Nice one

Found this article on the web. Brilliant article. Worth a read.

The Jet saga....

Lay Off: (Sec 2(kkk) Industrial Disputes Act 1947) "lay-off" (with its grammatical variations and cognate expressions) means the failure, refusal or inability of an employer on account of shortage of coal, power or raw materials or the accumulation of stocks or the break-down of machinery or natural calamity or for any other connected reason to give employment to a workman whose name is borne on the muster-rolls of his industrial establishment and who has not been retrenched

Retrench: (Sec 2(oo) Industrial Disputes Act 1947) "retrenchment" means the termination by the employer of the service of a workman for any reason whatsoever, otherwise than as a punishment inflicted by way of disciplinary action, but does not include - (a) voluntary retirement of the workman; or

(b) retirement of the workman on reaching the age of superannuating if the contract of employment between the employer and the workman concerned contains a stipulation in that behalf; or

(bb) termination of the service of the workman as a result of the non-removal of the contract of employment between the employer and the workman concerned on its expiry or of such contract being terminated under a stipulation in that behalf contained therein; or

(c) termination of the service of a workman on the ground of continued ill-health;

Today the airlines industry are unable to give employment to the workmen due to shortage of passengers, who are the one of the raw materials for the aviation/services industry. But they have not laid off their workers. They have retrenched them.

Till a few months back, employees never had it so good. They could jump ship at the slightest provocation, sometimes for as much as a INR 2000/- ($41) increase in salary. HR managers at high attrition companies worried their hair out, about whether they critical resource walking out of the door every evening would be back the next day. The Gen-X did not know what it was to be without a job.

The bad news is out. Jet laid off close to 850 people and are planning to lay-off more. AI has announced that 1500 people will be asked to go on leave without pay for 3-5 years. While laying off people is not illegal, nor is it a subject matter of political debate, there are ways of doing this without unnecessary heart ache. Nor is it true, that the PYT who just jumped abroad from Kingfisher without waiting to complete her due notice period just because the going was good, has got what she deserved. Here we are talking about lives. Young lives who for better or worse have no other training. They followed their dreams and their dreams led them to this.

Very soon we might see the same thing repeated across IT/ITES sector, given the fact that Obama is leading in the popularity poll. The BPO worker is specially vulnerable. They hardly have any other training or experience to do any other work. At that juncture is it proper to ask the Government to bail out the sick companies? Even if the Govt. pumps in cash into the ailing companies, how long will the company survive on crutches? But then, we are used to giving crutches to all and sundry instead of trying to involve them in the mainstream. Now the question is how do we cope in these times? Increase spending? Increase the Gross National Debt? That is just pushing today's problem to tomorrow. Anyway here I am dergressing from the topic.

CITU and MNS are waiting in the wing to jump into the fray to be seen as the saviour of the poor. They are asking for a bail out of the aviation industry. If the government bails out the aviation industry today, is it prepared to bail out the IT/ITES industry tomorrow? There are dharnas and morchas asking Jet to take back the employees. Is it fair to ask the industry to keep excess workers on roll while they are bleeding? Have we forgotten the Bombay Mills so soon? Aren't we ever going to learn from history? I don't have the answer. I don't know who has the answer. But I have a question for Mr. Naresh Goyal.

Mr. Goyal, you knew your company was bleeding. You knew that you might go in for a code sharing agreement with Kingfisher. You knew that when the going got tough, you would have to let go a significant number of your people. You are a businessman and not a social activist. I respect all that. But Sir, would you please stand up, look at those young faces you axed, look them in the eye and tell them that you did this to save the company? Could you cross your heart and do that? I have only one problem with this retrenchment. Why have you done this in such a shady manner? You could have gone ahead and fired everyone, no one would have said a thing. It is your company after all. But why in a way that makes it appear so shady, so cheap? And when you did this where was your HR manager Mr. Goyal?

