Mint editorial has the following to say in response to induction of Kiran Bedi by BJP in Delhi CM race.

Bedi is being seen as the answer to Arvind Kejriwal. If faces could change governance, then Bedi and Kejriwal would have made all the difference to Delhi.

Delhi is a megalopolis with problems that don’t have easy solutions. Its consumption of water and electricity is way beyond what it produces. Every summer, their shortage creates a crisis-like situation. None of the parties has a clear idea of how to solve this.

An election campaign that is so focused on personalities is unlikely to pay attention to the problems. As in other elections in India, the emphasis is to win first and think later.

Read more at: http://www.livemint.com/Opinion/Lo4XZPg9qejrwpK9jQVrJK/The-battle-of-faces.html

I disagree. If the mere problem of good governance was solving issues 'at hand' then a bureaucracy would have sufficed to run a country. And that was the precise mistake we made in the last two elections by electing a stellar bureaucrat Manmohan Singh to power.

The challenge is to have a leadership which can not only solve concurrent issues but envisage what the nation needs to grow beyond the present and immediately eminent future. A leadership which can not only anticipate but also lead and inspire a nation towards a greater future than what chance affords it. To do this, you need men (and women) of vision, integrity and conscience, running the government.

The precise problem with the UPA government was that it had too few of those people in government (notably Jairam Ramesh, P Chidambaram, Nandan Nilekani) and more so, most of them were sidelined by the demagogues who ran the government amock for personal gains.

What the country needs is a clash of personalities. A nation is made not by what systems it runs or what issues it solves, it is made by people who run it!

And so we need more able gentry and intelligentsia to join politics and let there be a clash of personalities!!

I was at a workshop last week conducted by Prof Ashish Nanda [1] and Prof Biju Varkkey [2] - and it was an enlightening experience. There was one thought which came from them towards the end of the session which has been reverberating in my mind ever since. This was about the future of the workplace.

In response to a question about handling the 'new generation' Prof Nanda mentioned that most of the theories and media talk about the Millennials or Next Generation being different and changing the workplace is bunkum; but what he said next was insightful - the workplace of the future will not be influenced so much by the entry or the new generation but by 3 factors:

• Women in the workforce - for the first time in the history of mankind we are going to have a large number of women who would have spent more then 30 years at Corporate and Academic careers. Many of them have reached or are reaching leadership positions and the workplace is going to be far different with so many women change makers, thought leaders and bosses. 
• The post-retirement workforce - with improved health and increased life expectancy, it is quite unfair for us to retire our senior citizens at an age of 60. In fact, several powerful and influential leaders in business and public life are past their 60s and continue to make an impact on how we live our lives and how we will live them in future. And the way trends are, it is more likely that we will see more and more people working in their prime past their 60s. How do we work with these people and how do they influence the workplace is to be seen.
• Technology - The current workplace is already heavily influenced by technology, but this is possibly just the beginning. Virtual teams, Teleworking, and use of Social media may be rewiring our brains as individuals, but it will rewire our work-life completely in the next two decades. There are new ways of working and new professions, but older professions may change the way they work. The opposing forces of personalization and globalization will give rise to a new set of expectations and mannerisms. Much has been written about this and need not be elaborated. 

This is a very effective mechanism - I am intrigued if this can only be applied to domestic violence - why can't it be applied to international diplomacy to reduce crimes against humanity such as the ghastly events at Peshawar?

As much as one is pained by the events and acts of Taliban, the larger pain is the apathy shown by most of the world's Governments including India. Just a message of condolence, a statement condemning the attack - is that all the governments of the world can do? If killing of innocent people in 9/11 could trigger a response which destroyed the whole Taliban apparatus in Afghanistan, are lives of children in Peshawar not even as valuable to trigger some similar response?

Taking cue from the Bell Bajao - why can't we simply "ask for Milk". So no one is asking the US or Britain or India to send in soldiers and drones, mass bomb Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province to cleanse it (of Taliban and even the locals). In fact, this, can be the worst response to the massacre - fueling further animosity and hatred. But why can't we flood the area with charities - both in terms of money and charitable agencies working towards the upliftment of region?

