As we approach 2014, the din of election rhetoric grows louder - the media and general public discourse alike get influenced by what the politicians put forward and portray. In such an atmosphere, while it is imperative that the real issues should boil to the surface, to the contrary, personality clashes and rhetorical debates will take center stage. One such debate being pushed to forth by the BJP is the comparison's between their PM candidate Narendra Modi and Congress (not yet announced) probable candidate Rahul Gandhi. There are those who accept this contest as one of personalities, and even try to justify the ideological bankruptcy of Rahul Gandhi as his style of leadership ; however most commentators concede [ 1 , 2 , 3 ] that Modi triumphs Gandhi in most sphere's of personality comparisons. Gandhi on his part has tried hard to break the jinx on him; he tried to instill internal democracy within the party, spoke several times against the party's decisions suppor

Some rights reserved by Lord of the Wings With rapid growth, urbanization, rising incomes coupled with rising immigration, the one service which is going to face the most stress is the Indian Railways. As more people move away from their villages and towns to cities, often miles away - they will use the railways to meet family often. As their incomes rise, their visits - both back home to family and leisure related - will rise. Already IRCTC.co.in which is the internet ticketing platform for the Indian railways faces ire  and ridicule from users. Soon such ire may get directed to the railway service itself. This calls for multiple actions on part of the government (which owns and operates the service right now); for example: As I have argued in past, in addition to the current network, India needs a parallel high speed railroad network connecting major hubs and based on completely new technology. This will help take the load off the current network from long dista

Increasingly we see more arrogance than humility - whether its the traffic queue or the mall or in a workplace. Many people today thrive on being arrogant (often termed as 'dynamic and demanding' in the workplace). And the emergence of Narendra Modi is also a part of the same culture we are promoting. While from the same political party - the biggest chasm that separates Atalji from Modi was his humility. And Sachin, the maestro belonged to Atalji's category. His strength and wisdom, apart from his cricket genius is in his humility. Many of last decades' titans - from ICICI's Kamath to Infosys's Murthy are known for their humility as much as they are for their business acumen. It is, hence, worth pondering if - as a nation, as colleages, as companies, as a society, and mostly as individuals - we want to promote arrogance as a way of working or as a bevahiour which is encouraged.

Image from Facebook - credit unknown A couple of days back while having a lunch conversation with colleagues, I declared that Whatsapp may not survive primarily because there is no stickiness in the product. In case of social networks like Facebook, even if a new platform with some differentiating features comes up, your relationships are very difficult to migrate to another platform. Hence, users will not switch from one social network to another unless there is a generational shift in the features between the old and new one (ex. migration from Orkut to Facebook in India), because of the effort needed to migrate all relationships to the new network again. In fact, this is one of the reasons Google plus is finding it so difficult to grab users from Facebook even though critics claim that Google Plus has a better conceptualized social networking features.  However, P2P messaging apps like Whatsapp, Line or Viber - lack any such stickiness because the relationships reside in yo

New Yahoo Logo || Source: Razilabs Yahoo! has been a struggling tech giant for almost a decade now - especially since the rise of Google and later Facebook. Yahoo! which was the original haven for geeks and the Social Network cum a goto destination for everything else online in the 2000s has had to hire Google's ex-executive Marissa Mayer as its CEO to stay afloat. Recently, Yahoo revamped the UI for its (still) most relevant service Yahoo Mail along with a populist looking gift of 1 TB storage. Mayer was probably borrowing a page from her ex-employers' book by offering a bonanza storage along with some other features copied from its service GMail. As Times of India puts it: Yahoo's free email service is becoming a bit more like Google's Gmail as part of its second makeover in less than a year. The similarities to Gmail probably aren't coincidental. Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer helped design some of Gmail's features while she was a top executive at Google

I was watching the movie Terminator Salvation on HBO today, when I realized that the movie's plot has so many parallels in today's context. The movie's plot revolves around (apart from John Connor), a cyborg Marcus Wright, who himself believes that he is human. He is sent by SkyNet (the evil brain of machines) to pull John Connor (the protagonist and purported savior of human race) into a trap. However, in the movie's climax, Marcus even after realizing his true identity of being a machine, sides with the humans assisting Connor in saving hostages in SkyNet's custody and also finally helping Connor destroy SkyNet. The plot of course, written to please the masses, takes an optimistic's view of which squad Marcus sides with upon being made aware of his identity as a machine. The plot assumes that Marcus sides, not with his identity but his beliefs - his belief in shared human values, in the "goodness" of human race and "evil" in machines

Image   by  Sean MacEntee I received the below spam mail in my inbox yesterday - mostly something which I would delete / (mark as) spam without opening; but by chance I opened this mail. And was I surprised! No, its not a legitimate mail - its spam, but it has been very carefully crafted suiting the present day context. And the logic presented is uncontestable: From: opt@mail.iks.ru Sent: 01 September 2013 20:55 Subject: More to Come? Do you want to become rich due to armed conflicts? It`s the very time to do it. As soon as the military attack Syria, oil prices will rise as well as MONARCHY RESOURCES (M O_N K) share price! Go make profits on Sep 2, grab M O_N K shares!!! Of course I am not interested in MONARCHY RESOURCES (heck! I don't even know what it is) - but no one can argue the logic that any more warmongering by US (or its protege NATO) will only end up increasing the cost of oil and drive up the prices of everything. In fact, if one argues that had the US not