To the HR manager of Jet Airways, You are a scum and people like you bring the entire profession of HR into disrepute. You know your numbers. You know which way the wind is blowing. You know who you need to retain and who to let go. And you know the law. More importantly you know your employees. You have been trained in soft skills. If you don't you don't deserve to call yourself a HR manager. You deserve to bloody shoot yourself. Where was your training when you needed it? If you had to go ahead and nuke people, you din't need your degree in HR. Do you Mr. HR Manager of Jet Airways, suppose that though this retrenchment is legally justified, it is morally justified? What were you thinking when you pulled off the cowardly act and sent retrenchment letters to the employees by courier? Remember Mr. HR Manager of Jet Airways, you wouldn't have lost a fortune if you had spent some more time on framing your plan of action before shooting off those letters.

To all industry leaders and head honchos out there. You might have to lay off people, you might have to retrench them; I don't say Don't do it, rather I say, GO Ahead!! Do It now. But do it in a humane way.

This is my request to all you HR managers and CEOs out there, when you retrench or lay people off do it, but follow these guidelines:

1) Retrenchment as a last resort: Sometimes, it is a better solution to propose a across the board pay cut to save jobs than to retrench multitudes. First cut off the fancy office, give up the company car, stop those small expenses everyday. Send a message to the workers that you are serious about cost cutting

2) Lead from the front: Not in the Shady way that Jet has done it. Look at the employees in the face. Tell them that we are facing a problem. We need to let people go. And tell them they will be welcome back when things improve. Then lay-off, retrench people fast. Within a few hours of making your announcement. Don't let people find out when they are ready to go to work and the cab doesn't turn up

3) Provide support: What prevents you from providing support to the retreched employees to obtain another employment? They deserve it from you

4) Don't hide behind closed doors: Walk around. Be available to the employees. They have doubts. They have questions. They are shocked. Now is not the time to retire to your castle. Be with them

5) Once and for all: Don't retrench 50 people today, then another 100 tomorrow and so on. This creates tremendous insecurity among people who survive. Once you are done with removing your excess employees, assure the rest that you are not going to fire them. They will be forming your core group on which you will build your future.

Well, one long post. But then this is the time when we all do a reality check. And ensure that we are ready to go back to school and pick up more skills that would be valuable in this market.

Sharod Subheccha....

One more Pujo goes by. And this time it was a dull one. Dull by even my standards. My mother and the kid sister left on shosti. And I went back to what I do best. Rest my tired body in the air conditioned comfort of the office. Din't have much to do this week with half the office out for navratri. And today felt too lazy too go out.

Well, anyways, even though this year I did not celebrate Pujo the way it is supposed to be, the last day always leaves you a bit gloomy, a bit nostalgic. It is almost like having to get on with the dullness of life. But then you know, that "Aasche bochor aabar hobe". And aasche bochor hopefully it will be a different celebration than this.

Wishing you all the warmest greetings for Dussehra. Subho Bijoya....aasche bochor mongolmoye hok





Picture courtesy this wonderful site that has enabled millions of Probashi Bangalee to keep in touch with Pujo.

Adieu Prince......

"I have a secret weapon", Azhar told the press on that beautiful autumn day as India vanquished a far superior Pakistan. The secret weapon had other feathers on his cap. A straight bat six against Murlidharan. Charging into Pollock as he ran in to bowl. A brilliant 144 that ensured that India won a test after having been asked to follow on. And last but not the least, the bare-chested shirt wave at the Mecca of Cricket....Lords.

The Captain who forged the Indian Team, who popularized the huddle and for whose backing we discovered the gems who are a part of the team today, Saurav Ganguly has announced his retirement.

There have been finger pointing at the fab four, there have been media spats, ugly politics that have taken place behind the scenes, but the fact remains, if any of the fab four have always got the short stick and has always managed to bounce back he is the man. And today as he decides to walk into the sunset, it will not be an easy walk. He will not be under pressure to perform, but yes he will be under pressure. To cap off a brilliant career with a flourish. The last hunt. The final bugle call. It will not be easy to walk off. But then it will be the brilliant end of an era if he does let his bat do the talking once again.

What was his contribution to Indian cricket? He forged a team. A team who dint win by chance. But a team who won because they believed they could. A team who did not snatch defeat from the jaws of victory but who even if they lost went down fighting. This team reflected what the new India was all about. It was the resurgent India that faced the world.