The Peshawar incident is not the first sign of the deterioration of the region - Malala's case was an early warning. Rather than spend billions in the War Against Terror - if the same money was given to Pakistan for focused, result oriented and result based aid to improve education, health, sanitation in its border areas, this situation could have been avoided. The people of this region - not the godmen, not the already radicalized but those who are ambivalent - need to know that the world cares about them, it wants them also to succeed and get access to prosperity.

This is not a case in isolation for Khyber Pakhtunwa or Afghanistan - it is a case for the Red district in India, Kashmir, Libya, and several parts of Africa. I am borrowing from this Facebook post - "The best revenge would be to kidnap Taliban's children, invest in their future, give them world class education, send them to ivy leagues, enlighten their minds, make them honourable members of the society so one day they can return to their fathers, look them in the eye and say, 'I am ashamed that your cowardly blood is running through my veins'"

Of course the quote above talks in extremes and of course the sense of vendetta (of the children literally abusing their fathers) is not welcome. More so, providing everything from basic education to Ivy league qualifications to a handful of Taliban's children is neither practical nor effective. But what is needed is to spread the net of basic education, sanitation and health to the most remote parts of the world and that is NOT the domain alone of Bill and Melinda Gates or Warren Buffet. They are not the richest and most influential - our governments are!

Can America stop exporting weapons and soldiers and start exporting books and teachers to the troubled parts of the world? That alone can put a halt to the mindless, brutal and anachronic bloodshed we are witnessing and will continue to witness in the world if we don't act.

Someone please ring the bell!!

One of the most popular posts on this blog has been this one, co-authored by me and Shubham while we were still students at NITIE. Even after 10 years, the post has stood the test of time and continues to guide new aspirants to take a right decision choosing between taking up a placement offer vs. going for an MBA.

This post however is dated and also leaves some key questions unanswered. One such question is as to what is the ideal work experience prior to an MBA. One visitor to this blog asked me this question on email and while I was replying to him, I realized that the answer may benefit several others who visit this blog. Hence reproducing a generalized summary of my reply to the reader here.

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If you look at it from perspective of jump in salary that you get before and after an MBA, then, the earlier you do an MBA, the better it is.

For example, if you are a fresher, as an engineer you'll end up with a package of 3-4 Lakhs, while after an MBA may be 6-8 Lakhs. If you have less than 2 years of experience, most companies treat you as good as a fresher, so effectively your work experience is discounted.

 The best bracket to get into an MBA is 2.5 to 3.5 years of experience when your work-ex is considered, so if you were already at a salary of ~5+ lakhs, you are likely to end up at 8-9 Lakhs package post MBA for sure - that's a good jump for spending two years frolicking :-)

After 3-3.5 years of work ex, the returns start diminishing, not because of less value of an MBA, but because your 'pre-MBA' salary after 4+ years of experience itself is high enough and hence investing two years in a job will usually bring your salary to similar level (say close to 9 lakhs) as would it be after investing the same number of years in an MBA. Most companies find it difficult to offer different packages to people who have 3.5+ years of pre-MBA work experience compared to their peers who may have 2.5-3.5 years. So if you look at a period of immediately after the MBA course, you are actually at the same level or may be even worse off, instead of if you would have continued in a job.
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However, the above is not the complete story because most people forget to look at the long term impact of an MBA on your future. If you do an MBA instead of continuing in a job, then your immediate salary level after an MBA matches that of your peers who have continued in the job. However, the kind of profile you get after an MBA for the same salary is quite different than what your peers are doing.

This difference in profile starts making a difference in your future prospects when you cross 6-8 years of work experience bracket in your career - with MBA vs without MBA. This is the point when you start getting close to middle management positions where (a) an MBA is a important criteria in many companies to get promoted beyond this level (b) your ability to perform at middle management levels is far better if you have an MBA - this obviously gets reflected later in your career path when you are about 10-15 years of experience bracket.

 In summary, if you do your MBA post 4 years of pre-MBA work ex, even though the immediate results are not so promising, it definitely puts you on a higher pedestal than those who don't have an MBA and is hence still better for the long term career prospects.
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There is another important criterion though to decide on when you should do an MBA - this is your ability to succeed in competitive exams to qualify for the best of MBA schools in the country and abroad. Remember that your ability and propensity to be able to study hard, and keep your mind fit enough to score higher is the highest when you are graduating. From that perspective, it is best to actually try to get into an MBA immediately after your engineering because you can possibly have a shot at the best B-schools in the country.

