What can India learn from Bangladesh?

What the hell, you might ask. After all, Bangladesh is a failing democracy, run by a government which cannot guarantee safety to the opposition leaders, madrassas corrupting young minds possibly with funds from ISI and Al Qaida, a government whose allies are Muslim fundamentalists who profess hatred against India and the west, what can India possibly learn from Bangladesh?

The recent UN human development report, which ranks countries based on infant mortality rates(IMR), female literacy, freedom and a host of other factors, has ranked India 127 out of 170 countries, way below Bangladesh. How a country which is economically weaker than India has managed to do so well socially? The answer partly lies in Grameen Bank, which is the first implementation of micro-credit in the world.

Mohammed Yunus, the Harward educated economist tried in vain to get the nationalized banks to lend money to the poorest of poor, and decided to start his own bank in 1983. Today Grameen bank has branches in 46000 villages and has lent over $4.5 billion, mind you, against no collateral, but has good debt recovery rates. It has stressed on women empowerment in a predominantly patriarchal society.

The results are for everyone to see. Empowered women tend to have fewer children, educate them, and are more responsible than their male counterparts when it comes to repaying debts. Bangladesh spends much less than India on education but boasts of higher literacy rate and lower IMR.

Does it mean there aren’t any micro-credit schemes in India? There are, but nowhere near the scale of grameen bank. Lending to women SHGs(self help groups) has proliferated, but the focus is still on trickle-down approach, like the much touted Bharat Nirman scheme with a cost of, hold your breath, Rs.174000 crore. There have been such schemes in the past (every time a PM visits NE region, announces a multi-crore deal). The premise is simple. Investment generates employment and other benefits like literacy and social benefits accrue due to money multiplier effect, the basis of Keynesian economics. But it has failed miserably. Why?

The potential for corruption associated with such expensive schemes is not the reason, but the very fact that our systems are so inefficient that the money allocated for spending on such projects are returned to the exchequer. ET ran a story of how Rs.5000 crore money collected for sarva shiksha abhiyan, by imposing a 2% education cess on goods and services, remained unspent even after one year of announcement. So is the case of Bimaru states returning the money allocated by planning commission. With such a history, Chidambaram need not worry about raising money. They are rarely spent anyway.

Lending tiny amounts is not cost effective and the government should do more than exhorting public sector banks to lend without offering sufficient incentives (to my knowledge) to do so. Putting money is alright, but the government should put money where the mouth is.

Home sweet home

Ah, finally home. It’s a nice feeling, isn’t it? After three months of dog work in a secluded place.

The flight was a hop- Lucknow-Delhi;Delhi-Chennai. And I didn’t had to disembark at Delhi. I got to see the activity in the flight before the passengers board – airhostesses with their quick touchups and lipsticks, an army of men doing what I thought was cleaning- very amusing indeed.

I had to put up at hostel for one day as I’d taken the apex for 24th instead of 23rd and couldn’t pre-pone it - I couldn’t get a refund. It’s tough to spend a day at IIM doing nothing, I MEAN NOTHING! So I went to the library and flipped through one Principle centered Leadership, by Stephen covey. Have you read his 7 habits of highly effective people? It’s a must read. This one was too similar to that. Got bored in third chapter itself.

Tried to get one book, Freakonomics, suggested by one blog friend (new avatar of pen friend!) Couldn’t get that. I’ll try when I get home.

Talked to my sister who is in London via voice chat. I am a little conservative, but I must admit that the technology is fabulous.

So if you think I spent the day usefully after all, you are mistaken. For most part of the day, I was counting the minutes. Everyone had left the 23rd afternoon itself. To rub salt, there was my special room mate who kept telling me that I have the entire hostel to play the next day. I asked him to get lost but alas, he didn’t get the cue and continued rambling about how lucky I am to get such a wonderful opportunity. He got the harshest verbal thrashing of his life.

Well, I try to make the place come alive wherever I am, but I do have this nasty temper. Hey, there is a limit to even banter, isn’t it? I was a little sad to having him leave with the sourest of moods. Have a nice vacation, mate. And don’t think about me.

Why do I write serious stuff?