And if sometime soon we eventually win the World Cup, and not the 20-twenty version, we would have one person to thank for that.

Goodbye Prince, we shall miss you.

The Good, the bad....the M

Well, Gujarat it is. West Bengal's loss is Gujarat's gain. Don't know if Nano will still remain the 1 lac car, or if the price will escalate. The fact remains that again the ordinary bespectacled, fish eating bong will have to step out of West Bengal in order to earn a living. And what will remain back would be the shadows of a golden past. Hats off to Momotadidi and co...

A Pyrrhic victory

Late and long post.....

Well, RNT has decided to pull out of Singur. Momota Banerjee is celebrating Durga Pujo at Kalighat and has proclaimed that she will start an agitation after the Pujo to return the land to the farmers. Nice thought. But Ms. Banerjee or her advisors, in their infinite wisdom, haven't given a thought on the state of the land. Agriculture flourishes on land which is fertile. Not land which has been levelled and graded. Dug up and concrete poured into it. The Singur area was a marsh land, so quantities of fly ash have been dumped on it to make it fit for construction. Have these intellectually superior people given a thought on how are those unwilling land losers going to start farming again?

My guess is, as part of her election ploy, now that she knows she has rocked her best boat for an election victory, she would ask the Tata's and the the govt to return the land in the condition that it was taken. Meaning, that all the clean up operation etc would have to be done. She has to try this plank now for her election. And public memory being as short as it is, Momota didi will be the Messiah for those whose land was forcefully acquired and then forcefully returned.

Land acquisition has another dimension. How will you return the land of those people who willingly parted with their land? They got their compensation cheques, which they encashed and spent the money. Will they again have to forcefully buy back their land? Or will they see their land going to someone else. If the latter, then it is nothing but a ploy by the Tirnamul to grab land. Good land. And vast areas of it. Which they will later deem to be unfit for agriculture and sell at a much higher rate for industrialization. Do I smell a rat somewhere? Or is it only me who thinks that this is a ploy?

As for the buy back policy, how will a poor farmer who suddenly got a windfall amount and spent it on a new house, a daughters marriage or a new bike, gather that amount required for him to get his land back? And if the Tirnamul pressurizes the government to give the land back gratis, it is the tax payer's money which is being used. Why should you and I pay for a folly that is entirely Momotadidi's? Will the govt. have the guts to bill the Tirnamul Congress and Momotadidi for the land and then return it? Or even better, ask Momota didi to come up with the money and then transfer the land to her. She can then return it or keep it as she chooses. If she is such a champion of the poor she would return it gratis. The same way she expects the govt. to do so now, difference it would be her money, not yours or mine.

And for the people of Singur, and West Bengal, when was the last time any politician did anything that was good for the people?

Why it makes sense for Tata's to shift out of Singur...

The impasse over Singur continues and there seems to be no headway. In this scenario the best option for Tata's seems to be to close shop and move out. Contrary to the sentiments in West Bengal, this would actually be a very good move. Here is why:

1) The project is getting delayed due to Momotadidi suddenly realizing that a lot of the farm lands that were acquired for the project was acquired from unwilling farmers. The story here is a bit different. In a previous post I had talked about the compensation that was being offered, a whopping 30 rs a sq ft. But then the story in West Bengal is unlike any that in any other state. Not all the farmers actually own the land that they farm. They are share croppers, and even when the original owners have willingly given the land to Tata Motors, the share croppers are with Trinamul. An increased package is not going to offer them any benefit. Their best bet would have been if the Nano plant came up and they got work there. But, no....they are too used to the life that they have been leading. If they had been employed at the plant, at the first disciplinary action for not reporting to work or some other misconduct, they would have declared a strike and anyway work would have come to a halt. You see, the average Bengali is very aware of his rights but not his duties.

2) A strong message gets sent out to all such aimless politicians who take up people's issues when they find that the going has just gotten tough. This will also discourage the so called leaders who take up the cudgels on behalf of the minority for those projects that benefit the vast majority. This is nothing new in this country. Under the grab of socialist, secular, democratic republic, we believe in throttling the majority opinion to pamper the minority opinion.

