size matters (even in recession !! )

Even before the debates on estimates of cost of sub-crisis are subdued, a new debate has started whether economies across the world are reviving. At least in India we have got enough reasons to believe so- a significant rise in IIP index, increased freight movement across ports, companies going on hiring spree etc. The pace at which banks were collapsing at one time has been shadowed by the pace at which economies around the world are recovering now.

A large part of this fast paced recovery should be attributed to governments across the world which have left no stone unturned in paying honest tax-payers money to crooked institutions. From Greenspan’s cheap money to Bernake’s cheap money has been a scintillating and fast journey. And mind you this is not applicable to one or two countries alone; this has been the trend everywhere. Globalization in true terms!!

But what signal is it sending to the companies? Go and enjoy the world till the sun is shining; when there will be night some Fed will come to save you. “If you were not taking risk and making money, you have been a fool, is the message which companies are getting by all this”- says a noted economist. But I have just a correction to make here. “If you wanna take risk, which is not even comprehensible to yourself, please make sure that your size is big enough.”
Small fishes are not entertained here – Fed Reserves.

economics with cuteness......

Okay c’mon tell me what is wrong in studying economics in graduation?

It came to me striking while I was having a lovely chat with a few lovely girls in a café recently (I don’t know why everything related to girls comes striking to us?). I was sitting with the friends of a friend of mine so I thought to concentrate on her friends (of course to make them feel at home); especially to one whom I found really cute. Our jokes were understood by each other very well followed by an extra ounce of laughter. As a group also we were going nicely, discussing the latest movie- NewYork, dressing sense of Katrina and John, then we went on to discuss new movie launches in pipeline (I was dreaming the future prospects) until one of them raised a technical question (I hate it when girls raise technical issues and that too in between nice talks). The question pertained to my studies. Economics Graduate I said. And after that the reactions changed from wow feeling to Oh! "Oh the number stuff? Why even after so many economics theories we can’t prevent a recession when it comes? Why everything in economics start with hypothesis?"

Oh my god this was not where I wanted to land.

And then started what I may call my nightmare. My cutie pie asked- Did you take Human Resources Management as your specialization to give yourself a human perspective after this economics degree or you were genuinely interested in taking up HR? I tried to lighten up the environment by cracking actually it was because of pretty girls in HR that I took HR. But my jokes were not jokes anymore. I could have understood if it were from one or two girls. May be a breakup with an economics guy or some time table guy (remember Dil Chahta Hai?); but there I was with four girls just hell bent to post mortem my decision of taking Economics at first place and then the dare to follow it up with an HR.

So finally I had to take up the stage to clear things about economics. Yes economics guys are a little enticed towards numbers (when somebody asks us how many hours you slept yesterday we tend to say 8 hours, 33% more than my average sleeping hours and so on). Yes economics theories did fail to solve the problems many times but believe me I had nothing to do with those theories. So finally 43 minutes later, after 7 arguments in favour of economics and 3 proofs about economics guys being human (even without studying HR), we came to the conclusion not to ostrich economics people from society. But in the process of reaching to conclusion my cutie pie was lost somewhere. My future dreams which had started coming in the beginning of the talk were forgotten in between somewhere. What an opportunity cost of discussing economics!

Independence - To think, to decide, to act.........

What determines the level of success and competence in a human being? What kind of skill set one has varies but the basic tenet remains unchanged; the degree of a man’s independence, crave for a new beginning and undoubted love for his work decides his level of talent as a worker and his value as a man. Independence is the only true parameter of human value. There is no alternative for personal dignity and self. Never in your life let anyone or anything become bigger than you. You are a unique creation and your degree of self respect will determine your level. Before others can think high of you; you yourself have to think high of you. Don’t let anybody and everybody sway your opinion. Question before you agree; think before you produce an opinion; believe in what you say and do. The man who can feel, think, judge or act is the man who can make a positive change for himself and the world.

Make your life worth living...

Almost no one likes uncertainty in life but uncertainty is what makes our life worth living. Excitement of doing things for the first time, not knowing whether it will be successful or not, gives us butterflies in the stomach. What other feeling in life can match the feeling of giving an important competitive exam, being late for an interview with slightest chance of making it on time, the feeling just before the results are going to be out, the feeling of purposing first girl in the life (the fear involved ranging from a firm No to a ‘I think I don’t like your face’ to even a Slap; but also slightest chance of Yes). How much boring life could have been if there were no uncertainty, had we known everything about the future?

