. no warm drying with towels .. no escape from the rain.. damn.. i was already thinking of rain as a capturer and i wanted to escape it. haribhai and i moved the cots inside and i for the first time got to know that out of the five cots that were put up under the tree only two were 'owned' by haribhai. suddenly the cot was a really big asset as it was the license to stay dry the whole night. wait..staying dry to survive the night was that what i was thinking? survival? in something called rain? we have always loved it.. we have always danced in rain dances.. and i am talking of survival in the rain..

inside the hut we got down to putting the cots only to realise there werent enough leaves on the thantched roof, the dust storm in the day had blown some away and now the hut was a huge leaking bathtub and the cow dug -mud mixture had started to turn into a sludge on the floor where it was bright and clean and savi ben (haribhai's wife) had cleaned it to perfection. she took a great deal of pride in keeping her home clean despite her poverty. we moved the cots to the east and the west and then 20 degrees to the north we rotate it and nothing helps..there is still water falling on the cots. While we are busy positiong cots to sleep, savi ben is positiong the limited utensils of home to capture water and protect the cow dung sludge flooring of the hut or she will have to do it again but only when the water would dry. Finally we placed the cot in a position we thought the least amount of water was coming to it and was likely to come even if it rained the whole night.

this had taken an half hour to position to cots.. and now haribhai wanted me to sleep on a cot while saviben and their three kids aged 5, 3, and 1.5 would sleep on the other cot and yes for the record.. there was no privacy for saviben or the family.. i as a stranger had no option but to stay that night in that hut .. first i felt awkward to sleep on a cot next to a couple sleeping and i could'nt give them privacy... second i felt bad at how unequal the world was. . i had one cot to myself and they were five humans to one cot. i requested haribhai to lend me the kids for the night so that they may sleep in my cot while he and saviben managed on the other cot. yes these were cots and not king size double beds.

after an hour and half of bargaining .. thanks to the indian hospitality which defeats reason and logic for emotion and tradition hands down.. haribhai was convinced by me to 'lend' me two kids for the night. it was really touching that in such adverse conditions haribhai thought of hospitality to his guest.. (sadly this guest was me and i was feeling guilty of being there at that moment as a guest). i for once never thought about the mission of IRMA or going where i was needed versus rewarded.

so the ordeal happened but did not end here.. i first positioned myself so that no water fell on me as i slept on the cot and haribhai would not have the arrangement in any other way. then the two kids who were borrowed by me for the night came into the cot in positions so that minimum water fell on them or if possible no water fell on them. in less than five minutes they had hugged me like little kids will when they want to keep warm and i was happily asleep with my loan of "two" kids for the night.

That nightful of rain, the fact of having nowhere to escape rain , and that fateful 'loan' of two kids taught me what POVERTY was. i for the first time understand what dr. kurien meant when he had told us "Go where you are needed and not where you are best rewarded". i understood a need that night.. the need of LIFE and HOPE because i wanted to see a morning SUN after a rainy night.

i hope Saviben and Haribhai are doing good in life and their kids are getting educated.

An Experimentation in Real life - Part II

2011-04-28T20:57:00.000-07:00

In part I we had a prologue, an introduction and a description to the experimentation in real life. As indicated by the comments of few readers they are eagerly awaiting the results. Those who join midway can get to the start here http://vitalenergy.blogspot.com/2011/03/experimentation-in-real-life-part-i.html

Well First let me state that those were not only experiments.. they are based on my belief that such wishes have the potential to have a good effects and hence i put my beliefs on the anvil of judgement. So neither were those who received them guinea pigs nor were the wishes only experiments. i believed in every single wish i sent and i start to present how my belief fared with the results.

Many People will say that a simple good day or good morning will be a passing greetings and will have no impact on how a day really goes.. here comes the twist.. add a message to reason how to make the day good or why the day might be good.. so the greetings now becomes.. "starting the day with smiles brings smiles back .. have a good day with many smiles" seems silly yet simple..
and this seems to work.. it evokes response from most who receive the wishes.. even if it is for courtesy sake of etiquette..It means that people are reading these messages...

Result No. 1: Most people are open to positive ideas..irrespective of gender..

many friends in random discussions had remarked that such responses are more common from a particular gender . my experience says otherwise..irrespective of gender people are reading such messages.. this still leaves open how the interpretations and responses can be different according to gender but thats a matter to be dealt later.. for now.. People do read and are open to positive ideas.. thats good news for the world around us.

Some people are perplexed and even ask the meaning of the message if its not so simple or if its counter-intuitive..now thats wow!.. People not only skim they actually read and try to understand!

Result no. 2 : People are trying to find ways to give positive ways a chance

now that's too far a conclusion from what i mentioned above but ill tell you how i make that conclusion and you can decide if its fair or not.. when people ask meaning they also tend to discuss what they had initially thought when they first read and if its conditional or more true universally and stuff like this..All these discussions have a common underlying thing about them.. people are searching for universal truths in good and positive statements.. the quest for goodness in human beings may be subdued but it is not over.

Now to dampen all that positive spirit. Most of the times the people who ask for the meanings or appreciate the status or like the thought are the same bunch of people .. about 30 percent of those who receive the messages.. maybe not everyone is searching for the positive thought.. actually try looking at it in a different way .. .like this..

Result No. 3 If you are looking for positive things you try really hard to find them and often find a way to find the positive energy around yourself

i have put this in bold because this is an important result and the one that needs to be critiqued the most. generally the same set of people replying in a similar manner.. that is definitely a pattern of behaviour.. maybe a trait in these people that they all share.. to that extent they are similar individuals.. well they are all trying to figure out the meaning of positive statements.. maybe even some random statements.. they are seeking the truth behind them and that means a lot. My experience and this is where you may disagree ..and feel free to do so.. is that they are more inclined towards positive energy than negative energy or in negating the statements .. the latter are likely to ignore the statements and the wishes.. and even more so after pointing out their flaw once or twice especially when in close succession. so here is the twist.. there is some reason to see they look at the wishes and statements as positive. there is a lot of reason to believe they are trying to uncover the truth .. and the two add up to individuals who are interested in showing that positive energy is a truth and it works..

ill close this blog here.. on a very positive note.. lets sum the results..

Result No. 1: Most people are open to positive ideas..irrespective of gender..
Result no. 2 : People are trying to find ways to give positive ways a chance
Result No. 3 If you are looking for positive things you try really hard to find them and often find a way to find the positive energy around yourself

and i build my own inference from all these... I am part of a network of individuals who are inclined towards positive energy and the positive aspects of existence.

so till then keep chewing and keep reading and ill present more results from the experiments.

An Experimentation in Real Life - part I

2011-03-16T03:18:00.000-07:00

As a young boy i did not read but learnt from people around me - the story of my experiments with truth.

in retrospect, the Mahatma has had a profound effect on me . Maybe not so much in being an ascetic but definitely in terms of beng foolhardly or having the courage to say the right thing sometimes even at the wrong moments. Also in terms of experimenting with life and its various facets only to learn more and more about it and myself.

I grew up constantly hearing people complain that the fast pace and eroding value system of life was rapdily transforming people into more inhuman mehcanical living beings rather than being emotinal beings with a quotient for societal and relational existence. I decided to experiment like Gandhi. Can one individual make a difference? The believers say Yes and the non-believers say Impossible and to me the confused individual it was a puzzle that i had to try to solve.

I put myself in the shoes of an individual everyone would judge. I became the experiment myself to reduce any side effects if any affecting anyone else who would be the subject to the minimum. I put myself on the anvil to be judged because that would reveal the true character of the people of the world in close measure to me.

I decided on a simple activity.. small to be almost unnoticeable and an optional activity for all of us and yet placed at a time of the day that it had the ability to impact manifold events of the day.

I decided to send "Good Morning" wishes to some individuals to see what happened. I chose this because since my childhood i like to wish people and i saw the incidence of wishing and greeting each other reducing around me and it is one small thing i want to revive around me.

At this moment many of those reading this can relate to my good morning and good day wishes that i send online or at times over the sms. Yes these small wishes are the treatment in the experiment. I started by wishing some people regulrly good morning and some also good night through emails. This was strange for many to receive nothing in an email apart from just "good morning have a nice day". It almost felt like spam for many. the responses to the wishes are interesting and make for a separate follow up blog on its own lest this on gets to be too long.

So after almost ten years of running this experiment what do i feel and how has it gone.. ? I wish this was an easy queston to answer.. the very fact that it has taken 10 years to answer reveals a lot. what started as simple wishes has seen many versions and multiple forms also.

The wishes can be sent online through email , through yahoo or gtalk messenger , through social network sites like facebook and twitter. The wishes can also take the mode of the mobile either from the handheld itself or through the internet through sites which give free delivery to mobiles for text messages within a limit.

Thus there are multiple people , multiple modes delivery, and one treatment .. and mutiple interpretations.. we will talk about each of these separately one by one in the following blogs..in the meantime feel free to send your interpretation of the wishes if you were receiving them.

The need for Systems Processes and strong Institutions

2011-03-02T22:07:00.001-08:00

Today Everyone is talking about the ouster of Mohd. Yunus from Grameen Bank. Most of the discussion is judging its righteousness or the lack of it. My thoughts drift to a different reality. What do i learn from this event? a learning that stays with me for long.

Most young entrepreneurs entering the development / social / rural space in emerging markets and economies rarely realise what it really means when they say that there are so many other factors apart from performance that matter in order to survive and be sustainable. Politics and the burden of history or morality might be the most frequent or they might not, however the events of Bangaldesh and Grameen Bank highlight the need for systems , processes and strong institutions to effect development (whatever your definition of development might be) and the amelioration of people and thier lives.

Assume that Grameen Bank delivered a required service to some people of Bangladesh. ( please not i have not even claimed they are poor or needy). Also assume that the need for the service remains. What do events like the ouster of Mohd. Yunus mean for these people ? you can make your choice out of the options given below

a) uncertainty of whether the services will be the same or not.. for some if the services will be continued at all.
b) uncertainty if Grameen Bank will remain afloat and if so the uncertainty if their own investment and activities with the bank are safe or not. its an uncertainty of both the future as well as the risk exposure.
c) Loss of an inspiring figure and strong brand ambassador for Grameen bank and its services. This is likely to lead to another agency to deliver the same services and in an emerging economy the search costs can be susbtanital and the chances of committing an error high.
Given these three instinctive reactions from people. Do we realise that the strongest human instinct will stem from uncertainty of Future and the Financial and business risk they are exposed to ( some can read business risk as livelihood risk depending on the dependance on microfinance and Grameen for the respective livelihood).

If the unceratinty is about the future and the risk.. due to the sudden change in leadership..Do we need more evidence to see that leadership alone is not the best form of governance. It is clear that a governance system which survives beyond the individual leader, the larger than life founding father is an absolute must. How do we generate such non-indivudal leadership and directioning capability in an institution?

The answer is in making the Institution adaptive - capable of absorbing shocks like a crisis of individual leadership and resilient to be efficient and reduce the risk exposure of the clients. My Thesis is about creating such adaptiveness in institutions. ( you can get the same from this link...http://www.iimahd.ernet.in/library/ )one of the points that i highlight is the need for complete structures so that there is not one leader but more individuals are forced to come together and collectively work for the institution.

The open processes provide both flexibility and continuity by defining the routine procedures and leaving the speical requests to discretion. The binding force is nothing but a strong institution which is larger than the founder or the paternal / maternal individual leader. Suddenly the conclusion flows , to me at least smoothly.