3) Ms. Banerjee's Chief Ministerial hopes are effectively dashed. Can you imagine the rot that would have happened to Bengal if Ms. Banerjee becomes the CM ever? If the Tata's continue now, it would have just added to her armoury. She would have become the messiah for the poor. Now hopefully she will be wiped off once and for all.

The only flip side:

Tata's lose out on a source of educated cheap labour. Well, that has to be taken in while calculating the cost of the nano.

Another Blast....

Yet another blast in Delhi.....what is the world coming to? Are we actually a weak state? These blasts demonstrate that terrorists are able to strike anywhere at will and all our political and governance machinery have failed. There has to be a solution to this....maybe a "Never Again" campaign.....Its the citizens who have to stand up and say "Never Again". It doesn't take much. If all of us pledge to not take things lying down. If the death of even one of our fellow country men causes outrage and a demand for justice, if we don't try to get away from our mistakes but accept them and try to overcome them, if instead of always having an external locus of control we look at ourselves we may be able to stop this.

These blasts are not the handiwork of Pakistani terrorists, these blasts have been done by us, The Common Man of India. Yes, each of us, you who are reading this blog, the man on the street, the cop sitting idle at the police station, the so called government, the I-banker, the Dalal Street share broker, the media covering these blasts, the PYT partying away to glory and also me writing this blog is responsible for these blasts.

Do the Self appointed critics of the failed governance machinery every wonder where do these quantities of explosives come from? Every time you encourage the sale of goods and services without a bill, you are creating a loop hole that these guys can exploit; every time, you walk away when you notice something suspicious, you are creating a loop hole; every time you bribe to get ahead of the Q or to cover up a broken rule you create a loop hole.

Gandhiji started the Civil Disobedience movement, but unfortunately failed to stop it. It is still going strong. And till the time this keeps on going strong, there will be blasts, and terror attacks. Will it really need one person of every family to die in this country before this country wakes up? We are in a slumber since we woke up for a few minutes on the midnight of 15th August 1947 to hoist a flag. Damn it people, you are the damned government, the damned police, the damned everything of this country...how long will you keep depending on external agencies for help? If we are to become a superpower ever, we need to set the trend. Can we have a "Never Again" campaign? Will each of you who is reading this stand up for the law as it is instead of trying to evade it?

Do we have the balls for it? Or are we a bunch of losers who deserve to die? Who will die anyway? and the survivors will carry on as if nothing happened? What is needed to shake these bunch of people awake?

Can he be tried for treason?

Enough is enough.....this guy makes arbit statements against every non-maharastrian and gets away with it.
He writes to the cops asking them not to discharge their duty
And we dont have a law to charge him with treason against the Indian Union? How is he any different form the moderate terrorists who are asking for freedom in J&K?

How is MNS different from the ULFA? Just because ULFA uses bombs and bullets and this guy uses speeches? Some one tell me please.

A Wednesday

This is a movie which just deserves to be watched if for nothing else but the brilliant acting by Anupam Kher and Naseeruddin Shah. The jingoistic theme aside, this movie is watchable only for the acting.

After a long time finally a movie, in which I wasn't waiting eagerly for the intermission. The fast paced thriller had me glued to the seat throughout.

All in all, a sunday afternoon well spent.

My Rating: 4.5/5

Rock on

Watched Rock On yesterday. Everything said and done, and after getting 4.5 stars somehow the movie disappointed me. Well most of it anyway. I thought Mumbai Meri Jaan was much better.

And yes....on another note, the music is great...so if you could actually buy the CD and not watch the movie...

My rating would be 2.5 stars for Rock On.

What is the relation between.....

Both are pictures of popular leaders who refuse to acknowledge the birth of a new era that has come.