I am not a serious guy. I crack wits all the time, and sometimes I’m the only one who laughs. When others do laugh, sometimes I get the feeling that they laugh at me, not my jokes. And I had no way to check. Till I started blogging.

When you like my write up, you come back, don’t you? It’s in a way, in psychological terms, self monitoring. So I started mimicking calvin and hobbes (I’m too small to have a style of my own). And writing wit is a very tough job. An occasional post may come out good (like manac presenta(sham)tion); doesn’t happen all the time.

So why not write serious stuff to fill the gap? What should I write? Psycho babbling (like this) all the time will only drive you away. I have this USP, reading editorials. I think I started this much before the gyan given by TIME or IMS or whatever. So I started choosing a topic, write whatever I had read on it, and give an occasional opinion (as if I am Alan Greenspan).

How does it help? One, it helps me refine what I think about that topic. Two, it gives me a little satisfaction that I share serious stuff in simple digestible words (I hope).

What can you do? I don’t ask you to post comments all the time, but I do ask you to comment on serious stuff. May be you can tell me what I haven’t thought on that topic.

Footnote: When you read this post, you may get the feeling that I AM A SERIOUS GUY!

Term I ends today

It seems like yesterday that I was vegetating at vinay’s (my best friend) house when a mail that said ‘very urgent’ (regarding IIM admit) came and put my career in an F-1 track. The term I (first of six) is over already.

Lucknow is a place I’ve never been, met and acquainted with colorful and gregarious north Indians, started doing things (like blogging) which I am not sure I would’ve done otherwise, and found things about myself which I never knew before.

I know the purported air that surrounds us, the mixture of admiration-envy-indifference the society attaches, the expectations of companies…. Our life will never be the same, will it?

I came here with modest expectations, finishing the course without hiccups, build a few good friendships, get a reasonably good job, and on the whole, enjoy my stay here. So I don’t find the rationale of crossing the line in the exam hall and getting a better CGPA which some of my more ambitious peers share. This is not to suggest that I’m the most perfect of them all. I have done it before, and never felt good afterwards. I hope I never find any situation so desperate as to cross the line.

Talked about economics and operations right? What about the other exams?

IT Management

The prof is a little weird. Gives a 3 part question
Part 1- Write a question
Part 2- write the marking scheme
Part 3- write the answer. Great. I was so tempted to give a question, ‘what is the full form of ITM’ for 5 marks.  

Organizational Behavior

We had this question. Write the precise title of your project and write the objectives and findings. Alas, none of the other members of my group knew the exact title, though most of them did contribute to the project work. This was the case in other groups also. I heard a lot of ‘title, title’ murmurs in the hall. I found it almost funny.    

Outsourcing: Is India stealing U.S jobs?

Yeah I know. It has become such a clichéd topic that every tom, dick and harry (another cliché!) writes on it.

Just the other week Government of India has approved IA proposal to buy 43 planes from airbus at 2.2 billion USD when Blair came to Delhi. This comes on top of Air India plans for 50 jets from Boeing for $6.9 billion; private airlines like kingfisher and Spicejet plans worth one billion dollars each for Airbus and Boeing respectively; plus options for many more. This doesn’t relate to outsourcing. Or does it?

For the entire cry over India and low cost countries stealing jobs from the west, every jet Indian carriers buy creates hundreds of jobs in these countries. With airlines like Northwest and Delta airlines filing for chapter 11, others barely managing their existing fleet, the two majors had come under severe stress to stay in business; till the flood of orders from the land of Bangalore.

How true is the paranoia of outsourcing? AT Kearney estimates that for every dollar US put in India, it gets 1.12 dollars by cost savings and India gets 33 cents. The increased profitability means more money to be invested in new ventures, more returns for shareholders (70% of US households invest) and more employment generation.

During 1980s when Japanese were buying a lot of real estate in US, there was a great outcry. That fizzled out. Only now the threat is real, looking at the way the dragon is spreading its wings. The threat is both for India and US. What could be done?

It seems almost impossible to compete with china in low cost manufacturing. But India can compete in a different turf. Cheap brainpower. The auto ancillary industry, which involves designing and auto cad are demonstrating that they can more than match the dragon. Bharat forge’s recent US and European acquisitions are worthy of note.

