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"Dengue that doesn't kill you, makes you stronger"

2011-11-19T23:05:00.001-08:00

My brother was hospitalized because of Dengue last week and he was there for about 4 days. That was the first time when I had a first hand experience of having a member of my family's "first circle" to be hospitalized for some condition other than the likes of pregnancy or a cataract... for something life threatening. There was a twenty minute window when the possibility of losing my brother was clear and present. I can spend the next one hour walking through it second by second. But that is neither the point of this post, nor would that be rewarding emotionally or intellectually. I would rather use this space and the rarely available time to write a blog post to analyze what lessons I can learn and remember to use going forward.

Dengue is one of the many diseases caused by virus. With whatever I have seen so far, a viral gives us one good head start with its classic symptom that should be perceivable without a degree in medicine. Fever and body ache. When we have this symptom, I think it would be a good idea to directly go to a diagnostic centre first and get all the diagnostic test done, and then go the doctor for consultations. I don't think we need to wait for the doctor's advice on this since his/her advice is not a prerequisite. And we are advised to be taking such tests on an annual basis.
Dengue is going to decrease the platelet and WBC count. Platelets work to clot blood while WBC, as we all know, provide immunity. Once detected for dengue, doctor would advice platelet count checks on a daily basis through blood tests.At least in India, it take about two hours for the results to come in. For a healthy person the count should 2.5lakhs though, I have seen normal people with counts as low as 1.5Lakhs. Dengue has no vaccine and don't have a direct medicine for cure.
The way to combat dengue is to ensure that the platelet counts don't decrease to a dangerous level while simultaneously addressing the fever by taking paracetamol advised by the doctor. To keep the platelet count from decreasing, one has to have a lot of fluid intake like fruit juice (esp. those rich in vitamin C that improves immunity) and eating well. But eating well was a problem at least in my brother's case since there was a fluid accumulation in his abdomen that messed with his appetite. Papaya fruit and leaves is widely spoken-of for being very good at helping in platelet count increase since papaya has a lot of vitamin C and other anti-microbial properties that purges the microbes from the body.
Just to put the above discussions in context using my brother as an example, he was hospitalized with a platelet count as low as 11,000. He had to take about 6 "packets" of blood platelets. He took two teaspoons of papaya leaves crushed in a mixer, twice a day. He emptied about 300ml of papaya juice once. In addition he emptied about three litres of water. His diet usually contained a bowl of tomato soup, Spinach, dahl and mixed fruits. All this with the IV of saline solution dripping into his blood stream almost 24 hours a day, he took about three days to recover from 11,000 to 1.15 lakhs in terms of platelets.
The hospital is going to puncture the patient with needles for a twice a day platelet checks. It is usually a progressively painful routine. But an increase of 8000 to 10000 in platelet count is a very good sign. The worry is when it is decreasing and goes back to 20000 or lesser.
After discharge he is at home taking rest for at least one more week, taking normal diet and medicine prescribed by the doctor. It would be a good idea to do another platelet check after may be a week to be sure that the count isn't going down

The experience was traumatic at least for the 20 minutes, and it was one of those rare "it can happen to me too" moments. But, bitter as it may be, I should acknowledge the fact that it was a very valuable experience during which we have lost nothing more than a few tens of thousands of money, a few tear drops, but gained a lot of knowledge, more strength to take on an unexpected emergency, and last but not least, the realization that when you or your loved one is down, there are a lot of friends, relatives and colleagues who would respond to your call for help with urgency. I have heard of a saying "Anything that doesn't kill you makes you stronger". At least in this case, it sure was true.

Lessons from cooking

2011-10-05T22:12:00.000-07:00

My wife has been gone for her maternity and is not due to return until early next year. As a result I had an opportunity to cook for myself. Here are what I learnt from the experience

Cooking has always been a source of fun. It is a great stress-buster especially when combined with good music, but only if you start early to have enough time. Me being me, I think of cooking only when I start feeling hungry. Till then, how Jake Sully saves Pandora from the dream walkers and wins back Neytiri's love this time around in Star Movies seems more important.
Once you start cooking, it is important to list and line-up the raw-materials first. I have been cooking on and off for about 10 years now, with about a gap of a year or so between two bursts of cooking. But even now, I first put the vessel and light the burner before I think of the vegetable oil!
A little less salt and spice is always better than a little too much. But the problem is less and more are relative. As long as you are cooking for yourself, less or more doesn't matter, of course. You screw up, you eat and don't tell anyone. Or your throw it out, have the ever-reliable bread-butter-jam combo.. and shut-up again. But the problem comes when you cook for others. A few people can take when the salt is a bit too high, but not when it is a bit too low. For a few dishes, adding the salt later works, but for a few, it doesn't. But from my experience, if salt is way to low, adding some salt helps to a certain extent. But if the salt is way too high, you can do nothing but feel bad about it!

So far I find that there are four big challenges in cooking

Finding the difference between toor dhal, moong dhal, urad dhal and when to use what.
Finding the difference between, gingeli oil and ground nut oil

Again, after over 10 years of part-time cooking, I am not able to sleep-walk through this

Judging the correct quantity of rice and vegetables to use to achieve the correct quantity of the dish by the time cooking is done. Sometimes, I choose to prepare a dish that I plan to use for over a couple of days (like tomato chutney). I take four tomatoes and come up with a real tasty one after about 45 minutes. But I find that it wouldn't last after the first meal. I wonder "Wasn't four enough?". Then it strikes. "Not when the tomatoes are as small as lemons!"
Maintaining consistency in taste. All the challenges I have mentioned earlier, I have got over at some point of time or the other. But consistency is still too high a bar for me to jump over. I remember that, as a kid, during family occasions my mom and aunts come together and cook for the extended family. I used to have each dish and by their taste, I would be able to say who cooked what with a fair degree of accuracy. THAT is consistency!

Cooking is easy if you think of it as an isolated task on just one particular day. But if you consider cooking as churning out multiple dishes in correct proportions each day, maintaining consistency in taste over multiple days and maintaining variety over any given week. Then you really see how tough it is and how easy your parents have made it look for you.

Choice between currency and coin

2011-09-21T05:07:00.000-07:00

When I was in high school, it dawned on me that money with higher denominations are all currencies (made of paper) and the one with lower denominations are all coins (made of metal). I had time and again wondered the reasoning behind the counter intuitive choice of transitioning from the higher valued metal to the lower valued paper as the denomination goes up.

Recently my uncle gave me an explanation for that. The choice of using metal or paper to represent a particular denomination is made based on the frequency of transaction as cash. One rupee denomination pass hands more often than say a hundred rupee denomination. So, if we make the one rupee denomination as a currency, it would soil faster and would significantly increase the recycling effort. So, it is made as a coin thus increasing its life. Since a hundred rupee denomination is likely to be transacted with lesser frequency, it would soil slower. So, a currency would suffice. After listening to the explanation, I suppose it isn't so counter-intuitive after all. But with the inflation shooting up, I think it is about time to consider a hundred rupee coin :)

What I make out of the Lokpal issue

2011-08-20T20:44:00.000-07:00

Anna Hazare led protest against the introduction of the Lokpal Bill and the corruption in general seems, at least to me, to have gathered the largest number of supporters to one single cause across the nation than any other non-political or non-religious cause. Emotions run high, as the government struggles to handle the juggernaut of India Against Corruption's (IAC) protest. But as any mass movement, the fundamental questions seem to be left unanswered in the most clear terms.

The most important question I find unanswered among the mayhem, of such emotion and hyper-reporting is "What specifically Anna Hazare fasting for (or against)? Is it to withdraw the government's draft from the parliament so that discussion for the consensus should continue? Is it to table the Jan Lokpal for discussion in the parliament's houses? Or is it to pass it?" Sometimes, I hear IAC say that ultimately they want a "strong" Lokpal Bill to be passed and sometimes, to pass the Jan Lokpal Bill by Aug 31. The fasting, protests and the mayhem has yielded the obvious result. Confusion and lack of clarity

I am clearly against, the present version of the government's Lokpal Bill which excludes the prime minister's office and thousands of other politicians from the Lokpal's reach. So, I am clearly against the passage of the government's version of the Lokpal. On the other hand, Jan Lokpal as explained in this slideshare seems to be pretty sound. For example, contrary to the popular allegation that the Jan Lokpal as proposed by the IAC would be an unelected entity, there is a chance to propose names for Jan Lokpal membership at least for the educated masses and those with access to the medium of electronic communication. I think it is better than the current scenario where the common man has no means to propose names for the vigilance departments like CBI or CVC. Similarly, I also welcome the proposal to empower the Loklpal to file FIR against High Court and Supreme Court judges without the permission of Chief Justice of India.

However these are just parts of the Jan Lokpal Bill, and despite spending some time searching on the Internet, I couldn't find either a draft of the Government's Lokpal Bill or a comparison of the bill with that of the Jan Lokpal bill by a neutral party (neither IAC nor government). So, (against all my gut feelings), I have to allow for the government's draft version to contain at least some element that is worth discussing to be part of the final "strong" lokpal that should be passed. So, I would support Anna's fast fully only if he does so to stop government's version of the bill from being passed thus keeping the Jan Lokpal alive and up for further discussions to take the best out of both versions. But if he wants the Jan Lokpal to be passed thus killing the Government's bill, I must conclude that Anna's (and the IAC's) intentions are "equal but opposite" to that of the government's intentions

National Anthem and Patriotism

2011-08-15T01:07:00.000-07:00

Its The Indian Independence day. Today I witnessed the usual. A lot of Indian flags fluttering around, the chanting of the National Anthem (not always as it is supposed to be, but as was taught in school), distribution of sweets and inspired patriotic speeches amid local politicians. During the flag hoisting ceremony I asked a little girl, probably in her second or third grade, what language is our national anthem written and she promptly answered "Hindi". Now I can start judging things about her and her school, but I tried not to, because I am sure I wouldn't have known the answer to that myself at that tender age. And the schools (accepting the fact that they are business houses and are getting more professional about it with every passing day) would care more about her academic scores and extra-curricular activities than clarifying this particular detail.

But then I suppose we should know certain basics about our own national anthem. Like what language it is written in, and its meaning. The first one seemed easy. Written by Tagore, it has to be Bengali. But why guess, when we have Wikipedia! I looked up and it was indeed Sanskrit, but heavily sanskritized. As of the meaning, I must admit, this is the first time I cared to look it up despite conspiracy theories that the National Anthem praised King George V instead of God. Neverthless, here is what I found in Wikipedia

Thou art the ruler of the minds of all people,

Dispenser of India's destiny.

Thy name rouses the hearts of Punjab, Sindhu,

Gujarat and Maratha,

Of the Dravida and Orissa and Bengal;

It echoes in the hills of the Vindhyas and Himalayas,

mingles in the music of Jamuna and Ganges and is

chanted by the waves of the Indian Sea.

They pray for thy blessings and sing thy praise.

The saving of all people waits in thy hand,

Thou dispenser of India's destiny.

Victory, victory, victory to thee.

But there is one question in my mind. Does the fact that a lot of us don't know about our own National Anthem or the details around it make us unpatriotic? I will struggle to answer this question all my life. I suppose we think about patriotism very less on a daily basis. But Independence Day is a good opportunity to think about it. The way I see it, National Anthem is an important tool to instill a sense of patriotism and however, wrongly we pronounce the words or how many ever times we sing the anthem without stopping to think about the language the Anthem originates from, the fact that we stand up, stay still, look at the flag and salute it should be testimony enough for the fact that we have some sense patriotism to the idea of India. But getting it right and knowing about the National Anthem better definitely shows that one is at least curious to be more educated and rational about her or her patriotism, which otherwise merely be an unexplainable psychological feeling.

Any piece of writing on India and patriotism wouldn't be complete without thinking of Mahatma Gandhi. But I don't want to use this space to praise him. But instead remember a piece of dialogue that Ben Kingsley delivers as he played Gandhi. The piece struck me because of its contemporary relevance.

Nehru: "But I thought you were against fighting"

Gandhi: "Where there is injustice, I always believed in fighting. The question is, do you fight to change things or do you fight to punish? I've found that we are all such sinners, we should leave punishment to God. And if we really want to change things, there are better ways than derailing trains and slashing someone with a sword"

"I keep reading your blogs!"

2011-08-12T07:02:00.000-07:00

For the second time I hear within one week I hear from a friend "I keep reading your blogs Badhri", and I go blank, wondering "Did I even write a post?" The question should have been written all over my face. So they go on to provide highlight of my blog post. Apparently they show more interest in my blog than I do. I keep promising them to write more. I hope in its own self-referential manner, this does some justice! :)

The India Story summarized!

2011-08-10T10:21:00.000-07:00

I have my LPG at subsidized rate, while my servant maid pays more for the same since she takes a private connection. Solving her problem is tricky since she doesn't have a proper photo ID or a residence proof! She pays more for being poor, ignorant and migrant.

"Nothing gets done in a goverment office without a bribe"

2011-07-06T04:45:00.000-07:00

When I think about government offices, what comes to my mind is an old building painted yellow or pale green with corners stained by chewed paan, unmarked corridors and doors that confuse one to the point of giving up, a lingering "What is the procedure?" question hanging over head that lead us right at the feet of blood-sucking middlemen who get the job done at a non-negotiable and usurious charges and a job that never gets done without bribe. In short, corruption and painfully long waiting time characterizes my perception of any government office that common man deals. No exceptions..

Or so I thought till today. Last Monday, I had to go to the Regional Transport Office at Krishnarajapuram, Bangalore to get what is called a "B-Extract". In short, it can be considered as a "duplicate" of the Registration Certificate. You can't show it as an RC to the traffic policeman when he leans over your window and asks in a stylish accent, "License and Registration please". But it sure can be used by your bank as a proof that it has provided loan towards the purchase of your car.

When I went to the RTO, a familiar scene greeted me. Pale green building. Middlemen chewing pan sizing you up as you approach the building. Even as I approached the building, one guy approached and within no time made me cough up my purpose at the RTO. He said, "Oh B-extract? It won't be available today. I will take a couple of days! But if you want to get it today, I can arrange it for you.". I politely declined the offer and proceeded inside the RTO. But as I went over to an unmarked counter, I couldn't help but wonder if just closed the only possible way to the B-extract that I am after. But the guy behind the counter, directed me to another guy who I should contact. That guy asked me to write a request letter and give it to another guy who looked like an officer. The "officer" held out his hand for the letter, but didn't even care to look at me. When I handed the letter, he considered it, wrote "B-extract. Rs. 10" and gave it back to me and told "Cash counter. Ground floor. Pay Rs. 10/- and register with that lady in yellow colour saree over there" and held out his hand for the next letter from the guy standing behind me. This is the tricky part. When a guy sitting behind the counter starts taking of money, he won't say "Actual charge Rs. 10, Bribe Rs. 50, totals to 60. Pay Rs.10 at the cash counter and give the 50 to the peon standing over there". Instead, there would be subtle gestures and I have to be smart enough put together the pieces and solve the puzzle. Or so I have heard from those who have got things done. But I couldn't see anything here.

I started picturing in my mind, going to the cash counter, holding out a 10 rupee note and this letter. I was certain that he would put a pissed off expression and hand the letter back saying "Come back 10 days later, the printer isn't working. So I can't give the receipt for this TEN rupees you have paid". With visible hesitation I approached the cash counter and held out the letter and the ten rupees and braced for the response I didn't want to hear. He printed out the receipt and handed it throwing a weird look at me in the eye. I didn't know if I am supposed to read something from his looks or not. But I just collected the receipt and walked to the "lady in the yellow saree".

She took my letter and reluctantly entered my car number and "B-extract" in a bulky register and said "Please come back on Wednesday after 4:00 PM" and held her hand out for the next letter to the guy standing next to me. No gestures here too! I asked "Can't I have it today?" trying to keep her attention with me. But she said. "It will take two days. Come back on Wednesday and just tell us your car number and we will give you the B-extract." She looked away and yelled "Next!"

I turned and walked back confused. Did miss any gesture suggesting "Pay extra and we can arrange the document right away"? May be they would hold the document to ransom when I come back on Wednesday. But when I went back today (Wednesday), she asked for the number and within minutes a clerk walked up to me shoved the B-extract into my hands and disappeared before I could even register his face. The document was on a poor quality paper and printed poorly. But what the hell! I pay ten rupees and walked away with what I wanted!