One did not recognize that the Manchester of the East was looking at a bleaker picture and proceeded to call an 18-month long strike that hastened the demise of an already sick industry. Datta Samant, a massive strike, at the beginning of which an estimated 200,000–300,000 mill workers walked out, forcing the entire industry of the city to be shut down for over a year. As the strike progressed through the months, Samant's militancy in the face of government obstinacy led to the failure of any attempts at negotiation and resolution. Disunity and dissatisfaction over the strike soon became apparent, and many textile millowners began moving their plants outside the city. After a prolonged and destabilizing confrontation, the strike collapsed with Samant and his allies not having obtained any concessions. The closure of textile mills across the city left tens of thousands of mill workers unemployed, and in the succeeding years the most of the industry moved away from Mumbai, after decades of being plagued by rising costs and union militancy. The result.....you just have to walk around the mill areas of Parel and Worli. The mills stand there like ghosts from another era. And those that have been redeveloped are now housing posh offices and malls.




























and the other.....Didi as she is called by all, refuses to let industrialization come to West Bengal. Somehow she thinks that returning the land that the Tata's acquired from unwilling farmers is a solution. Does she really think that the unwilling farmers would be able to return to agriculture in the then fertile now barren land? Surrounded by paint shops, forging shops and assembly line? May be Tata Motors will have to create a new designation, Farmer, Farm Labourer for those who will be farming in those areas that are within the gates of the factory.

And what makes the farmer unwilling. Well to look at it one way, the Govt. acquired the land paying a price of about 13-17 lacs an acre. ($32500-$42500 an acre) thats about Rs. 321/sq m ($8 a sq m) or 29.8 a sq feet. The price paid to the farmers for a plot of land in the middle of nowhere the size of a tile in your room is about 30 rs. That is huge amount by any logic. Now the unwilling farmer contents that in any case if the factory comes up, the land has to be acquired. The price of land will shoot up. So the farmer has the opportunity to sell the land at 3 times the present price. No wonder such large numbers are supporting didi's protests and her intelligent argument that Tata's need only about 600 acres, return 400 acres to the farmers. Left to her, the factory will have a paint shop, then a rice farm, then the body shop, and forge, then maybe another farm.

What if Tata's move out of Singur? West Bengal gets tagged with an industry unfriendly status. The only thing left for educated, unemployed youths is roke bose adda maraa aar prem kora....after all who needs industrialization....we are happy, lazy beings.

Of Mumbai Meri Jaan, Bihar Floods, and others

Watched मुम्बई मेरी जान this weekend....thanks to AM who tagged me along. Well whatever the reviews said, this was a movie worth watching if you are a part of Mumbai. For those who haven't watched the movie yet this is what the synopsis is, "On July 11, 2006 the local train service, known as Mumbai's lifeline, was struck by a series of bomb blasts. Bombay Meri Jaan explores the impact of this devastating incident on the lives of the people of Mumbai. From a brilliant broadcast journalist to a patriotic corporate man; from a retiring policeman at the twilight of his life to a rookie cop at the dawn of his career; from an angry and xenophobic unemployed young man to a coffee-vendor struggling to survive and belong: Mumbai Meri Jaan follows the lives of people from all strata of Mumbai's bustling society as they tackle the aftermath of a fatal incident that brings out the best and sometimes the worst in them." (courtesy UTV site)

The movie laced out well and the acting was good. Madhavan was brilliant, so was Irfaan Khan. Paresh Rawal portrayed the retiring cop so well that today morning when I saw a constable with grey hair at the naka I really wondered if he was the inspiration behind the role. On the other hand Vijay Maurya got too much into the skin of the character......or was he not given enough lines?? A new cop, who chooses to ask his senior what his achievement was, questions the system that exists does not pull the trigger on himself without enough reason. Also, Kay Kay Menon I felt overdid his part of being a Hindu Fanatic....and Soha Ali was not genuine enough.....

Maybe because you connect with the places and the people you connect with the movie. I doubt how much a person from lucknow or chandigarh would connect with this movie.
The personal drama did not look to personal for anyone other than Soha and Madhavan. And the usual Hindu-Muslim bashing and then bhai-bhai preaching. It is a tribute to a city, a tribute to the people, but it could have been handled better. Maybe it was not possible to compress this in cinematic time, but a tragedy that 7/11 was, deserves something more than this.