To the youngest of entrepreneurs there is an important lesson - if you operate in an emerging economy or an environement where politics or some such external environmental force matters .... it is not a choice but an imperative that you need robust systems, superior processs and a strong institution to continue delivering services to those who require them.

The moral implication of this monologue is .. if the systems and processes are not in place and the weak institution crumbles - you might have to be ready to take the blame for breaching the faith of people twoards fulfiling their needs.

Year of CONSOLIDATION

2011-01-12T21:05:00.000-08:00

Transformation

Rising

Making

Realization

Blossoming

Is there a pattern that you see? This might be the journey of a branch on a floral tree through different seasons and stages. For me it’s more like the story of the various stages of my doctoral studies. Blossoming included the start of my new job at IIM Indore. These are also the themes around which I lived my years as I led my life into a new phase altogether. Having completed five years of the journey I look back with satisfaction and some sense of achievement and loss. Satisfaction, I feel because I am satisfied with what I set out to do and what I achieved. Yes for satisfaction no one else but only me and those very very near and dear to me matter. Achievement I feel a little because moving in the mainstream while being different is not easy and I have survived so far. My experiments with life and my own convictions have not left me lacking good stead so far. There is also a sense of loss as I have made compromises on the time and togetherness I could have shared with those who matter to me. Economics it seems is more important in life than anything else as I realize. TANSTAFL – There Aint No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. Well especially if you’re on the receiving side.

Here starts my learning, if you got to create free lunches. First get to the giving side.. give some free lunches and hope that more people may start giving. The surety is never there but this is the only way to have a probability.

So I start another new year.. trying to create change trying to put together the wide variety of experiences and learning that I have collected through my travels in geography, demography and sociography. I am consolidating my learning and experiences to make better sense of them. This year I also start my new job at the Centre for Management of Agriculture at IIM Ahmedabad. (http://www.iimahd.ernet.in/faculty-and-research/research-centers/cma.html). This sets up the need to and also enables me to consolidate my professional leanings and focus on being most productive to creating change where it is needed. Professionally this is clearly a year of Consolidation of the blossom in the last season.

Personally, Mridul is set to complete her thesis and we start our true journey of life together ( at least a new phase of it) as a couple shifting to officially one city of residence and therefore we also consolidate our life together. I also want to reconnect to the people and friends and individuals who have mattered and who inside the deep of my heart do still matter to me. A start has been made but much more needs to be done. Hence at a personal level also this looks like a year of consolidation.

So with folded hands and faith in my heart .. I welcome the YEAR of CONSOLIDATION.

Report Card - The year of BLOSSOMING

2011-01-05T22:32:00.000-08:00

Just like every year i shall be putting up a report card out for everyone to see. Like every year (for the past 5 years) this year had a theme - it was the year of BLOSSOMING. At the start of the year i expected to complete my Doctoral Studies, get married and start my professional life as a management teacher and researcher. The expectations were definitely not modest but were loaded with many events of the past few and many years.

The PhD got over and i graduated in March. see here http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=221357&id=723865049. The happy go lucky soul was ready to start searching for happiness in the real world moving out of the cocooned environment of being a student. I was trying to be a little experimental. The PhD Left me feeling satisfied as i have mentioned in the opening blog for the year with the appreciation i received in Australia followed by Indore , Lucknow and back again at Ahmedabad. So some dissemination has happened and lots more is waiting to happen and focus must be on that in the first half of the coming year.

I also got married this year. see here http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=247130&id=723865049. Finally me and Mridul are one family. She has brought a lot of luck and focus to life and it has been giving rich dividends so far. Marriage starts with benefits of so much more love from new relatives and friends.. it also makes your old relatives look at you in new light and shower more love, especially if you have been a little rebel younger kid in the family. Marriage also delivers at times, like it did for me, benefits of home cooked food, a loving wife to look forward to when u leave office and more goodies like hot tea and snacks served to you with a round up for the day.. and no office gossip !!!

I also started my new job . see here http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=222840&id=723865049. I joined the Economics Area of IIM Indore and found myself in between a group of lovely people. We were able to expand the area from 3 to 6 people ,i,e, double the strength this year. We also launched some 3-4 new electives from the area in this year. We hopefully continue to be one of the highest rated areas in the institutes.

Professionally at IIM Indore i had a rewarding stay. I launched a new elective called the "Economics of Rural-Urban divide"(ERUD) that was well received by a bunch of very enthusiastic students who show a lot of promise of doing new and different things in the near future. I was also able to complete teaching in almost all programs of the institute - the MBA (PGP as we call it) first year, second year, The Doctoral Programme (FPM) and the one year Executive programme (EPGP) as well. I was also able to revise and rehash the "History of Management Thoughts" course for the doctoral students. The end of the year was exciting as i collaborated with other faculty to launch a new stream called the "Role of New Media in Management" which aims to look at communications , IT and Strategy aspects of new media and take it one notch higher to Management levels. ERUD looks at Rural and Urban areas with a theortical base , URP or Unlocking Rural Potential took a look at the same with a practical in-situ approach and saw the students visit DRI in chitrakoot ( http://www.chitrakoot.org). What could not be done was the development of UCRM or Understanding Culture for Rural Management and a connectivity conference fro the PURA work. We did a one day workshop on PURA in June (http://www.iimidr.ac.in/iimi/pages/posts/working-conference-on-pura-conceptualization-impact-assessment-and-implementation-issues162.php?p=10) which was graced by none less than Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam and Shri Arvind Mayaram of GOI. A research Proposal on Wastewater irrigation has firmed up and one case is set for publication while one more is in the pipeline. There was one paper at an international conference too http://econpapers.repec.org/paper/agsaare10/58885.htm

The year was marked with a short visits to Australia and Portugal overseas and to the rural areas of Andhra Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. There was a fair bit of travelling and obviously with travelling comes learning. So there was a lot of learning this year too.

So the year did see a lot of blossoming and a lot of other things that i keep doing either kept on in reduced measure or were put on the backburner for a while...sure to return in the future..

The not so good patches of the year were - not enough time with parents and family .. not able to visit Dubai ...

And as we must move one.. we must enter the new year .. a new year.. a happy new year :) that leaves us happier and healthier.

Ek aadhi anniversary ka sukh

2010-12-20T02:29:00.000-08:00

Ek aadhi anniversary ka sukh
Ek aadhe aane vale saal ka rukh
Aur hum dono ki rangeen ulfat
dil maange thodi si fursat....

ki dekhon teri aankhon mein
sapne sunhari palkon mein
ek haseeen rang-khushbu bhare gulistan ke
tere-mere masoom nazneen afsane ke

fursat ke do lamhe mile
to tera phir se deedar karoon
chukar tere mann ke taaron ko
fir tujhse ikraar karoon

aa hath pakad kar baith zara
ek chai ke cup se chuski lo
dhalte suraj ki kiran ko pakad kar
aasmaan ko naye rang do..

Ek aadhi anniversary ka sukh
Ek aadhe aane vale saal ka rukh
aur hum dono ki rangeen ulfat
dil maange thodi si fursat...

happy Half anniversary dear Mridul on our marriage

The Bihar Diaries

2010-11-25T22:39:00.000-08:00

Writing for the first time after i joined IIM Indore and it takes a big event to move me out of the state of being silent on the blog.. the big event is my fascination with a geography and society called Bihar.

The election results of Bihar have sparked a multitude of thoughts within me. I am reminded of Lord of the Rings and the Star Wars or the Matrix trilogy as Nitish Kumar clearly emerges the Hero on whose shoulders there rests the hope of almost everyone in society around him. All hopes rested on one person .. there were many forces he was up against... and most of the hopefuls were unsure of how many forces will combine in his support and i stop the analogy there.. we have a HERO in the chief minister of Bihar. We have a story to tell and a moment to rejoice.

We the people of India have shown our commitment to development and to growth in action at the grassroots and not mere rhetoric of India Shining. The politics of India may seem to be in a far from ideal state but the election results in India are as good as it can get.

Why do i say so.. ? This is based on a partial understanding of Indian Politics and that comes as a disclaimer of a theory in the motions of formation.

The myth about elections:

1. Most of us educated anglophone urban individuals carry this impression that the rural individual, who actually votes and does not merely indulge in rhetoric like this blog entry, is illiterate and naive and exploited and first of all UNAWARE.

2. The politics is so decrepit that only money and caste equations drive politics and the objectives are narrow to individual vested interests.

My view of the truth about elections : as this is my view it is an interesting conjecture , a conjecture for being a viewpoint and interesting cause it comes from me .. an optimistic cynic as my friend Deepak Iyengar will like to call me.

My view of the elections and specifically the results:

1. India is not shining. the voters across the nation rejected the argument or belief of a shining India long back . We can still claim that those vote do not live in the India or are not connected or do not benefit from the India that shines. More interestingly , we can pursue the thought that India is not shining but the glitter of a lot that was not Gold has been last and so the shine on India is only comparative and hence most likely short-lived. That should be scary for many of us who have forgotten what it is to travel in Sleeper Class railway compartments and State Transport Buses but that proves the point that the voters know their stuff very well. Better than we know ours maybe.

2. Mere Rhetoric is not the modern mantra. Rhetoric needs to be backed by action. Voters are discriminating between mere rhetoric and a planned vision and following concerted action. The responses to the three seem to be very clearly different. ( Is that a hypothesis worth checking or is there enough evidence to prove that?). For a teacher of MBA students the nearest imperative is Where do the b-plans that i see in competitions and assignments lie on this continuum of mere rhetoric - planned vision - concerted action. Clearly less than 1 % reach the right extreme of the continuum. ( If not noticed.. then please notice the intended pun in using the "right" extreme of the continuum.). Sadly most of us miss out on this pun and hence never move in this direction of the continuum. As far as voters are considered, given an option mere rhetoric is neither necessary nor sufficient .. it is simply archaic and needs to be buried in its rightful place.

3. What is development?

This is the most interesting and debatable of the conclusions i draw.

The development sector, it seems, will perennially seek to figure out what development is and in that effort continually fail and strive for a better definition and in the process keep getting developed itself.

Clearly this development is about gaining depth , Accumulating Diversity and allowing it to thrive, resisting reactive actions and events, and of a straightforward action-oriented approach that is not restricted to few or that move closer to being holistic and simplistic.

I think this is the simple understanding of development that emerges from a development driven script of the elections and their results and we must bear in mind this was scripted by none other than the voter.

4. A Development Driven Script

As more and more people wrote about the vote for development i was thinking and questioning why do we say so and how can we be so confident about it ? As a researcher i was taught to believe nothing that was told to me and to ignore nothing that was told to me.

(This is the most crucial part of my blog and the only part where i say something that i think is intelligent).

The voter did not align on caste equations - i am unsure about that. I think we still have a caste formula that worked with the breaking of the M-Y combine and the focus on Mahadalits. If i go back to the voters understanding of development then the focus on Mahadalits makes perfect sense but there is greater meet in the realignment of the caste combine.

Earlier the Political affiliations decided what I gained and that decided in turn on what side of the beneficiary-non-beneficiary divide I existed as a voter. Now the alignment of castes is driven by development and my choice to be on what side of the beneficiary - non-beneficiary divide is determining my influence on my caste alignment. This radical shift in the thinking, in the minds of the voter, maybe .... subtle and unrecognized, has delivered that now caste alignments are based on how to bring greatest hope for development. and this is as traditional as it can get.

Only now we can link up that the definitions of development is different and more sharp in the minds of the voter and more localized too it seems. The development is not mere rhetoric but followed by a planned vision and even concerted action in some cases, the voters ability to give a clear mandate is recognized and the smart politician focuses on serving this mandate. And for politics in India in the post -independence and especially the post economic-reform era, this is as non-traditional as it can get.

