Closing the YEAR of the REALISATION

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

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

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"

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

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

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

1. India is structured like US ...
2. India has the same type of infrastructure as the US..
3. Do conversations happen in the same way in India as in the US
4. Do we share ideas in the same way in India as in the US
5. Is TED India really for Indians or does it want to bring the outside world to India cause there ain't much money elsewhere.
6. 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.
7. 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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'

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

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 ...

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

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

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.