As you get more grooved into a work environment in office, not only does the spare time available to you reduce, your ability to remain focused on studies and your ability to attempt for "scoring" becomes less prominent. Over a period of time your work responsibilities will also increase leaving you with less and less time after office hours. Another reason is also that the kind of thinking that makes you a great office performer may not always be the same kind of thinking that helps you score better in competitive exams - this is ironical and sad, but true.

Hence, I believe the best thing to do is to prepare for an MBA all the while, while you are in the college, while you are in the first year of your job, then next year and then year after next - until you get an MBA offer, which you think, you will not be able to improve next year.

If you have both offers at hand, whether to go for an MBA or take up a job is a key decision for your future and one may only speculate but never be sure of what path one ought to take. My advice here would be doing an MBA is always the better option than otherwise, unless there are financial constraints to do so. The moment may come right after college, after one year of experience (even though this would mean you loose on one year's of hard work in office as it will get virtually washed off post MBA), or after two or after 3 or 4 years. If you want to do an MBA - work experience should not be a hurdle.
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Now consider if you have a bond with the (pre-MBA) employer to compensate them if you quit before 1 or 2 years. Here, let's assume that there is a Bond of  5 Lakhs and the job on the offer pays you 4 Lakhs per annum. Given than your first year's package pays for almost everything of your Bond except 1 Lakhs, I will suggest you take up the job.

My logic is that when you finally face a recruiter after an MBA, you always lose some marks for sitting idle for an year even though you had an offer in hand. The world is competitive and sitting idle only preparing for MBA competitive exams is no more considered a worthwhile thing, especially when everyone else gets into an MBA while they also were working at a day job.

Also, there is a risk that if you let this offer go and do not qualify for an MBA in the first year, you'll either have to sit idle for two years (which is a very bad thing to see on your CV) or take up a lesser paying job after having been sitting idle for an year and yet prepare for an MBA in the second year. Given the risks - I will instead go for a job.

Also recognize the fact that often when they interview you for entry to an MBA, one advantage people with work ex have is that most questions are likely to be focused on your work and not on what you studied in the final year of your engineering. It is usually easier to answer questions about your job because you are doing it yourself, than answer technical questions about papers you studied in final year.
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Having said all the above, an important disclaimer that I got into my MBA immediately after my Engineering and then got into KPMG which has been my first and last employer till date since the past 10 years - you can read more about this here. So most of my advice above is based on vicarious observation of experiences of my friends who came from different backgrounds in the MBA program at NITIE and then went into various career options in the industry.

Let me underscore that this is only one part of the Sports administration changes, there will be much more to be done. For example, one needs to still work out how to scout sporting and coaching talent, how to nurture and train them to international standards, how to manage the logistics of their health and medicine, how to create a talent pull market in India etc etc. Some of these problems are being solved by the recent bout of "leagues" in India - we have seem IPL model of Cricket being followed by Badminton, Kabaddi and now Football. And as I wrote in my previous post, this is an area which SAI itself needs to focus on - becoming a 'marketing agency' for Sports in India.

And hence, at least outsourcing Sporting facilities management will free up SAI's bandwidth from a major chore and more importantly ensure that capital invested in the last century on build up of these facilities through the Nehruvian socialist model is not completely wasted and we don't have to create facilties from ground up and start from scratch as Jiji sir says.

Concluded.

Flickr image by sayan51

I was listening to my grandma and my uncle talk about the nonsense they show on TV nowadays, about how Children in TV are shown to be arrogant or uttering things which do not suit their age, and then the topic turned to how there is too much 'freedom' given to today's youth, the fact that they are not bound by cultural ethos is making them directionless achievers; and as the discussion got accented, there was a hint that the world needs a dictatorial order - how youth need to be disciplined and made to act within the 'bounds' of our culture, how this will result in a more fruitful generation.

This, I am sure, is a common debate in many households in India and even elsewhere; the conclusion of course is very typical of the rightist philosophy bordering on, though not absolutely, vigilante approach.

I agree and disagree. Yes, freedom is a double edged sword, but absolute freedom does not have an alternative irrespective of its blemishes. In fact the word 'absolute freedom' is a misnomer, if its not absolute, it's not freedom! But why is freedom important? Is it just because it feels good to be free? Is it just because some of today's influential societies and their laws make it a 'fundamental right'?

