Sunday Posts

C. is staying with us now, and she forced this discussion on us : Who would you call an ‘educated’ person? As one thing leads to other, the thought trail went further – what is the purpose of education anyway and how does it affect anyone individually and also a society as a whole. Big questions, these. Also, one needs to be qualified to answer such questions. But there must be layman’s answer: A sort of a generalist view, which may not earn a Ph D, but something which can be understood and can be used to explain some of the maladies of lack of education. When the question was asked, a Sanksrit sloka came to my mind, which says Education gives you humility, which leads to success, fame and money. A very concise statement on the purpose of education, but slightly dated perhaps. Humility is not COOL. It is OUT. Self-advertising is IN. It is a Brand You world, as Tom Peters will say. So, has the purpose of education changed? But if you look at the process of education, and the format of i...

I am now reading John Wood's Leaving Microsoft to Change The World and am hugely inspired by it. This is a story of his leaving a cushy job in Microsoft in China, and setting up Room To Read. This tells the story of his encounter with school children in Nepal and promising to come back with books for their library, tapping in his hotmail contacts, and finally going on to set up Room to Read. I must admit I am inspired, and I wish to do something similar in India. I can see what a revolutionary role free public libraries can play, and know about Andrew Carnegie and his project. While I set up the English Training business, I see this as a worthwhile project to get involved in. There are t-s to cross, and i-s to be dotted. But I have now got started on this - setting up a chain of free reading rooms in India. I am talking to a few Rotary clubs, and intend to speak to Indian businessmen as I meet them.

Don't blink, or you go under. The policeman sleeps, The eve teasers hang about - The eve is trying apple juice in the corner shop. Buses everywhere. A queue forms in front of the ATM. Another, in the panipuri shop nearby. This is Ekdalia. The corner of joy. An eternal Calcutta moment frozen in a frame.

There are moments when you think, Life's not worth living. Either boring or compulsive, All is tedious, and repulsive. These are moments when you see What we live for, is the key. Money matters, but we know, There are limits it can go. So is love, or sex if you please, Happiness appears more of a tease. Friendships matter, but waver too, No one lives just as you. These are moments when you choose, To keep going or cut loose. All of us have habits to keep, Even on board of a sinking ship. So, keep going, keep going till you die, Because you can't change, nor can I. Head down, and throw up hands, Or say, let us dig in sands.

So what do I do? When I get into a conversation, the question inevitably comes up. I have noticed I try to answer this differently every time: 'I am a business man, setting up training business', 'I am in International Business Development and setting up a training business' and 'I am a training professional, setting up a training chain'. There may be another few variations but I don't recall it at this time.So, when I thought of getting used to one straight answer, this is what I arrived at - I am Englishwala, and my job is to set up a business of training English. Yes, worldwide, and as my job title will say - India is included. I always wanted to do something worthwhile with my life. My Calcutta childhood did not show many possibilities, and my indifferent academic results did not inspire others to think of anything other than a standard office job for myself. So, I did - as destined - start off as a computer operator, gradually moving into customer facin...

I could not write the blog as often as I wished to in the last few months. This blog, Sunday Posts, was supposed to be about thoughts and ideas, and I suppose the hard, practical facet of life took precedence during this period. I was having a thinking holiday, which was refreshing, but one I can not afford for much longer. My life is set to change now. I am taking over as the Overseas Development Director for a training and recruitment company this Friday, and will be straight onto the airport thereafter. This inevitably means even more pressured thinking and lot less time to write a blog. I could have let the blog die. I did seriously consider that, and pledged to return to blog writing when I would have restored sanity and comfort in my life again. But, then, I had this flash of insight – first in many days – such a thing will never happen. I realised that it is a much better idea to turn this blog into a daily diary, trivial in the context of my lofty goals, but alive. I realised m...

So, it seems BAE had paid Prince Bandar Bin Sultan, ex-Ambassador of Saudi Arabia to the United States, whose face and name became familiar to all of us in days following the 9/11, upto $120 million a year, in bribes. Well, we knew that. That's not news. The Serious Fraud Office in UK wanted to investigate, but dropped the case after the Government stepped in. That's also old news. What should make us pause and think, however, is what Tony Blair said in justifying why the investigations should be dropped. He said that if the SFO investigation into BAE had not been dropped, it would have led to "the complete wreckage of a vital strategic relationship and the loss of thousands of British jobs". Vital Strategic Relationship with a corrupt, repressive and undemocratic Saudi regime, one must note. Also, of course, protecting British jobs justify bribing and securing contracts under the table - for our comfort. Strategic Relationship is more valuable for rule of law, it is ...

Reading through Simon Robinson's 'India Without the Slogans' in TIME, I could sense a danger for India : Edsel. Well, Edsel as in Ford Edsel, one of the most famous examples of over-hyping, effectively advertising a product and raising expectations before the actual product completely failed to match expectations. There is lot of talk on India now. Incredible India! As Robinson mentions, this years World Economic Forum meeting was replete with 'India Everywhere' advertising. India is moving up the chain : it is no longer hyphenated with Pakistan, implying its self-destructing conflict, but with China, underscoring its emerging economic might. Indian businessmen are on a global buying spree, Indian companies are hugely successful in IT, real estate prices are going through the roof, salaries are rising, there is a clear optimism in the air. But, for all this, one wonders whether India is selling ahead of itself. Robinson talks about the age-old Indian problems of inf...

Alfred Chandler passed away last month. It's funny that I chose Alfred Chandler as my nickname on Second Life. Playfully, I wanted to be the business historian of the Second Life businesses :-) However, having lived in the age of Internet, I am an worshipper of enterprise. For me, managers are outdated and out of touch, and completely incapable of leading because the environment is fluid and expectations are uncertain. For me, the entrepreneur is the hero. Chandler had just the opposite view. For him, managers were real heros. They were the value creators. He saw it at the pinnacle of the industrial age. More importantly, he worked it out with Alfred Sloan and GM, which needed all of Sloan's efforts after living on the brink under William Durant's management by the seat of pants. Chandler is also remembered for his contribution on strategy thinking. He is remembered for his studies of strategy and structure, which is ever more relevant today, when the companies need to reas...

Thomas Friedman can be rightly called the Cheerleader-in-Chief of Globalisation. His unending enthusiasm, coupled with his great capacity to observe only the sunny side of things, makes his books a kind of sugary-syrup, something that feels good and cheerful while it lasts. Whatever my attitudes towards his books, here is something I wanted to add to one of his lists. He lists - in his 'The World is Flat' - 10 great flattening forces of globalisation: namely, 1. Walls coming down [Berlin Wall]; 2. Connectivity [WWW]; 3. Work Flow Software; 4. Uploading [Open Source Software]; 5. Outsourcing; 6. Offshoring; 7. Supply Chaining; 8. Insourcing; 9. In-forming [Web Search]; 10. The Steroids [Digital, Mobile, Personal & Virtual]. I wanted to add another, the eleventh, English Language. If it was commerce that led the first and the second wave of globalisation [Globalisation 2.0 as Friedman calls it], it is global communication and cultural infusion and uniformity will lead the nex...