Saturday, December 29, 2007

Narendra Modi - A necessary Evil

“Love him or hate him , you cannot ignore him” – These were the lines that the media constantly used to describe Modi throughout its election coverage .As all the pundits and psephologists continue to brainstorm the victory of their own coined term “Moditva” analyzing various conventional factors like various caste combinations , anti incumbency, dissidents, they all are reaching paradoxical results .

It is not that CMs haven’t been able to pull off successive victories in past . Be it Lalu Yadav banking heavily on Muslim-Yadav vote bank or Left because of its strong cadre . It is just that Modi had nothing in his favor, even his own personality was not favoring him completely .

It is not possible for many people to digest the fact that a CM who virtually turned his face the other way when people were burnt ,when humanity lost its relevance can win elections after elections . The very argument of polarization is being rejected because he did not do too well in riots affected area of central Gujrat.

Then why is that Modi registered such a phenomenal victory ? The very reason is that people questioning him on the grounds haven’t been able to define the grounds well .It seems to be a very popular thought in politics today that a certain level of standards is to be maintained. So the leaders like Lalu Yadav and Mayawati even being most corrupt are acceptable though they may not be of any good for people because they are above those standards! Being corrupt or non efficient is within the standards!.But Modi is not acceptable for his inaction against violence perpetrator's in a very emotionally charged situation .Fact is both are not justified and we should not have such leaders. But moral issues for common man are totally different . Indians as usual have a very short memory and the issues more important to them are peace and bread and butter .

Now is the Hindu voter in Gujrat insensitive if he is voting for Modi? Fact is that the alternatives provided to him are Congress which is equally blood stained with Sikh riots having strikingly similarities with Gujrat riots ,dividing country on castes and religion by appeasing minorities or the left which is responsible for an equally brutal genocide in Nandigram .

Let us now look at Modi’s journey in Gujrat :

When modi became CM he had never contested any election which would have surely made him more politically correct and moderate . So when he was faced with Godhra issue , the religious or sect sentiment got better off him and he completely overlooked his Rajdharm as CM . Now as far as gujrat riots were concerned , they were disgrace to humanity but then which riots were not . One has to understand, when its riots , there should not be any expectation of humanity . Riots are like wars where no sense or humanity prevails . And it will always be debatable whether a man brings out worst in the war or whether a war brings out worst in the man . Wars are bad so are riots.

But after 2002 Gujrat has been completely peaceful without any curfew when whole nation continued burning .He is man of great integrity. Just for a change an honest politician having zero tolerance for corruption and inefficiency .He too has shades of grey , authoritative but decisive , efficient administrator but non inclusive reach . Most importantly he has been a great visionary giving electricity to all the villages , developing rural economy , reducing drop out rates of girls to 2 % from 49 % , winning awards for best e-governed states , fastest developing state of Asia , reducing bureaucracy , winning all round praise from corporate world and average middle class citizen delivering what he promised . As far as the argument that his development is limited to urban areas , the agricultural growth is 10 percent compared to average national of 2 percent .

The same congress which is accusing Modi of showing fake figures of growth itself in an independent report by Rajeev Gandhi foundation headed by Sonia Gandhi declared Gujrat No. 1 state in economic freedom index , RBI claiming that Gujrat showed a growth of 10.5 % in GDP and 25 % of the total foreign investment in India has actually come to Gujarat .

So is economics is all that matters today? Is he a necessary evil that we want for our society to work efficiently because development in Moditva comes with an additonal baggage of communal divide.

Well the fact is that he has another chance now to reach out to all those who are hurt giving them a healing touch . Its time for this nation to move on , Gujrat to move on and by moving on I mean an inclusive move having all stratus of society to move together .

Tuesday, December 25, 2007

ORDERED CHAOS




"God does not throw dice": Little would have world known that more than a statement made by Einstein these lines represent the mind sets of the human race (atheists included) who can never believe (consciously or sub consciously) that things can exist totally independent of each other.Are we really genetically coded to see things that way or pretend to see them that way.

Is it unnatural to think that way ? Going by the classical definition of thermodynamics entropy of the world is constantly increasing . The every process nature is involved is increasing chaos . So why is that we human want to put everything in order . Well the answer is that even when there may be chaos at the microscopic level , but things look always in order at macroscopic level.

Nature like humans have come to terms with the fact that chaos will be there . So the main endeavour of it is to order that chaos . Knowingly or unknowingly even we are involved in the same process .

Like millions of molecular level particles are in perfect disorder , things around us are too the same way . But when seen together they appear in perfect harmony just like a million notes of Mozart make a grand masterpiece .

This is this drive to keep things in order , find anything out of nothing that man has scaled some of the toughest possible peaks and solved few of the greatest mysteries of life.

How many times we have seen a small kid without any sense trying to keep his toys in order going through various permutations before arriving at a satisfactory order.