Clearly the mandate of the people of Bihar ( the voters are supposed to represent them) is very very clear and enabling for a Chief Minister who understands it. However the pitfall that the CM has to avoid is his own casting as a HERO. Everyone now looks up to him and he runs the danger of developing a megalomaniac ego or a focus on enjoying the fruits of his hard work. I guess the Civil society has to understand the mandate that the vote is still for the hope and the evidence seen in the past but it is a mandate for continuing the hard work on the ground and the grassroots. The mandate is for the realignment of castes in new combinations that give hope to promote development powered by society and not by the schemes of the government. This subtle but radical shift is what in my opinion will determine a third term or a new government.

The Strange Coincidence of a being A BACHELOR

2010-06-07T11:48:00.000-07:00

Now that i am all set to marry in less than a fortnight's time.. i can share this piece.. not that i could not have shared it earlier but then .. No one would have believed me.. and.. even now some are not going to believe me but then that's what this is about the coincidence of being believed and not being believed because people live by their own beliefs.

As a young bachelor ( i am not so young any more lols for many people ) there were coincidences of coming across beautiful maidens and vying for their attention... only to be saddened that most of them lacked the charm to hold attention beyond a particular duration and if they did hold the attention .. they lacked the simplicity of being "my types". it's about such coincidences that bachelorhood is about .. and not just in India but the world over.

Being an open guy who could say what was inside me .. only made things difficult and coincidences more common. here are some funny and not so funny experiences.. which reflect the times in which i lived my bachelorhood.

Two ladies treat me to an ice cream and cold drink each (for some long overdue favour ) and ultimately steer the discussion to ask "are we beautiful?" and sadly enough all that i could reply was "No Comments" .. (the bachelor was trying to be a Gandhian at that point of time) . Coincidence taught me later on .. if you want to Brew a relationship.. it pays to be non-Gandhian or else you as a matter of coincidence you need to have super -patience.

A girl is narrating a tale to me about herself and her friend and asks me "its like you and me and we know that we will not think of each other in an amorous way.. . right we wont?"...lo ls and not by coincidence i wonder what was the question.. will we or will we not ? and months later she says do i feel as if i am getting feelers from her .. cause someone else she was talking to thought so.. lols.. only by sheer coincidence could i feel the feelers someone else was feeling when she was talking to him. absolute ROTFL.

A girl tells me reasons why i would probably not get married so easily.. and repeats the same ones for herself and then asks me "don't we have a lot in common ?" .. i wonder is it by chance or design ? and whether we have a lot in common or we lacked a lot in common ? maybe it was just a coincidence....

i admire a girls dress and tell her that her dress looks beautiful and she asks me back "is it my dress that looks beautiful or me ?". coincidentally to her dismay i answer in the affirmative for the dress.. and then to make matters worse as a matter of coincidence she asks me why not her ? and i have to answer cause i cant see her at all .. the dress is all i can see ... she thinks this is the case for some other reason when all i meant to say was that the dress is so beautiful that i don't see anything else. lols.. Hail bachelorhood.. it coincides with peoples attempt to discovering the wrong meanings of your words, phrases, clauses and sentences.

i was travelling in a train .. the family on the opposite side had two daughters.. they were promptly pushed to the window as i sat towards to aisle. about five hours into the journey a discovery is made that i am about 10 years elder to them and they are allowed to change places and then five minutes later on it is known that i am still a bachelor.. and they are soon sitting cornered to the windows :) whatay coincidence to my bachelorhood.

I used to live in this small town in Gujarat called Anand and one day i meet one of my neighbours outside my bank and they introduce me to a boy .. a nephew who is in town from New Zealand.. and i wonder they have never introduced me to any nephew before.. in the late evening as coincidence will have i discover he has a sister who is to be married off....and i wonder who is more desperate for marriage "the girls parents and relatives" or "the bachelor"

I am travelling in a train and offer the seat next to me to a young girl who is standing since long due to the crowd. We hardly talk or speak and as the journey is about to get over ,she asks me if i want her phone number ! Is that coincidence or is it NOT!!!

Bachelorhood coincidentally changes the meanings of numbers.. my orkut list at a point in time had about 600 friends out of which 450 were male and 150 were female , linked had about 400 contacts out of which 70 were females and facebook had about 200 contacts out of which 60 were girls.. and yet coincidentally everyone seemed to think that i had too many females on my lists !!!

Another strange coincidence of Bachelorhood is that people remember the names of females who are your friends and the poor males are ignored and forgotten . Now this must be a coincidence.

However the high point of Bachelorhood in 21st century is being asked if i was married ..and then the next question is "how many children do you have"..i pointed out that i was unmarried and i was told that in the modern world you didn't need to be married to have children. and i wondered why they asked about marriage first and children later on and why not vice verse.. i guess only coincidence can explain this.

diclaimer: i am sure most of what i present has been experienced equally by women as well .. so bachelorhood is used in a much broader and gender neutral sense here.

Points to ponder for completing a Thesis .. you can feel good about

2010-03-15T03:13:00.000-07:00

A Thesis can be a lot of fun .

There can be no statement as untrue as this. If you want to differ ask someone who has just tread the path.

Its a long as in LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOng process. There are few reasons in between to cheer , be happy or party about. There are few things to compete for (it seems). There are few guiding stars and you are unlikely to end a thesis without many guardian angels.

From the editing of chapters in the end to the conceptual diagrams at the start and the suggested readings all along, inputs to a thesis come in various shapes and sizes. Sometimes the most unexpected people give the most valuable tips and the most silly things can lead to the most valuable insights. There is however seldom an advice better than what my guide gave me early on... "The only way a building is made is brick by brick.."There is rarely something as true as this for a PhD or a full blown research.

So here is a small collection of principles for completing a Thesis you can feel good about.

a) Open up.. talk about your work.. to the right people and get their views ... while you talk .. talk less and listen more.. the only reason you want to talk is to get inputs from all possible. All research intends to ultimately find a universal law.. if yes then start with accepting universal diversity.

b) Close down...reduce the amount of diverse things you do in work and concentrate on few things.. the focus is not on diversity of things you do but on the depth and ability to complete the things that you do.. in the case of the thesis these are the various tasks of the thesis.

c) link laterally .. A thesis is a huge task like a mega project comprising of numerous small and odd tasks .. making them link up and scheduling them seems next to impossible at the start. so don't try to link up too many activities.. try to link up friends who can help you with them.. a do-it-ALL-yourself PhD is not a good idea for completion though a great idea for learning. The more you link to people the better ideas you will get and the more you will end up learning. The idea is not to do everything but be capable of doing everything yourself.

d) Having good people with whom you can share your emotions is important to complete the process. The process is like a fellowship of many different tasks and good people are the binding material.

e) You have the ups, downs, lateral links, the binders, and the filling? yes what do you fill the PhD with.. Nothing but Hard Work.

f) The PhD is a process of learning the process of doing research till you can produce a complete finished product. The stress is on learning the process... complete...finished...product.. and think if you were evaluating a thesis .. what would you want to see to convince you that it was a finished and complete and final product and that the process had been learnt on the way.. clearly the last can not be evaluated and is left to the guide so guides at times have to be harsh.. and for the same reason the examination committee gives you some amount of work to check the process learning.

g) Your THESIS will be evaluated and not YOU. so choose people to guide you towards completing a THESIS and examiners who know what to evaluate.

h) The only way to complete a Thesis is to KEEP GOING ON . Only when you keep going can you ever reach the light at the end of the tunnel.

These are neither necessary nor sufficient and neither comprehensive nor exhaustive and each one of us might add our own rules to the list..or even i may revise this in a few days time . However i expect these to be helpful to most PhD Scholars who want to feel good about their own Thesis.

I..I...am..I..= IIM I

2010-03-06T01:09:00.000-08:00

It was a normal trip on a very well known route .. the same train .. the same destination .. the same bogie.. the start was different this time. It was Ahmedabad and not Anand.. and this time i need travel towards Mumbai from Indore only a few miles to the IIM indore campus instead of the 100 kms to kasrawad.

It was a wonderful morning except that it was earlier than the usual morning for me. There were the usual issues of not knowing if a taxi had been booked or if i had to arrange on my own , whom to contact at six on the morning but these are like the minor crease on an otherwise flat and smooth landscape.

The gate of IIM indore is built huge but in it's not so good looking condition is far from impressive but then many years back my sister had told me that IIMs are supposed to built people and not great buildings and gates. Never the less the hills of IIM Indore and the pleasant view there and the morning breeze definitely caught my fancy and my mobile was soon overworked as a camera.

The morning was extremely beautiful and it now seems as a good omen for things that were to come. Thus began a day of meeting old freinds and making new ones while meeting the director thrice. A faculty recruitment seminar thrown in between and more friends and fun times with them.. a crisis situation for a friend and a change in travel plans to work out things and a lovely lavish dinner from a friend and bhabhi that left me licking my fingers as i left the campus.

The meetings with the faculty of the economics area were freindly , open , and pretty informal making the going very smooth and nice. smiles exchanged , hands shaken and new friends made. Last but not the least was a phone call , an important one. but this is about Indore and how i see the city .. the campus is beautiful with huge spaces and hillocks and palash trees the flame the ground red as if there was a forest there :).

Indore has been an enigmatic city always for me.. a mix of the old and the new .. more like the new trying to fight the old to break free. This time too it was much the same. The shops looked similar, the roads are being constructed just as i remember them in 2003. The retail formats have moved in but either their names have changed or they have changed hands, the more swanky and flashy shopping destinations have come up. There are more avenues for the indulging consumer to indulge in behaviour that is more asssertive of money linked status than the depth of character that the city has been known for in the past.

However the city retains its past, the narrow bylanes and much more so nicely still. twain extremes are allowed to flourish together so far and that makes Indore unique apart from the little job offer that IIM Indore has offered me. I guess i have to spend more time in Indore than everyone had thought.

The Year of the "Blossoming"

2010-01-26T09:51:00.000-08:00

For the past four years, the new years have begun customarily without resolutions and with the year being named.. as a year of... transformation - rising - making- realisation. This year must follow the tradition to be linked with the past and must add a new dimension to be a harbinger of the future.

The seed was transformed (germinated) and it 'rose' to become and then as it was 'made'.. its presence was 'realised' as a result of activities put into effect. Now the plant must blossom.. for there is no youth without blossom.. youth is a riot of colours, energy, a search for stability in constantly new things and innovations , nervous anxiety, idealistic and full of ideas of change and visions of the future and a lot of hard work .

The metaphor only indicates so must be this year.. full of various hues, energy, search for stability, innovations, nervous anxiety, idealistic and full of ideas of change and visions of the future and A LOT OF HARD WORK. the two months that have gone by for the year only confirm that this year is just that.

A mad rush to submit the defensible draft of the thesis to frantic paperwork for a trip and a chance meeting with a very dear school and college friend as a bonus in between.. things were on a roll in January. February only made it brighter more colourful and exotic but equally hectic as it saw me travel to Australia for a hectic trip along the river Murray seeing some of the most wonderful sites and meeting some of the most wonderful people and discovering some very innovative ways of trying to save and work the environment. Thanks Lin :) , Sue, Bethany, Christine, Prof Gandhi, Floriane, Marian, Alok ji, Anna and the others that we met on the way.