I believe the answer is more fundamental than that (pun intended!). What determines whether a thought, an idea or a philosophy is right or wrong - time; only the test time can tell if an idea is right or wrong. An idea - Iridium - the global satellite phone network - hailed to be a stupendous success at the time of its launch, was a magnificent failure. So was the Segway, the human transporter. Moving away from science - the Socialist model of Communism hailed as a breakthrough for welfare of mankind at the time of its inception turned out to be a fallacy years later when it failed to deliver.

So, if time can only tell what works and what will not, the only way for mankind to progress is to allow as many possibilities in every walk of life to be seeded today, so that the best out of these become trees for mankind to grow. Most of them will fail, but some will succeed - and freedom is the most important element for these 'will be successful in future' ideas to sprout today. Cliched, but true, that freedom allows us to experiment and hence is the most 'fundamental' precondition for innovation to prosper and flourish.

And so, even if you hate what youngsters or outcasts today are doing - you should still not put any barriers on them - you never know where the next innovation might sprout out of. You may feel that polygamy and promiscuity is wrong or the gay movement is against the 'laws of nature' - but how do we know - the future of mankind may be saved by the promiscuous and gays. You may feel that children glued to mobile screens will hinder their physical development, but for all you know, the future may need a faster brain than body. You may feel that the gentleman wasting his time playing Candy Crush is going down the drain - but could the future of mankind lie is our abilities to play games better?

I know a lot of the above sounds absurd - so did the idea of democracy or Computers sound when it was seeded - The whole knowledge economy and computing revolution which has transformed our lives was born as a fringe movement of the outcast Hippy culture of the 70s. And while one may argue that it wasn't the drug smoking hippies who invented the personal computer, one cannot miss the fact that one of the leading icons of computing - Steve Jobs - was a hippie in his sophomore years. The freedom which allowed him to become a hippie also allowed him to experiment and create the personal computer - and you cannot classify freedom; it is the same freedom which results into both.

The point being made is simple - we need to allow these multiplicities of life exist; co-exist and intermingle to give a chance to mankind to survive. Freedom is the bedrock of such co-existence and intermingling; and hence it is the most important 'Fundamental Right'!
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Continued from here

The root cause with several nations such as Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan or even Pakistan, is that they are still kingdoms, and have not transformed themselves into modern democratic nations. There remains no way to govern them apart from a totalitarian and dictatorial government. [The fact that Pakistan is a kingdom, not a nation unequivocally explains why Pakistan’s history has been marred with coups and why the nation goes into tizzies of instability every time a ‘democratic’ government rules it.]

The problem with kingdoms is that kingdoms cannot be multipolar, they exist because there is supremacy of one and only one force at any time - as Jean Bodin's concept of absolute sovereign commands. If that force is not a monarch or military dictator, there ensues a war between various factions to become that 'one force' which would govern the kingdom.

One of the reasons why Pakistan has seen so many bloody coups is that it was not gifted with the vision of ‘secular’ multiculturalism which is the only way for a diverse society to function without conflict. The two nation theory is not incorrect just because it talks of existence of two nations based on religion; it is more incorrect because it limits itself to just ‘two nations’. The Pathans, Punjabis, Sindhis, Pukhtuns, and now even the Muhajirs are each a ‘sub-nation’ in themselves, but left alone they will keep fighting among themselves for the want of a territory.

Similarly, the Shias and Sunni's of Iran-Iraq-Syria are two sub-nations each within the same geographical boundaries of these nations; so are the Arabs and Jews in Israel-Palestine. Unlike the Christian unity which bonds the whole of West, East has several such 'pseudo-nations' each juxtaposed over complex geographical boundaries. Each one of these 'nations' (mistakenly) seeks a territory for themselves just like Jinnah and his followers sought a Pakistan for the 'Muslim nation' within India.

However, even they are unaware that a territory is not what they seek - they seek an identity - they seek a system which recognizes that they while being a part of a larger Pakistan or Israel, are still a unique civil society in themselves with their own unique cultural and historical heritage. This story is not entirely unique to Pakistan or Israel - it holds true for many other multicultural nations where different communities are in a perpetual struggle for identities. It applies to Iraq's Shia and Sunni majority-minority combine and to Israel-Palestine's Jew-Arab populace, it applies to Lebanon which is "a mosaic of closely interrelated cultures" [reference], it even applies to North and South Korea!