How many relations we maintain being the son , the father , the husband ,the friend, the enemy . See things at this level and it seems such a mess . But its nothing but YOU and see now things appear so smooth and you are always on a mission to order this chaos such that it appears ordered constantly challenging Murphy's law and always believing that you are in total control of yourself.Those who can't perish.



A constant effort to stand out
but still be one of us
the droplets on leaves
like few lost birds
yet beautiful and mesmerizing
for all of us there is cause
we are nothing but a part of ORDERED CHAOS

Friday, December 21, 2007

ANTI MANAGEMENT


As the management philosophies makes it forays into creative fields like arts , cinema , sports , there is strong need to question the fact that the traditional managements philosophies the six sigmas , the MBOs and above all the basic concept of creating surplus can be applied here . Is the management in this very form a misfit for these artistic fields.

One of the school of thoughts which basically consists of old players in the field are strictly against converting to corporates and cite fact that these fields have been working on principle of subjectivity and they have been creating or producing things for their customers purely on the basis of the knack of imagery that they had without thinking of commercial implications leave apart principles of creating surplus. Their very basic argument against it are that they always work on spontaneous imagination while management philosophies always want them to work on objectives and facts and figures .They argue that quantitative analysis of their work is not possible and only a artist can do a qualitative analysis.

One of the examples that can be cited from off late is cricket . Due to management trying to make the game commercially more viable the management gurus have changed the whole face of the game by making it more batsman friendly wickets , rules citing facts arguing that spectators just wanna see sixes being hit . That has eroded the very competition that used to exist between ball and bat.the skill based game is now fast converting into a power game and we see Dhonis outshining Dravids .Do we see any Wasim Akram or Shane Warne in making now .The very charm of the cricket , the skill is all getting lost and time is not far when it will be something like baseball .

In a recent interview noted holly wood film maker Shekhar kapoor said that due to the fact that all these studios have taken charge of film , the director has lost all the creative freedom he used to have on script and all decisions are taken on facts and figures from past . A reason for so many sequels and remakes these days. The argument against the commercial success they give is the fact that the audience is not left with any other choice due to the extensive marketing. So they all are arguing that all the great cinema made in 70s and 80 s throughout the world and not now .

Are we going over the board in criticizing managers . One counter school of thought is he very fact that they have equipped the directors with very powerful tools like better technology , funding reducing risk by creating alternative sources of income like merchandising , satellite rights , etc . They have been able to bring order in this otherwise mostly disorganised field. They have been actually able to create markets for them which never existed before . They are all armed with progress curves and on paper it all looks glossy and shining .They can talk for hours citing their achievements not all quantitative also.

Many already commercial organisations like apple , google have created one of the best arts of our times ..ipods .google search...looking closely we can see that these companies see themselves as artists and the management culture is such that they encourage all the time their maximum limits of imagination and facilitate them to all the levels of possibility . That is the reason that these are the few companies which have actually change the face of the world and shall always continue to do sowhich is end beneficial to the customer as well as the company.These have been the companies which have deified all traditional management philosophies , the result is too obvious to state .

Now the fact is that no matter whether its artistic field or whether its a commercial company like apple , all exist for a reason . The reason being to create something which is not there already .So management philosophies and corporate systems are only tools for them . You might become a successful company but u should ask whether your existence has any meaning other than making money . Dell today is the no 1 company in computer and other products sales and have just showed loss in just one quarter of their whole 3 decades of their existence!But just imagine if you delete Dell from the history of computer industry! You can easily imagine , it won have any effect in the very industry they are market leaders coz they have not created anything .They have just assembled and sold it the best possible way , never came up with revolutionary technology like the other companies like apple or ibm or google . Its not these other companies are just creative and not successful . They strike a great balance between both commercial viability and creativity.

So what is the answer . The best possible answer can be is that creative aspect should be completely differentiated from management and the managers instead of managing should be just a facilitating the creators especially when it comes to purely artistic fields. Given the pressure of investors and the big bucks involved managers will always have an upper hand for their ability to generate resources and improve performance but an attempt to quantify the unquantifiable should be immediately stopped and the philosophy of objective approach through subjective adjustment should be just reversed .

It is very difficult to convince managers to work on those basis because they have always enjoyed the highest offices in other field so to play a second fiddle to these creators is very difficult for them . But if we have to make sure that they don take away life and soul out of all creative fields , we have to address this fact and a whole restructuring of management in such fields is necessary . Only then will we be able to not only create better products but also the very friction between the two fractions can be avoided .

Thursday, December 20, 2007

Insearch


thoughts they might be
restless but defining
giving life embracing other
but when one ends
and the other begin
jus then i reign


paradox is shallow
when nothin exits i do
the reason for i
is not the reason for others
then why am i

heavens decide
nd things r incidental
quest for meaning
is a quest for fact

as an eternal relationship
transceding to another meaning
this zeal for insearch
has taught me one thing
its not the reason for me and u
its jus tht u exist
tht is wat all matters.....