The 54th annual conference of the Australian Agricultural Resource Economics Society (AARES) was a pleasant break with the mini symposium for the project and me presenting some of my thesis work. the work was well received and got some nice discussion of some of the biggies and most relevant and exciting people in the field in Australia :) Indian Irrigation and its experience is sure a best seller.

The two day stopover at Bangkok was a concise tour of a almost a new world for me. The politeness of the people, their hardworking nature and the eagerness to help strangers really weaved a magic for a person like me. indeed i don't like to call myself a tourist. we, as Indians and a growing economy have a lot to learn from Thais. the secularism, the openness to strangers, the humanity is mind boggling if you can focus on it. despite being the prostitution capital of the world as some would call it, it is one of the safest place for women that i have ever come across and hats off to that:). What had me most enchanted was the simple but overarching love for beauty and artistic touch that the Thais have as their culture and still seek to espouse. Bangkok has been made a great showcase of the same.I wonder if this is true for their villages as well or is Thailand a dual existence like India.

Finally i also cleared my Thesis defense paving the way to convocate this year and finally put an end to the uncertainty that people around me have been forced to live with. So now the search is on for teaching positions which allow me to do research as well.

Coming back to a year that is one sixth gone by already.. the seed has transformed- risen- been made a plant- and its presence in the garden realised.. and now it should Blossom.

In the year of the 'Blossoming' i have visited the land of Thailand and Australia and moved much closer to my destiny by getting done and over with my PhD. Let us all enjoy the bloom ahead :)

Closing the YEAR of the REALISATION

2009-12-30T10:56:00.000-08:00

If you can refer to the post http://vitalenergy.blogspot.com/2009_01_01_archive.html you will know why i called 2009 a year of the REALISATION and whats with the naming of the years.

2009 saw me enriched in knowledge and almost completing my thesis and realising my strengths and weaknesses. i realised that i can actually do a thesis and also design execute and complete a research on my own.. my thesis took me through existing knowledge in 8 domains, 3 states, 5 districts, 19 villages and 22 institutions and scanned and met over 600 farmers out of which 464 were interviewed. That's a large sample to manage and conduct any damn thing on my own.

The year also saw me realise about my thought process. i was working on the same issues this year as the Nobel laureate Elinor Ostrom and citing her works along with the other Nobel laureate Oliver Williamson. Our focus , fortunately, was not the same. it was a moment of pride to see my domain being honoured with global recognition.

the year saw me design the first course that i taught. Design Project Management , it was called for Strategic Design Management (SDM) Post Graduate students of the National Institute of Design (NID). Left me satisfied and convinced that i can teach well. The hard work that the students put in was not always reflected in their grades and i need to improve on that. The realisation that it is only a third of its type course in the world and the first in India was thrilling to some extent and challenging in all aspects. It left me wiser with many new ideas and almost baked material for publication. The highpoint was the last assignment which is a world class creation in a very very short duration of time. The achievement that the students took it up and actually did very well on it :) hats of to them. The critical fact not mentioned.. teaching DPM without much mathematics and i think we did fairly well.

The year saw me conduct a workshop for a group of women from Afghanistan. A challenge to design and deliver with no common language. The year also saw me conduct a 2-day workshop on contemporary HR issues along with Mridul in Faridabad and a guest lecture at NIRMA Institute of Development Studies, Ahmedabad . There were publications - a book chapter, two cases, and a second prize at a conference also. there was also fieldwork for a research project on institutional reforms in watershed institutions in AP.

The year was exceptionally good on the Social Entrepreneurship domain wherein i end up as advisor to four existing organisations - Bihar Development Trust, Kaushalya Foundation, Yardstick Services and the Entrepreneurship cell , Genesis at ISM. I am also being useful on a regular basis to Gurpawan , the founder of Genesis with his business idea which should soon hit the market.

The year started dull on IRMA Alumni Association front but ended up in comparatively better financial condition despite the global recession. The important facts are that we have been able to give the association a global flavour and initiate the decentralisation of the activities of the association. The association has made its mark in the ecosystem of IRMA and we see it becoming increasingly more important in the times to come. we ended the year with about 10 reunions across the globe which is the maximum for almost any alumni association across the world in a year with an alumni base of a little over 2000 spread all over the world.

The year ends on a note of realisation, there were many points when i let others decide for me and these did not augur well. Equally there were points when i let others decide and the decisions proved very helpful. The Method in the madness that underlies this is the clarity and the detail of the vision that guides the decision and not who makes the decision.

The year leaves me contemplating as i am still without a regular job that earns me regular income but not short of work.

Realisation in the YEAR of the REALISATION had meant to bring into concrete existence. With some amount of surety i realized that i have brought brand Bhammo into concrete existence. The consistent hard work , though often misunderstood, is likely to bear good fruit.

A tired man in the night says.. REALISATION dawns heavy at the end of a year and deep too !

A trip through time : Mahatma, LBS, Obama and the Globalised Populace

2009-10-01T23:38:00.000-07:00

What does it mean to be in a flow.. and why is the flow of success so dangerous? think about these questions after this positive thought..

2009, Oct 2,
http://in.news.yahoo.com/139/20091002/888/twl-gandhi-s-anniversary-a-moment-to-ref.html

President Obama revers and remembers Gandhi on the even of his birth anniversary.
and i am wondering how many of us really think about him or his ideals .. do we really want to remember him with reverence?

we are moving from being a developing to a affluent society and luxury and capitalism are in . India talks of affluence today and enjoying your earning by splurging on consumerism while America remembers Gandhi and his ideals. our youngsters are discovering 'open-mindedness' and rights to be themselves and not care a damn attitude. Most of us today have very strong opinions about us Indians and we know very little about Americans. On the contrary Americans know a lot about us and are wanting to learn traditional Indian cultural values as the way ahead.

1960 s
America basks in the glory of Capitalism and the land of hope with the big American Dream. there is Luxury and splurging in consumerism as the latest fad. the youngsters discover and build the free sex generation with a heavy input of drugs and hippie culture .Indians shun America for its capitalist ways and the cultural values and we try to preach Indian cultural values to America as the way ahead.

suddenly in the 60s a civil rights movement is born in America but is not noticed. Indians have strong opinions about Americans.

so now do we want to think and ponder on the questions :-

What does it mean to be in a flow.. and why is the flow of success so dangerous?
and
what leads to clarity at the end of the day ? a skeptical start or a confirmed bias?

...good day on the birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi and Lal Bahadur Shastri.

Just to add info Mahatma never thought it was "unclean" to clean and lal bahadur shastri on his foreign visits used to stay with ambassadors and cook his own meals to save foreign currency for the country as he was basically still a humble farmer.

numerical coincidence and not numerology

2009-09-30T11:28:00.000-07:00

India sifted out of the Champions trophy .. and interesting is that the format of the tournament had seeded teams.. aus -1 south africa -2 new zealand -3 india -4 pakistan -5 sri lanka -6 england -7 west indies -8 . so what emerges is that all the even ranked teams are to return and the odd ranked team shall go to the semi final. what a coincidence! and this is not numerology please.

numerology will be if we can predict futher ..

Statement of a "Bride"

2009-09-14T22:25:00.000-07:00

A chance discussion which i was making animated just for the sake of it led to certain questions that i present here. We were talking of shopping for a marriage and the bride's desire to look very different in an event that is once in a lifetime ( well for most of us in india it still is!).

my dear friend kept on telling me that the bride needs to shop for about a two months in advance for the ceremony and i enquired "what all does a bride need to shop for?". the unobvious answer was "dresses and accessories". unobvious cause if it takes two months to shop , you'd expect someoene to procure clothes for a UN initiative for the whole of Africa in the time duration. however as things are they are ! lols. Making my point clear that its only dresses that need to be bought my next questoin was "How many dresses does a bride need?" again the unobvious answer was 2-3 special ones for the marriage and about 10 for the week or so succeeding ceremonies when people and relatives come to "look" up the bride lols as if a new item has come in for display. so its 13 dresses takign 2 months to get bought and i was also informed that 90% women never wear these dresses more than once or twice ! such a criminal waste of money , i could float a civic organisation in that money and benefit 1 million people over the life of my marriage ! however things are ..they are...

so i asked my dear friend how much time does she need to shop for her dresses usually.. and she says she shops once in four months.. and can buy stuff for the whole year in one day.. my brain cells irked nad twitched ..."why is bridal shopping so inefficient and a criminal waste of time?" we are not celebrities that we need to work on one dress so much .. as if for a designer event lols. the marriage as a designer event is fun .. especially considering that the purpose of marriage is to "solemnise" a relationship between two people or two families.

never the less my worst rebellion was saved until later when i told my friend "its all about showbiz.. there is so much about shopping only to "look good" ( as if your confirmed you never look good otherwise!) and to "show" to people that you too can look good (reminds me of ratatouille.. anyone can look good). The most wonderful thing is that every girl as a bride wants to look different and in her effort to look different does exactyl the same things as a billion other brides and ends up looking exactly like a billion other brides.

So are we doing the wrong things for marriage ceremonies? or are we misinformed of our own desires? or is there a mismatch between actions and desires? or is it that we have forgotten that marriages are solemnised and the celebrations are ought to happen once they are successful adn not anticipating the success which might come or might not come. but most importantly why do we all want to different when to everyone we keep telling "i'm just liek anyone else!" why is it so easy to say and hard to believe that im just like anyone else - possessing the ability to do things my way .. even if its just way a billion other people do it. !

(

The joy of a simple life

2009-07-09T03:19:00.000-07:00

I was out on my Thesis Data Collection to the villages of India and i discovered the huge amount of sheer beauty India has..and i discovered amazing small facets of life that can transform one. here is one such facet i learnt in a non-descript village said to be the ancestral village of Bhutto family with a well still named after them.

I had often heard people saying and exclaim in desire that they want a simple life but i had totally failed to understand why they called it simple when they had such complex descriptions of that desired life. Like one wise person had once told me .. he wanted to settle at a place away from the city where all urban facilities would be available and where he could breathe free air and live with people who all loved him and expected nothing of him. Where his servants would take care of all his needs and where his sons and relatives and friends could come and spend their holidays and where he would sit down and write about the factories of software engineers.. i was left wondering.. he wants people to expect nothing from him.. isn't that a tall expectation?

So i went to Indore village near Nasik and i discovered this couple who have a "simple" life. They get up and do their daily chores and drink tea and entertain visitors all day long if the visitors happen to reach this remote village. ( i walked for at least 7 kms from the main road each time i visited the village). the sons take care of the farming and the old man talks to people in the village on how to take the village ahead and improve life for people. he relates to his youth and the freedom struggle and tells everyone how things can be worked out. the lady grows flowers like you can see behind them on the side. they are huge hibiscus and the flowers remain fresh for seven days after plucking !!!.

i suddenly discovered a simple life.. growing flowers..and cooking and eating and sleeping... but flowers are ones that survive seven days and are of such huge size that they are not abnormal. that's a successful life. i am focused on one activity but i do it well , very well and get extraordinary results. that's perfection. i had to touch the feet and seek blessings of the lady before i left.

The old man leads a simple life. he talks to people. he inspired his villagers to form a cooperative water users association that has changed the economics of the village, the surplus has helped start a dairy and now he wants them to set up a shopping complex. he is focused on village development and thinks well and does it very well. he had threatened to break the shop of his cousin when he had declined to help the water user association. he uprooted bricks from the shop wall at the age of nearly eighty and managed to get this man to the village to manage the paperwork as he is the most educated person in the village.

i learnt what a simple life is. i learnt what stuff freedom fighters are made of. i learnt humility as they served me tea and opened up all they had for me and wanted me to stay with them longer. i learnt a little bit of gardening also for flowers always spread smiles and these were surely special flowers.