Still we fear the unknown world more than anything else. We are not ready to take risks in life. But the fact is that we almost never regret doing something but we regret things we didn't do in life. We regret for love not shown, for words not said, for not understanding the viewpoint of a friend, for not giving full hearted efforts at something which interested us once, not taking enough risks. By living our life on safer notes all the time, aren’t we depriving our grandsons of stories of our adventures, depriving ourselves of the line- 'I was so crazy once'; depriving ourselves of a life that we could have made?

Always be confident enough in life to make it worth living.

a dream is not what comes to u while sleeping but it is what doesnt let you sleep...

Imagination takes us to the world where we fly, birds dance, flowers speak and where offices are perfect, people mingle easily with each other, bosses give unbiased reviews, everybody talk to each other with good intentions (without being selfish), ideas free flow (better say there is space for ideas), you learn new things (not doing the same thing over and over) and you get intellectual people there. But not all the dreams come true, not all the imaginations bring fruits.

It was my first exposure to the corporate world when I entered there for my summer internship project, with a reputed company. I had my own assumptions regarding the corporate life, none of which came true when I joined. Birds were not supposed to dance in the world of practicality, flowers were not supposed to talk. Only thing where this experience has helped me is in building in me a strong desire to become an entrepreneur. I have given a good amount of thinking about my personality, what makes me happy, what is my turning on points etc. Once I had an eccentric discussion with my MBA Prep coaching classes’ Director on the day after my final selection call for SIBM, about the futility of MBA. “Throughout your MBA course it will look useless to you, but if it makes you realize your dream and what you want to be in life, you will understand value of MBA. In fact this is only thing in MBA worth looking forwards to – attitude, which you acquire there is with you for a life time. You will need nothing else in life once you get the right attitude and your choice. Everything, then, will fall in place” said he. Today I realize, although to only some extent, how true it is.

I am devoting most of my energy for last few days (not to mention sleepless nights that i am going through) towards cherishing my dream- to contribute towards education industry (more about it in any of the next blog entries). At the same time I am also working with a friend of mine on the business plan which we had presented in Innovation Challege 2008 and won the first prize. Currently I am working as the HR Consultant for the company. The level of freedom of taking decisions and challenges is enormous and gives a diferent kind of feeling altogether. Now i am planning about going in full terms as an entrepreneur. If everything goes as per planning sibm will get one more entrepreneur from its soil. In reality, I will never be able to forget sibm for making me realize where my true flair lies. At the end of the day what matters is whether we are satisfied or not, whether or not are you following a distant dream? A dream is not something which comes to you while sleeping, it is what does not let you sleep.....let me work upon my dream once and see what comes out of it. Two main things which are driving me towards education sector are- all my passions will be fulfilled there and freedom of work while staying in your own state, with your family, friends, people whom you know, who know you. Hopefully I will be able to make a positive difference (education system needs a lot of them) in a better way in an area where my interest lies.

I am looking forward for a partner, enthusiastic about a career in education sector, to make our journey together.
- sunil Rao

A system avoiding failure or a system for FAILURES......?

Why does it happen so many times that people who top an engineering College or MBA College or any other teaching institute are not the most successful people in life also? Why do we see people like Bill Gates or Ambani there? Why do we see that CEO’s of most of the companies are never the toppers of their school or college days? If life is one factor which gives us the most important lessons of living then why do we need an education system? Is it for those failures or dumb people who can’t learn from life? May be no but may be yes also.

Education as a system itself corrupts our mind in the sense that it provides us with the limitations, it teaches us a few notions which we carry throughout our life without even thinking how true they are. It gives us a conformity criteria in which we try to fit ourselves. Isn’t it possible to allow everyone to explore things on his/her own? No boundaries, no formalities, no compulsion to be the same like everyone else is. But with this freedom we run a big time risk of failure also. Whether failure prepares you for a better day next time is a separate line of discussion. But this fear of failure is one of those things which are the base or oxygen of education system.

Do you think our system needs only brilliant, innovative, idea generating, strategically thinking brains? Never the case. If all people are genius then who will do the mundane, routine tasks (without thinking much) which provide us basic necessities in terms of production or services? For example shop floor activities or even engineering stuff like coding, testing etc for that matter.

This is the base of education system- it prevents you from absolute failure because it will make you the way system needs you. Therefore toppers may not be the most successful people but they are almost never a failure in life also.

you cant eat the cake and have it too..