I must say, I have a new respect for at least this RTO in KR puram. I do realize that there is some falsehood in our perception that "All government offices are corrupt" and "Nothing gets done in a government office if you don't pay under the table". I write this post as a token of appreciation and expression of my thankfulness to the "officer" who didn't care, the "guy who gave me a weird look" behind the cash counter, the "lady in yellow saree" (today she was wearing rose, but...) and the "clerk" whose face I couldn't register for a job done without expecting a bribe.

Some deep thought here!

2011-06-15T21:56:00.001-07:00

Among a lot of addictive non-sense in Facebook, sometimes there surfaces a few things that are deep and worth the time giving a thought. I came across one such message in philosophy! Don't know who hold the patent for this, but thanks Bhaskar-garu for sharing! :)

There’s usually a little truth behind “Just Kidding”,
some knowledge behind “I Don’t Know”,
an emotion behind “I Don’t Care”,
and pain behind “It’s OK”.

Is education all about innovating gibberish to remember things?

2011-05-04T11:19:00.000-07:00

I visited a local NGO run school during a corporate CSR activity. The NGO was well run as the school they have set up offers not only the mainstream education, but also the vocational stream. I "co-facilitated" a session on "How to ace an interview". It was gratifying as the presentation was at the right time, when students graduated and got ready for the interview.

We had a free interaction session with the school kids before closing the day when one kid asked "How do we make studying simple?". I jumped at the possibility of conducting a science demo. Before I realized, a colleague said "You should imagine what you study! it makes studying easier". He gave an example. He said, "By remembering a simple phrase, "MaGoMahendra", I used to be able to answer any kind of questions, be it fill-up, multiple-choice etc. What does this gibberish mean? "Ma" stands for Mahanadi, "Go" stands for Godavari and Mahendra is the mountain range that stands between the two rivers! Voila!

I thought "Where is the imagination part in this? Look at what we teach them? Is education all about innovating gibberish to remember things?" But the students looked amused. He sensed the attention he got and started off on a continuous rambling that lasted about 30 seconds. Nobody could figure out what he was saying. After a moment's pause and suggestive smile he said, "It is the phrase I coined to remember the entire periodic table". I heart sank. But the shock was yet to come. To my utter disbelief, the teacher started to clap loudly and the rest of the gathering joined! Now I feel, a science demo will either sell big, or it will fall flat!

FAQ on Anna Hazare (forwarded mail)

2011-04-08T01:37:00.001-07:00

1. Who is Anna Hazare?

An ex-army man. Fought 1965 Indo-Pak War

2. What's so special about him?

He built a village Ralegaon Siddhi in Ahamad Nagar district, Maharashtra

3. So what?

This village is a self-sustained model village. Energy is produced in the village itself from solar power, biofuel and wind mills.

In 1975, it used to be a poverty clad village. Now it is one of the richest village in India. It has become a model for self-sustained, eco-friendly & harmonic village.

4. Ok,...?

This guy, Anna Hazare was awarded Padma Bhushan and is a known figure for his social activities.

5. Really, what is he fighting for?

He is supporting a cause, the amendment of a law to curb corruption in India.

6. How that can be possible?

He is advocating for a Bil, The Lok Pal Bill (The Citizen Ombudsman Bill), that will form an autonomous authority who will make politicians (ministers), beurocrats (IAS/IPS) accountable for their deeds.

8. It's an entirely new thing right..?

In 1972, the bill was proposed by then Law minister Mr. Shanti Bhushan. Since then it has been neglected by the politicians and some are trying to change the bill to suit thier theft (corruption).

7. Oh.. He is going on a hunger strike for that whole thing of passing a Bill ! How can that be possible in such a short span of time?

The first thing he is asking for is: the government should come forward and announce that the bill is going to be passed.

Next, they make a joint committee to DRAFT the LOK PAL BILL. 50% goverment participation and 50% public participation. Because you cant trust the government entirely for making such a bill which does not suit them.

8. Fine, What will happen when this bill is passed?

A LokPal will be appointed at the centre. He will have an autonomous charge, say like the Election Commission of India. In each and every state, Lokayukta will be appointed. The job is to bring all alleged party to trial in case of corruptions within 1 year. Within 2 years, the guilty will be punished. Not like, Bofors scam or Bhopal Gas Tragedy case, that has been going for last 25 years without any result.

9. Is he alone? Whoelse is there in the fight with Anna Hazare?

Baba Ramdev, Ex. IPS Kiran Bedi, Social Activist Swami Agnivesh, RTI activist Arvind Kejriwal and many more.

Prominent personalities like Aamir Khan is supporting his cause.

10. Ok, got it. What can I do?

At least we can spread the message. How?

Putting status message, links, video, changing profile pics.

For a departed friend

2011-04-07T02:08:00.000-07:00

It has been exactly a month now since this happened for the first time in my life. A former colleague and a beloved friend of mine who had been a bundle of energy and enthusiasm in almost everything she did was silenced forever by meningitis.

I was told, she had prolonged fever and hence applied for some time off work. Following persistent fever, she had seizure that never ceased and after fighting the disease for the whole of February and for a week in March, finally lost the battle.

I never traveled to Hyderabad to visit her. I didn't do so because, I honestly thought (until one week before her death) that it was a matter of time before she recovered. But she didn't. I didn't attend her funeral because, I had to admit it... I wasn't brave enough. But I don't regret it either. I remember her smiling face and explosive laugh rather than silenced body.

But I do regret one thing, days before she was hospitalized (and when she was still well), she came up on chat and complained that I never called. I had to run then, so I promised her to call and left my number. I wish I had called her. But I didn't and now I can't.

Apart from being a good friend, she is one of the very few people who took active interest in my efforts in the social sector and was the only person who taught English to the kids whom I taught Physics. I suppose one thing I can do in her memory is to restart this effort. I will.

I have come to realize a few things, albeit the hard way from her departure. I had listed this to a friend earlier which I think is worth sharing here too.

Life is a gift and we are all very very lucky to have one especially because it can be snatched away brutally in a matter of minutes.
A healthy life is even more a precious gift. We better live it more responsibly (as per ones' own definition)
And Friends. I am sure all of us have friends who are as sweet as her they can't be taken for granted (she wasn't a granted for us). And they are priceless gifts. We meet them by pure stroke of luck and they end up playing such a positive, sometimes decisive role in our lives. We better treat them well. Keep in touch. Before it turns out to be too late.
It isn't just friends. Anyone (relatives, neighbours) whose departure may affect us as bad as her departure.

Lest we forget...

2011-03-28T19:33:00.000-07:00

World cup is on (and is almost over). Everyone, everywhere is discussing how India should have played, did play, should play and would play. Its a great atmosphere since we seem to have reasons to think beyond the plethora of scams in India. Great.

But let us also remember that just a few months ago when we bit the dust in the Commonwealth hockey finals, we were talking about how India's sports scenario is over run by different versions of cricket leaving no room for not just Hockey but other sports.

Lest we forget the unsung heroines and heroes, like Akunji, Preeja Sreedharan, Kavita Raut, Manjeet and Mandeep Kaur, Sini Jose (Track and field), Jayanta Talukdar, Rahul Banerjee and Mangal Singh Champiya (Archery)

Best of luck India in the ICC World Cup

A few observations about Mani Ratnam's movies

2011-02-21T06:54:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, I was watching Mani Ratnam's "Guru" after so many times, that I was mostly sleep-walking through it. But at one sequence, I observed something that is probably a less observed uniqueness to his movies.

In this sequence, a bunch of officers visit the paralyzed Guru in the hospital to serve a supreme court summon for the irregularities in his company. That actor who played that role impressed with a silent, sharp and subtle show of confidence and attitude which made the scene more lively than otherwise. Thinking about it, I find that this has been one of the silent differentiators of Mani's movies from others. These actors usually don't have the underlying "I don't play an important role in this movie" attitude, but rather stand up and make their acting be accounted for.

The lady doctor in "Alaipayuthe" who leads Madhavan from the hospital's reception to the ICU, the CBI officer who raids Priety's home after the foiled republic day bombing and Manisha's "brothers" in Dil Se are other examples for this.

Another observation (by someone else) is that all the amazing locations that we get to see in his movies ("pachai nirame" song, any random scene in "Roja") are shot in India. All of them! None outside the country. I thought about it myself, and put this point to my friend who is much more of a movie critic than myself. Both of couldn't place one single scene that we can say "that was shot outside India!". It is quite amazing! But can you think of any?

Of TV, imperialism and live music

2011-01-03T22:35:00.000-08:00

I have spent a lot of new year eves that was very insignificant to me. Especially the ones after 2008. Nothing special happened apart from the usual "Happy New Year" mails. This time though it was different. We bought quite a few stuff and those that would be put to some use. A spacious shoe rack, an economical (in terms of price as well as space it occupies) TV stand and most of all a 32-inch LG LED TV! Though this is the first LED TV I bought (for that matter the first TV I have bought), there was a feeling of deja vu! I realized that a new TV at home now brings about the same excitement to me now as it did when I was a kid. I guess, the only difference is, now it take a LED TV while then a Onida TV without remote control did the trick!

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My brother visited me for the new year and we chatted like crazy meandering from one topic to the other. The usual guy talk. All relevant to the world and nothing that is relevant to home. But during the discussion on colonialist and imperialist past, we discovered how British imperial ruler, while being brutal, were better than the other imperialists like say, Nazi Germany or, the Spanish or the Portuguese. My brother highlighted that Gandhi's commendable strategy of non-violence, while deserves all the credit given today, worked partly because it was used against the British whose governance and judicial system were based on a more civil and democratic principles. I recalled, on the other hand, how the present day Brazil, Columbia and parts of Africa like Ivory coasts, all colonies of imperialists other than British have lost their traditional identities, for example, how they have started speaking Spanish or Portuguese as their language. On the contrary, if we take an erstwhile British Colony like India or South Africa, irrespective of how brutal the regime was, the cultural identity largely remains intact. All things considered though, there is no denying the fact that slavery and imperialism were unfortunate part of world history.

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Today was like any other day of work until as recently as noon. All of a sudden, we heard the sweet music of guitar and the familiar "Give me some sun shine, give me some rain..." from 3-idiots. All of a sudden, I saw heads popping up from the cubicles (and remembered "Angrez"). It was an invite from the event managers for the upcoming new year party. For five minutes, my heart soared with excitement as the music filled up the bay. Damn, it is awesome to hear some live music during a serious day of work!

How I let my first friend slip away...

2010-11-17T21:52:00.000-08:00

"NS" was my first friend. I don't mean the "was" to mean that he isn't my friend now, but because I have lost track of him. My parents say he became your friend from when I was just months old. They said he used to come to our home as a kid to watch TV (the only one of the two in that locality then) but kept watching me play as an infant. It amazes me but doesn't surprise me at all as ever since I gained control of my senses, there was NS, his home right in our street.

Almost everything about him was curious. He is a Jain and remains the only Jain I know in first person till date. I have gone to temples with him and remember seeing him wear the "vibuthi". He had a red coloured bible at home that he got from his Christian school due to which I knew of the existence of bible. For a long time, I have seen a picture of a Jain Tirtankara on top of a tall pedestal with with all sorts of animals sitting on a spiral ramp that leads up to the pedestal. And for years, I had thought that it was Buddha. :)

He was creative! He once showed me a picture of Mickey Mouse dressed in a red wizard's robe. That was the first time I believed that every day people that I meet can draw something beyond match-stick figures with just pencil, crayons and papers. A couple of years or so later, I myself had a small collection of Mickey, Donald and Goofy, and then veered off to mythological characters like Hanuman, Rama, Shiva and Krishna. The best I did was a picture of Sita garlanding Rama during Swayamvaram, that I reproduced from "RamaKrishna Vijayam" a spiritual magazine that my parents had subscribed to then!

His creativity didn't stop with just drawing. He was a bit of a science geek too! In his early teens (or may be a bit earlier) he had amused me by making a car chassis using a couple of batteries , motor, a few wheels pulled out from god-knows-whose-toys!

But he was not all geeky all the time. We had a lot of fun flying kites, catching fish from streams flowing on the road after monsoon, playing games involving good guys, bad guys and fights involving all the Tamil movies that we saw.

After close to 20 years, I only increasingly miss those days. I was jogging this morning when for no reason all these memories came up and I felt a sudden rush of stupidity at how I have let such a friend who has influenced so much of my first memorable experiences slip away. Facebook has come to the rescue in making up for the mistake. I have found him in seconds on search and have sent a friend request. Keeping my fingers crossed!

Highlighting Accountability Initiative

2010-11-04T03:30:00.000-07:00

I have been watching the social sector for quite sometime now and that includes the policy space. A while ago, I chanced upon Accountability Initiative (AI) and I find myself thoroughly impressed by the work they are doing. So impressive is their work that it actually go me to restart blogging after eons! :). But of course I did post about it briefly it in ThinkChange India

I am usually shy of talking about women in entrepreneurship in itself as an achievement as it makes me feel that the very statement lends support to the notion that men are better entrepreneurs at women. But I must confess that the first thing that made me stop and notice AI is that it is all women at the helm. Somehow. I have a psychologically driven belief that organizations founded and led by women are honest and purposeful than otherwise!

The second thing that interested me was the fact that 3 out of 5 of these women have a common background of education in London School of Economics, which probably means that they have trashed some plum job offers, came to India and focused on development.

AI is primarily interested in finding ways to institutionalize transparency and accountability in all government programs. Their flagship initiative is called PAISA (Planning, Allocations and Expenditures, Institutions: Studies in Accountability) which works towards developing tools to track fund flows right from the top all the way till the grassroots level to understand where and how implementation deviates from the intention. This is accompanied by a parallel capacity building initiative to empower stakeholders in education (like teachers, principals, parents, students). They have visited a village (called Sehore) and conducted awareness-drive of sorts on their entitlements and responsibilities under SSA by means of comics-like posters etc, and documented the lessons they have learnt.

To kick-off PAISA they have done an extensive expenditure track by means of sample surveys on SSA across the country. Their finding paints a very breathtakingly grim picture of planning, implementation, administration.

The PAISA exercise tells me that even if we assume no corruption, the current trend of planning, implementation of fund allocation is toothless and ineffective. The exercise highlights that decision making protocols that estimate the funds needed are short-circuited, definitions of roles and responsibilities at different hierarchies of administrations are confusing, funds often reach the school too late to be of any use and frequently teachers and grass-root level stakeholders often don't even understand the purpose of the fund that arrives at school. Sometimes stakeholders don't even know that they are stakeholders. Worse of them all, there is no formal grievance redressing system and the Parent Teachers Associations that are supposed to raise concerns back to the government don't meet.

What I understand from this is, the very fact that AI is going through with this exercise offers some hope but the is a long, long, long, long way to go before we see the light at the end of the tunnel,and the only way is to help organizations like AI build informed citizenry that raises as much hell as the trade unions do when they don't get Diwali bonus.

Going forward they plan to expand and replicate their efforts out of SSA into other government programs (like NREGA etc). Accountability Initiative's work appears to me to be extensive, purposeful, addresses an urgent need and reaches out to all stakeholders (government, schools, parents). Simultaneously, their presentation is simple, clear and transparent (which it better be :) )

Now the question is, do people like you and I have it in us to take time, stop and take a look at what they are doing and help them?

Child abuse Awarenes

2010-09-16T02:23:00.000-07:00

Humans err, animals pay

2010-08-25T02:52:00.000-07:00

These are a few facts that I came across recently.

A guy trespassed into the Safari range in Hyderabad zoo and not surprisingly gets mauled by the wild cats. Following that the zoo authorities erected cages within the safari range and put the lions and tigers behind bars!
Florida is a known native habitat of crocodiles. A resident of Florida accepts a challenge from his friends to swim across a lake and come back. Again not surprisingly, he finds a fully grown crocodile! The reptile rips his arm apart and lets the rest of him go back to shore. The guy is taken to the hospital. The next day, the crocodile is hunted down. The guy miraculously survives. It is the crocodile that is "euthanized"(check out the usage!)
Spanish bull fight is infamous. Everyone knows how it works. This one time, a strong but terrified bull, jumps and easily clears the fence and lands straight into the stands (Take a look at the breath-taking scene!) The bull is captured, order is restored eventually. Later the bull is taken to an isolated place and killed. The place the bull met with its end was all that was different.

