Sunday Posts

I had an interesting experience last week which is worth writing about. I was asked to recommend ways to improve the operations of an organization. This was outside my work, and I knew little about the business and its operations before I was asked to sit in a few meetings, observe and give recommendations. The request was made by someone who I could not say no to, despite the fact that I have enough on my plate now. I ended up having a very interesting, insightful experience, which was my main takeaway from the exchange. The organization in question is a government contractor, and delivers training services in various occupational areas. The organization has grown over many years, and some of those growth was ad hoc . The systems and processes that I noticed seemed to have grown organically, from its roots as a small firm, and somehow did not scale up when the organization got larger. Besides, following a merger a few years back, this firm has suddenly become very large, have achieved...

After Ireland ratified the Treaty of Lisbon, and with only Poland and Czech Republic left to go before the treaty is fully ratified, the speculations are hotting up for the new President of European Council, or the 'President of Europe' in the popular imagination. And, one would not be surprised if Tony Blair, whose name is making the rounds for a while, ends up getting the job. If that happens, no one will be surprised: Mr. Blair has always been very Presidential, and is suitably high profile for the job. However, it is likely to leave a lot of people disappointed. But, before we get to that stage, a lot of things can go wrong. First, indeed, if any of those two remaining countries fail to ratify the treaty, all these talk will be meaningless. Poland and Czech Republic are both Europe friendly countries, and both countries know that the EU represents a lifeline in the middle of this deep economic crisis. So, it is fairly unlikely that they would want to scupper any deal. But, ...

It was Herbert Spencer's fault. He read Charles Darwin's On The Origins of Species [1864] and thought it endorsed his own economic theories. And, he coined the term 'Survival of The Fittest', which became permanently associated with Darwin's name after he accepted the term as synonymous to his own 'natural selection' and used it in the Fifth edition of the Origin . Thus, Darwin gifted the capitalist market economics its greatest gift - that it resembles the laws of nature - and paved the way for thinking which will later be labeled as 'Social Darwinism' or 'economic Darwinism'. It is worth reflecting back on this connection between how nature works and how modern economic thinking sees it working, because we are at an important inflection point in our history when we must question all the conventional wisdom thrown at us. Economic policy making has been dominated by Economic Darwinism, since the failure of Welfare State thinking in the 1970...

I am surprised to note the buzz around Shashi Tharoor's Twitter comment. Dr Tharoor said that in Vietnam, people work on Ho Chi Minh's birthday. And, also, in a reply to a direct message, said that he thinks the Indians should work on Mahatma's birthday and not take a holiday. Amazingly, this is taken as a mark of disrespect to Mahatma. I could see Dr. Tharoor having to explain to someone that he meant that he would pay his homage to Mahatma in the morning but get on with day's work thereafter. Congress Party said that the comments were purely Dr. Tharoor's and did not reflect the party's, or government's stance - the sort of spineless, boring reply you can expect from career politicians. Overall, it seems that India's political class is yet to come to terms with Twitter openness, and Dr. Tharoor is getting into trouble ever so often because he is speaking his mind. But, before we get into that, why it is so wrong to work on Mahatma's birthday...

I have obviously made different statements, in this blog and in my private conversations, about my future plans. I am conscious that most of them displayed torturous inconsistencies. I have long said that I shall leave this employment by end of August, but then decided to stay a little longer because the things I expected to come about, did not come about. However, the things I did not like about the job remained quite the same, and though I decided to stay for a while, I wished I left and kept talking about leaving soon. As someone recently told me, in jobs as in marriages, you never talk about leaving, unless you absolutely surely want to leave. Very true, because after a while, people stop believing your sincerity, and then, even if you leave, it does not matter anymore. Besides leaving and staying on the job, there was another subject on which I was terribly inconsistent. About staying in Britain Vi's -a- Vi's going back to India. I have deliberately migrated and settled ...

I am at it again, after a gap of almost five years, when I am actively searching for a job. This means all the things that come in the package, preparing a CV, posting it on job sites, keeping a watch on job alerts, firing off applications to those positions which remotely match my area of expertise and smarting off after reading through various rejection mails every morning. Despite the disappointments, it is an interesting exercise to do, to get a feel what I am really good at, to study the patterns of rejection letters and infer which one was written with some sympathy and which one was auto-generated, feeling the sense of hope and despair while waiting for some employers who did not say no, overall feeling young again. Also, the interesting thing here is that my heart is not in it, not yet. I am not sure whether I can get back the zeal of sending out 750 applications as I did in the first few weeks after landing in Britain, which earned me 743 straight rejections, 7 interviews and ...

The news that overshadows any announcements made in the G20 this week is that Obama 'snubbed' Gordon Brown. The British media went on an overdrive on the leak that while Downing Street wanted an one-on-one with the President on the sidelines of the UN meet or the G20, no such meeting could be organized. Gordon Brown had to be satisfied with a walk and talk discussion with President Obama in the kitchen of the UN, though he had a 'substantial discussion', following the Downing Street communique. The British media obviously did not like this: President Obama failed to call Gordon Brown immediately after taking office, he landed up in London a few months later and gifted the Prime Minister a set of DVDs which did not run because of the wrong region coding and finally this! President Obama does not seem to have any time for the 'special relationship' that the British assume that they enjoy, and he is making it way too obvious for the British tastes. What is going o...