So far I have voted two times in my life for government elections- once for assembly elections and second time for Parliament elections. But since I have a deep interest in reading and knowing stuff related to politics I read a lot on this subject. I have always thought why politicians use petty issue like religion, communism, caste etc and on based on these sentiments they try to win elections? Don’t they have self conscience? But today I got an almost same analogy and I understood the concept in a better sense. Today we had elections for selection of Student Council President and Coordinators for various committees in our college. Even in this highly educated class of MBA’s, issue of casting votes according to class sections raised significantly. It was looking as if section A were fighting against section B or C. Can’t they understand there is much to life beyond a small section boundary? And here I got answers for my earlier questions - When people can raise this section thing just to win a small election what’s wrong if politicians raise such divisive issues to win Parliament or Assembly elections where stacks are really very high. Next thing is even worse - why do people vote for such politicians; why do we constantly select people with corruption and criminal records? When it comes to shouting about the problems we have to face due to poor functioning of government, our people will be in front shouting against government but when time to choose good representative comes they will decide with a MY perspective in mind. Instead of going by merit; people go for - My caste, my religion, my boli (language), my section. We people are big hypocrites; while choosing our representative we will ask for MY, but while looking for performance we want best quality. “cake ko ya to kha lo ya bacha lo- dono kaam ek sath to nhi ho skte.”

Live the life beyond doubts

In our life we live less and doubt more. We doubt the intentions of people close by, we doubt whether person X is true to me or not, we doubt the capacity of our educational system to provide us knowledge, we doubt the capability of government whom we have chosen, we doubt the world around us, we doubt our boyfriend or girlfriend, we have serious doubt about the real meaning of what a person has said to us even though the person in question is known to us for years. We know the person very closely for years but still instead of understanding the meaning, we will go the simple path- ask him to clarify what he said. Does mere saying something over and again would make that more forceful. Why do we need clarifications even after years of relationship is beyond my comprehension. And in between these doubts we forget to live the life. We don’t even have the time to see the world beyond doubts and enjoy the blessing it has in reserve for us.

who says we learn from history?

Protectionism as a policy is one of those policies which had hurt economies all over the world very severely. But the sad part is people get a feeling that by applying protectionism, government is doing them a favour. Take a recent example of USA government which is putting a condition on bailout companies to take only Americans as their employees (Big story in today’s newspapers on cutting H-1B Visa).

In a way government is saving its people and organizations by providing them a shelter. But what about the cost that the organizations has to take in the form of increased payment (more people would have created an excess of supply and decrease in wages) and loss of quality (less people to select from; leaving talented migrated people), and that too at a time when any organization needs these two things the most.This way USA is protecting economy or digging the hole further?

This reminds me of July ’08 when food prices were on their peak due to shortage of food grains. It so happens that one part of world (which is a significant player in that grain market) may not be able to produce grains due to any reason say drought for argument sake. Now there is a shortage of that particular grain in world market. Prices of that grain starts shooting up and other grains (substitute goods effect) also catch up soon. Countries start feeling scarcity of grains; they tend to go for the policy of protectionism and don’t send their own production out in order to protect their interests. But this creates more scarcity outside and further increase in the prices. Hence other nations also follow the suit (protectionism), and in the process drag market for that commodity into deep trouble. This is exactly what happened which started with Australia where continuous drought for 7 years reduced rice production by around 60-70%. At a time when all economies were supposed to come together and take steps, they were busy in forming protectionism policies for their countries.

Now USA is repeating the same mistake. Who says we learn from history?

we live our life only once...

Each organization has its own culture and a value system inherent in it which you can feel in the people of that organization. For so many years, I have heard a lot about sibm culture but today I felt it. Symbiosis as a culture can be described as a culture of friendship and joy. People here love reaching out to people. One more thing which is entirely visible is love of symbites for their institute even after years. Alumni just love coming to institute to meet even years after years. Today two events ran this sudden streak of thought and brought out the feeling which I was experiencing for a long time. After the Leadership event(a big event consisting of many leaders across sectors), I was outside the campus to bade my friends. We were clicking photos with our cellphone camera. All of a sudden a charming person around the age of 35, with a high quality camera in his hand, who I think was going back, appeared and offered to click our photo. We were all surprised. He clicked the photo, took one of our email ids, and promised to send photo on that id. We all were mesmerized at this gesture, he said- “1992 batch” and walked away. I was so shocked and delighted that I could not even ask the name of our friend.