This may seem like a simplification, but it should not deter us from trying out the Indian model as a solution to end the strife which has been depriving mankind of galloping ahead at a rapid pace towards being a happy race. The governance systems can differ but replicating the principles of multiculturalism and secularism; using the governance quirks of federalism and shared identity can help the multicultural East to replicate the prosperity of the West.

The Indian constitution is a living experiment, and a successful one at that, as to how a federal system of governance can be used to create such a multicultural and secular system which empowers every faction and every community while not resting power into any one of them at the same time.

Concluded.

This post is a part of the series Problems of Middle East and the Indian model as a solution

Continued from here 
The consolidation the territorial boundaries was only half the job done – what was in the hands of the provisional government in 1947-49 was just a kingdom and not a Nation. The forging of a nation from this kingdom required visionary wisdom and unflinching determination to principle of ‘multi-cultural’ nationalism.

Operationally, the issue of sub-nationalities was resolved by instituting a pseudo-federal governance system. ‘Pseudo’ because unlike an ideal federal system, the ‘union’ or whole was not made up of the smaller ‘states’.

Upholding the original territories (some of them governed by Royalties) and ‘combining’ them to form the nation would have been disastrous.

It would have meant allowing each state to have its own territorial borders, and a deluge of pacts and negotiations to freeze them – which would have broken down time and again, sinking the region into perpetual strife.

Instead, the first step was, to consolidate all military power with the Union and entrusting it with protection of the borders with neighbouring countries. In effect this meant that the sub-nationalities that composed India had to give up their ‘sovereignty’ in favour of a ‘shared sovereignty’ of the Union.

Notably, ‘shared sovereignty’ would be an oxymoron as per Jean Bodin, yet was the only way to maintain (minority) rights for each sub-nationality, while continuing to forge a single nation out of them.

The next step was designing a constitution that would allow peoples to maintain their communities and yet not create a ‘divide’ between them. One of the systemic features introduced by the constitution was the clerical task of dividing responsibilities between the ‘State governments’ and the ‘Union government’.

This mundane looking step was a leap towards providing ‘cultural’ security to different sections and subsections while keeping the territorial tendencies of the communities at bay. So while a state could decide what language students would learn within their boundaries - they could not decide ‘what’ those boundaries would be.

The division of responsibilities was done very astutely leaving all functions of a ‘Civil Society’ to local governments and awarding all territorial responsibilities not only for the national borders but even state borders to the Union as a whole.

Foreign Relations and Military Development thus automatically became a Union subject ruling out possibility any foreign intervention in deciding intra-union territorial disputes.

Another major quirk of the Indian system was that the Union government was elected directly by the people and thus was in not affected by the ‘loyalties’ or allegiances of the ‘state governments’ towards it.
This averted all possibilities of allowing a ‘state’ to rebel against the Union because even the people of the state had voted to bring about the government against whom the rebellion would be directed. Article 360 which empowers the Union Government to dismiss a State Government is the explicit manifestation of these principles.

While this all might seem too obvious, it was not so and a living example of the failure to invent and implement such careful systemic balances, is the neighbouring country of Pakistan.

Given that Pakistan was created on the basis of the two-nation theory, there was no way any other cultural subsections could be accepted in the Pakistani polity. Since Pakistan was now ‘one’ nation – how could it have many others within itself? The nonchalant acceptance of the two-nation theory resulted in Pakistan continuing to remain a kingdom which could never forge into becoming a nation.

Coming back to the Indian constitution – it delivered satisfactory results for the people. People were now guaranteed a peaceful existence wherein they could practice their own culture and customs – while not harming the others’.

The Federal system has today matured with the intermingling of the peoples – so that now you have Tamilians of Delhi, Marathis of MP, Saurashtrians of Karnataka and Marwadis of Bengal, Punjabis of Assam - all practicing their customs irrespective of their locations - but voting for state governments in their respective states and for the Union government as a whole.