Humans err, animals pay!

Back to the glorious past!

2010-08-24T00:59:00.000-07:00

Time and again, I come across people who, with a sense of nostalgia, wish to re-establish a glorious era from the past.

"How great it would be to have politicians with integrity as much as Gandhi, Nehru and Patel had".
"People used to be pious and disciplined the days for saint Ramanuja and Nigamanta desikar. Nowadays even in the mutts, crooks roam about! When will our culture regain its past glory?"

When encountered with this situation, my mind goes into a spin. Has the past been better than the present? Does the world degenerate in terms of morality and discipline as it journeys into the future?

Here is what I know from my observation. When I look at my family and that of my friends, I find that "grand parents" have definitely been more meticulous in doing things. The extent of meticulousness is possibly lesser in the "parents" generation. But, when it comes to comparing "parents" with "off-springs"it is not a question of extent, but a question of "intent". It seems people of my generation often ask their parents "Why do I have to be meticulous?". This is a general observation of course, and exceptions sure are present. But again, does it mean that we degenerate in discipline? Or does the very definition of discipline and "meticulousness" go through a change?

In the context of a community as large as a state or a country though, history seems to highlight a potential risk at trying to re-establish lost glory of the past. Hitler, quoted many times as an example of "what not to do", again finds himself quoted. He wanted to build a Third Reich aiming to re-establish the lost glory of medieval Holy Roman Empire (962–1806) and to the modern German Empire (1871–1918). He ended killing Jews in millions and himself.

Khmer Rouge to have got its ideology of "social engineering" by means of creating a self-sufficient agrarian economy is stated to have based its ideology the glorious past of the Khmer civilization which built the great temple of Angkor Wat (see BBC documentary on Angkor Wat). The large water bodies surrounding the temple was believed to be for irrigating a large rice growing project that was the lynch pin of the glory of civilization. Pol Pot forced people to hard labour in rice fields believing that it is the way back to the Khmer civilization. Like Hitler, he too ended up only killing thousands of people without anything good to show. Later elaborate surveys by water engineers revealed that water bodies were not even used for the rice project to begin with! So much for a misconception!

Within India itself various self-appointed guardians of culture further corroborate the lessons we can learn from Hitler and Pol Pot.

I guess the lesson to be learnt is, if there is a natural degeneration of human morality, discipline and culture, trying to regain the "glorious past" only seems to degenerate it faster!

Guha on Hindu civilization

2010-08-13T02:24:00.001-07:00

I have like Ramachandra Guha for his uncomplicated and straight talking eloquence. And he continues to impress me! Here is a quote from his two part interview to Rediff. You can read Part1 and Part 2 of the interveiw here. But to me the highlight of the interview was the following piece.

"In the course of debate, some Congress leaders ridicule lots of characteristics of India.

That's not true. The danger in your comment -- that idea that there was greatness in Indian or Hindu civilisation is like that the Ganga it is immortal, pure and beautiful. Like the Ganga that is polluted from source to sea, Hindu civilisation was polluted. Hindu civilisation practised the most degrading form of social behaviour called untouchability.

Hindu civilisation oppressed its women. In Hindu civilisation there was division of manual labour and mental labour.
The greatness of Gandhi, Nehru and Rabindranath Tagore was that they became critics of their culture. I would rephrase your question and say that as Hindus we were fortunate to have reformers like Gandhi, Ambedkar, Nehru and so on. They pointed to the weaknesses and fault-lines within Hindu culture and civilisation.
By the way, more Hindus vote for the Congress than the BJP so, obviously, they find something attractive in the Congress"

Hyderabad Zoo

2010-07-22T00:05:00.000-07:00

I couldn't recall the last time I went to a zoo, though I could recall that when I went to Anna Zoological Park in Chennai as a kid, I scaled the railings and almost jumped into the territory of a bunch of Zebras.

I have heard rumors about Hyderabad's Nehru Zoo as the largest zoo in the country and we (my wife, myself and a friend of hers) decided to go find out how good it is. We went to the zoo and found out that a safari ride is available at an additional fee of Rs.25/-. So, we thought we would check that out.

As it was located at the far side of the zoo, on the way to the safari ticketing counter, we got to watch a white tiger located right next to a mob of deers, and a herd of elephants all at a very close range. The white tiger was especially a treat to watch. The tiger could get a clear view of the mob of spotted deers and kept swimming in the waters trying to find its way past the wall that protected the deers.

At the ticket counter, we found that the safari is available not just the expense of Rs.25/- but also at about one hour of time in the queue. When we finally got into the armoured van and ventured into the woods past the iron gates, we found that the lions and tigers were kept inside a caged anyway! All that hyped up fantasies about free roaming wild animals like those in the Discovery channel came to a very disappointing end. I later heard that the animals received the treatment because somebody ventured into the safari range and got himself killed! It be sad if it was true. The animals get punished for the carelessness of the dead man and the zoo authorities!

But the Bisons and a lone bear were let roam free in the range and the curious bear with a smiling face kept following the van for quite sometime giving us a enough time to watch at a very close range! Some return-on-investment! The safari lasted about 20 minutes after which we got to see two really big turtles. This is probably the largest I have seen. Apart from that the other residents of the zoos were all the usual suspects. Jaguar, (non-white) Tiger, chimps, orangs and other kinds of monkeys, and a few wild birds.

Hyderabad seems to be able to maintain parks better than other cities I have visited, and this zoo was no exception with plenty of well maintained greenery.

Overall, the zoo is a good day's off, worth the money you spend on entry ticket (Rs. 20/-). But safari can be safely skipped. The one-and-a-half hour saved on it would be well spent on covering the rest of the zoo (We had to skip the reptile section) and enjoying the nature over a cup of coffee.

Who and What India would be?

2010-07-18T20:49:00.000-07:00

Michiko-san, a 60 year old Japanese lady who is an avid traveler and a colleague of mine was telling about her spinster days when she first traveled to UK, then around the world in her quest to learn English by interaction and to explore places. She added "You may think that I must have been rich. But I very much belonged to middle class, but in 1960 Japan's economy was growing and Japanese people felt they can pursue and achieve anything they want"

I thought, now India is in a similar mood. It is growing and its middle-class is ambitious. Only we have more poor people to liberate from poverty, more cities to organize and more institutions to rid of corruption, more people to educate and more laws to enforce.

Just as it happened to Japan, the growth will one day slow down, or worse, come to a halt. And when that happens, even if we have the intention we may not have the excess cash. Whatever we do before then will what determine what and how India would be before we hit the ceiling of growth.

Guha on "Will India become a super power?"

2010-07-17T21:40:00.000-07:00

Inspired by a nationalist feeling which paradoxically peaked during my life in the US and fueled further by the "India Shining" economic growth, I must admit that I, for the first time, fancied the chance that India will one day become a super power.

Time has changed since and I believe now that the chances of India being a super power in the forthcoming decades, given the ground realities in India. But I still nurture the hope that India has its chance in being a super power.

I recently ran into a booklet - as big as pocket diary - from "Outlook" magazine which addressed the question "Will India Become a Superpower" written by the noted historian Ramachandra Guha. I have respected Guha for his objectivity in his various articles in India Together and Outlook. So, I found myself compelled to read it. A few of Guha's observations and his conclusion are very interesting.

In the article he succinctly outlined the mood of the wider world and conventional wisdom about the newly formed Indian Republic. According to Guha's observation, world-watchers of 1950s believed that India would not stay united or democratic because its didn't fit the European model of society united by a common language, common religion and a common enemy. For the same reasons, the fact that India is unique in its status as a union and a democracy (however dysfunctional it is)

I have come across a school of thought, especially among the youth of 1970s that the Nehruvian socialist vision had obstructed India's progress had it been under Patel's more capitalist hands. While Guha doesn't directly address this if-else point, he observes right after independence the private sector stalwarts such as Tata and Birla asked for the state interference.

The Bombay Plan of 1944, endorsed by G.D. Birla and J.R.D. Tata among others, asked both for curbs on foreign investment and for an enhanced role for the state...At the same time, Indian capitalists lacked the capital and knowhow to invest in sectors such as steel, power, roads and ports. They were thus content to focus on the manufacture and distribution of consumer goods, leaving capital goods and infrastructure to the State.

What really lead India pulled away from progress is the government under Mrs. Indira Gandhi in the late 1960s which, citing "political expediency" had failed to liberalize the Indian economy that by then had the right elements such as manufacturing infrastructure, skilled engineering and technical workforce in place.

In his conclusion he quote corrupt and degraded central government, trivialization of media as some of the seven reasons why India will not become a superpower. However, he says India should actually stop trying to be a super power which, in his own words, is a "my penis is larger than yours" way of thinking. Instead he calls for India to judge itself against its own achievements.

"We need to repair , one by one, the institutions that have safeguarded our unity in diversity, and to forge, also one by one, the institutions that can help us meet the fresh challenge of 21st century"

Writer Sujatha & principle of "Management of the Absurd"

2010-06-01T12:46:00.000-07:00

I have been recently reading a lot of Sujatha. For the uninitiated, Sujatha is the pen name of a successful Engineer of yesteryear turned successful writer - novelist, screenwriter in various capacities including screenplay, dialogues for various successful movies including "Roja", "Mudalvan" (Nayak), "Indian" (Hindustani). His other brownie points include being a classmate of APJ Adbul Kalam and supervising the design and production of the now successful Electronic Voting Machine. More details @ Wiki

In his famous collection of essays in Tamil "Katrathum Petrathum" he discussed a book called "Management of the Absurd" by Richard Farson in which Sujatha summarized the paradoxes in leadership that shaped and changed the world. He quoted several examples from the book that made for very interesting reading! For example, the first of Abolitionists - people who voiced equality of African Americans in the US - were non-African Americans; Child-rights activists are almost universally adults; some of the most successful divorce lawyers are happily married!

Sujatha drew parallels in the Indian context. Indian National Congress was instituted by A.O. Hume, a non-Indian. Some of the most ardent pro-Tamil activists had a mother-tongue that is not Tamil.

In fact ironically enough, I think Sujatha himself fits into this paradox if you will. I started reading Sujatha's creations after his death on February 2008. I have known Sujatha before that more for his novels and back-stage involvement in the film industry than for his essays. I have read some of his novels for which he was very famous, including "En iniya iyandira", "Aryabatta" and a few others that didn't find as much mention, like "Niramatra vaanavil", "ilamayil kol" etc. To my surprise, I was disappointed with the lack of quality in all his novels, famous or otherwise. Drifting storyline turns out to be the common denominator in all his creative writings, though the famous ones did have some substance that allowed me to stick with the book till the end.

Ironically, I found his series of essays in "Katrathum Petrathum" as the best of his creations that I read so far. This book truly highlight his unique ability to discuss complex scientific concepts like "uncertainty principle" (yeah.. that wretched concept that we used to memorize in our 11th grade!) in ridiculously simple Tamil, his off the cuff wits, and most of all his well-known versatility in areas as unrelated as creative writing and science.

Trees and garbage

2010-05-15T04:46:00.000-07:00

How much more pusillanimous we humans can get? We buy a piece of land and make a concrete out of every square inch of it. If our neighbours have a tree and it crosses over into our home, we give reasons like "Oh, the leaves of your neem tree adds up to a lot of garbage inside our compound! In addition it may grow bigger and its roots may or may not destroy the flimsy compound wall. So why don't you cut down your neem tree and we can all live in peace?". And then in an unrelated instant we all wonder why summer temperature is consistently beating 30 or 40 year records for that month.

I say, nature has been bloody kind to us. I say just roast our butts off in one go and get it over with. After all we have been asking for it. It is good for the rest of the world. At least all humans will in one burning moment realize that trees add up more to our useless and selfish life than just "garbage"

Azlan Shah cup

2010-05-09T02:23:00.001-07:00

IPL has put T20 cricket in my living room for way too long. The current T20 world cup seems really boring no matter who plays who and close the match goes. Win or loss, I now want to see an Indian Team doing something other than play cricket and the next best thing we are good at is Hockey! I really wish they relayed Azlan Shah Cup Hockey Tournament.

Its my wife!

2010-04-23T21:34:00.000-07:00

Sriramya (my wife) is a package of mysterious talents. She has learnt vocal carnatic music and has classical dancing. This is in part passed down from her parents. But she apparently has an eye for photography too as the picture above shows.

This morning she took bath and was all set to start cooking, when she suddenly dashed out of the kitchen and grabbed my phone as I was playing with it (when I was supposed to work). I thought she was playing my mom and was expecting a glare from her that said "You are supposed to be working now!" But she went straight into the kitchen without meeting my eyes. Not knowing if I should catch a utensil or dodge a knife that flies from kitchen, I pretended to start working keeping one eye at the kitchen. But she came out, and showed me this picture.

At first, I thought it was one of those default pictures that came along with the phone when you purchase it and said "That's good, but why are you showing it to me now?". She tightened her jaws and uttered "I TOOK IT". She lead me down to the kitchen and took a picture of a portion of the newly cleaned kitchen sink! Sure is an awesome piece of work! After all, its my wife :)

Things I hate about IPL

2010-04-09T07:24:00.000-07:00

For a three-and-a-half hour match, there is a one hour of pre-match discussion, interviews of players, bollywood starlets and others who you can't recognize just makes for such a boring experience before the excitement starts
When the ball hit through the air and crosses the boundary line ts not a sixer anymore. It is a bloody "DLF maximum". If it is caught, its not a great catch, its a dumb "Carbon Kamal catch". Come on. These are great moments of cricket. Don't spoil it with such stupid aliases!
Mandira Bedi. I am all for glamor provided there is substance. But what is this lady doing in the studios pretending to be an expert? I mean, I am ok if she is the one who is asking questions. But sitting along Arun Lal, Sidhu and Anjum Chopra discussing cricket seems to me as an insult to the intellect of cricket lovers.
A month full of cricket, no matter how short each match is, takes the excitement out of cricket. After all, the idea behind in coming up with T20 is to reduce the boredom of the traditional one-day or test cricket. Now it appears we have just moved from boredom to overdose.

Expats for India

2010-02-25T02:54:00.000-08:00

I had a chance to meet a number of second generation US-resident Indians over the last year. I am very much amazed by their conviction to make a positive change in the Indian society. I have spent a few years in the US and my life there - which distinctively showed the difference in quality of life between the two worlds - is the primary reason for my interest in social causes in India. So, I could clearly relate to a first generation Indian working from his adopted home, or a returnee (like me) working for India's development.

During my days in the US, I have met a few second generation Indians who either didn't feel strongly for their country of origin or at times were even embarrassed about their Indian identity. A few were involved enough to follow cricket matches and felt strongly about an Indian win or a loss. But given that a majority of the resident Indians themselves don't bother about acting for a social change, and a few even embarrassed to be Indian, there is no fairness in judging the sentiments of NRIs.

But here, I am talking about second generation Indians, who are born in the luxury of a developed nation and really need not have sentimental attachment to a country in which their parents were born and probably spent their first 20 years of life there. One of those I have talked about, has changed career path to a less paying social enterprise from a better paying business enterprise (in the US). The other one went one step ahead and chose to move to India (where there are no immediate relatives) to work on educational development. This is just to mention a few.

Honestly, I don't know how the initiatives of these people will turn out to be on the ground. Some may hit the bulls eye, while some may be totally impractical. But I am really amazed to find how they are inspired so much by the idea of a well developed community, when development is something that they are already born into.

Hats off!

Met an old friend!

2010-01-12T21:03:00.000-08:00

I invited TR Deepa, an old friend from school, her husband and her cute son Shashank home. She had been here in Hyderabad since 2003 and me since 2005, but haven't met up till last saturday. Had food at a nearby restaurant. It was a lot of fun meeting her with her family. Her son is an active young man and am sure is going to attract a lot of girls when he grows up (if he already doesn't! :D). Such a smart looking fellow. But for some reason, I found that he is fond of Mehendi! :)

Had a lot of fun trying to recall what we used to do during school and exchanged knowledge about what Xth-friends are doing currently. Special thanks to Girija, another school-time friend of mine, who sent X-std class pictures. We went over it once again. My wife especially laughed @ how I looked then.