At the same time, one is forced to ask some serious questions. We talk about the Spirit of Mumbai but is it something more than spirit? I think it is desperation that forces people into the Spirit of Mumbai thinggi. Truthfully, who would want to travel in overcrowded trains? Except for the fact that the only other option is at least 2-3 times the train journey time. The most chilling scene in the movie, when Madhavan's friend from the US tells that maybe the next generation will become used to terrorism. To me that is a stark reminder about what life is going to be all about. Survival. And like MM says in her post, that how much longer can we create gated communities and pretend that we are safer just because we chose not to look at the world around us? Isn't it time that we decided that it is important for us to be responsible for our own security. That we cannot keep blaming the police and the government for everything? This brings me to another recent event, the calamity in Bihar. One recent TV report, said that policemen where saving all they could and moving to higher ground and another showed an interview with a villager that prasasan kuch nahi kar rahi.

I know it is the easiest thing to find a scapegoat, but then do we realise, that we are the prasasan, the administrators? The IAS officer is just a representation of the society we live in. He is no superman to save the people. He wants his cut like everyone else. Everyone in this country is out to get his pound of flesh. And by everyone, I mean everyone. We are all cheats and thieves in private and saints outside. Sarkaar kuch nahi karti is our favourite statement. But, the same statement makers will bribe a govt official who pulls you up for breaking a law, will cross the road at anyplace, will spit and dirty the city, you see for us, as long as it doesn't affect us, we are fine. We will rave and rant at the unfairness of it all and then go back to being the way they are.

Where are all these related? Bomb blasts, terrorist attacks and bihar flood.....they are all the product of our apathy.....apathy born out of not trying to be a country.....we are not Indians.....we are hindus, muslims, brahmins, dalits, maharastrian, bihari, everything but not Indians......when we start bribing the cops to let us go for small offences a precedence is created that says that the more money you pay the bigger offence you can get away with......when you pay to get your work done without standing in a que, you start a trend which says it is easy to ignore the rights of people who have been waiting before you......and that is the tragedy from which all the bigger tragedies flow......question is can we say "Never Again" or will it just be another movie being made on another tragedy?

Classics all the way

I picked up this tag from Altoid. Found it interesting enough to make it the first tag on my blog....and I pass it on to Daffodils...lets see if she beats me on this....

"Following is a list of books that decorate most people's bookshelves but not always read. In this tag we are supposed to reveal how ill read we are by showing the ones read in bold, by underlining the ones read at school, and by italicising the ones started but never finished. "


1. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
2. Anna Karenina
3. Crime and Punishment
4. Catch-22
5. One Hundred Years of Solitude
6. Wuthering Heights
7. The Silmarillion
8. Life of Pi : a novel
9. The Name of the Rose
10. Don Quixote
11. Moby Dick
12. Ulysses
13. Madame Bovary
14. The Odyssey
15. Pride and Prejudice
16. Jane Eyre
17. The Tale of Two Cities
18. The Brothers Karamazov
19. Guns, Germs, and Steel
20. War and Peace
21. Vanity Fair
22. The Time Traveler’s Wife
23. The Iliad
24. Emma
25. The Blind Assassin.
26. The Kite Runner
27. Mrs. Dalloway
28. Great Expectations
29. American Gods
30. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
31. Atlas Shrugged
32. Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
33. Memoirs of a Geisha
34. Middlesex
35. Quicksilver
36. Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
37. The Canterbury Tales
38. The Historian : a novel
39. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
40. Love in the Time of Cholera
41. Brave New World
42. The Fountainhead
43. Foucault’s Pendulum
44. Middlemarch
45. Frankenstein
46. The Count of Monte Cristo
47. Dracula
48. A Clockwork Orange
49. Anansi Boys
50. The Once and Future King
51. The Grapes of Wrath
52. The Poisonwood Bible
53. 1984
54. Angels and Demons
55. Inferno
56. The Satanic Verses
57. Sense and Sensibility
58. The Picture of Dorian Gray
59. Mansfield Park
60. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
61. To the Lighthouse
62. Tess of the D’Urbervilles
63. Oliver Twist
64. Gulliver’s Travels
65. Les Misérables
66. The Correction
67. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
68. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
69. Dune
70. The Prince
71. The Sound and the Fury
72. Angela’s Ashes : a memoir
73. The God of Small Things
74. A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
75. Cryptonomicon
76. Neverwhere
77. A Confederacy of Dunces
78. A Short History of Nearly Everything
79. Dubliners
80. The Unbearable Lightness of Being
81. Beloved
82. Slaughterhouse-five
83. The Scarlet Letter
84. Eats, Shoots and Leaves
85. The Mists of Avalon
86. Oryx and Crake
87. Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
88. Cloud Atlas
89. The Confusion
90. Lolita
91. Persuasion
92. Northanger Abbey
93. The Catcher in the Rye
94. On the Road
95. The Hunchback of Notre Dame
96. Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
97. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values
98. The Aeneid
99. Watership Down
100. Gravity’s Rainbow
101. The Hobbit
102. In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
103. White Teeth
104. Treasure Island
105. David Copperfield
106. The Three Musketeers