This post is based on content from guest author Aisha Singh  - many thanks Aisha! When you think about a successful online business, names like Amazon, eBay or Flipkart come to mind. While these companies have mushroomed from garage ventures into colossal corporations, there are also millions today who are making a living out of online properties which are capable of more or less running themselves - think of blogs, classified websites, tech help forums, and even YouTube channels. Case in point - Amit Agarwal , who after working with brands like Merrill Lynch quit his job to become India’s first professional blogger. Running an online businesses is not only exciting but also many a times allows the owner more time to engage in leisurely activities rather than being stuck in a corporate job all day long. Creating a successful online business is of course no easy feat and you will have to work very hard in the first few months/years in order to reap the rewards later on. Wit

I visited Ladakh close to two years ago with my parents; since we went there close to beginning of winters, we had to keep our trip short and that left us with less time to acclimatize ourselves to the weather. Out of the 4 days we planned to spend, my parents felt a little sick on the second day and could not join us for the sightseeing. On that day, we had planned to visit places around Leh which included the visiting the Thiksey Gompa (Monastery). I liked the place so much that I wanted my parents to visit the place - so on the next day, after we finished our day long itinerary, I insisted we take a shot at visiting Thiksey again. As luck would have it, we reached the monastery just when it started getting dark (after which usually the doors are closed to visitors), but chanced to get entry into the main gate. However, to my disappointment, the doors of the main temple were closed by the time we climbed up. We were about to turn back when my brother spotted a young lama, in h

My life has been running at express speeds for more than the past 6 months and I mean it quite literally. It started in December when my cousin got married in Nagpur, a day after my third wedding anniversary (which we celebrated with the whole of my paternal extended family on the eve of my cousin's wedding). We returned from the wedding and within days proceeded to Pune for the Baby Shower, which was immediately followed by Divya moving over to Indore for the next few months. I went to escort her to Indore, and directly flew to Kolkata to a close friend's wedding. Since then, my schedule has been pre-decided for every weekend - a compulsory travel to Indore every fortnight, and spending many (or rather most) in between weekends in Pune with my parents (except the few when they came over or I had too much office work piled up to manage a Pune trip). So much so that, this Friday, when I told the maid to come on a Saturday, she gave me the look for the boss who asks you to w

I live in Mumbai and while it has become routine for people to sing praises of the city, idolize the 'struggles' they face here, there are   some people , who see the naked thruth through the Stockholm Syndromed reactions of ' Mumbaikars ', and talk sense! Today I plan to add my take to this line of thought. I live in Powai, specifically in the Hiranandani locality of Powai - probably one of the most urbane spaces developed in Mumbai - paved streets, proper footpaths, angled / curved turns etc. Traffic flow has been planned to be regulated well; even then every morning between 8:15am and 8:30am, there is a cacophony of cars honking their way on the road beside my apartment. The reason is that there's a school in the alley behind my house and since it starts at 8:30am, cars of parents who have come to drop their wards occupy one lane of slow moving traffic. I am sure there are several commuters who pass this point every day at this hour and get stuck in this

Even though it might have become quite a personal statement in the West, religious conversion is still a topic of taboo in India - considered sensitive both by the communal and secular forces, given the treatment quite akin to that given to the subject of sex. Indeed, where religion itself is a political weapon used by both the right and the middle (thankfully, the left in India is intellectually inclined and hence does not debate religion), religious conversion is a topic more vitriolic than religion itself. But when we do observe the pattern of religious conversion, we will realize that barring some celebrities, people (even celebrities) do not change religion for matters of "faith in a given (form of) god(s) or traditions/ beliefs of a given religion", but more for the social treatment meted out to and by the followers of the religion to fellow believers. Whether it was Babasaheb Ambedkar embracing Buddhism after being ostracized for being a "low-caste" Hi

Continued from here: Viraam: विराम (Arthvyavastha - Part IV ). "Guruji!", Saakshaat called out to Kalpakji, his teacher (Guru) as they walked towards the Banyan tree in front of the Panchayat Bhavan, "You remember there used to be days when you would announce a test only to make us study the whole night, and then announce a cancellation the next day when everyone came ready for it?" Kalpakji smiled, he knew what Saakshaat was hinting at. "Yes, I do. But remember when the same exam was announced two weeks later, you all were better prepared for it! Do you agree Aanglesh?", Kalpakji had deliberately asked Aanglesh, noticing that he had been quiet all along after the meeting. "Yes Guruji, but you know - one thing that always made me study harder for every exam?" Kalpakji could not guess where this was going, he looked questioningly towards Saakshaat, but he too was clueless. Aanglesh replied on his own - "the fact that I knew I will be jud