Meeting with old friends sure is a lot of fun. Especially when they have toddlers! Not every thing is so happy though.There is one that I still can't digest. Deepa is still taller than me! :(

The lame Australian advice

2010-01-06T19:09:00.000-08:00

I hear from The Hindu that Australia has advised India not to fuel "hysteria" after India reacted angrily over the murder of a student of Indian origin. They have also thrown some light about how big cities work. Precisely this is what was said (as quoted from The Hindu)

“In big cities around the world we do see acts of violence from time to time; that happens in Melbourne, it happens in Mumbai, it happens in New York, it happens in London,”

I don't want to bore anybody going over the details of how many Indians are dead and for how many days this has been happening. The last thing I expect from a government that has fallen flat in protecting citizens of a foreign soil is advice and that too one as lame as "It happens". I would rather be happy with an official apology and a promise to act quickly and decisively to stop such violence.

The Indian side need to take some lessons too. I remember the time when a British teenager was killed in Goa and our self-loathing mentality was so well exploited by the famously careless Indian private media by putting her mother in the spotlight for such a long time. I would say that the one off death of a foreign national in India can be a better case to be dropped in the "It happens" category and move on for more nationally important stories.

Five point 2009

2010-01-02T06:36:00.001-08:00

A friend of mine had summed up story in 2009 in just five lines! I liked that. So I thought I will draw inspiration (a better word than copying!) out of his work

1. Awesome wedding at Srirangam
2. Relaxing malaysian Honeymoon
3. Boring return to bachelorhood (for practical purposes)
4. Sustained work on education!
5. Bad job with blogging!

Obituary: YSR

2009-09-02T23:42:00.000-07:00

It has been sometime since I have blogged in this site. But now is a good time to restart the discussion OverTea. After about a day's mystery finally we know that CM of Andhra Pradesh YSR has died in the chopper crash.

After he had taken over from Chandrababu Naidu as CM, a visionary credited to have ushered in an IT revolution in Hyderabad, YSR had done well not to root out the best of reforms the former CM brought in.

For example, the Velugu project to eliminate poverty renamed a Society for Elimination of Rural Poverty (SERP) in YSR regime did very well to imrprove the rural poor's quality of life. The same example also points that he seems to have learnt from ostensible mistakes of Naidu too. Often Naidu election debacle after 9 years of rule was attributed to his "one-sided focus on the cities" and ignoring the poor. While the claim is arguable, YSR seems to have maintained the urban-rural development balance well. His own initiatives like Arogyashree (health care) and Indiramma housing programme seems to have been received well by the public.

In my own personal experience during my last 5 years of residence in Hyderabad, I find the municipality of Hyderabad as less corrupt and more proactive than any other municipalities I have found. So, all said and done, as a CM YSR did well, and Andhra Pradesh and the country at large is at a minor loss at his untimely death. May his soul rest in peace and hope his replacement is at least as good as he was.

Before the mottai

2009-08-23T22:16:00.001-07:00

Now this one is before the tonsure!

Her first, my second

2009-08-23T22:11:00.001-07:00

Shradda, my neice her first tonsure today on account nd her first birthday here at Kumbakonam. About two years ago, we came to the same place to do the same thing for shashank! I held the child during the tonsure on both the occasions. So its the second time for me! :)

HOUSE!

2009-08-22T18:17:00.000-07:00

Its a house. At least tree to be. Now this is where my nephew's first birthday is going to be celebrated! Now its a function hall!

Kumbakonam!

2009-08-22T17:46:00.001-07:00

Back to the place it all began! Kumbakonam! Its my native!

Life of late...

2009-08-20T07:25:00.000-07:00

I have been blogging for ThinkChange-India for a while now and my role in NGOpost has changed from that of contributing to more of monitoring and quality maintainance. I don't know if I blame only this, but for some reason or the other, I have been forced to betray my own personal blogs.

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One of the most worrying developments after wedding is developments in my stomach! No am not pregrent! :0) But I have put on about 5Kg, thanks to all the relatives who invited home the new couple for a feast. Now, I feel like a model - constantly uncomfortable and worried about body shape that is. I have started biking, doing surya namaskaram and finding opportunities to walk! Lets see if they make any difference at all!

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The last week of July was harrwing to say the least. My passport was up for renewal and I had an official visit to the US scheduled during the last week. I caught the potential problem early enough and applied for the renewal through the "expedited" scheme (locally called "tatkal"). But the passport despatch was lethargic. There was a small clarification required for which the intimation was typed 3 days after the supposed despatch date, posted 2 days later and reached my about a week within my travel date. By then I had paid a visit to the passport office twice and sorted out the issue. But that didn't help. There was unexplained delay, with no tell-tale signs of a need to for bribe. Finally I got the passport - the unknown reason for delay resovled for unknown reason - exactly a day after my scheduled date of travel. - Jai hind!

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Six-months after wedding, life is slowly settling down with Sriramya (my wife) finally getting an internal transfer to Hyderabad. But the current rented apartment - though judged by my friends as better than normal for the rent I pay - sucks big time! Today's rain brought a lot of water seeping right through the walls in the hallway. If it seeps through the wall within my apartment, it is well worth considering a resettlement, no matter how horrible the transition!

Together forever!

2009-07-31T05:43:00.001-07:00

Finally one snap wher both of up look normal

Sleep july 25!

2009-07-25T05:43:00.001-07:00

The sight of sun setting is one of the few things that make travel by train memorable!

Places in TN and its specialities

2009-07-24T21:08:00.000-07:00

A few months ago, I have been travelling from Karaikkudi, a place in Tamil Nadu and my wife's native to Rameshwaram, via quite a few places that were familiar. Familiar not because I just knew about them, but because they were always associated with something special. So tightly associated that just mentioning the name of the places without following them up with the speicality made it sound incomplete. For example, just saying Kaangeyam, without mentioning "kaalai" (Bull) made me feel as if I am leaving something incomplete. Simiarly, Thiribuvanam "pattu" (silk) and silk brought to my mind the famous Kacheepuram.... then a series of other names and specialities! Then I began to wonder how far can one go with this. So, I sent an email to friends from Tamil Nadu and at the time of writing this blog post, the list is 35 entries long and it is at http://bit.ly/eSx3U. If you are familiar of a place in Tamil Nadu which is traditionally known for a speciality and if this list doesn't have it, go ahead and add a feather to TN's cap. But no cynical or comical entries please! I love them too, but lets create another list for that! :)

Gulmohar at Karaikudi

2009-07-18T06:10:00.001-07:00

This Gulmohar now fully blossomed, is planted by Sriramya in front of her home when she was a child. Five of her friends decided about planting a tree and now each of their homes has such a bright tree. :)

Fool or trouble seeker?

2009-07-04T06:12:00.001-07:00

This evening I leave chennai with profound distaste. A few times now I have been ripped off by the tricky auto walas, in chennai or elsewhere. This time i thought of standing my ground. But that gave me a day full of bad mood, in addition to the official branding that I am short tempered. Now I wonder if feeling foolish gives less of a distaste than being called an immature trouble-seeker by my own loved ones. Either way I have decided to stay away from those criminals who take the city hostage with their three wheelers even if it means walking a couple of kilometers or missing a train. But I wonder how long that would last or if that would remove the tag I have on my forehead. But if thats the only way to keep myself at peace amidst these goons, I suppose its worth the try.

Passport to passport

2009-07-02T23:40:00.001-07:00

Standing at the queue at passport office for reissue of passport I realize how the gandhi capped freedom fighters would have felt during dhandi march. Waiting in line to face the inevitable blow. The checking officers here are no less arrogant than the british imperial police. :)

Deemed universities demystified!

2009-07-02T06:30:00.001-07:00

Have you ever wondered how so many deemed universities have mushroomed, that too out of colleges with no reputation? The latest copy of Frontline provides answers and outlines how it all started with a politically motivated move by Murli Manohar Joshi that soon opened a can of worms.

Happy Birthday, young man!

2009-06-28T19:43:00.000-07:00

Today is unique in the history of our family tree, at least the extent to which I know and consider. My grandfather (Shri S. Jcelebrates his 91st birthday. The first person that I know in my family to do so!

Like anyone belonging to the pre-independence era, he has been through a lot of hardships in stabilizing his family and bringing up his children. An immensely spiritual man, he has always believed that an unknown force always leads one to his or her destiny. That must have made him fearless, for I have never seen him afraid. He is a very rigid believer in consistency and regularity, not just in education, but also in games and fitness. When I was a child, ye used to say

"You have to play one hour everyday! Poet Bharati told 'Malai muzhudum vilaiyattu' (Play though the evening""

But he would allow the evening play no longer than that! He would call me back exactly after an hour, make my chant the evening prayers and get me started off with my homework. I honestly wish he had spent a bit more time staying with us (then he was at Trichy and would visit us only occasionally.) so I could have used a bit more of his regularity! :)

I have also noticed that he has been very balanced in digesting joy and sadness. Be it the death of his beloved and eldest son (who I hear was exceptional in college, before he died suddenly of unknown reasons) or the more recent convocation of my cousin Priya (who is the first Ph.D of our family and an early pupil of my grandfather), he always attributed it to God's will and took the feeling into heart in. Which explains why the young man is so young.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY Thatha! :)

Photo

2009-06-26T20:40:00.001-07:00

The picture to the right is my brother as is the one on top left. To the left is his son shashank! I know! You could tell! :)

Shradda

2009-06-26T03:59:00.001-07:00

My niece can barely walk. But she sure wants to ensure that she knows the nooks and corners. Quite an explorer!

Reaction to new education bill

2009-06-26T03:56:00.001-07:00

Optional 10th exam is a bad move. The schools will internally assess poorly performing students allowing them to pass on to ensure better pass percentage.

Comment on WSJ's observation on NREGA

2009-06-22T22:57:00.000-07:00

From ThinkChange India I read an article on Wall Street Journal about India's poverty and specifically about NREGA. I commented in TC-I about the article which I am reproducing here.

Two things about WSJ's observation on NREGA

1. About moving beyond NREGA in the next 5 years (which helps survive but not escape poverty).

The author is correct about making NREGA less prominent and making training, infrastructure investment, more prominent. But given the imperfections in implementing NREGA (corruption), it would be too soon to expect the transition in the next 5 years. I suspect, it would leave a void that would be occupied by more corruption. "But is the government thinking about skill enhancement?" is the real question to face!

2. Transparency.

Well, there are concrete measures for transparency that are already delivering. For example, the wage payment are increasingly made as bank transfers to the worker rather than cash. Another example is making NREGA, RTI compliant. This empowers independent monitors like RTI activists. The Hindu Publication has followed NREGA very well. Links

The Hindu Magazine:

The Frontline survey in Jan 2009 edition: Go to "cover story" to the left of the page

My servent maid

2009-06-08T21:37:00.000-07:00

My servent maid had an attack of fits....again! This is the second time in two months. She had her first attack in her life early last month for the first time. She hasn't showed up for work for more than a week now.

She has two kids of her own, a boy and a girl both in their primary school. She takes care of her sister's daughter too. She would have been in her secondary had she gone to school. Every time my servent couldn't show up for work, she send this girl as a replacement. I usually refuse to discourage child labour in my own small way. My servent maid talks a lot about her three kids, but never does about her husband. I don't know if he is even there. I wonder who takes care of the kids. For my part, to avoid a double whammy for her family, I pay her the full month's wage.

Drive safe lovable morons

2009-06-02T21:27:00.001-07:00

I hate the hyderabadi driving culture. Especially the bikers who inspirationally 'pave their own way'. But now I owe them some benign words. Being a bus commuter, I frequently find myself chasing a bus only to miss it by a whisker. But almost always I find a biker stopping to give me a lift till the next bus stop. All the love i have for chennai considered, I must say hyd seems to beat my home town in this one. But you should drive more carefully you lovable morons!

Homemade sweet homemade

2009-06-01T21:36:00.001-07:00

I would not buy a mango that looks like this from market. How would i know such an ugly mango can turn out to be so luscious? Combine that with the knowledge that it came from your own backyard as a result of absolutely no effort and it just gets sweeter! Really! What did i do two deserve this? Sow.. and reap. Thats all? :)

Yesteryear hits remind me of my past!

2009-05-31T00:48:00.000-07:00

When I listen to yester-year hits, I inevitably remember all the incidents around when I was listening to them when the where still latest-hits.

I listen to Rang De Basanti, I still remember myself sleeping early in the only dark room of the apartment in Begumpet when I just joined my first job, when Aish played the song before going off for his CAT classes. I listen to Jeans, I remember the Engineering Drawing assignment during my first year of Engineering Bachelors' degree, and the graphite ridden chart that was supposed to have a need diagram of a cylinder!

Those good old days! Does that happen to you, or is it just me?

My verdict on the election

2009-05-26T20:21:00.000-07:00

Now that the dust around the elections are beginning to settle after a surprise result at virtually every corner of the country, what has really come of it? A UPA government without the "support" of the nagging communist party. So, how is it going to be this time around? Better or worse?

CPI's absence should allow the UPA to be more decisive without getting into a big and often useless argument with an ally. But that may also make a big citizen activism only possible force to stop them from doing something that the society considers detrimental, and I believe the current UPA governemt has as lot of potential for that considering that there are a handful of incompetant and not-so-society-minded individuals and leadership qualities, like Azhagiri and A.Raja looking at cabinet ministries, that too ministries like IT - a sector that is almost unique selling point for India.

While I am glad that the openly non-secular BJP especially led by Advani is decisively routed out, I am simultaneously cautious about over-estimating the competence of current government. As almost in anything that has to do with India. We have to wait know what really is going to happen

Visits to temples of Kumbakonam and Thiruvelliaynkudi

2009-05-06T19:27:00.000-07:00

I visited Oppiliyappan temple along with family and wife to pay respects to our ancestral god for a great wedding without any untoward incident. A tight travel schedule from hyderabad through chennai to Kumbakonam and then all the way back within a span of three days was made a little convenient by a well maintained air-conditioned Qualis.

I have been to Oppiliyappan temple half-a-dozen times earlier. But the visit this time was refreshing since the temple was recently renovated and the murals repainted. The temple elephant has grown up into a dignified adult from a playful adolescent he was during my earlier visit.

A short note about Oppiliyappan. It is one among the 108 vishnu's divyadesams (temples sung by at least one of the 12 aazhvars). This particular temple was sung by nam aazhvar, poigai aazhvar, paei azhwar and tirumangai azhvar. Oppiliyappan is considered Tirupathi Lord venkateshwara's elder brother and is also called Lord Srinivasa.

He marries rishi Markandeya's daughter, a reincarnation of Bhoodevi (mother earth) in this place when she was still young. So young and naive that she cooks for Lord Oppiliyappan without salt So, all the prasadams distributed to devotees here have no salt till date.

In the sanctum sanctorum he appears in a standing with rishi Markandeya seated to his left and Bhoodevi seated to his right. In one of his right hands palm is written "maam ekam saranam vraja"

After the visit, my mom suggested that we go to a nearby place called Tiruvelliayngudi, about 10 km from Kumbakonam. It was a very small village with serpentine, narrow yet relatively well-laid roads. It was as typical a village as any other in Tamil Nadu, with lush green paddy fields with fresh water gushing out of electric pumps, and with tall coconut trees bordering them. I had visited the temple in the evenings, contrary to the burning afternoon, have enjoyed the village atmosphere more fully.

The temple was ancient, and evidently very rarely visited by devotees travelling from outside the village. But was not yet in a dilapidated condition. But for a temple that is forgotten to the outside world in these modern times, it has a lot of historical and mythological significance.

The stories has that Lord Vishnu married Maragadhavalli Thayar in this place and transferred his conch and chakra to Garuda for doing so. As a result, in this place it is the Garuda who has the conch and chakra instead of the Vishnu - the only such temple in the whole world. The Lord appears in the sanctum sanctorum as blue-skinned Lord Rama, in a sleeping posture. There are only three temples among the 108 divya desams in which Lord Rama appears in a sleeping posture in different colours. The other ones are in other lesser known village temple called Tiruppullani (Dharba sayana Ramar) and in in Aadanur (Valvil Ramar).

The temple tree is Sevvazhai, a plantain that yield red coloured banana (what is English for that?). The outer wall of the sanctum sanctorum is lined with this tree and it is said that any tree growing in this particular place doesn't survive when transferred else where.