My Enquiry with TED India

2009-06-22T02:07:00.000-07:00

TED.com has become a revolution. It was however hardly known (outside the USA)before it had discovered the Internet and it was not amongst the first to discover the Internet either. So while TED has been seen as the place to be for "ideas worth spreading" there has always been more to it. There is more method than madness inside. There is a pattern and things are predictable if you give it a thought.

TED has been raising expectations with its delivery and the way they have been marketing itself in the past few years. It claims to be the best and the most innovative stuff comes here. TED decided to launch TED outside the USA as recession hit and it was evident that money is now somewhere away from the US.

I managed to attend the TED India launch talk at IIMA about a month ago and i was pleasantly surprised to know that TED is playing it safe and conservative and copying the formula from US to make TED India a success. Laxmi was there and as she answered queries she accepted that TED is very conservative and have had few things not working out in the US and they were all out to replicate the US model in India.

It is here that all the cross cultural theorists need to sit up and take notice.. they have a challenge.. TED comes to India to do a Conference or "share" Ideas worth spreading and says it will replicate the way thins happen in India. I wonder if

India is structured like US ...
India has the same type of infrastructure as the US..
Do conversations happen in the same way in India as in the US
Do we share ideas in the same way in India as in the US
Is TED India really for Indians or does it want to bring the outside world to India cause there ain't much money elsewhere.
Is TED really about innovation if it cant innovate given the well known and not so well known differences across US and India.. not just the continents are different even the contents are different here.
Given the new ways we look at the world can TED succeed in India by using the same formula it has been using for 25 years in the US ?

As i had not the benefit of the answers and cause i increasingly feel TED is not about innovation as much as it is about oratory .. i decided to drop the cause of applying for the TED fellowships.

But now i am interested in knowing how TED bridges the divide that cross culturalists so much talk about.. or given its experience do we question if a divide exists at all considering the way India is changing very fast... very fast...

Life is Unfair

2009-06-20T04:54:00.000-07:00

I work with all types of structures and institutional arrangements and like to say i work on marginalisation issues as well. This experience today beat all of it. I met a 65 year old person today . Nanubhai asked me my well being and when i asked him his well being he bent down to touch my feet. He is 65 has seen more than double of the life that i have seen in 32 years of my life and has successfully navigated through the changes of time and value systems and i am yet to start doing that.
I came as a student to IIMA campus and was first impressed by Nanubhai, a simple sweeper for my dormitory. he would report to duty at 0730 because he came by bus from 15 kms away. his duty started from 0800 but he would start working before that as he did not want to waste time. he was sharp on dot everyday and before 0900 am my room was spanking clean. i never had to tell him and he noticed when he had to clean and wipe the door, when to remove the cobwebs and when to do a more detailed cleaning. His commitment to his job was unmatched and his dedication to his profession was ultimate and to me he is still an ideal of how it is to work with commitment and devotion. i believe he was one of the best teachers for me at IIM and yet he had to bend down to touch my feet. and he taught me humility. and i discovered LIFE IS NOT FAIR.

The Mystic Quality of Life- Things we can never find an answer

2009-06-18T11:23:00.000-07:00

I met an unusual soul last year. On campus it was a usual night to the other mess for dinner ...usually alone apart from two interns Sidharth and Anirudh form IIIT Allahabad who made my summer worth the mess by transforming their lives. Only this night it rained. i was waiting for the rain to get a little less as i wanted to get wet ( i love the rain falling on me) and also didn't want to spoil my already too old mobile which was counting its last few months.

i was joined in my long walk from one corner of the campus to another corner by an unlikely partner - a young beautiful girl who got talking to me. What struck me was her confident manner of talking and her smooth way of being comfortable while talking beyond introductions to expressing joys from her inner self. She was going to receive her first ever stipend the next day and was excited about her first earning :) , we parted ways as we reached our dorms (hostels) after a seven to eight minute walk and talk . i had jokingly asked her for a treat.

We kept bumping into each other on campus and she insisted on treating me as it was her first stipend and all her friends were in delhi. Strangely enough i found her taking me out to chocolate room for a treat where we went to and fro walking. Ramita (that was her name) detailed about her career interests and how she would like to return to IIMA for an internship in the next season as well. She talked of many ambitions and dreams of her academic and career pursuits and i was impressed by her confident self and clear thinking. What struck me was her down to earth attitude , willingness to grow and learn by working hard and ability to focus on the right issues.

we had decided that i will treat her in delhi for a return treat during my next travel as it was very very awkward for me to be treated this way. But that was never to be.

Why would someone open up about their dreams and ambitions to a stranger like me in practically our first ever meeting and talk ?

Why would someone seek to learn from the experiences of my life wihtout even knowing me remotely ?

Why would someone share a happiness with me this way ?

i have answers to none of these in connection with ramita. However i guess there are some pursuits we can never complete and some answers we can never have. i can only thank God for the brief moments where i can share someones happiness and be part of it. i can only thank God for considering me worthy of sharing a special joy like the first earning of a young indian. i can only thank GOD for makign me meet astonishing simple but confident young kids who can shape India's and the global future so differntly with the right training. Ramita could have been one such individual .

Yesterday i discovered on facebook something that was totalyl unexpected. We exchanged hardly one or two off line mesages in september and then i came across this http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home#/group.php?gid=30951019715&ref=mf

This came as a rude shock and brought back the unanswered questions to me. How can death walk in so silently and steal away the unaswers to such ordinary questions and make them so mystic ?

I can only be amazed and dazed by the mystic happenings in life and the unique way it unfolds.. i still wonder what message is stored for me?

Dr Kurien - An inspiring Leader

2009-06-10T04:42:00.000-07:00

An old man of 87 years of YOUNG age lies in a hospital bed in India’s commercial capital. He is in one of India’s best hospitals because he deserves India’s best. His age is young for he never stopped working relentlessly like young people with grand ideals. His age is young because his ideas are fresh and radical. His vision is young because it is far reaching and strong, the journey to his goal seems just begun. Out of 87 years he has worked for the same employers for 61 years. Most people retire at the age of 58 in India. The old “young’ man is none other then Dr. Verghese Kurien, an inspiration to the thousands of young leaders who have spawned the rural commercial landscape of India. What Dr. Vikram Sarabhai has been to the Indian Industry and Management education, Dr. Verghese Kurien means the same and much more to the rural India, rural management education and the development ‘Industry’ of India.

He defeated the British with a business model rooted in the illiterate people of rural India (perhaps the best Gandhian I have known thatways), then he beat the casteists and religious fanatics to bring people under one banner. He then beat the barriers of management and institutional theory and Culture (especially work culture). He continued to beat the management pundits and consultants of the business world and this was his leadership- of inspiring each one of them to deliver quality and scale up a commercial activity in rural India that balances the deep sensitivity of an NGO and the astute strategy and efficiency of a shrewd business enterprise – the dairy industry and the GCMMF.

I write this piece as we search for O-ve blood for Dr Kurien in what I hope is not the last of his battles. A few days ago I was stunned to hear that he was giving up. “Giving up” is something I or anyone have never associated with him. It was a shock and a rude one at it.

Dr. Kurien taught me many things. When he welcomed me along with 63 other students as the 20th batch of IRMA (Institute of Rural Management Anand) he told us “Go where you are most needed and not where you are most rewarded.” I have tried to stick to that talisman since that day ten years ago.

His creation AMUL taught me that India does not need replication but amplification of a successful idea. We need to innovate to amplify while we need to imitate to replicate. AMUL is big and successful because it innovates and does not imitate.

He once told and official in front of my batchmates “how unbecoming of you to still carry this when the matter is closed” and it still reminds me of justice, fairness, equality and magnanimity of a warm heart that is not insulated from human feelings by success.

Even in these three small incidents he teaches me clarity of purpose, depth of insight and humanity in approach and that to me is a recipe of leadership from the cult of Dr. Ku and it shall live on till my work can sustain.

http://fnbnews.com/article/detnews.asp?articleid=25563&sectionid=1

The Need of Bihar - Attitude Training

2009-05-27T01:55:00.000-07:00

Continuing on my Patna rhetoric is this one more entry. I know a lot of my freinds and readers must be amazed as to whats the big deal about Patna ? well its not so much about patna as it is about myself. This is the year of the realisation and as i have written in an earlier post that for me this means "to bring into real" or to "bring into concrete existence". This sets up my visit to patna as unique as it saw me see an initiative on the ground that i have been closely associated with. Not one but two. Actually three.

Kaushalya foundation started by Kaushal seeks to work with the vegetable vendors and producers. Dr. Ravi Chandra set up the Bihar Develpoment Trust along with Dev Kumar Dubey in Bhagalpur and basically works with microfinance and micro enterprise. Sidharth Jaiswal has set up with his brother Rishi, a workshop and is setting up a business to train farmers for organic agriculture. Together amidst them they give me a wide vareity. One had its crux in the supply-chain logistics and the other in the cost effective systems to maintain consistency and yet the third one is a technology and knowledge based approach to production. Two have been set up by IIMA alumni and other two are IRMA alumni .

All three need to work with the rural and the underprivileged populace of Bihar and all three rely on churning the local economy out of its slumber and start rotating capital. That Survival alone is next to impossible in Bihar leads us to realise that a group is essential to sustain and thats what the thier multitude helps us in . they can be a group with their individual identities and yet all work for the common communities of the downtrodden and the rural serving their different needs.

To the extent of nature of activity their problems and woes are similar and unique. A generation has passed in Bihar when there has been no significant opportunity to work and that has rendered us a young generation that has never seen work happening and the desire and motivation to work for a cause is lacking often. This poses the biggest threat to entrepreneurship in Bihar - the lack of human resources. While there might not be a dearth of Manpower but there is definitely a lack of human resources. In short it means there is potential in manpower but they do not know how to realise it.. they are raw material and not yet resources that can be used to deliver productivity.

There is a missing link of refining the raw materials to make them resources that can drive production and productivity. Most funding agencies and HR professionals will jump on this and come out with a skill training module for the same. To me there is a deeper understanding thats needed here. When i have not seen something in my life and i also have my strong impressions i end up having a belief or an attitude towards the phenomenon in question. If this logic seems right to you then it should be logical to conclude that what we need is something that we can call as "attitude training".

what is an attitude training?

an attitude training is a instruction that seeks to make you learn new beliefs and hence it sets you on the road to develop new attitude and often this involves challenging your existing attitude/s. An attitude training will go beyond giving you a skill as it will alter the approach you take to a phenomenon.

thus a training which trains you to a new attitude is what we call as an attitude training. However it might be deeper than that. changing an attitude often does not involve just training at the attitude level but needs to go deeper. As one HR tool suggests that human behaviour arises out of attitudes which arise out of beliefs and they in turn arise out of values. some people have debated whether beliefs arise out of values or vice versa. whatever maybe the agreement on the same, we know for sure that one of the ways to change attitude is to change the belief systems. in order to change the belief systems we need to challenge the existeing belief systems as they have been in a state for decades together hence they are not easy to change.

so we need a module that challenges existing notions and open up people to challenge thier own beliefs and then give other beliefs a chance and then give them the inputs to choose the set of beliefs that will govern thier future and not what has governed thier past. once this is accomplished the attitude change will follow. one of the best examples of belief changing modules that i have seen is the "Shodhyatra" conducted by Prof. Anil Gupta of IIMA. it has a strong module of challening ones physcial limits which enable one to challenge their belief systems. however the calibre needed to carry the discussions beyodn that is very high and it is a difficult task to accomplish and probably the defence forces are one organisation which have been able to change attitudes of youth who enroll.

so the serach for an attitude training module is on and we need to figure out one soon. advice and feedback on the same is solicited to help BIHAR.

a land called patliputra .. i mean patna

2009-05-20T02:30:00.000-07:00

This was my first visit to the historic land that was once called Patliputra and was at the centre of many a international events. Well if you think this is a mundane talk about the city.. i assure you it is not. I was in Patna for merely 36 hours and that give me two full days to roam and see the city.