Continued from here  (Vinimay: Arthvyavastha - Part III) When Saakshaat informed Aanglesh that his father Seth Pramanikji would also accompany Pramukhji, colour drained from Aanglesh's face. Aanglesh told Saakshaat that his father was a staunch disciple of Pramukhji and was as much in doubt of the tamrapatrak schemes as Pramukhji himself. This was a jolt to Saaskshaat, he had never expected that Pramanikji, a trader himself and whose son was the first and the largest beneficiary of the tamrapatrak vyvastha would be against the novel concept. He had expected Pramanikji's presence to bolster their position, but now on the contrary he felt even more vulnerable. Saakshaat and Aanglesh had spent the whole night preparing for meeting Pramukhji and Pramanikji. They talked to Anugam about any positives of tamrapatraks which he could identify to impress the village elders with. Anugam mentioned that the tamrapatrak scheme had benefited the society in two major ways - first that b

I met a young group of student entrepreneurs today who came to me for some basic advice on how they can start up a new online video portal. Their idea was to open a niche video portal and cultivate a community around it - in the process helping content owners / producers with the technology and sharing revenue with them. The idea wasn't unique but one of the co-founders had a good insider connect within the artist community which he hoped to use in content aggregation and building audience. They had identified a team of programmers in Hyderabad who would be able to do all the "coding" for their video portal, and they would do the groundwork. My immediate advice to them was - don't create a website ! Counterintuitive as it may sound, the time for starting websites and portals from ground up is long over. The time now is to start 'services' and not 'websites'. The web has come a full circle, from the days it was a haunt of Geeks, to today when eve

Arbit Choudhury For the uninitiated, Arbit Choudhury is a web-comic run by 4 friends (including me) focusing on Management jargon related humour and features 'Arpit Choudhury' - a B-school student in India who is famous for his wisecracks among his friends. We release regular comics - you can subscribe to them on Facebook , Twitter or email . Way back in 2004 when we started Arbit , we had initially chosen a different name for it - it was part parody of a then famous Management Guru, part a play on words (something which Arbit is famous for!).  We for some reason did not like the name and asked our friends to suggest other names - of the several names which were proposed, "Arbit" was one. While I and Shubham were convinced of the name 'Arbit', Hemant wasn't quite so. So we ended up going back to our friends, conducted a poll on the NITIE LAN, and "Arbit" won! But it was not until recently that the spiritual relevance of this name we g

About 8 years ago, I blogged about how our generation has disappointed the science fiction writers by not making much progress in the area of Space Travel - something considered achievable by them by the 21st century. Space however is an area where we may not have matched fictional expectations in any form. We have an international space station in place but that I believe is a far cry from a space city and the days of Star Trek do not seem close enough. Time has come, when we will redeem our honour soon.  Space hasn't progressed much in the past few decades because it has remained, until now, a high expense, high government (funded and) controlled industry; much like Telecom sector in India until 2000s and Banking until 90s. Also, entry barriers in terms of cost and regulation made experimentation difficult, which in turn made risk taking difficult. Less risk taking meant less chance of disproportionate reward, lesser private sector involvement resulting ultimately into les

Image Credits by Flickr user  urbaneapts I recently went to the showroom of ' Sleek ' - a modular kitchen furnishing company. I and my wife were discussing the various options for fitments to be bought when we came to the point of discussing the Chimney. Both me and my wife were sold out on buying a Chimney, but the salesperson asked us if we were non-vegetarian and whether our apartment had a window in front of the stove - the answer to the former being no and the latter being yes. To my surprise, the salesperson suggested we do not buy the Chimney because we will have little use for it. The salesperson knew she was reducing the ticket size of her sale by almost 10% and this was not a discount to make the sale, the discount was to come after this. The experience reminded me of how we work in consulting - there are times when we tell our clients that they are not ready for a particular initiative or a new software implementation, even though these initiatives would fetch

Image Credits: Flickr user vernieman An eminent programmer was referring to one of the most typical challenge the Media today faces - how to find out the most influential people on Social Media? Who is more influential on twitter - Barkha Dutt or Amitabh Bacchan? Who is more influential on Instagram, on Facebook? Is the number of followers the only metric which matters? What about the quality of content? What about the quality of followers / fans? How do we measure this "quality"? And if we can measure these individual factors - what is the algorithm to combine these to create a common metric, the rating which will be used to rank people based on their influentialness on social networks. Some startups have attempted to solve this puzzle - just like this eminent programmer is also trying. Klout and some similar services look like they have cracked the nut, but Klout gives a pretty high level percentage score - so its quite possible that two people have exactly the same

Photo Credits: Flickr user Lord Jim Humans are cognitive beings, we instinctively get attracted to actions which involve thinking, perception and interaction with others. And the  crucial difference between human cognition and that of other species is the ability to participate with others in collaborative activities with shared goals [Michael Tomasello, Malinda Carpenter, Josep Call, Tanya Behne, and Henrike Moll (2005),  Understanding and sharing intentions: The origins of cultural cognition ]. Hence, as I argued in the first part of this post  - given a chance, any human will prefer talking and interacting with others, even if it means talking or texting on the phone while driving! Making laws declaring mobile phone usage illegal is probably the easiest but the most difficult to implement solution to this problem. The solution lies in using technology to circumvent the problem. Humans today do not engage in several non-productive tasks such as those involving physical labou