This temple is also considered a very good place of worship for those with any sort of eye-related ailment. As the story goes, Shukran was once blind and after offering prayers unsuccessfully in various temples, he gained his eye sight only after offering prayers here. For this reason, this is a shukra stalam. Further, the sanctum sanctorum has a lamp that is kept lit for 24 hours a day. This temple becomes one among the 108 divya desam because it was sung by Tirumangai Aazhvar.

I recommend this temple not only for the devout, but also for the the mythological inclined.

Going green should be easier to cause desirable impact!

2009-04-24T05:38:00.000-07:00

I have come across enthusiastic appeals to contribute towards saving the environment by modifying the way I go about my everyday life. For example, I am piling up dozens of used batteries simply because I am yet to find an environmentally safe way of disposing them, even after actively searching for a recycling plant or safe-disposal facility close to Hyderabad. The same predicament applies to anything that can be connected to electricity from cellphone chargers to television sets. More importantly,

I find it very difficult to avoid using plastics. I buy juice in a tetrapack as against a plastic bottle, only to find that even they use plastic linings to make it waterproof. After little research I come to understand that there is no environmentally safe, affordable water-proofing alternative to plastics available to common man. If such a solution is not available, how is one going to avoid plastics?

Often those who make the transition to the green lifestyle would be forced to spend more on a regular basis!(either as cash or as time trying to figure out a green work-around). As a result, such a community will always be small. Worse, there will always be someone who says, "You know. Its too tough to be green" and will get back to the bad-old ways! (Consider the poor. They generate a lot of waste, but don't participate in waste management in proportion. But is it their fault?)

On the other hand even when solutions are available for an environmental problem, common man is not effectively sensitized. Consider the case of disposing kitchen wastes. Composting them to manure and using them as manure for plants is a tried and tested solution. However, the process of composting or the fact that such small compost bins are available in the market are known only the to environmentally conscious. Good intentions of appeals to be environmental consciousness not withstanding, a tangible impact can be achieved only if proven green alternatives are available and affordable so that common man doesn't really have to subscribe to the green movement to be green

Enroute Rameshwaram...

2009-04-11T02:19:00.001-07:00

The railway line connecting Rameshwaram island to indian mainland. As seen from Paampan bridge. The rough rainy weather made it all adventurous B-). Lord Ram crossed over to lanka after building the now controversial Ram sethu in from Rameshwaram!

Karaikudi - A different cosmos.

2009-04-10T18:52:00.001-07:00

In Karaikudi where i am right now, its appears like a lost world preserved. A different cosmos altogether. As if SPACE has expanded and TIME has slowed down. Yet it seems to have advanced for our times. It was divided into proper layouts in 1949.

Happy birthday Hari

2009-03-29T05:38:00.001-07:00

Its my nephew Srihari's birthday today. He had always been interested in cars and we uncles- my brother and I fueled it thus far with different kinds of cars from hot wheels collection. This time though i wanted to buy him a comic book to shape him into a reader. I found it hard to find that suits his level. Now i have gifted him POGO's book on transportation that includes cars! That should give him some reason to read. Happy birthday Hari!

On train gripe!

2009-03-27T19:18:00.001-07:00

It seems the coffee vendors on train are on a mission to wake you up. Once you are up and ready for coffee they say 'its done' and disappear. I wonder if they learnt it from city buses! They pass by the dozens when you want to cross the road. But disappear into thin air if you are at a bus stop.

Bowled by Elizabeth Gilbert's TED talk!

2009-03-26T02:34:00.000-07:00

I recently saw a series of talks in TED conference after a long interval (last time I saw, I was a bachelor in Japan!). An amazing journey that took me through technological superiority, psychological naivete of humans. But while they fed my cerebrum well, one speech deeply impacted my romantic and moral side.

Elizabeth Gilbert shared her insecurity about surviving success - one that she now shares with any other successful people (some of whom died because of it!) in the creative field, after the of her recently published bestseller "Eat Pray Love" in captivating 20 minute speech. Watch out especially when she talks about a 90+ poet she met and her picturesque narration of how the poem "barreled down at her with earth shaking underneath". Evidently Elizabeth is not just an accomplished writer, but probably an even better speaker.

I have placed an order for her book - and this is the first time when I have bought a book I have never heard of, written by someone who I have never heard of - purely based on her talk. She says in her talk that she wonders if her best is already behind her and if she would ever surpass her first success. I personally wonder if her book would surpass the speech that she gave on TED.

Enjoy the video!

The Alchemy

2009-03-24T20:44:00.001-07:00

Middle class apartments in hyderabad are substandard in design. For example, the kitchen platform is so low that a gas cylinder is too tall to get under it. And its not really unheard of in apartments worth the rent Rs 9000 per month. However, we do have something to smile about. Our two balconies open out into a panoramic view. Better still it is likely to remain that way as the adjacent area is the backyard of a government college. So they are not goin to build more than two floors. Tea, biscuit, music and evenings do form quiet an alchemy with balcony!

Its all my wedding!

2009-03-09T03:32:00.001-07:00

For shashank - my 2 year old nephew my wedding was the first exposure to the world of weddings. He enjoyed it to the fullest. After his return home, everytime if spots a couple dressed up for an occasion or hears a nathaswaram-thavil music combo. He starts celebrating as it is all 'Badhri chittappa' getting married!

"S" series and Scrabble

2009-01-14T01:37:00.000-08:00

I don't know if it happens to others. But sometimes when I encounter something, for about a week or so, that is all I happen to encounter. For example - this will raise a few eyebrows - about a couple of years ago, almost all the girls I meet newly have had their names starting with "S". Swapna, Shweta, Sangeeta, Srujana, Shruti, Shabnam, Swaroopa, Sirsha T, Sirisha G. Sometimes a few of the girls with those names I have come across for the first time. I wonder if that particular series actually has come to an end. I am engaged to Sriramya! I have heard of a Ramya, I have heard of a lot of girls with the prefix "Sri". But Sriramya is a first. :)

While that is still there, now I am beginning to come across scrabble in quick succession. While at office, about a couple of weeks ago I heard someone talk of scrabble while passing by me. Then I thought "may be its a good gift to give for kids!". A week later, my niece who twisted her ankle in my earlier post >[:-D] received a scrabble set as she was celebrating her birthday. Now I have come across an interview of a New Yorker journalist who has wrote an article about Scrabble (registration required. Those beep!), its influence in America and how it has reemerged in its online version. In the audio, I found that India is big in scrabble. Now I am thinking I will take it all in and start off with scrabbling, and am banking on Scrabble's recurring encounter with me.

Taking the plunge

2009-01-08T04:52:00.000-08:00

After taking a stab at various way of social intervention it seems that the way ahead seems to get slowly and clearer.

I have a school near my work that is looking for teachers.
I have my idea of doing the teaching with as much demonstration as possible.
I have the rickety infrastructure that the team at my office prepared once and gathering up dust.
I have a new set of 25 DVDs dedicated to physics demonstrations (thanks to the sincere belief in social and educational change of a few executive level managers of Synopsys!) that I have not yet started watching.

May be it is time to set aside an hour of my mornings to start teaching science. This is in a way going back to where it all started. The first of my thoughts on social change was to teach and teach at schools.

For now though, this thought has to remain as just another thought and the extent to which it fructifies over the next year hinges upon how much hit my conviction can take over the next couple of months! All the best to me!

First-aid: Do's and Don'ts

2009-01-06T02:34:00.000-08:00

About a month ago, my niece twisted her ankle and it bloated up within like "pulka roti" within minutes. That night I happened to be there. Noticing her twisted ankle and grimacing face, I told her that the next time she twisted her ankle, she must keep keep her feet in a raised position and apply ice immediately to prevent the swelling as much as possible. Thanks to my earlier double-experience, I was fully equipped to provide first-aid treatment for twisted ankle. Pity I couldn't use my skilss in my niece's case. The poor 10-year old was limping for the rest of the week. But the incident quickly demonstrated the handiness of the knowledge of first-aid.

I found the following article on "Do's and Don'ts of First Aid" in LiveMint, which can come in as a handy guide. Recall your college days, brush up your memorizing skills and learn this one by heart! :). This is also a handy guide that should reside along with your first-aid kit!

Ads of the world

2009-01-01T21:35:00.001-08:00

Most of the works of creativity that you would have noticed nowadays come from advertisement industry. Ads of the world is one website that seems to track all (at least a lot) the ads throughout the world, categorized into different regions and industry. There are quite a few good ones. Check out a few here!

"Alone we jump, together we soar!"

கேட்போரின் எண்ணம்

2008-12-20T19:23:00.000-08:00

[ நூறாவது மின்பதிவைத் தாய் மொழியில் செய்வதில் மகிழ்ச்சி! ]

சில கானங்களில் வரிகள் மனதை வருடுகின்றன....
சிலவற்றில் இராகம் நெஞ்சில் இறங்குகின்றன...
பலவற்றில் பாடகரின் பண்பட்ட குரல் உள்ளத்தை உருக்குகின்றன...
ஆனால் ஒன்றிரண்டு மட்டுமே கேட்போரின் எண்ணத்தைக் கூறுகின்றன..

"நீங்காத பாரம் என் நெஞ்சோடுதான்..
நான் தேடும் சுமைதாங்கி நீயல்லவா?
நான் வாழும் நேரம் உன் மார்போடுதான்..
நீ என்னைத் தாலாட்டும் தாயல்லவா?"

[English translation follows!]

Is targeting the poor alone always efficacious?

2008-12-15T20:43:00.000-08:00

With my on and off involvement with centers close to social development, I find one attitude that may have to be changed for better efficacy of social initiatives. Let me have the first stab at defining the attitude.

"A social initiative will produce a better impact when it is targeted towards the economically poorer sections of the society. The richer the beneficiaries are, the lesser social impact it has.."

While in general this point has a validity, it has to be revisited for every specific case. Here is an example. A team of my friends and I conducted a science demo in a private school nearby. When I talked about this, "Don't you think your initiative would be more useful to students of government schools?" was one question that popped up universally. My answer is "In my case doing it in *this* private school is likely to have a higher social impact" . Why?

1. This private school doesn't have a lab infrastructure in spite of the students paying a nominal school fee (Rs. 200/- per month).

2. The students here do have a capability to read, listen to and understand English, Telugu and Hindi which provides us flexibility in our implementation. So, it gets easier for us to get more students to start "thinking and reasoning science" - a better success rate at our initiative. On the other hand, a government school on which we are working on the ability to grasp English is lesser providing us with challenges (lesser number of teachers from our office)

Much more importantly, access to better education sure is relatively much more difficult for the poor. However, schools that fall in the economic category of the one that we are working on also face problems faced by government schools (non-availability of teachers, labs etc.). In addition to that they also suffer the ignorance of NGOs that rush to help poor quality government schools. It is almost as if these students are paying Rs. 200/- per month to be ignored!

Thankfully, in our case, we need to ignite as many minds to think and reason (in science and others..). In our eyes, whether the students have the ability to pay Rs.200/- or not, if their inclination to reason is lacking, they are equally poor! Only the former is equipped with a skill (English language) that offers flexibility for us to make a better impact.

A society, apart from being categorized into economically richer and poorer, can also be categorized into rich and poor based on other criteria. And the economically richer need not be richer (or have better opportunity) in all the other categories. Social upliftment, one must remember, is not only the upliftment of the economically poorest, but the upliftment of the society as a whole.

Reader.goggle.com

2008-12-06T19:21:00.001-08:00

Ask my room mate and he will tell you that i read a book at about a page per day before dozing off. Now that I've started off with tamil books its worse. Yesterday i bought a book called 'Katrathum petrathum' (those learnt and those acquired) in which novelist sujatha shared his views and experiences with a sumptuous and proportionate dose of comedy and insightful facts. An engrossing read. But the best part is, i didnt have to fumble with my rusty tamil reading ability. My dad did it adding the much missed flow. Sujatha through my dad's goggles sure looks wiser.

Wood to stone

2008-12-06T01:15:00.001-08:00

This is a piece of Wood that got buried for 200000 years and gradually turned to stone!! Showcased in Madras museum. For the historically inclined this place is a treat.

Terrorism in, parochialism out ... for now at least

2008-12-05T01:12:00.000-08:00

I am not interested in going deep into the Mumbai terror strikes, which is already over-analyzed in all spheres. But the one silver lining that I see out of this unprecedented and audacious act is that everyone, including the politicians have for once forgot about petty parochialism. Raj Thackrey shut up for sometime now, or if he is still talking, there is none to listen. But it is such a pity that sanity on one issue has to be established only superceding it with a far worse insanity! Pity!

SE Session 11: Social accounting and auditing

2008-11-22T09:40:00.002-08:00

Today’s session was on an interesting topic called social accounting and auditing. Financial accounting and auditing are tried and tested methods for tracking and verifying the financial status of an organization and finding out if the financial goals are met are violated. Social accounting and auditing is a parallel concept developed on the lines of financial accounting and auditing in order to measure and verify the social goals of a social enterprise.

In case of a business enterprise, when a project is taken up, one sets a financial goal for the project. As the project progresses one tracks certain financial metrics of the project that will help assess the financial performance of the project when financial audit is done.

However a social enterprise has a double bottom line of financial profit and a social impact. So, when a project is taken up in a social enterprise, similar to having a standardized financial accounting procedure that can be used for enterprises catering to different sectors, one may have standard social accounting procedure that can be used be social enterprises irrespective of the sectors they are catering to.

In social accounting, one will set a social objective that complies to the mission of the enterprise, and plan activities that achieve the social objective, while upholding the values of the organization. For each activity planned, social metrics has to be measured that provides feedback about the social impact of the activities when a social audit is conducted. This is the basic idea behind social accounting and auditing. One difference between financial and social accounting is, for the former, quantitative metrics will suffice to accurately assess the financial performance of the enterprise. But for the latter, the both quantitative and qualitative measure has to be captured to assess the social impact.

Social accounting has three steps

Getting ready: Social accounting is process that has to be assimilated as an inherent part of the social activity and is effective in giving a measure of social impact only in a long term (3 years). So, it is important for the members of the enterprise and stakeholders to understand the importance of the accounting. Steps have to be taken to get everyone’s approval to adopt social accounting as part of the enterprise’s initiatives.
Social, Economic and environmental planning: We went through a case study of a social enterprise called Good Crafts that trains women from a Mumbai slum in employment related skills like making baskets, wall-hangings, soft-toys etc., and procures their products to sell it in overseas markets and shares the profit with the women. From the case study write-up we identified the

mission statement of Good Crafts that addresses the purpose for which the organization is formed

Example: Good crafts aims to empower women and thus build sustainable and self-reliant communities in slums of Mumbai.

the values it has to uphold in the organization as it strives to achieve its mission

Example: Being non-discriminatory to the beneficiaries (slum women), etc

Objectives that are aligned towards the mission statement and the activities that achieve the objectives

Example: To empower women through training and creating of employment by

a) Providing relevant skill training

b) Encouraging and supporting self-employment

c) Providing crèche facilities for the working women’s children

Metrics that measure the effectiveness of the activities

a) Number of courses provided (quantitative)

b) Number of self-employed women (quantitative) and how satisfactory to the women is the quality of support provided (qualitative)

c) Number women whose kids are enrolled in the crèche.

During the exercise we learnt that

- the mission statement should be specific, clear and should remain the same through the completion of the project

- each activity taken up must be tied to a specific objective. This is because; the metric that we measure should provide us feedback about the efficacy of the activity in achieving the objective.

Social Economic and environmental implementation: This amounts to ensuring that relevant metrics are measured and qualitative data collected during the activity. Standard ways of collecting qualitative metrics are focus group discussions, questionnaires, surveys, and analyzing the minutes-of-meetings and status reports
Social, Economic and environmental auditing: Once the data is collected, a social auditor may audit the accounted metrics to analyze the social, economic and environmental impact that the social enterprise has caused and provide feedback on how much the objectives are achieved. Based on the inputs the implementation strategy may be modified for the better. Then the social audit may be repeated the next cycle to measure the efficacy of the modified strategy. So, the minimum recommended period for the audit is two years.