Where does US come here? US has the technology, India with its engineering professionals represents cheap but skilled labour. It is easy to see one plus one is more than two.

The success of any economy lies in the ability of its companies in moving up the value chain. The pharma sector, which has long been thriving on reengineering and poor patent laws, has started putting a lot of money in R&D. So has software, which has moved from call centers to analysis and research. Proponents of outsourcing assume a zero sum game. India wins, US lose. The whole economics is based on scarcity.

Scarcity is not in the pie, it’s in our mind.          

Term I- End term exams start off with a whimper

Economics paper was designed to be written like an economics paper. Write the economic dimensions of so and so case. Write about how tax increases effect on the government exchequer. I could have studied operations management thoroughly (sigh).

Not that it could’ve made any difference to my performance efficiency though (operations is over, damn it siva). It was a shade better; engineers prefer maths to theory, don’t they?

Adhiraj-I-won’t-write-the-name-Banerjee does it again! I thought human beings were so narcissistic that the first thing they write on any paper (not just the answer sheet) is their name.

All blogs are blocked within IIM. Worse, all blogs are put in the same category as porn. Blocking freedom of speech? Not that it will stop the author anyway.

Psycho Babble II

Don’t get drowned in pressing things

There are always reports to be made, presentations to be done, textbooks to read. There are always a countless things to do, and they are the most inviting. Why? They demand action, they are NOW! DO THIS. It is very easy to get drowned in them, lose focus of what you really want to do, end up firefighting forever. At the end of the day, you may get satisfied with what you have done today, only to worry about what’s to be done tomorrow.

So how can we break out of this endless cycle? We can always find time to invest in ourselves. We can devote time to do two things- what we feel good, and things that will do us a lot of good.

First one- How often do we consider doing things which we really like, be it as simple as novels, sing, paint, write or whatever we are good at. What stops us from doing it. One of my friends asked me how I get time to blog amidst my busy schedule. Well, you read because it shows well on your acads, you do projects because your prof asks for it, (may be bath and brush because others ask you to!), what about giving one hour for yourself?

Second one- Consider reading papers. How much time do we devote per day, and how frequent do we do this? How about calling up our friends and relatives, investing in people?

It is easy to pass them on, procrastinate. These are things which don’t say NOW, though we all know the benefits we get from them, be it hone your skills, increase knowledge base or get benefits from ‘emotional deposits’ (to quote Stephen covey).

So why do I write blog? I need a little space for myself, but more importantly I CRAVE FOR A LITTLE PAT ON THE BACK! Heck, everyone do.

Lastly, hmmm.. Read the first line.

What is a self analysis test?

Long long ago, the rishis wandered Himalayas and did tapas to find about themselves. Fast forward 2005; we are doing the same in a computer that too in one hour!

There are a lot of heads-personality, group-dynamics, leadership etcetera. All on a 6 point scale – given a situation you disagree- strongly, moderately, slightly, one neutral and three agree.

How are the questions? There is one test- how good are you at building a team?
The questions are like this

1. I encourage team members to balance autonomy with interdependence among other team members.

Hmmm… I guess I slightly agree.

1. I encourage the team to achieve dramatic breakthrough innovations as well as small continuous improvements.

Hmmmm…

1. I diagnose and capitalize on the core competence.

I’m neutral (I don’t understand one word of this, damn it)

So how do you analyze the scores of these tests? Fast, the deadline is only two hours away. So I write, ‘…By analyzing the scores, I believe that I could make paradigm shift in the way I deal with people that will result in not just evolutionary but revolutionary changes that will help me handle the tempestuous challenges facing this world.’ Take that, sailu (prof)!

Footnote: There were a lot of printouts spewed by the printer that people didn’t know whose score-sheet was which. Clement saw two score-sheets wondering which was his, took the one which looked better. May be this is what is called personality conflict.

Management Accounting presenta(sham)tion

Well, this is easily the best presentation of all time. You have to see to believe how a Professor can make 20-25 year adults run for cover.