Also I met one more alumna of symbiosis, priya, a really nice and pretty girl, 2005 batch pass out from scmhrd. One can see the proud of being associated with sybmi in the eyes that young lady. I liked her down to the earth personality and love for symbiosis. She was excited visiting the symbiosis after a long time, interacting with sybmi students. We discussed a whole lot of issues ranging from practibility of curriculum, market conditions, to symbi feeling. “You can recognize any person from symbiosis just by interacting with them for 5 min. That’s what culture is all about. we live our life only once and rest are memories.” – puts priya. Rightly defined. Currently she is working with Standard Chartered here in Bangalore.

To....point 5

The worst thing with the relative grading system of evaluation is that it is really hard to fight back once you have left the trail somewhere. The system works like this- if you have scored relatively less in your first semester, you tend to work harder to cross the average and perform better (a few folks who don’t share this idea please forgive me; but believe me I am also amongst you). But the problem is that you are not the only one who is thinking this way. There is whole bunch of below average and about average people who are thinking on the same lines. So next semester these hardworking people will work harder and push the average high in the process and when looked at relative performance, they will find themselves almost on the same position (isn’t it seems like being inspired from five point someone; of course it is, you fool). But the point is today I have got the grading of 2.492(almost 2.5) out of 4 (just above average )so I have all the rights to write about it. Now onwards my whole target in MBA is to reach 2 point 5 instead of tending To... point 5. Quite moderate a task; seems like but when you look at my daily schedule (of novel, newspaper, TT, Gym, Chess and Chatting) you will find out there is hardly any scope to improve in examination related stuff. And I will be satisfied once I achieve my target of 2 point 5. Anyways if you score more than that, people will say- “ saala ye to MBA me padhne gya tha!!!”

To a serious note, i would say that though marks are important in MBA but MBA is lot more apart from marks only. It is more about overall development, networking, focus, confidence and loads of fun.

“Does petrol cost us what its price is?” – one more reason to be an entrepreneur..

What was the cost of petrol when you bought last time? 53.5? or 45 ? or 39? Okay whatever be the price; is it possible that the person buying next to you is buying cheaper than you? Or may be dearer than you? Is it possible? YES. It is. How? Read on...
There is difference between the price of petrol bought by an entrepreneur and petrol bought by a person working as an employee. It is the rate of tax and calculation method, that create the whole difference.
For the sake of building the model we assume that tax rate for everyone in the country is 30%. We also take market price of petrol as Rs 50/litre. If the income of an employee is Rs 100, after tax he is getting only 70 and hence for him the petrol is costing around Rs 71.42 (50/70*100) effectively because he is paying 50 Rs out of his income of Rs 70. On the other hand, for an entrepreneur the same kind of an expenditure gives a tax shield to the effect of 30% (how ethical, showing personal expenditure in business, is a different issue)which makes his income of 100 as 130 effectively. So for him, effective price of petrol is Rs 38.46 (50/130*100) only. The same logic goes on when we buy laptop or a software or electricity and so on and so far.
So what’s the lesson – there is one more reason to become an entrepreneur – effective use of tax slabs.

People leave their highly rewarding jobs to realize a distant dream of their own and become an entrepreneur. So if a good idea strikes me, will I go on to become an entrepreneur? The thought of starting something of my own is becoming more and more prominent in me for quite some time. But sometimes I think I am not ready yet. I don’t have any experience in the way things move in corporate world. May be I would like to have a firsthand experience with corporate and then 5 or 7 years down the line I may think of becoming one. Let’s see how things turn out.

MBA - Is the juice worth squeeze?

One of the most obvious and most asked questions in MBA is – Is it worth anything what we are reading? Does it have any practical application at all? Or most of the time we are mugging up theories only?
We, as human being, are what our teaching, life experiences, people around us have made us. Our environment and learning in life put a deep impact on our way of thinking and applying the thoughts into practical life. But is it possible to cut that learning into pieces and say that this part of my behavior or learning can be attributed to my learning at the age of 15, this can be attributed to my learning from std 8th and like that? The way you behave or solve a problem in particular situation depends on the learning and experiences applied cumulatively. In the same manner it will be difficult for us to say whether a particular part of our MBA will be useful for us in long run or not. It is never that you take your decision exactly as per some theory taught to you in class but these theories definitely have an impact in shaping processes of mind and molding it to think in an intended direction. MBA is all about building the right attitude – about work environment, about colleagues, about the problems that you face and about the LIFE.