Benefits:

1. It’s a standard auditing based on a proven model. It can be applied to all sorts of social enterprise, irrespective of their area of interest

2. Scalable: Can be applied to a whole organization or just one program of the organization

3. It is a process. It can accommodate other tools of measurement like “Social return on Investment” within itself to make social auditing complete.

4. Can be used as a strategic tool; can sell the results of the audit to stakeholders and to generate more support (money or the like)

Snag:

Need to allocate time, finances and resources
Inaccuracy of surveys or scanty response to questionnaires
Long term project, needs change in business model to accommodate the process

Face-to-Face with Comat technologies

2008-11-19T22:34:00.000-08:00

Cross-posted from ThinkChange-India

TC-I Fundwatch has recently reported a Rs. 60-crore investment by Omidyar Network and Unitus Equity Fund (UEF) on Comat technologies, a profitable social enterprise doing business with the rural poor.

The CEO of Comat technologies Sriram Raghavan recently talked to NASSCOM Emerge Blog and offered some good insights into Comat's success in becoming a profitable social business.

Sriram's answer to one question explains the business model of Comat technologies succinctly.

"Q. Your own business is built around the Rural Business Centres. What exactly are these?

SR: It is a very simple concept. The rural business centre is primarily an access point for rural citizens, where we use technology to deliver different kinds of services - only those that help improve the quality of life in villages. We don’t want to sell soaps and consumer goods.

I’ll give you two examples. Take government certificates such as birth, death, land and property related papers. If you have to get one from the taluk or the district office, you have to go to that particular office, wait in a long line and follow cumbersome processes. We deliver it to the village directly – it takes about five minutes for the same cost, i.e., Rs. 15 per certificate. This makes a very big difference to the rural consumer.

The other area we are in is education. There are teachers in rural areas, but the quality of education is very poor. Our centres bring live classes from best teachers in cities who broadcast their lessons online, much like the erstwhile UGC programmes. Except that here, we have two- way interaction and the students and teachers can speak to each other."

Sriram Raghavan also shared a few of his experiences with rural consumers that can come handy to a new social enterprise venturing into the villages.

"In a typical agrarian set up, income generation is a twice-a-year cycle – unlike in urban areas where we earn monthly salaries. It is important to bear this in mind as you have to position your product around this insight."

With a turnover of Rs.55 crore while improving the lives of about 10 million rural inhabitants, there should be little doubt about the success of this unique business model. But the best aspect about the venture is that it has identified one critical handicap of the Indian villages and working successfully towards eliminating it. Better said by the man himself.

"All these years, rural India has been isolated; they have been “informationally disabled”. It is now time for a change and we want to ensure that."

SE session 10: Writing fund-raising proposal

2008-11-19T05:43:00.000-08:00

I couldn't attend this class. So, this post owes its credit to my classmate, Manmohan Jain.

1. Most NGOs overseas average about 51% earned income. The percentage for Indian NGOs is much lower. Earned income is income generated by the NGO. It could be either by
- sales of goods (T-shirts, auction of paintings by hearing-impaired children)
- volunteer activities e.g organizing a qawali nite / music concert
- beneficiary created products (hand made carpets or some other handicraft of a particular community)

2. People give to People -
At the end of the day it is a person that you are making the appeal to. It may be a foundation that makes grants, or a government body or a corporate that you are seeking funds from, but eventually the pitch is made to a person - for e.g a trustee or board member.

Similarly when making their decision they are considering you, your credibility etc. You may have a great cause, your NPO may have good track record, but still it does matter in terms who is the person appealing to them.

A fraction of funds raised may be impersonal but any large grants - the "people to people" principle applies.

3. Understand donor - what appeals to them, what is important to them, what is their process for selection.

4. Pareto principle - how 80 % efforts might only give 20% returns and often it is core 20% activities that give most of the Return Of Investments so focus on those.

5. Acronym for sources of income - GGCIE (you can refer to the slide on this)

6. Fund raising cycle - PDCA Plan -> Do -> Check -> Act

Or on similar lines

Need -> Sources -> Method -> Select / Evaluate

with the last step feeding back into the first in each case. For example, you evaluate you results and re assess/replan your needs.

A good question to answer is "How will you sustain the work after the grant runs out?"

Plan: Research sources - who will you target? Refer to GGCIE. If it is Government what schemes and programmes are available?
V K Puri's "Government funding schemes for NGOs/NPOs in India" lists several hundred schemes and can be very useful resource.

7. We went over SSA proposal format and some of the sections in that.

If applying to Companies and CSR departments, they will certainly need metrics/measures

8. A good exercise in planning phase is to project the need over time and match to appropriate sources. For example

- quick or short term needs - selling T-shirts, individual volunteer donations of small amounts

- long term needs - grants from foundations/governments. This will have long lead time and typically be larger amounts.

9. Objectives of CSR:
- branding
- employee motivation and feel good factor
- shared objective e.g KidSmart ?
- good business
- social responsibility

Went through exercise in actual writing of funding proposal. The template used is in slides 10 to 14 The class broke up into 4 groups of 2 each and spent about 30 mins preparing a proposal and then presented to rest of class.

Each was critiqued by Prof Bhargava, pointing out what was good and what needed improvement.

Some key points

- be specific in your title if you can
- have facts, clear breakdown of expenses/projected needs
- shows you have done your homework
- have measures or impact - short term/long term, even can mention associated/corollary impact
e.g rehabilitation of street children addicted to drugs will reduce crime in the locality - in 1 year impact can be seen

After the exercise we saw short video where a trustee/grant making body official talked about how they decide and how it is never a cut and dry Yes/NO answer.

- donors would want to review and evaluate
- they would want to visit and assess
- they are assessing the individual /invidividuals making the application, what is their credibility, integrity, commitment etc
- the decision takes time and combines several factors
So it is not black and white - yes/no.

Caution: Never put any fact or any statistic that is not real or cannot be substantiated

We then saw a real proposal example . Hindi Martin Institute and went over its salient points. It was a real life actual proposal that got funding.

Finally he touched briefly on results versus indicators and the LFA - problem solving technique. (I need to learn more about this).

Sricharan

2008-10-25T06:52:00.001-07:00

My nephew

first stab at first aid

2008-10-18T04:57:00.001-07:00

A doctor delivering the lecture first aid to school kids during a session we did. Its a first for the kids, first for the doctor and for up too. Not a roaring success. But all of us learnt.

Live accident report: Are we learning anything?

2008-10-11T11:34:00.000-07:00

The picture didn't turn out to be clear...but two things

it still delivers the message
for once I am glad it didn't since the real scene was terrifying and nauceating (literally one more minute and I would have passed out!)

It happened right outside my residence but on the opposite side of the road, as I was walking home. I just heard the loud crash. But as I crossed the road, I knew that the guy passed out the moment he hit the ground. He was injured in the back of his head and, needless to say, it was profusely bleading.

The only thing that went right was that someone immediately called 108, the ambulence service (one good service for the insane hyderabad traffic). But what went wrong?

No helmet!
His companion, who escaped unhurt, had no clue that the first thing to do is to stop the bleeding, nor did the on-lookers. None seemed to have first few minutes after an injury to a vital organ is crucial. That guy basically racing to his death. ZERO AWARENESS OF FIRST-AID! It took another first-aid dumbo to tell him to stop the bleeding.
The on-going traffic dutifuly stopped to catch a glimpse of the accident and pay "homage" to the hapless victim. The called ambulence can reach to about 100-150m from the victim, but no further. The police was on scene regulating the traffic, but the flow was still slow. In this situation, if you are on scene and if you are not helping, your are hurting!

But he is just one in a billion....a piece of statistic...what is the lesson learnt...right? Look at the picture again...

SE-session 9: Project Management

2008-10-11T07:38:00.000-07:00

I would like to start off at the last! My take home of the day! (more of a suggestion than a rule of thumb though)

Identify what your beneficiaries need, sensitize the beneficiaries about their need and your solution, involve the beneficiaries of the social initiative to participate and if possible manage the initiative.

Project planning should be approached from a mixture of top-down and a bottom-up approach. Top-down, as in using "from the book" ideas like management and leadership principles, business models etc. Bottom-up as in getting to know what the beneficiaries (or end users) want and forming strategy based on that.

The class started off with some basics about project management. It is not only a science, as it involves rational thinking, data analysis and decision-making, but also an art since it involves getting the job done using your wits.

We moved on to a brief analysis of the difference between a program and a project.

Program: Long-term or on-going activity, continually funded and has regular allocation of budget. Example: National literacy mission

Project: Usually short-term, one-time funding. Usually a program is made up of a lot of projects that achieve the purpose of a program

Following this, we discussed a questionnaire, answering which one may have planned an entire project well considering all aspects and would be ready to hit the road. This took us all the way up to the break and formed a very important learning session of the class (so, don't skip the link!)

During the second half of the session, the instructor presented the way his initiatives in eliminating rural poverty made an impact in the livelihood of the rural society. He devised and designed various initiatives for the benefit of rural poor in various sectors like agriculture, education, micro-finance, health, income generation.

He talked about the federated model of self-help group (summarized by slide-3 of the PDF doc) in Andhra Pradesh, which was a run-away hit in the whole of the country. The success of the model was summarized by the fact that about 42% of all the money allocated by the Indian government is used by AP, while the repayment rate is 98%, unmatched by any other SHG anywhere else. Delegates from other states and even countries like Vietnam visit AP to study the SHG model.

Since this post is not about singing the praise of AP's SHG models, I move beyond to aspects that are common to all the government projects (including SHGs) that he was involved.

All project involved formation of Village organizations (VOs) which essentially is a representative body of the village. They were legally registered as co-operatives. All SHGs and VO are composed of women from the village
The relevant govt. representatives train and sensitize them about the need of the co-operative. (If it is agriculture.. training is on retaining profit and eliminating middle-men during procurement... if it is micro-finance, training is on how important savings is etc..)
Once training is done, the initiative is implemented and the outcomes are measured!

The model of sensitizing and involving the beneficiaries in various levels from management to volunteering has largely produced good results (will be evident from the slides of the session that I will post once they are available to me). But few do fail to scale up after initial success.

The whole session was finally summarized by the discussion titled "Why do projects succeed?"
highlighting the points user involvement as a participant, continuous funding, Clear understanding of goals, effective planning and setting realistic expectations of scope, quality and time involved.

By the then, we were about half-an-hour past time and we didn't even realized it. (I was especially mesmerized by the facts and figures he presented by the success stories of SERP's rural development initiatives). But he left us with a mention that goals should be SMART

Specific: Well-defined and clear to project managers
Measurable in terms of qualitative parameters
Agreed upon by all stakeholders
Realistic, as in set within the availability of resources
Time-based

Brief Profile of Mr B. Ravi Shankar

Mr. B. Ravi Shankar has completed Post Graduate Diploma in Computer Applications and also in Management (Rural development) from Xavier’s Institute, Ranchi.

Earlier he worked as a project officer in the Society for Rural Industrialization, Ranchi, Jharkhand, as a Community Coordinator in Girijan Cooperative Corporation, AP, and as a Project Director of Leather Industries Development Corporation of AP. He also has the experience of working in IT sector for sometime. Presently he is the Project Manager of Society for Elimination of Rural Poverty (SERP), (IKP-VELUGU project), AP.

Staying awake

2008-10-05T10:59:00.001-07:00

Night security guard challenging the house-keeping in chess to survive the night. Night shift is no fun. :(

The Interview with Hugh Herr

2008-10-04T22:53:00.000-07:00

BBC has a wide range of mesmerizing and inspiring and unique podcasts. While their documentary series sweeps you away as much by its depth as by its variety, their Interview allows you a sumptuous bite into the life of some of the most inspiring, a few controversial (yet inspiring) figures. But the most likable aspect of the Interview is that most of the time such personalities are not really famous around the world. However, they are always into something that is of importance to the larger sections of society or have always done something from which others find a scope to learn from! It helps you understand that you don't have to look for role-models who are famous

Here is one such interview. In BBC's own words..

"Owen Bennett-Jones meets Hugh Herr who lost both his legs below the knee in a mountaineering accident and set out to design his own artifical legs."

Enjoy!

Courtesy BBC

SE-Session 8: Running a successful social enterprise

2008-10-04T07:55:00.000-07:00

Today's session was very less of a presentation and more of a discussion session. The instructor started out by asking each student's objective and encouraged us to think back and identify one instance that caused a "shift" in us towards social entrepreneurship. His belief is that the answer to what social transformation we want to bring lies there (I feel while this may be true, it need not apply universally to all!).

After that elaborated on eSafal, a social enterprise that he conceived to provide an IT enabled, integrated approach to making agriculture. He discussed his initiative as a "case study" to provide an idea of what forms a successful social initiative. As part of implementing his process, he identified different aspects involved in this like

1. Investments (seeds, fertilizers) and people involved there
2. Farming techniques
3. Output (and people involved like consumer companies, middlemen).

He came up with a process to train the farmers on improved farming techniques to save on inputs (fertilizers, water), reduce waster (during transportation etc), improve quality of produce (cotton in this case).

He discussed this idea to drive home the following points (at least these are all what I perceived from his example)

Identify your target beneficiary group in specific. (It may be kids...but are the school children or are they uneducated kids?)
Identify various aspects involved in your initiative and identify stakeholders in each aspect
Create a business model which benefits every stakeholder, so that it provides a reason for him/her to invest in it.
When you identify a problem, track the problem all the way back to its root cause and eliminate the root cause. For example, cotton produced by farmers were contaminated by human and animal hair, threads from dress farmers wear. This costs the cotton buyer a lot of money to improve quality of cotton, he worked to modify the process used for harvesting and transportation of cotton to eliminate contamination at source, which saved a lot of cost to the consumer. This in turn translated to more money for the farmers.
Remember the triple bottom line Profit, People and Environment. Measure the impact of your social initiative in terms of all the three and and in terms of social impact it has caused (improved standard of living, better education, better soil quality etc.)
Social Return on Investment.

In an email communication to me later, Mr. Ravi summarized the session as follows.

Based on the conversation, the takeaway from the conversations I had with all of you - to start or be with an NGO - in a nutshell are

Identify ONE AREA which is your PASSION
Do complete study on the various aspects of that area chosen and take the best practices already at work in the world…RESEARCH, RESEARCH….
Do a pilot with a small target group and – check out all the issues, challenges that are being faced…
DOCUMENT the processes and brainstorm with similar mind set people
Create a MODEL which is a sustainable one…slightly bigger than the Pilot and showcase the sustainability and the SROI
Market the Model with a group of investors and make it work
Scale the area of operations to check out the challenges and issues being faced…
Document and fine tune the process and market with funding agencies SCALE it up in new areas.. or locations …

Bottom Line

ensure that the community buys in the model,
train and build capacity in the community that they take over the processes
The community pays a token amount for the services they get..
The other stakeholders get value for the investment they make…
Have everything transparent
Publicise it through Word of Mouth, Media, different workshops and events…DON’T be shy of talking about it….

Take-home of the day

Model the social enterprise to benefit each stakeholder, not just the end beneficiary

Calculate the Social Return on Investment

Create a process and document it well. Creating a process will help maintain a quality of implementation (the absence of the person who conceived the idea will not compromise the quality of execution). Documentation keeps every one on the same page

Brief Profile of Mr. Ravi Shankar
Mr. Ravi Shankar is a postgraduate in Operations Research and a graduate in Mathematics from University of Delhi, India. Earlier he as a member of senior Management team in Satyam Computer Services and Nagarjuna Fertilizers ltd., Hyderabad.

He is the Creator of eSafal,(a social enterprise based on application of IT in rural development).. He successfully implemented a pilot project on this enterprise in 2005. This model focused on value creation at all levels by participation and involvement of all stake holders. In 2006, this model was judged as the finalist in Global Social Venture Competition. Presently he is consultant to Government Departments and Rural Development Projects. He is also an Advisor to NGOs like Roshan Vikas.

SE-Session 7: Fund raising is not begging

2008-10-04T07:31:00.000-07:00

I was not able to attend the session as I was out in Chennai enjoying a break...having herbal food at a Malayali health restaurant. So, I requested a classmate of mine (incidentally a keralite himself!) to capture a few points out of the session. So, I credit this work to him.