The city lacks in infrastructure for its size and needs. The city is way behind many other cities of its stature in India. Yet it stand apart.. it is a city of people.. The peoples will and their ways are supreme over other systems and procedures. It is the contagious enthusiasm and hope of people that hits you in the city as well. It is a city where people like to connect to people more than at other places and the people of the city are simple and lovely most of the times.

There are also people who are frustrated , who want to run and can only walk in the muddy lanes. There are people who find it difficult to make professionals out of simple country bumpkins. There are people who are running behind scarce money and do not mind to walk on my toes for it. There are people who are in a hurry ... hurry to get out of Bihar and flee from the land that we all relate with despondency.

However there are few like kaushalendra (http://www.kaushalyafoundation.org) and Dr. Ravi Chandra of Bihar Development Trust who have come back and are facing the odds to transform and reverse the outflow of capital , knowledge, information and hope .. all manifested in people. They are to me in the same league as Nitish Kumar in weaving a new hope for the people.

The People of Patna rejoiced the win of development in the elections. Everyone had been skeptical about the outcomes of Bihar while everyone wanted Nitish to win. The overwhelming verdict in the state has made people realise that Nitish is a symbol of development and action. even the most illiterate and downtrodden voter in Bihar has opted for development and action in this election. the winner is not a party or a leader but "the people of Bihar' who have shown the true maturity of the Indian voter and it is not surprising for those who are knowledgeable of history to see that this new wave comes from Bihar or shall i say the once golden land of Patliputra.

A walk in the park

2009-05-08T09:50:00.000-07:00

I have always loved moving in the public in India.... for the sheer richness of the experience you get and today evening was no different . I had to pick up some pics and so i ended up walking in the park before i had some light dinner and called it a day with my lovely buttermilk.

The park however had other plans and it had to make me write a blog. A recount of the experience of walking in the park. As i enter the park i see the familiar stalls that do brisk business by the roadside at the entrance.. the pani-puri wala, the soda-wala, the cholafali-wala, and the numerous others. their ploy is routine and i lose interest in it soon and i move ahead.

My quick steps make me noticed by many people at once, the young kids and the teenage girls who seem to be looking for their own space and the young girls who are on the look out for a date to the old couples who are probably reminiscing their old young days looking at an energetic me. i smile at the old pair and move on while the smile plays on my lips. i realise it is a show of the Indian diaspora and also a statement of the fast and furious changes it has undergone.

So i move along knowing for sure that i might be up for surprises. On the next curve (the path around the lake in between) i see two very young girls (definitely school girls) sitting and chatting with each other and i catch their sounds to realise they are chatting about boyfriends and i wonder if i even knew about girls and guys at that age and i realise that i did know lols.. and i don't miss my steps and keep walking only to see a mid age couple walk hand in hand. It's nice to see our mid age couples express love to each other this way.

On the next curve the scene changed a little more there were lot so families in a picnic like mood enjoying the summer breeze and the kids who were littler than five years were all busy playing and running everywhere. Families have slowly developed a culture of going out and enjoying and the public spaces will always be free irrespective of the prosperity and shifting priorities towards exclusivity for those who can afford it. There is more to India than just new found prosperity and it should always be remembered in making policies is what i realised looking at that huge crowd.

The next curve was lower than the others and narrow and dark and i was curious what i will find there.. The first was an old couple finding their way in the dark and the lady seemed very puzzled and amused. i had to walk five more steps to realise why it was so . A young couple not over 20 years were busy in exploring a wet-kiss thinking it was too dark. Sadly some like me and the old auntie are gifted with the eyes of an owl to see in the dark. The truth is that culture in India especially Ahmadabad has moved a lot and such couples were there beside every pillar along the curve and surprisingly there was a rural couple from the slums evidently and so was one in Reebok clothing and while the youngest seemed around 16 the oldies were also there making the most of the "dark" and they must be around 45 years in age.

i decided this wasn't the most interesting section when on the last pillar i saw an interesting looking girl cause she had herself covered in her chunni and her companion being convinced to buy some educative books by a group of 3-4 kids who seemed to be on some social mission. Unfortunately i was out on a walk and could not wait for how animated the discussion would have become.

The next curve was even more interesting and it had a couple sit and talk the serious issues over the choice of school for their child. The next couple were busy trying to figure out which vehicle to buy and the next one were trying to remodel their home and how the "kaka" should not feel bad about it. There was another couple where the guy was frantically trying to make a point to the angry wife and the next couple were unique as it was a single girl shouting over her boyfriend or husband and it seemed a really bad fight as she was red with anger and even sweating because of it ( i assume that).

i tried to walk a little faster and cross this sad curve fast only to return the lively schoolgirls and this time even she seemed to be looking for some appreciation irrespective of the fact that she was indeed a very lovely looking girl. i quickly went through two more rounds of the lake and nothing really changed.. the couples were the same , their actions same and each curve had a different set of activities that remained the same. People seemed to have created an order in the bustling crowd of the park just like in India the social capital will almost always lead to a norm for the usage of a common resource if not diluted by any laws.

The changing cultural face of India is more evident now than ever before and so is the changing concerns of people. While all this happened in the park the most startling observation was of the remaining 80 % of people in the park who were least bothered about what went on wither out of lack of concern or merely out of routine leading to lethargy. Either ways the huge lack of concern on common issues seems to define the Indian crowd now in place of the over concern just a few years ago.

liberation in a space of webs and cages

2009-04-22T12:06:00.000-07:00

you realise how busy and stressed your life has become when you have to revisit your blog to see if you have missed the once in a week deadline that you set for yourself or not. in the first place the mind is occupied elsewhere and has forgotten when was the last blog or when is the next due. also the mind is so much feeling about being stifled as it wants to blog but can move towards it only in the free time which is a rare resource. as such the mind is trapped and caught in a web of too many activities and things. so the agenda today is freeing the mind. but freedom from what - the cage and the web. the mind needs avenues to roam free and fly.. spending time with children or relaxing with some sport usually top the list or doing a favourite activity. they refresh the mind and give it new energy to move on in a enthusiastic manner. so breaking the cage seems simple in pursuing a hobby or a pleasure giving activity. many youngsters today move to the pub in order to break away from their routine but most of them are confused the pub and disco routine every week does not help us break from our cage - we just transgress from one cage to another. there are very few of us who can let the mind free to roam everywhere in a dance and pub routine and that's why so many parties give us joy then and five minutes later on we are back to square one. the larger problem is to break the web. the pub routine like any activity at best is helpful in breaking the web cause it absorbs us into something which takes us away from the web. however many times such things might be less in u number but they have a web of their own and the end result might be no benefit at all. any activity like cooking which gets us totally involved into something breaks our mind away from the many trifles it is concerned about and frees us and is liberating from the web but not from the cage. liberation from the web is about being free from the many things that bind us and being liberated from the cage is about being free and moving in many different directions and getting the liveliness and loveliness of diversity in our life . so it needs a diverse set of activities and group to make us do wonderful things. famous profs are known to have quirks of sports / movies / travel / some other idiosyncrasy which makes them wander in a domain they have not been before and that is breaking the cage in a true sense. so how do i do it. the blog is what breaks the web and absorbs me in itself. and spending time with children or enjoying the beauty of everyday life in pictures . movies, plays , art , or beautiful places to travel that make us seek different skills of trekking , swimming, languages, culture or food habits and this is liberating truly. at the end it reminds me of the motto of IRMA the institute of rural management anand what liberates is knowledge and my researcher at pun mind asks me what about the researcher for whom new knowledge is mundane .. do we really have answers? if you think NO read this bit again .

The system of consumerism and poverty traps

2009-04-15T20:43:00.000-07:00

Everyday there is so much waiting to be written and so much wanting to be written and at times documented but rarely is there time enough in modern life to write a good blog or to keep your thought trained on one thing to do justice to it.

Today morning over a cup of tea i got discussing about the culutre of doing sewing , embroidery , stitching at home. It is a dying culture or has already died in most parts of India. my counterpart was trying to tell me "why do you worry if we can help generate employment by getting someone to do it what's so bad in it?" ...it made me think why was it that i was disliking this change in culture.. i'd like all of us to think through this with our understanding of life, money, jobs, economics, or whatever.

To me the answer was not strange or unknown.. The answer to my predicament not that i have the best understanding on the same. I had to patiently tell my friend that everytime we outsource, we bring in an element of consumerism into services. While to our eye this consumerism has only one effect - generate employment for someone who provides services to us, to a seasoned rural manager and IRMA passout it is not too difficult to realise that consumerism has dual effects on the poor populace. The first is the effect of rising consumerism which raises the prices for services that were otherwise delivered within the household free of financial cost. They never the less had an economic cost. In being provided in-house they avoided the unnecesarry economic costs of packaging ( a shop or an office to provide services etc. ) and develoment (skill training etc.) . The second effect is that the poor generally survive on open access and community or common resources and as such increasing consumerism draws on their meagre financial resources and increasingly renders their community and common resources non-tradable and as such they do not get monetary benefits of the same or the monetary benefit gets significantly reduced.

In summary by killing such cultures we are pushing the poor away from a sustained common resource livelihood to an unsustainable private rights resource livelihoods that simply do not give enough returns.

Now the question is why do they not give enough returns. Well to answer this question we have to look back at our own behaviour - how many times have you paid the rightful price of hand-work embroidery and how often have you bargained that on"xyz" footpath the same embroidery is available for 1/10 the price. How often do we realise that we are not just killing a culture but by pegging a persons labour equal to an exploitative regime we are also killing the chance of survival for these folks by making life more unsustainable.. As a parting shot i'll ask you to work out the relations of a community of people that lives an unsustainable life with illegal activities. and you will know where we are headed in the "growth only" regime.

Hail Growth - Whither Growth

Blogging ain't easy

2009-04-12T03:36:00.000-07:00

Blogging ain't easy at all , especially if you get to it after a long hiatus. I wonder if the hiatus can be long or not lols. well ill try to be back to blogging about once a week amidst the chaos and chorus of my life and retain a habit that has given me some very wonderful friends for life. As my life changes slowly and the year of the "realisation" impacts things around me and my life it is only apt that i should preserve a good habit and i shoudl preserve my good freinds and the platform which brought me to them.

However everytime we come back to something we have not touched for sometime.. my pserspective changes and so i guess has my perspective about my own blog and it is only with time that we will see what perspective this takes but trust me its going to be fun as my thesis work and my personal life catches up with me and i try to catch up with all of you on my blog:)

So its back to happy blog days again and long live the blog.. but man seriously bloging ain't easy at all!!!

The year of the 'REALISATION'

2009-01-01T11:52:00.000-08:00

It is almost customary amongst bloggers to summarize the year went by, because half of us bloggers think that we are journalists and we must shoulder the responsibility of summarizing the year went by. I too shall fulfill that expectation but in a blog that shall come out soon and maybe that soon happens not so soon given the hectic life these days.

Prof. K V Raju at IRMA taught me about life being more about the shadow of the future than the shadow of the past. So what does this year hold for me? An interesting question it is for me to answer. But let’s make a try.