There, these are my dismal stats : 33/106.

If anyone else is interested, please do take up the tag.

Why Tata Sky and others should start worrying...

Two new news items have generated world wide attention. This and this . In addition by the year end Reliance ADAG is going to launch its Big TV. RCom has also reportedly placed orders for 5-million Set top boxes (STB).

Till now the cable tv scene in India has been that people were at the mercy of their cable operators. The cable scene in India is unruly at best and a gangster's paradise at worst. The introduction of set top boxes and the entry of big players like the Hindujas (Incable), Subhas Chandra's Zee (Siticable) and Rahejas (Hathway belongs to Rajan Raheja Group) has cleaned up the scene a bit. But the last mile connectivity is still provided by the local cablewaala. That is where DTH comes in. You dont have to deal with the local cable operator. You deal with a reputed company. Either Government (Doordarshan), or Zee (Dish TV), or Tata (Tata Sky). Now with the entry of Reliance the customer has one more choice.

This is precisely why the existing operators should be worried. RCom has the pockets to survive the initial years till it breaks even. It with its deals with Steven Spielberg and Bachchan ADAG has in its kitty the power to give the viewers the choice to view just released and yet to be released movies. The average viewer will get to watch the latest movies without having to shell out huge amount for the multiplex experience. That is big bang for the buck.

Lets us face it, most of the viewers have a few chosen channels and that is what they watch. The operators on the other hand have to ensure that they offer something different from the run of the mill to get more people on to their network. The cable TV market is growing at 8-10% in India. With many state governments taking a cue from Karunanidhi, free color TVs will be distributed amongst a lot of people. With just two channels on terrestrial broadcast, these people will increasingly turn towards cable. That is where value packaging comes in. The distributor who can offer maximum value for money will rule the roost. And reliance with its deep pockets can afford to take a hit on the price of its equipments to lure customers. This is what was done when RCom launched its mobile service.

It is time to be worried for the other players. The big hulk is coming. Either adapt or perish. Let us now see which way the wind blows.

Mumbai Nagari

Well I am back.................

Exactly a month has passed since I joined one of the most happening general management group companies that came to campus.....move over TAS, ABG, I am joining a dynamic group which is investing billions, which has got some of the top people who retired from one or the other of the Nav Ratnas.

Life has basically been good...nothing much happening....a small tweak here, a small tweak there that is called work....as one of colleagues puts it "Dude, there is no work life balance here. The damned work is missing".

So long we have been left to our own devices....left to search for acco in the unsympathetic city....Ten other poor souls who joined with me have been shunted out of civilization to one of the most alien cities in this country, where it doesn't matter what or who you are, if you don't know the language you are finished...for reasons best known to me and to my extended circle of friends, it was my dream city. I have been promised that on my next stint, so will probable wait out the monsoons, watching the seas around Haji Ali.

Here is where the great Mumbai Dream begins and goes on....but somewhere, just somewhere there is that small voice in my head which seems to be telling me..."Dude, this isn't the end"....Here I come big bad world....

.....another begining.....

All my bags are packed and am ready to go.....there is no taxi waiting yet.....but here it is to a new beginning.......am leaving for Mumbai once again......dear old city.....the place from where it all began......will join one of the corporate houses which has a finger in multiple pies....the HR journey begins....