"Fund-raising is not begging...Enjoy fund-raising"

This was the punch line of Michael norton's sesion on fundraising and sustainability. Below are the important aspects of his session apart from the ppt and document provided:

Money is not in fact never the most important thing.
Getting too much money is a bigger problem than having no money.
Streams of income for a sustainable model
Concentrate on getting money from independent source.
Vision and mission statement are useless!!! Have a vision of better world and be missionaries!
Build relationships
NEVER do fund-raising through email
NEVER send mail to unknown people
Rely on telephone/personal meetings
Parties are effective,invite friends & friends' friends
Story of Beacon & eggs: involved like the hen and committed like the pig
Without local support successful org cant survive.involve local people.
Story of New York beggars.
Fund-raising is a relief from boredom;helps people to do what they want to do
www.kivo.org : people helping people
Convert NO into YES!!!
Explained some initiatives like dinner@home, hunger banquet
Individuals & communities as constant source of income.
Be a donor;he urged SEOP batch to maintain a fund.

Later he went on to explain how to write a proposal and also about budgets. Check out www.365act.com

A BRIEF PROFILE OF MICHAEL NORTON
Michael Norton is the Honorary Director and a Trustee of CIVA (www.civa.org.uk).
He founded the Directory of Social Change in 1975 and was its Director until 1995. DSC is the UK's leading agency providing information, training and support to voluntary organisations. (www.dsc.org.uk). He co-founded UnLtd, the foundation for social entrepreneurs, which received the £100 million Millennium Legacy as an endowment. UnLtd makes awards of up o £20,000 to individuals in the UK who wish to create change in their communities. He chaired the International Year of Volunteers 2001 youth programme for England. He received an OBE in 1998 for services to the voluntary sector.He is the author of numerous books on fund-raising and charitable status including 'Writing Better Fund-raising Applications' , 'The WorldWide Fundraiser's Handbook' , and 'The Complete Fund-raising Handbook' , all published by Directory of Social Change.

Ordinary men to monsters or heroes

2008-10-01T23:31:00.000-07:00

Philip Zimbaro (who is he?) talks in TED conference about psychology and the situation that makes ordinary men and women monsters and how to use psychology to make heroes and heroines out of ordinary men and women.

Watch it...its awesome!

From Madness towards Method

2008-10-01T00:16:00.000-07:00

Be it your office pantry, or a weekend gathering of friends, when you run out of topics to gossip, all you have to do is drop in a word "traffic" and everyone one will suddenly find a story to say and gripe about the anomaly. A few socially active ones among us will take it a little forward by trying to propose a CSR initiative to regulate traffic in an area near the location of their work. But I personally believe that traffic regulation will be ineffective if the initiative doesn't involve the traffic police. I would be even better, if traffic police initiates and leads the initiative...which is why I was pleasantly surprised this morning as I was walking by the Police lines circle, as I watched the traffic police hard at work.

Standing by the sidewalk with my phone-camera, I could see that the police working with maddened determination to three things right the first time and then repeat it throughout the day, hoping to "train" the beast to comply with the order.

At the whistle, stop behind the stop line. Motorists wishing to take a right, stop to the right side of the road.
Allow the pedestrians to use the zebra crossing to cross the road
At the next whistle, allow the traffic flowing straight to go, while holding the traffic flowing right (or take a U-turn).
At the next whistle (when the traffic on the other side of the road is stopped), allow the held traffic to take a right or U-turn.

Repeat it!

Standing there and looking at the constant whistling and frantic gestures of the traffic police, I could realize that this job is so much easier said than done! The police might have chosen today, a holiday due to observance of Id-ul-fitr, to exercise this pilot but the traffic was still huge. Nevertheless, they seemed to have handled the traffic quite well.

But man! it was quite a sight to see vehicles neatly lined up against the stop-line to allow the pedestrians pass without fear of being run over! Finally, one small step towards method in what is the very essence of madness. Hope this pilot doesn't die at infancy, but grows and lives long enough to get into the subconscious mind of the average motorist to prompt him/her to follow the traffic rules.

Its part of the package..

2008-09-25T07:33:00.000-07:00

This guy tried to reach out to an inaccessible area for food and got something a little more for free, only he didn't like the way it was served.

Nocturnally mine

2008-09-23T12:21:00.001-07:00

From my new Sony Ericsson K790i

SE-Session-6: Field visit to NGO Bhumi

2008-09-20T10:25:00.000-07:00

In this session, we made a field visit to Government High School at the heart of Rasoolpura, known as the largest slum in Hyderabad (some say in AP). This school was adopted by Bhumi, an NGO that aims at large scale, holistic, sustainable transformation for the slum (and for the larger society in a long term).

Bhumi's members Sai and Pallavi (one of CSIMs students too!) greeted us and gave an outline of their flagship Dhronacharya and Ekalavya program (DNE) in which Bhumi trains and deploys volunteers to mentor the school children on a weekly basis on academics and extra-curricular activities. The program seems to spring from the notion that kids in the slum study better when they are exposed to an "elder-brother-cum-role model" who can inspire and provide them a regular learning environment.

Abdul Mujib Khan, one of the founding members of Bhumi, provided a brief account of their history. Rasoolpura, like any other urban slum, faced multiple interlinked problems. Poverty resulting in child labour, in turn resulting in low academic performance and high dropouts. Poor conditions resulting in poor health problems, in turn resulting in loss of wage which compounds the problem of child labour and education. Further, the cynicism of the slum dwellers towards the "outsiders in Proline T-shirts" posed another layer challenge.

To address the first problem, Bhumi has divided its task in Rasoolpura into four domains viz., Livelihood, Education, Healthcare and Water & Sanitation. Then it adopted the then dilapidated Govt. High school. and with funding from Sarva Shikhsa Abhiyan and Hyderabad Round table, they renovated the school, hired teachers and got the school back up and running. This automatically helped Bhumi address the second problem too as the promise kept acted as a good testimony to their commitment to area. With more kids in school on a regular basis, the DNE program was launched in an effort to improve the pass percentage (then a dismal 13%) among 10th std kids. To improve the livelihood, Bhumi used the trust built to constitute about 6 self-help groups among the womenfolk (headed by a slum-dweller named Razia).

A crucial aspect that needs addressing in improving this society, they said, is the mentality slum-dwellers towards the SHG in general and using the loaned money in particular. As expected, the primary modes of income to people in the slum are fruit and vegetable hawking, house-help, working as a driver or running an autorickshaw. Since the livelihood is always hand-to-mouth, the mentality to save and planning for the longer term was lacking and took repeated counselling to attain a decent awareness level present now. Further, when Razia tried to spread the idea of forming a "group" the first question they usually asked was "How much money will I get?".

Bhumi is also involved in improving the other dimensions of the problem that affects education. Health. One school of thought suggests that children brought up with inadequate nutrition till the age of 5 show learning disabilities that affect them for the rest of their life. They took the initiative to bring in some students of medicine to conduct "Bailey's test" and found that about 20% of them fail the test. However, since medical treatment needs to be sustained over a long term for improvement, it is challenging to keep the respective families interested.

With the slum-dwellers increasingly placing their trust on them, Bhumi is also working on slowly training and transfering the control of their initiatives to the local slum-dwellers, though this seems to be a long objective.

A few other takeaways from the field visit

Their initiatives, especially with respect to education, are modeled in such a way that it can be "sold" to the government to adopt as an accepted model of education (am a bit confused about this, asked for clarification, will update!)

Bhumi seems to have extensively used the help of CSIM, who I have found myself are larger directory of contacts than "YellowPages" if you are a social entrepreneur. They have also helped Bhumi is redesigning their DNE mentoring program.

Most of their successful initiatives have been field tested on a smaller scale (say, applied to a smalller section of the slum) and then have been scaled up. Probably a good point to remember.

Overall, Bhumi provides quite a few lessons to learn the easier way. The biggest lesson of it all is probably the way they have conquered the trust of the slum-dwellers by delivering on the promise of renovating and bringing the school alive, which seems to have had an immediate effect on families the students hail from and those who live in the adjoining areas.

SE-Session 5: Communications

2008-09-13T19:45:00.000-07:00

Father of Contemporary Communication – Wilber Scram

He coined the below formula of communication: SMCNRF

Sender Message Channel Noise Receiver Feedback

Different types of communication:

1. Intrapersonal

2. Interpersonal

3. Team

4. Organizational

5. Mass

Communication the ART is primarily a collective cultural process.

Communication the SCIENCE is a research driven consultative process involving planning design & implementation of strategic interventions.

Dimensions of Communication

1. Soft Skills

2. Business Communication

3. Mass Communication

4. Communication Management

5. Professional Communication

Father of Management – Peter Drucker

1. Soft skills : People skills/life skills/transfer skills/social skills

2. Hard skills: Technical skills/Occupational skills

Dimensions of Soft skills

1. Personal Competence

1. Self Awareness

1. Emotional Awareness

2. Accurate Self Assessment

3. Self Confidence

2. Self Management

1. Self Control

2. Trustworthiness

3. Conscientiousness

4. Adaptability

5. Innovation

3. Motivation

1. Achievement driven

2. Commitment

3. Initiative

4. Optimism

2. Social Competence

1. Empathy

1. Serve Others

2. Understand others

3. Develop others

4. Leverage diversity

5. Political Awareness

2. Social skill

1. Influence

2. Communication

3. Conflict Management

4. Leadership

5. Change Catalyst

6. Building bonds

7. Collaboration & Cooperation

8. Team Capabilities

Business Communication

· 3Ps – Power ,Profit & Pleasure

· Life is business – Peter Drucker

Mass Communication

1. Media writings

2. Media Productions

3. Media Research

4. Media Ethics

5. Media Management

Communication Management

1. Advertisement

2. Public Relations

3. Market Research

4. Corporate Communication

5. Brand Management

6. Event Management

Communication Competency

1. Invisible Competency

Visible competency is knowledge & skills

Invisible competency:

1. Attitudinal Traits – Attitude is mindset by Peter Drucker.

2. Behavioral traits

3. Character – combination of principles, values, ethics &habits

4. Talents – Interest & Aptitude

5. Experience

6. Values

7. Flair – Unique/novel/appealing style

8. Culture – fit

2. Thinking skills

1. Critical

2. Appreciative

3. Analytical

4. Creative

5. Decision making

6. Problem solving

7. Questioning

8. Interpretation

SE-session 4: Legal aspects in NGO management

2008-09-06T06:31:00.000-07:00

If you have even been reading this series of posts faithfully, I am sure this posts header would have turned you off. When I went for today's session, my objective was to keep myself awake till tea is served after about an hour of class and hope the tea will keep me awake till the break at the end of two hours. After that...well, no tea, and I would use my right to sleep! :)

But the instructor, Mr. M. Anant Kumar, a chartered accountant with over 30 years of experience made it reasonably interesting. The session was divided into two sessions

1. Three Categories of NGOs

2. Income Tax laws governing NGO sector

Both the section had so many fine details govern our responsibilities while forming, registering and maintaining the finances of NGOs that this session will not obviate the need of legal consulting when one starts an NGO. The first section does have a larger story, while income Tax laws section was just an accumulation of pieces of laws . So, I will focus on the first section and give a one-line treatment to the second section.

1. Three categories of NGOs.

Trusts
Societies or associations
Section 25 companies

Trusts

Trusts are organizations run by "trustee(s)" entrusted using an "instrument of trust" (legal document which you never understand! :D) to use a property (money or kind) allocated by an "author of the trust" towards an "objective" designed for benefit of an identified "beneficiary"

Author of the trust: One who allocates a portion of his property for an identified purpose.

Trustee: Person/people that the author entrusts the property and the responsibility to carry out the identfied purpose

Beneficiary: Well..beneficiary of the purpose. The author of the trust and/or his family can be the beneficiary, but then the trust will not be a private trust (not a public charitable trust, which is the focus of the session)

Trust property: The property the author of the trust allocates for the purpose.

Objective: The identified purpose of the trust (poverty alleviation, health, education etc)

While registering a trust, the above five aspects should be mandatorily identified with the registrar. The should be non-religious and should not be directed only to a particular class or group of people (with the exception of groups like women, tribal people, handicapped or the like).

Society

A society is an association of people who subscribe to a common objective/goal. From the legal stand point, the main difference between a trust and a society is that the former needs to show the "property" while registering. But the society can own property. (Example Amul is a society!)

A few other differences:

Trusts:

Always have a fixed number of trustees (though not necessarily the same people)
Trustees can't be beneficiaries, but can draw salary for services rendered by applying specific skill set. For example, a trustee who is a CA can draw salary for taking care of the trusts finances.
Only one governing body.

Society:

Members can be added
Members can be beneficiaries (as in area welfare associations)
There is a govrening body that governs the society, but doesn't take part in policy-making and a general body that makes policy and to which the rest of the members belong.

The society is governed by the central government's sovietyes registration Act, drawn in 1860 (and hasn't changed till date!) and the state laws that differ with each states. The societies are governed by the law of the state that is mentioned address of the society's premises. If EBAI has a center in Delhi and Hyderabad, and changes its headquarters from Delhi to Hyderabad, EBAI can't file a tax return in Delhi showing the premises address in Delhi.

Section-25 company:

From the legal stand point an organization registering as a section-25 company should

have a social objective
be run as a non-profit company (can earn profits but should be used in full towards the social objective)

Unlike the archaic laws governing the registration and running of trusts and societies, laws governing a section-25 companies are rigourously updated, implemented and enforced. For example proposed name of the company is rigourously scrutinized by the registrar's office to ensure that it doesn't identify with or similar to another registered company. Further, the name must also should be desirable and not misleading. For example, a section-25 company not endorsed by chennai municipality cannot have a name that contains words "Chennai municipal".

A section-25 company, since it goes through such a rigorous registration process and conforms to a stringent accounting standards, are guaranteed to have better credibility with the public than a society or a trust.

Interactive exercise on NGOs:

We performed an interactive exercise to rehearse scenarios in which an individual has to decide if has to register his organization as a society, trust or a company

Scenario 1: A doctor couple coming back to India desires to use their properties to setup a charitable cardiac hospital.

In this scenario, the doctor couple are technically sound, but do need a management team to run the hospital, since they have the initial capital and need to rise more money, they can register their hospital as a charitable trust. However, considering the need for the hospital to be run even after their departure and the need to maintain high standards in quality of services, they should strive to eventually progress and register as a section-25 company.

Scenario-2: Women's self help group to pool up some credit and jointly improve livelihood through small business

This is a loose association of people with a common objective of improving livelihood, with no property. Here the members are the beneficiaries and membership is variable. Society!

Scenario - 3: An individual identifies talented, but poor group of artisans proposes to start a fabric business to employ their skills, export finished materials to international market and profits with them thus providing more returns for their talant.

This organization has a double bottom-line of social benefit and making profit to be invested in social benefit. Since it caters to international market, it also has the obligation of show high standards of accountability and transparency. Section-25 company.

2. Income Tax laws governing NGOs.

Numerous legal aspects governing the income tax reponsibilities for NGOs were covered. In general, 15% of the NGO's funds is exempt from income tax. The rest 85% should be used towards the administrative and the purpose of social objective. The memorandum and bye-laws that NGOs provide while registering the organization, are very crucial since the IT department carefully scrutinizes the utilization of funds for the purposes that are strictly mentioned in the memorandum. Laws covering the taxation of foreign contribution were also discussed. (though much of this went right above my head)!

(Note about the instructor will be posted shortly!)

Redefining Thirst

2008-09-05T14:40:00.000-07:00

THIRST

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: design crisis)

SE-session 3: Innovations in social sector

2008-08-30T08:46:00.001-07:00

Agenda:
Innovation:
1. Another perspective
2. Social sector
3. Examples
4. In class innovation
5. Prescription

The class began with the emphasis that Individuals can make a difference.
Before the discussion of the items on the agenda, we had a short discussion on plastics and its environmental impact in which professor Bhargava indicated (at least my perception) that recycling is not will not avoid or reduce environmental impact of non-recyclable materials.

1. Innovation: Another perspective

Answered the question "What is innovation?"

Discussed a scenario that forced innovation.

Scenario: A hotel with malfunctioning air-conditioner and an ineffective fan. The room is infested with mosquitoes. There is a 60-watt bulb. There is a mosquito mat, but no matches or any other source of fire. How to use the mat to find a solution to the mosquito-problem that lasts till morning.