Looking at history, I was not doing so well personally in 2004 and then came in 2005 and I decided to change things around me and started the way of giving names and themes to year. I don’t have resolutions for the new year but I have targets. The names of these years are qualitatively indicative of the targets. These are not “SMART’ targets but they are targets that have motivated and guided me like mission statements for the year. To that extent this is again an experiment that seems to have been a success but it is yet difficult to describe it in full. So there was the year of the transformation, the year of the rising, and the year of the making. So what can this year be? Hmm to my heart and mind the next episode is the “delivery “ or the “realization”.

Realization is a not so simple word and concept. Realisation is a big word and it carries weight. As a verb it indicates an ongoing process and yet it is confused as it can indicate a culmination of a process or a temporary climax that leads to the initiation of many more processes. Merriam Webster (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/realize) gives an interesting meaning from the dictionary. It tells of “to bring into concrete existence”, or “to make appear real”. My interpretation of the same is that “realisation” is “to bring to concrete existence” or “to bring to existence in real”.

This quite ushers in the New Year to be the “Year of REALISATION”.

So lets see what we “realise” in this year though we are clear of what we want to “realise” in this year after the year of transformation, rising and making… we need to realise.

DIWALI OF THE DARK NIGHT

2008-11-03T05:54:00.001-08:00

i went home for Diwali , i did a lot of adventure and took a lot of effort to reach But then going home is never an effort. sorry sir.. it took a lot of effort from my parents who were constantly worried about me and my travel ... as i adventured to my home.

however Diwali was touching with the touch of love and the tension of happiness .. yes happiness is in a state of tension till it breaks into a laughter :) ....

Diwali was touching for my elder brother was home after many years..

but you know DIWALI is celebrated on the day of NEW MOON NIGHT.. a DARK NIGHT.. yes it was sad.. all the sons and daughter in my colony have left town and the parents wait for their sons and daughters to return home on Diwali and as the children leave (their parents waiting for their return) the parents often tell their children "it was good that you could come, it rejuvenated us and we loved this time together."...this is the dark moment... i hate modern life and economics for doing this to us. i wonder why do parents have to bear this pain ... when growing up a child is enough of a pain in itself and seeing them go away for their lives and destinies.

DIWALI is definitely a dark night.... hope the diyas will bring in light. Ganesha are u reading?

The village beauty ...

2008-10-23T11:03:00.000-07:00

The Data collection is as elusive as it can get... the village a beautiful place as beautiful as it can get despite the flies that live "harmoniously", the increasing amount of plastic waste that makes me wonder why is Bangalore making plastic roads.. Indian villages don't have roads and too much plastic.. if we could use the plastic waste within them maybe all villages will have metalled roads in India ...and this is no lols..

Today started on a mixed note and the day was a mixed note day no doubt.. my bus got delayed thanks to a very long goods train that was crossing the road. lols well this is lols. cause the train came to the unmanned crossing and then the assistant driver got down and walked ahead of the engine clearing the traffic and impatient bike car drivers away and the engine roared its whistle and moved behind the assistant driver just like a little toddler learning to cross the road behind its mother. lols.. the log 60 Bogey goods train was thus taught to cross the road in about fifteen minutes.. the next railway crossing was manned but the meter gauge train took its own sweet time and the impatient jeep drivers created a traffic jam and so my usual 2 hour journey took an extra half hour.. then comes the task of moving from the taluka place to the village and the shared auto took 40 minutes to move and budge as it did not have enough passengers.. and i discovered a girl wearing a skirt and moving in an auto in visnagar :)

In the meantime my partners in crime in mean in the data collection were administering some questionnaires and we were getting some data. i saw the huge village pond . We even spent a full hour in the village temple of Umiya Mata and i discovered beauty in there.. beauty that usually we all will ignore.. see the pics... the temple is built majestically though not very grand in size and it has beauty in many aspects the gates, the pillars the design and best of all the charm in the idol of the deity . it is a sight for all of us to see and realise how realistically charming deities we have in India in villages and most forgotten corners as well. we just don't have time and eyes to see it most of the time . I hope you enjoy the data collection pics. lols the birds and the buildings.

In the meantime i shall worry about my worst fears being confirmed.. the youth have lost touch with agriculture in this village and there is a rising incidence of males well past marriageable age not getting brides due to the high pressure on land.

Another beauty i noticed today was that of a full grown tree with a round foliage that had not been cut or shaped by something else. the original tree as we might call it today in the cities and this sad lols.

The life and issues of Adaptiveness in Bharat or Rural India

2008-10-21T10:54:00.000-07:00

What does one do in a village, if you come from a city and not a village?

Wif your PhD thesis takes you there .. there is enough to figure out and time is always short. This is precisely what has been happening with me while i tell people about how i accomplish very little work in a day of fieldwork. let us look at how this unfolds.. why? well cause i want to explore the pace of life in a village..even for an urbanite like me who is overplanned lols!!! yes Over planned and you will see how.

Today, like usual, i started on time but my partners got delayed. The reason was simple. The bus they had to take was cancelled. the first reality of "Bharat" within India hits you. there are two things which get cancelled so easily these days - the flights of Kingfisher and Jet Airways and the Buses to rural India. No wonder the airplanes are called "air"- "buses"...lols..

I decided to make the "most" of time on my hands and i decided to pay a friendly visit to the Visnagar office of Development Support Centre (DSC) . i was met there by Shri Vijaybhai and it was a more than welcome reception and i tried my best to cooperate with him as well. i got some good information as in the name and location of a few villages which coudl posisbly be my sample unit villages for data collection and also the names of main contacts. That was more than what i had bargained for as i landed in without prior information. If you have'nt wondered how i reached the visnagar DSC office unplanned is not cause i carry a list of contacts with me or because the internet penetration in Gujarat is very good and i have used the internet in Visnagar and trust me the internet cafe there has better speed than the sify iWay in lucknow:) sad :( but true. i had the DSC ahmedabad number and i called them up to get to DSC visnagar . That brought me to vijaybhai who connected me to mohan bhai and rajandra bhai :) phew already too many characters and offices and location..well this Gala-head story is just beginning to take shape.

My mobile got a charger easily in the DSC officer but it fell and it stopped working . The repair shop guys were more polite for my more than 5 year old mobile phone there than i could ever find in the city. I was happy at that. I rushed to village Kansa and was met there by the Secretary of the irrigation cooperative called the "shri kansa Irrigation Cooperative for the sale of Canal Irrigation Water". I wonder who named that...

I was met by Gowdabhai . a very helpful gentelman who also doubles up as the operator of the irrigation cooperative. i decided not to "waste" time and i requested him if i could interview him as a farmer member of the cooperative. I was almost through when i was joined by my partners and then we tried to catch others in the village.

we searched on institutions and farmers for our sample and as we searched we got to know they were gone to a meeting for the irrigaiton canal. some others were gone out on personal or family errands. from one to four we talked about the irrigation cooperative to the secretary and corrected the information that i had collected earlier. a critical part of this was understanding new services like the washing ghat for women which i had mistaken as an activity of the irrigation cooperative. it is only tactfully supported by them.

beyond four we had no option the secretary was showing the laurels won by the cooperative and himself. Soon we realised the world is a small place. my IRMA juniors Shweta Kolluri and Shweta Prasad had visited Babubhai and we discussed sweet melodious memories from thier visit to his name. the next hour was spent on this.

We were forced to decide further work was not happening today. and we decided to move out of the village. While we made the plan for the next day i got a friendly visitor on the road and i decided to help myself.

so at the end of the day in a Indian village you can click a Peacock in its glory :) if not anything else. If you agree with this you miss that i was living the slow rural life for a day and trying to understand the changing needs and aspirations of people and hence the need of the Water Management Institutions to adapt and be successfull by fulfiling the expectations of the farmer-members. I was exploring the rate of adaptiveness that existed in the institution. In such a village the institution can respond to any exigency like a breach of the canal minor in less than two hours and a change of rule or procedure in less than two days where the decision is with the consensus of all the members of the institution. ..so now think twice about whats fast... whats slow.. and how important it is know the context before we conclude something as fast or slow.

the house of Research and its mess of responsible Researchers

2008-10-15T10:58:00.000-07:00

Hmm a long absence from the blogosphere.. and I'm trying to be back. Well what brings me back this time is none less than a Nobel laureate Dr. Paul Krugman. My friend Avinash Kishore Shahi did not find him interesting as a teacher ( for more log on to http://www.avinashkishoreshahi.wordpress.com) and the Nobel committee found him very exciting. They even lauded his teaching. That is not what brings me here.

What truly brings me here is the fact that he is a popular writer in the New York Times with a regular column where he criticises Mr. Bush and makes himself interesting to a Global audience. My interest has always been in doing work that connects to real lives of people and since the time is ripe i can take a dig, unlike the virtual finance world. Krugman does connect to a popular sentiment of the masses, even if most of the masses are not of the US, it would still be valid in an increasingly globalized world.

How many of us researchers ever try to take our work to the common man and make sense for him?

How many of us researchers want to place our work in popular literature so that a mass of people can benefit from it without our worrying about dissemination of our research and its findings.

How many of us researchers are confident that we can tackle the layman questions and show the connection with the real world of our research?

How many of us researchers are capable of not losing sight of the actual real life problem, we touch upon in our research ,in the maze of epistemology, validity, reliability, sampling design and so many other arguments and counter arguments?

How many of us are still excited about the problem we are trying to tackle when we are finishing our thesis and have not made the compromise of hitting a deadline cause it had to or altering the design or sample cause of some "practical" issues like operational funding etc.

I am not saying that i am beyond this or i have not done this or that but is it a more important question that our research is based on reality as it exists rather than a method proclaiming my religion of "good" "rigorous" "research". The vote is open now and we all have to cast our own vote . If relevance is achieved by compromising rigour (as many will vouch for relevance vs. rigour) why do we need rigour at all. If rigour is what is research is about (as many will vouch about purity of research again ) then why do we need to tell the implications and managerial implications or policy imperatives of our research at all. i guess its been long the research house needs to set the house in order. also i know this wont happen. Veblen had tried the same 110 years ago and we still live in the mess he had wanted to clear.

Amidst all this i wonder what Krugman does to this debate? apart form kick it up in my mind.

The Princely Experience

2008-08-02T07:52:00.000-07:00

It doesn’t rain much in Ahmadabad. Definitely not for someone who spent his life in Lucknow and Dhanbad before coming to Ahmadabad. So when it started raining yesterday, my heart was all joy and contented at the sight of a familiar but recently rare pleasure giving phenomenon. When the rains continued through the night my hearts joy knew no bounds and then when today the rains yielded the skies to a cool breeze with the relaxing touch on the skin I was ecstatic. Yet there has to be a spoilsport in a PhD scholars life and work it was for me. I had to review this document sent by abhishek. But me being me , my mind leaped and jumped form here to there in an attempt to find a magic solution to emerge out of the anomaly of life and enjoy the beautiful evening.

With heavy steps and a heavier heart I trudged the weary way from my room to the new LAN at the other end of the campus a good 700 m walk. My mind was restless. As I came to the LAN I realised my mind was not restless it was not at rest. And behold an idea flashes. I open the door to the balcony of the LAN and take my chair with wheels out to the balcony knowing that I have a laptop to work on. Sadly the balcony has no room for a breeze when I am in there in a mood to enjoy. I needed an alternative and soon there was one. I put my laptop on the chair and skilfully guided it through the work space to outside it to the portico and corridor above the main ramp in the new campus. Where the breeze flows in from a neat half km free flow and crosses to the other half of the campus . the brilliance of the idea could not be mixed. My feet firmly rested on the railings and my self on the chair began the review of the document and then I remembered the wonderful gift of rashmita – soothing music from the land of ladakh and I instantly clicked on Nawang Khechoggs favourite collection. The setting was complete.