And the most important of all; an MBA degree can take you to the boss' position...read further:
When the body was first made, all the parts wanted to be Boss. The brain said: "I should be Boss because I control the whole body's responses and functions." The feet said, "We should be Boss as we carry the brain about and get him to where he wants to go." The hands said, "We should be the Boss because we do all the work and earn all the money." And so it went on and on with the heart, the lungs and the eyes until finally the asshole spoke up. All the parts laughed at the idea of the asshole being the Boss. So the asshole went on strike, blocked itself up and refused to work. Within a short time the eyes became crossed, the hands clenched, the feet twitched, the heart and lungs began to panic and the brain fevered. Eventually they all decided that the asshole should be the boss, so the motion was passed. All the other parts did all the work while the boss just sat and passed out the shit!
Q: What can we learn from this?
A: You don't need brains to be a Boss - any asshole will do.

Building Infrastructure is NOT a solution to current recession

Governments all over the world are mulling various options to overcome recession. Building infrastructure is candy of eye of all the governments as the solution. . J.M. Keynes, in his book ‘General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money’ argued about the relationship between production, wages and employment. According to Keynes, purchasing power in the hands of people was the most crucial factor for the economy to revive. He suggested that government should pump in money because no private investor would be interested to take risk in turbulent times.
Although the benefits to economy from building the infrastructure cannot be neglected but I have reservations about whether it is a solution to recession. In earlier time (when Keynes has given his theory), building infrastructure was labour intensive. But today it is highly mechanised, using little labour. Dams, power plant, airport, roads etc are capital intensive these days, not labour intensive. With today’s technology, building infrastructure is not a big job creator unless we insist on inefficient, obsolete techniques, a mistake that government of India had committed when it stipulated that 60% of cost of building road under NREGA (National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme) should go to wages. As a result, we got low quality roads which disappear almost after every monsoon. This approach of forcing the mechanism of building infrastructure can never create good infrastructure.
Also, normally infrastructure projects have a long incubation period. So they have their own time in disbursing money and hence cannot provide Keynesian boost.

a few past entries from my diary

a few entries of past dates from my diary:

August 4, 2007
Our bathing spree on the way from tuition to home last evening was superb, really awesome. Events when done against established norms give you a different kind of thrill and pleasure. Her idea of having an ice cream, while both of us were shivering in the rain, blended with cool wind was quite a different experience to have. That half an hour in the rain with a good friend has been and will remain as a memory forever.

September 8, 2007
The novel ‘Fountainhead’ is one of those novel that has given me a new way of thinking altogether and has answered a lot of my questions which i used to ask myself. Really a thought provoking novel written by Ayn Rand. The biggest thing about the novel is that every character of the novel is so strong that it’s hard to decide who is going to prevail in their fight; in fact a queer type of fighting where publicly they are with each other but inside they are playing a different kind of game. And if that is not enough, they love to a person whom they want to destroy. What kind of a novel is it? you have to read it to find this out. But one thing i can assure you is that you will enjoy reading this novel. This has become one of my favourites.


September 18, 2007

Today I had a long, infact two long discussions with two different mams in my college. Both the mams are quite opposite in nature and so were the discussions. One is maths mam to whom we played the prank of ’rechecking’ today. Actually what happened was that we had a maths test today and not a single boy had attempted anything. All sheets were blank. Kuch aata hi nahi tha humko to attempt kya ramayan-mahabharat kren? Mam was distributing back the answer sheets after the correction (of course there were a few stupid girls who had attempted questions and needed correction but majority was with us). We all boys received blank sheets back with zero marks put on it while some girls were going to mam to increase their marks which they think were not accounted for( a common practice with girls as if with two more marks they will win the world). So inspired from these hard working girls, I wrote a small letter saying that my paper needs rechecking because I have got very less marks. Pasting that slip on paper, someone gave it to mam and she got damn angry. Followed which I had a 20 minutes long intense discussion with mam which in literature world is known as monologue. First time I realized she speaks so fluently. But I think she needs to improve a little on her pronunciation. Rest is fine.
And the other mam, I was talking about having a long discussion with, was Neha S, a friend of mine according to some students. Okay I don’t mind it. She is so damn beautiful and young, with an age of 23 only; why should I mind? Frankly speaking she is the one who is doing proxy for me in English lecture. She is really sweet, not only because she makes for my attendance but also because she encourages students to participate in the class activities and working hard for their English improvement. She has respect for others and for talent. Nice personality residing inside a beautiful appearance. Today we had a long discussion on my hobbies, interests and my choosing career in MBA (she was forcing that I should go for civil services). While people were learning via Distance Learning Programme on LCD Projector about how to write a letter; I had an interesting and fruitful discussion with Neha..i mean Neha mam.