Solution: One can use the 60-watt bulb as a source of heat. But it is too hot to be used directly and the mat won't last till morning. So, a one-rupee coin can be balanced on the bulb with the mosquito mat placed on top.

My inference: Innovation is a practical solution to solve a problem at hand using available resources, that need not be meant to address the problem at hand.

Innovation also the need to emphasize lateral-thinking. As an example of lateral-thinking we saw videos of ads by Coca-cola and Pepsi

2. Social Sector - Triple bottom-line
Social sector shares a lot of similarities with for-profit sectors. A list is as under

Hierarchy
Objective
Resource management
Quality
Ethics
Customer (beneficiary) satisfaction
Marketing

However, there is one difference. For-profit organizations have a single objective of making profits, while a social enterprise should have a tripple bottom-line of People Planet and Profit

3. Examples of innovation in Social sector:
Few examples in different categories of social sectors were discussed

Co-operative:
Amul, a mik co-operative, that mobilized individual milk-men to form a co-operative to find a way to get more returns. Karsan bhai also started a CSR initiative, by which the members of Amul invest a small portion of their earnings towards building health infrastructure.

Rural Employment

Poverty alleviation

Grameen Bank's Micro loans initiative for the poorest

Attrition reduction
The instructor didn't name the company based in Bangalore, but highlighted the innovation for tackling the attrition problem. They identified that attrition becomes a problem only when timely replacements are not available. The company studied the background of those who leave the company and found that a majority is from Bihar. So, they targeted the exiting employees from Bihar and asked them to get one person from his village and train him/her thus taking care not only timely replacement but also overlapping the training time.

Others:
Big shoe bazaar
Shoes of size 11 or above don't sell much, hence aren't stocked by many of the showrooms. Bigshoebazaar.com connects the demand for big shoes to the supply (tie-ups will all the shoe companies) for which the latter provide a discount. This provides a winning situation for companies (big shoes are sold more), and customers (they find the shoe of their size with much less hassle!) while earning money out of it (a share in the discount!)

National Innovations Foundation: A compendium of rural innovations

4. In-class innovation
The instructor divided us into groups of two and asked us to identify a social problem, propose an innovative solution and identify the tangible benefits of the solution.

One group identified the lack of teaching talent in government school. To combat that problem, they proposed a teacher's training institute close to the locality of the school, channelize students who have completed 10th stds to the institute. That was voted the most innovative and effective idea of all the proposed ideas (for which the team got a large bar of chocolate).

5. Prescriptions
As a prescription for innovation in social sector, the instructor highlighted the importance of

community involvement and promote self-reliance (exit strategy for the NGOs after providing solutions)...

While NGOs can provide a solution to problems, they
can't stay forever to maintain the solution, and that the beneficiaries
need to take ownership of the solutions. Being associated with Byrraju Foundation, he pointed efforts taken by the foundation in this direction

Innovation for a purpose, than for the sake of innovation

He showed a funny cartoon in which a student shows his work to a bewildered teacher. The quote runs like this. "My name was David, but the name is old-fashioned, so I shortened by name as DVD!"

So what is the take away from this session?

When you hit upon an idea, do some research to find if anyone has hit upon the same idea and has gone a certain disatance. It gives an opportunity to learn the easier way and introduces a potential partner.

Be open to borrowing best-practices from the for-profit sector. For-profit is not necessarily against non-profit. Just the purpose is different. So there is a lot of scope for common interest.

Note about the Instructor:

Prof.Harsh Bhargava,

Harsh is an Engineering graduate from BITS, Pilani and M Tech from IIT, Kanpur besides MMS from Osmania University. For over three decades he was involved in institution building, outsourcing management and indigenous design, development and implementation of embedded real time systems in various capacities in Indian Navy. Widely traveled, Harsh is a keen environmentalist who gives his time for social causes. He has edited 7 books in the areas of Business Process Outsourcing, Rural Transformation, NGOs and Virtual Leadership.

Harsh is currently a Professor at The ICFAI Business School, Hyderabad and has also served with Byrraju Foundation.

A "win-win-win" idea for education

2008-08-24T08:00:00.000-07:00

This idea about improving education at the bottom of the pyramid (every one uses the phrase these days!) came to me in a flash when I was in the middle of a class when I wasn't even thinking about it consciously. But the more I thought about it ,the more I realized its win-win-win potential not only in education, but also in social integration. Doesn't it sound awesome?

Ok, no more beating around the bush, here is the idea. Its simple. Private schools strive to improve their students' performance. Government schools just can't get their kids to cross the pass mark since they don't have good teachers and labs. Private school students don't get out enough to have a good community-activity-based learning at school. To strike all these with a single effort, I say, get get all these students from private schools, to a government school to teach there.

- Government school kids get "access" to private school teaching (lets say the kids teach under the supervision of the private school teacher). Further, kids approach their friends first when in doubt. So, better learning prospects for government school kids. If teaching is in the form of a demo, even better!

- A student learns better when he/she teaches. So, potentially the academic performance of private school kids is likely to improve too!

- Kids get exposed to other kids of different economic background, hence get a feel on one anothers' lifestyle early on. I feel this would help moulding them into socially aware and sensitive adults who understand the "other side" better.

If the private schools involve all their kids and count this activity as a replacement of, say a couple of class tests, they can count it against their internal (or call it externals!) while giving a breather to their students from those mundane class tests. I think this idea lends itself to easy validation. All one has to do is observe the medium-level performers in private schools (say students who score 75%-90%) to see if tihis exercise helps them close in on the rank-holders.

Since private schools constantly strive to improve academic performance, if the school prinicpal is an "experimenting kind" this idea should attract her. I guess from here on a lot of implementational problems may arise. How does this strike you as an idea?

First serious stab at Social Entrepreneurship

2008-08-23T07:16:00.000-07:00

I have joined a certification course in Social Entrepreneurship in an "NGO B-school" called Centre for Social Initiative and Management. The center is run as a non-profit initiative to attract professionals into non-profit so that a social problem can be solved permanently with "problem-solving" mentality rather than temporarily "philanthropic" mentality. The course lasts for 18 sessions which include classroom discussion, home works, case study, field project to find a solution to social problem partnership with one of 30 NGOs. The best part is it costs not in lakhs, or tens of thousands, but a mere Rs. 5000. and you get a copy of "How to change the world". How is that?

Talking about philanthropy and non-profit, it only makes sense to share the spoils with everybody. Free of cost. In this series of post, I will go through the proceedings of each session so that it helps socially inclined readers (if there are any) with some ideas or inspire them to take up this course, or just with plain boredom! :)

Today's session saw an introduction to two broad topics
1. Social Entrepreneurship and its criteria
2. Leadership

1.Social Entrepreneurship
We watched an hour-long video on Aravind Eye hospital and Dr. Govindappa Venkataswamy and discussed his and the hospitals characteristics with relevance to social entrepreneurship. We identified

Human welfare as priority
Targeted social vision and area of intervention (Eye care)
Sustainability (those who pay for care, also cover cost of treating the poor)
Innovation (Indeginous low-cost lens production facility)
Partnership with government, poor people, other non-profits and for-profit businesses

Also discussed about various know social entrepreneurs like Vikram Akula (SKS microfinance), M.S.Swaminathan (Green revolution in India) and identified keen social acumen, leadership, aspiration, social impact, and ethics like abiding by the law as criteria for social entrepreneurship.

2. Leadership
This topic was handled by a retired officer of The Indian Army and he had a lot of anecdotes from the his life in the Army training camp, Siachin glacier and Srinagar. He discussed about different shades of leadership starting from an autocratic leader at one extreme and a laissez-faire leader at the other of which Servant Leadership would be the most suitable for a social entrepreneur.

Further we discussed several characteristics that differentiate a leader and a manager. In short, there were too take-aways as per my understanding.

A manager implements an already identified solution using a known way. A leader finds a solution to a problem and implements it in an innovative way, if need be.
Management is a sub-set of leadership

We also discussed briefly about Leaadership Pipeline, a concept introduced to address the dearth of indigineous leadership in companies. Apart from the book recommended (as given in the link) for this quite a few other books and website were recommended. Here is a list.

Books:
Leading from the edge: By N.T. Perkins
Shackleton's way: Margot Morrell and Stafanie Capparell

Websites:
www.socialedge.org
www.ashoka.org
www.changemakers.net
www.basicsindia.com

My overall, my first impression is very good. I mainly like the variety and the enthusiasm in the class which is about 15 strong. Though the majority are software engineers, it is also represented by people from educational field of which one is a school principal, two chemical scientists (and professors) and one foreigner (His name is Tahir, and I think he is an African!).

The faculty so far seem to be very knowledgeable and experienced. Prof. K.L Srivastava, the director of the center, had been a scientist in ICRISAT specialising in water management for agricultural irrigation and has been active in social forums like Social Edge.

However, there could be some improvement in the presentation of the lecture
1. Powerpoint was used through out the lecture, but a lot of the lecture was read out of the slides. This was followed up by elaborate discussions which brought out the expertise of the lecturer, but the "reading out" part took the interest out of the lecture.

2. Such course should encourage classroom discussions at every opportunity available. Though fair amount of classroom discussion did take place, there were also instances in which a student added a point to the slide, but the lecturer seemed to have moved on to his next point without addressing his point. This should be changed.

Finally, I felt that I have already recovered my Rs. 5000/- and it is just the first class. Very good start.

Profile - Amy Smith, MIT D-labs

2008-08-06T07:59:00.000-07:00

Ms. Amy Smith is an instructor MIT's D-Lab which offers courses in Mechanical Engineering. But unlike the conventional engineering course or lab, Ms. Smith along with Ms. Bishwapriya Sanyal offer a course in which engineering students don't just learn the concepts of mechanical engineering, but go all the way to complete a product that addresses need of the under served communities of different parts of the world.

In a four-part course, the students start out ( in the "Design" part)learning about specific sectors of development that need to be addressed and the appropriate technology that can be applied. The second ("Development") part, is a combination of

lecture, which talks about various aspects of design like affordability, sustainability, design for manufacture and assembly,

Labs that offer experience on fundamentals like welding, circuit-boad design, CAD etc

Case studies and field trips to understand the needs of the people to who this product will eventually be useful
design review discussions to present and refine ideas of the product

The third ("Dissemination") part of the course focuses on brain-storming ideas to make the product that conceived by part-two to be "ready to roll", which includes making the product scalable, affordable and marketable. The fourth part executes what was conceived in part three.

In the process, her team has been successful in providing local solutions for local yet, problems local to a specific region as against trying to find a generic "one-size-fits-all" solution. The best example for this is offered by the following video of her presentation outlining a method of using sugarcane waste and biomass to produce a clean and efficient fuel thus providing a solution to the worst killer of children under five - household cooking smoke, but also to make the fuel at home using the abundant agricultural waste (this avoids cutting trees and cuts down on expenses in buying fuel) Truely amazing...and this is just one of the projects in MIT D-labs.

Laptop for school kids

2008-08-04T18:59:00.000-07:00

A recent post in ThinkChange India made me squander much of my work time into this post. But what the hell!

When the news comes out, it sure does come out in bulk! :) This is not the only laptop for education story I came across within the last week. Here is Classmate from Intel and ICT's research initiative on a computer for Rs. 400. This sure seems to be another emerging trend that will change the future forever. But is it for good or for the worse? Here is my take.

Positives:
1. The three laptop initiatives put together, laptop should reach the bottom of the pyramid faster. I have my doubts about XO and classmate, but if ICT's initiative is a success, Rs.400 laptop should be affordable to anyone who is rich enough to afford school books.

2. "meant for education", probably means that it allows parents worried about the darker side of the internet such as adult content to breathe easy.

3. About "expensive laptops vs. reading, writing", I think reading and writing wouldn't suffer a loss that can't be compensated by improved creativity, skill and understanding that current book-oriented education suffers from.

Negatives:
The idea of bringing technology right into classroom sounds amazing, but I wonder if this initiative is taken because of a clearly identified necessity in the academia that such laptops can address (looking at it from the govt's perspective rather than OLPC or ADAG). It is one thing to use a laptop for an academic purpose and it is another to modify the academia for using a laptop! Currently, I don't see any resource that talks about this. So, while I don't see this as a definite negative, I doubt if the state cares enough to architect an educational model that includes the laptop to serve its purpose rather than model itself for using the laptop.

Another concern is, cheaper laptops is likely to translate into more laptops, quicker obsolescence and more wastes...and that with already bad waste management system and a proven slow and reactive (as against proactive) government, the future of waste management doesn't look too good. But, this may be the catalyst that pushes the govt. to do something about wastes.

On the whole, I find that the negatives such a improving the curriculum, waste management are a few things that have to be done regardless of the"laptop for education", but a computer with the purpose of making education entertaining, creative and productive would be a big leap forward at best and a small leap forward at its worst. So, Go laptop!

Mr. Role model IAS

2008-07-28T13:30:00.000-07:00

The offshoot of the fast growing economy and getting-rich-fast middle class is not only the fast increasing consumerism, but also fast increasing social consciousness among the young-and-the-restless. Consequently, the government apathy and corruption seems to dominate the hot debate, be it in the media or overtea.

But are all those in the government corrupt? Or all of them callous towards their duty? Over the last few month I have come across some surprising encounters that demonstrated extra ordinary commitment public interest amongst a few bureaucrats (IAS officers) who, in their flesh and blood, walk the surface of India (this is a partial lift-off from Einstein's famous mention about Bapuji).

Here is quick mention of three of them

Mr. M.N. Vijaykumar, IAS (Bangalore, Karnataka)
He has been a crusader against corruption among his colleagues and politicians in the state of Karnataka for the past 25 years. He had once tried to introduce a transparent systems by which files related to public works are freely available online at http://bngregcommr.freespaces.com/ (link broken), but three days before the site became operational, he got transferred with immediate effect. That was just one of the six-times he was transferred for either blowing the whistle or trying to make the system more transparent. His wife maintains a frequently updated blog in which she claims harrassment and threats by his own higher-ups and attempts on his life. She also has a forum for people to participate.

Dr. Santhosh Babu, IAS (Krishnagiri, Tamil Nadu)
He has made news for his success in bringing school kids to where they belong - school!. In his back2school program he partners with Sarva Shikha Abiyan and AID India, uses computer technology to track kids who don't show up for school, and send a Village Volunteer force (VVF) track them down, find out the reason (usually the necessity to work), solve their respective problems and bring the kids back to school.

To show the scale and effectiveness of this program, let me provide two quotes from Business Standard here

"The effort involves a 10,000-Village Volunteer Force (VVF) consisting of child volunteers, panchayat presidents and headmasters of the 1,700-odd schools in the district."

"Using software aptly named, back2school, developed by Chennai-based Arbiter, the district administration monitors each schoolgoing child daily. And the results are showing: 8,000 of the 8,867 school dropouts are back in school."

And this is just one of the slew of his educational initiatives such as Ariviyal Anandam (Joy of science) program provides science kits and trains teachers to use them to teach children in about 10 districts of Krishnagiri, and Padippum Inikkum ("Education is interesting too") initiative to use trained volunteers of AID India and SSA help teachers and students to improve the reading ability of the kids by way personal attention and in-class demonstration.

Dr. Kushal Pathak, IAS India Post
A medical doctor by education and an avid web-developer by hobby he has harnessed his passion and profession to create not just one, but two useful platforms for the general public who may need help on social issues and issues related to handling the government.

bighelpers.org is a forum of citizens to help his/her fellow citizens on any problems he/she may face, from drinking problem, getting a ration card or filing a police complaint.

He has also created another web-portal dedicated to Right to information in which he has comprehensive information database and discussion forum for procedural and legal aspects exclusive RTI.

India has a lot of people and limited available resources. This leads to competition and inevitably forces people to bend or break the rules for survival. Given that, it is easy for anyone (not just a government official) with a secure job to step down from his/her ideological stance and settle for an easier way of earning his/her life (by way of corruption or simply shunning responsibility). In this scenario, the live example provided by these three extraordinary gentlemen (and I am sure a numerous others unknown to the general public) upholds the faith that good governance and justice do have place outside the law books and among the society. It is just a matter of will.

Full credits to where it is due.

Running on the corridor at night..

2008-07-23T18:43:00.000-07:00

If you feel dizzy and simultaneously if you feel that some heavy man is running on the corridor at night, then it must be an earthquake.