What this effectively means is that the sub-nationalities that the different ‘states’ originally represented, have now been deconstructed and converted into cultural communities, which not only can coexist in the same space, also intermingle and create new sub-cultures .
They are fast approaching a stage where they will no more need territorial boundaries for their fortification; as a result every state is fast becoming a microcosm of the Union itself and India is fast becoming a nation of many minorities and a single majority – a majority of multiculturalists.

The nature of the Union too has been transformed. Coalition politics has brought upon the regional political parties getting a stake in the Union ministries. It is notable here that a similar arrangement - where ministers are apportioned in accord with party strengths in the assembly rather than the ‘winner-take-all’ approach - has been formally adopted in Northern Ireland as a part of the Good Friday accord with the Irish republic.

This is one scenario where the Indian constitution did not invent a systemic change but did provide a strong base for its voluntary evolution.

[There have been however, lapses in proper implementation of the constitution at some places which have led to many problems like the resurgence of casteist and communal mafia, remnants of territorial struggles. But these must be seen strictly as failures in implementation than design of the system.]

During the Raj, the British did make some efforts to unify the whole mass in some ways (like establishing railway and postal systems), primarily to suit their commercial needs, but the basic fabric remained as divided till 1947 as it was in 1857.

In words of Lord Curzon, the Viceroy of India under the British Raj,”The political system of India is neither feudalism nor federation. It is embodied in no constitution and bears no resemblance to a league.” In fact, before leaving, the British gashed a new divide within the subcontinent - the ‘two nation theory’.

If the partition was an injury, several more potential wounds lay ahead of independent India in 1947. With the region left in a fragmented mess of erstwhile royalties, ethnic territories and tribal ghettos - India was far from being a Nation State.

The biggest problem that confronted the makers and visionaries of the new India was - How to create a system that would satisfy aspirations of each individual in this diverse universe of identities and heritage? How to unify the many minorities without breaking the country into small parts?

The answer lay in deconstructing Bodinean sovereignty and creation of a unique Union of many minorities and no majority.

Many allege that the Indian constitution is a copy of the British and American systems; if at all there is truth in the allegation, it’s the most intelligent and well customised copy ever made.

While the vision and goals eschewed by the Indian constitution are remarkably similar if not exactly the same to those of the western world but never had any of the Western Democracies, to face such a complex concoction of communities as in India.

The amount of diversity that the makers of the European Union find difficult to handle even today was faced by the makers of the Indian Union 50 years ago.
The promise of the Indian constitution lay in its two aspects – respect for diversity and vision of integrity. The leaders of the provisional government of 1947 realized that India would go back to being a land of small territories warring amongst each other if the two nation theory was allowed to fork into a multi-nation theory.

After all India of 1947 ideally did have multiple nations in it. The mild sympathy that separatist organizations like the LTTE get from few supporters by appealing for Tamil Sub nationalism, or political parties like Shiv Sena get for Marathi Sub Nationalism are evidences that sub-national sentiments could have ran much higher in 1947, had they not been controlled.

It was the vision and mettle of leaders like Vallabh Bhai Patel that averted the break-up of the subcontinent further into splinters of micro-nationalities.

Here’s what Wikipedia says on India’s Political Integration:

“The Instruments of Accession were limited, transferring control of only three matters to India, and would by themselves have produced a rather loose federation, with significant differences in administration and governance across the various states. Full political integration, in contrast, would require a process whereby the political actors in the various states were "persuaded to shift their loyalties, expectations, and political activities towards a new center," namely, the Republic of India.
“This was not an easy task. Whilst some princely states such as Mysore had legislative systems of governance that were based on a broad franchise and not significantly different from those of British India, in others, political decision-making took place in small, limited aristocratic circles and governance was, as a result, at best paternalistic and at worst the result of courtly intrigue.
“Having secured the accession of the princely states, the Government of India between 1948 and 1950 turned to the task of welding the states and the former British provinces into one polity under a single republican constitution.
“Older historians such as Lumby, take the view that the princely states could not have survived as independent entities after the transfer of power, and that their demise was inevitable. They therefore view successful integration of all princely states into India was a triumph for the Government of India and Lord Mountbatten, and as a tribute to the sagacity of the majority of princes, who jointly achieved in a few months what the Empire had attempted, unsuccessfully, to do for over a century - unite all of India under one rule”

Continued

This post is a part of the series Problems of Middle East and the Indian model as a solution