An alternative perspective on Reservation

I know its been long since my last post....and with that my resolution to post regularly goes out of the window.....lot has been happening around...convocation (Pappu pass ho gaya :))- will have a detailed post on that later- sitting at home, lazing around, nothing too exciting....in the meanwhile the reservation debate continues to make headlines....was planning a post on that, when I came across, this. Brilliantly put by none other than Mad Shuks.....you gotta love that man.....enjoy this till I come up with something to blog about....

Peter principle and definition of success.....

"In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence."

This is the Peter Principle which was formulated by Dr. Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull in their 1968 book The Peter Principle.

It was a wet evening today, just the kind of evening when you would wish that you had a steaming mug of coffee, a roaring fire and friends to chat with. Well it was just a wee bit different, it was a wet evening, but it was just two friends over hot burgers and coke meeting up at Indiana's, Bangalore. Oh yes, we had a copy of The Ten-Day MBA by Steven A. Silbiger with us.

Here we were, the three year work ex, tobacco salesman, and the fresh, yet to cut his teeth, IR manager; talking about everything, catching up with what common acquaintances are up to, what life is all about, what are the prospects of a jump etc etc, when the discussion turned towards success. What does success mean? Who is a successful person? Are CEO's the only successful people? What about the 179 odd people out of a batch of 180 who dont become the real famous hot shot CEOs. The aam junta might not know who a B. Muthuraman or a J.J. Irani is. But does that make them less successful than a Vijay Mallya?

Or is the guy who passed out of a B-school, decided to take life easy, has found time for his family and for his passion of painting, earns enough to stay in one of the upmarket locales of the city, drive a reasonably decent car, kids go to a good school and are good performers, is he successful. He may not have achieved the kind of life his batch mate did. But can we brand him as not being successful? The question comes down to the alumni meets that B-schools have every year. Who are the people who attend? The top honchos are there but are few in numbers, the majority are the run of the mill people. These are the people you would meet in your daily life and yet not turn and stare.

Success, is a self actuated process. It is that which brings me joy. If I am happy, if I have no regrets for the life I led, if there is no it could have been like this if I had done that thing syndrome, I feel that one is successful. Material wealth, doesn't matter in the long run, position, power, prestige, nothing matters. It is that feeling in the autumn of your life, when you can look back and say, this was a life well lived, that is a measure of success. What could have been, what could be done, what I dint do, those are immaterial. What matters is what I did, how many people did I make a difference to.

This brings me back to the Peter Principle. The principle says man rises to the level of his incompetence, and if you actually sit back and analyze the lives of people you know, take a third party independent view, and look at their lives, their career paths, their life paths follows the equation

y=m ln(x) -b

In the long run, it plateaus out. And initial thrust depends on how good you are. An academic topper will perform better than the last guy who will perform better than the guy who never made it. It is just one of the ways of the world. And thats when Peter principle kicks in, when you thrust a donkey into the world of race horses, the donkey performs, but to his potential, and which might be better than the performance of the average donkey, but is no where near the performance of the race horse.

But, if the donkey decides to sniff the grass, and observe the crowd, if he decides that he is here for the fun of the run and not necessarily to be the winner, it will be a much more enjoyable race for him as well as for the guy riding him. And at the end, when the race is over, everyone is led to a common stable, where they get the same oat to eat. So maybe it is time, that we decided to look around and sniff the air, look at the grass, the meadow and the bright blue sky, for often in our quest for achieving the top of the pyramid, we let life pass us by and then, in the end, it is always, "I was the topper of my batch and could have done such and such, but....". Life is calling, it is up to us to take the plunge.

The curtains fall.....

More than 820 classes, more than 1230 hours, 33 professors, innumerable guest lectures, presentations, assignments, project reports. Sweat, toil, blood and tears. Euphoria of A+s and the disappointment of Cs. Summers, ensemble, elections, public production, juniors nite, parties, placement processes, treats. Myriad of non academic activities, both value adding and non value adding. Finally today XLRI dream run ends. Today at 6 pm, the class of 2008 will move on to a new beginning. A new beginning as alumnus. As managers. For a lot many of us it is the last academic class we shall be having. As one of my close friend has put it, some one press the pause button and rewind...