I was seated like a maharajah with half a km of approach road leading to my high perch – the main lounge area of the new campus. I was taken back to old memories of castles and palaces and movies and dream theatres of the prince sitting on his balcony overlooking the beautiful gardens in his palace as he waited for the next adventure in his life which took him to his princess as well. More strong was the princely feeling of a kingdom on earth with free flowing air, beautiful rain , greenery and flowers, long wide roads , and the luxury to enjoy it all. And I silently thanked god for two things – one for my bringing me to IIMA and the second for the love that nature has always showered on me in blessing me with these luxuries of life.

So come join me… lets create luxury in life.

a fun post.. not all of this is true

2008-07-17T11:12:00.000-07:00

I Lie down on the grass, green and serene in the Louis Kahn Plaza, as i write this piece that i don't know what shall be. the moon is there - a full moon and it reminds me of so many faces, sound and beautiful, all lost to the vagaries of life. Pretty much like the moon that fades behind the dark clouds. The majestic buildings stand tall and firm having seen battles and Earthquakes- battles of a corporate and academic nature. The moon peeps on me from between two clouds and as i look back it hides behind the cloud and a cool breeze embraces me in congratulating me on my victory over the moon. The cool breeze and the lovely but rainless weather take me to my own self inside.

The structure stands firm having seen and endured many a battle and earthquake. Yet the bricks are all tattered and old. A new fabric is needed and a new look to the structure over due. the metamorphosis (this is the year of the metamorphosis) is proving to be painful and surely a test on many accounts. Patience is just one of it.

I lie down and look at the vast sky and huge clouds above, ready to fall on me. My heart knows no fear and it knows not a friend either. My hears sees beyond the clouds into outer space for it is like the outer space - distant , dark, remote, existing but never seen or realized. Person after person that i have met and friend after friend that i have failed reminds of the expectations (that died long back) i had that someone will understand my heart.
People closest to me have had no inkling of what is happening within me or why? Where i am floating and on what? The search for my own self has become a pursuit of the self of others. I know the moon feels no joy in the sky when clouds fly by and it is lost to the breeze and games of nature. i know how inspiring the moon is and how it is capable of bringing tides to the mighty oceans. i wonder if some celestial being ever asked the moon , does it want to do so?

Every night it sets out. Lovers of the world feel that it is there to remind them of romance, inspire the poets they feel, to predict the weather the meteorologist thinks and for the kids to hear fables and fairy tales. having done this why does it need to move out again the next night on the same path and night after night in a seemingly never ending pursuit. Maybe it just wants to ensure that all is well with its beloved, somewhere, she might be.

seeing me write about itself the shy moon has hid behind the clouds and i lying on the grass in LKP (Louis Kahn Plaza) amidst the tall buildings and distant trees feel like falling in a big deep pit... of eternity and oblivion... in a world of my own.

The Value System of the Media... are they opinion builders or scam creators?

2008-07-13T07:40:00.001-07:00

how many times as a 14 year old did i think my parents were curtailing my freedom and strangulating my creativity and expression...i guess once almost every week...
how many beautiful 14 year old girls have guys queuing up to "patao" them.. in the age of today talking of 2008. i guess more than 80% of the 14 year old girls have someone flirting with them..
how many professionals in high stress jobs do not like to take stress home and discuss with some colleague who can understand it irrespective of whether the colleague is male or female? i guess about 70 % in metros..

you would be wondering why am i writing all this where the title suggests that it should have something to do with media. well I'm talking about arushi talwar and Dr. talwar and the family. AND

HOW ASHAMED THE MEDIA SHOULD BE AT ITS ROLE...

given the figures i estimate above and a lot of people agree (yes i have informally surveyed this with my friends..) so given the figures above.. i never found reason or rationale enough to frame Dr. talwar in the whole affair. and the finger points at only one direction for the same. THE MEDIA.

it was the media which wanted to show evidence and circumstantial information on the TV before even the police had gone through it.
it was the media which thought that probably having read enough detective novels they could play sherlock holmes this time ..the reporters went into elaborate analyses beyond the "expert" investigators that they got on TV in explaining how and when Dr. rajesh talwar had killed his own 14 year old daughter....can those reporters today stand in front of a crowd on thousand odd people one side and the talwar family on the other and beg forgivenness for the trauma they have inflicted.

just because some 20 something year old reporter reads the wrong magazines and stories. s/he thinks that a doctor in a detective novel should have an extra-marital affair and it would shock the people most if the father killed the so young and delicate daughter. i wonder if they think the same way about their own families and friends.. id be happy not to have some such friends..

a media which is responsive to society can also do business seems to have been erased from the memories but what remains is a business that can also manage the media. sadly enough the latter is true for the times i have to lift a newspaper and watch a television.

the first day Dr. talwar had been indicted by the media i was stunned.. i remembered the arguments that i had with my parents in my teens and i knew a father cant hurt a child without reason but these are not the values that the media believes in . it seems to believe in incest, homicide, murder, motive, fraud, scam and scoop more than anything. i ask "what are the values of the media?"

last but not the least.. i turn my attention to the family.. a mother and a father who lost a darling child after 14 years of nurturing her in this world where values are askew and in turn get blamed for nothing short than murder.. a 60 day trauma of being in jail for Dr. talwar and he has only his wife.. and the two are separated on two sides of the jail. in the loss of a child the husband and wife so much need each other and the media ensured that they had no such avenue to come to terms with the loss. i wonder if there is an avenue where we can put the media on trial and yet i rest that idea cause the trauma for the family has only now begun. they still have to come to terms with the loss of a teenage daughter while for the media the story has ended.

may god bless the departed soul.

a lily of a day is fairer in may.....

ECONOMICS OF PEOPLE

2008-07-04T22:41:00.000-07:00

I have thought about writing this many times but then people are not what i relish writing about so i always let go of it. However this recent new experience makes me think twice about doing that and here is a post.

Well its about how economics is applied to daily life in our interaction with people.

When two strangers meet and a common platform is discovered to keep the conversation going ..initially there is a lot that they have to discover about each other .. these are new things and facts or projections not known earlier by one about the other. As such the marginal value returned by every added moment of interaction is pretty high and as such there is a desire on part of both to spend more and more time with each other. As such it is evident that a lot of time is spent together and some exceptions are made in schedule. (the given graph is from http://www.davidfriedman.com)

As more time is spent with each other, more facts and aspects are discovered about each other and the new things to learn keep on reducing unless new experiences are created. What this means in practical terms is that the focus needs to shift from learning or talking the past to the living the present and building the future. If that does not happen then the incremental learning from new facts decreases as they are linked to now known facts and also the probability of coming up with a fact not now already known reduces. In economical terms the marginal value added by every moment of interaction goes down. Asuch the incentive to spend more and more time with each other goes down and new options are sought priorities are reset , the exceptions disappear, and what some people call it as "distances creep in".

So next time this happens in your or our life don't worry .. don't fret about it don't feel cheated it is a perfectly rational approach in the larger frame of bounded rationality.

In simple humanitarian terms the economics of people is about a utility function of deriving added value.. in other terms its plain utilitarianism.

The rains are here :) HURRAH

2008-06-30T23:44:00.000-07:00

Ever since Yahoo 360 started misbehaving i had no option but to move to some other blogging avenue and that brought me back to this old experiment of mine. and so now its time to revive this and return to my blogging times..

so lets start with some happy news.. it finally rained in Ahmadabad .. and it rained cats and dogs... and true to my spirit i was out under the clouds getting drenched like a kid.. i roamed in waist deep water... found a football and played and made thirty others play with it in ankle deep water lol so much fun and then i also rolled on the floor on the ramp to let the waves of flowing water hit my head .. by the way that is very soothing like a head massage after a hot and tiring day.

so what i can write in few sentences is two hours of fun and a parting gift to a hardworking boy trying to make his place in this world. someone who has slogged and worked hard and came to iim as an employee to find that the students are very much like him but no one taught him to speak good English or build his cv. so it made me happy to give him the happiness.

rain always seems like gods love and i feel as if mother nature is embracing me so it is very very difficult to keep me away from it. my own mother always keep me away from rain as i was delicate as a child but now every time i get drenched i remember her love:) strange are the ways we associate things and justify them to ourselves.

it also brought many people on campus to see the kid in me. i am sure not many would have noticed that there is about a decade between me and them and yet we are all kids inside.

the rain made me miss a lot of people that i have enjoyed with in the rains... the fun the frolic the eroticism the ecstasy the legacy of paper boats and the wild splashing of dirty water lols i feel so energetic again.
the worst is all good things have to come to an end so two hours and i had to gt back to my room to sleep.. and this post has to end to make way for another soon :) till then keep Yo-ing

im back

2008-03-14T22:26:00.001-07:00

after a long gap.. yeah years to go by .. ill be back.. :) and the cosmic dance will never stop...

cosmic dance more

2004-06-18T03:29:00.000-07:00

hi guys and gals

and i have a sense that since a male brought up in a typically male domionated indian society writes this most of the readers are bound to be males rather than females.

well its time to unleash the cosmic dance.

why do we celebrate so much segregation of the sexes in the indian society? is it a traditional thing as some people claim it to be or is it just a fad for the out of phase people in the modern era?

well truly speaking i have not come across a single proof in support of segregation in the ancient past except for separate dormataries for lady students in the gurukuls and that too i found was based on the reasoning that by then the division of labour in the society had set in and the separate dorms were part of learnign mechanisms that led to different social functions and it was only to in aid of that and nothing else as per this reding that i had come across long back and forget its reference.

even the movies like trishagni have shown how we have started misinterpreting things for vested interests and how they can put both religion and traditional knowledge in the wrong light.

i have lost so many friends in my life to the segragation of sexes in the indian society despite the fact that i was brought up in the more liberal urban societies. the friends i lost are greatly treasued and the loss has taught me how the so called traditionalists just distrust relationships in the name of culture and tradition without even understanding tradition and culture itself.

wll things move on as they will and so will the world but in the small time duration that we are given (in a metaphysical sense) can we each make a differnce ?? i think we surely can by each trying to abolish one such social misnomer form our lives in our life. did someone say not a big task? i contend that.. our social upbringing drives some things so deep into us because every stimulus is geared to a single but hopelessely wrong end that it makes such a small task a great uphill task in itself.

i have tried and so far have not met with a good measure of success on anything that i have tried in my life but then most of the small time still remains for me and i am not to lose heart so easily. i keep on trying confident to drive above the driven down deep musings of a social upbringing till i can come up with an example to show what i mean when i say that can we try to root out one such social misnomer from our lives?

love to all...jughead

opening the dance party

2004-06-16T05:32:00.000-07:00

hi folks this is my first attempt at making a blog and today ill be jsut content with starting a blog which shall let me share something deep inside me with you all. i am a man of varied interests and a myriad of experiences come my way and as such i call this blog a cosmic dance because ill make you travel with me through not just worldly phenomenon but things which can be celestial and at times transcend the pure physical material domain and into the grey domain of spirituality and well well what the celtics call the skeptical existential reality and at times ill be contradicting myself as well because i believe in learning and i solidly believe in what walt whitman had written somewhere " i am large, i contradict myself , i contain multitudes"

thats all for now i am in a good mood today.