The whole affair was reduced to a viva-voce, and how I hate them! People come, customarily open the ppt, if you answer Professor Bansal’s one question, he says ‘Thank you’ and you are done. But if he says ‘thaenk youuu’, you know what it means.

Rahul-bubbly-avasthi strolls confidently, opens his company ppt, ‘Sir, Zuari Ltd is basically…’ ‘I know what zuari does. Do you have cash flow statement?’ Hey, we weren’t supposed to put them in ppt. How can you see those small figures in a ppt slide anyway?
Avasthi meekly replies ‘No sir. But..’. ‘Thaenk youuu’. Strike one.


Vikas Pasrija:  Prof: ‘Do you have cash flow statement?’ ‘Yes sir .I do’. Oops! Downloaded the wrong file. ‘Thaenk youuu’. Strike two.

Amol: Sits in the last bench. Didn’t know that his group had been called. Runs to the stage. Irritated prof, ‘Are you not interested? ‘ ‘Ssss….Sorry’. ‘Alright. Show me cash flow statement’. ‘Hey. I was supposed to do group presentation’. Thaenk…

Myself: Goes to the stage. Blurts out, ‘Sir, mine is an exports company’. Prof retorts ‘Do you know the foreign exchange policy?’ Ha haa. Bach gaya.

Bandaru: Poor chap. Couldn’t find the file. Nervous Bandaru frantically searches the ppt in the cluttered desktop. (Imagine having 60 ppts with most of them having the same name ‘Accounting policies of so and so company’). Theank youuu.

Pranshu Gupta: She has the same problem as bandaru. Prof waits patiently. Not fair at all, Professor.

Gives a break. Everyone runs like hell to add cash flow statements, B/L and P&L statements.

Murphy’s law: If you perceive that there are four possible ways in which something can go wrong, and circumvent these, then a fifth way, unprepared for, will promptly develop.

Example-Puneet Bansal: Chap thinks he covered cash flow analysis, P&L, B/L.
Prof: ‘Can you show the company’s board of directors?’ What the hell.

I could remember only so much.

Learn to write a formal letter

To
The unsuspecting reader
Wherever you are

From
Yours truly
My blog

Sub: Economics project presentation

Sir
Ref: Article ‘Market survey means freakin’ out’

With reference to the above, kindly refer to the below (oops! Here goes my formal letter)

As you may/may not be aware, my group had eco presentation at 18:30 IST at Class room 107 of one and only IIM L. The duration of presentation was 30 mins and 6 people shared the time.

We started with the definition and history of man made fibers viz yawn err… yarn and the like. The discussion then went forward to demand and supply for the past 15 years. Actually we didn’t have data before 2001. So we put the demand forecasted in 1990 for the next 15 years as the historical data! The international market vis-à-vis Indian ones were analysed (vis-à-vis is a term economics prof likes. So we peppered our presentation with vis-à-vises)

The group took off like a cat on a hot tin roof (sidhu! forgive me). Four people finished their part in ten mins. Make it long, make it long were the whispers on stage. Then came our own market survey which we forgot to take. Sounak didn’t disappoint. Simple strategy, slow down the pace of words. Soooo, ouuur neeext isssssue waaas……Good going mate. ‘In graphs, he used 47,13,8,9.5% pie chart distribution (when others used 80,10,10% drab distributions) to make it look real. Cute.

Cometh the hour, cometh the man! Yours truly comes last and makes a lasting impression (I wish). Agenda: Textile quota regime and government policies. 10 full minutes left.
Why not start with history of quota regime. My heart errr.. talk will go on ……

So what happens after ppt? Question and answer session. If no one is interested in questioning, why doesn’t prof leave us? ‘ Mr.Serious Sam, Why don’t you ask a question?’ Sam wakes up. Hmmm… ‘Sorry sir, I came late to the class’. That’s a good question.

At the end of these, all we needed was a lecture on communication from Prof. If anyone talks on communication again, I’ll die.

Yours whatever
Sivananth



      

Psycho babble

So I’m here for two months. What have I done?

The going is the same as in college. Chill out the entire term, cram in the last week and those who do the most end up having the last laugh in exams. This is how the system works every where and IIM is no different.

What’s the point of doing this in IIM? I could’ve worked in Wipro, done well and get promoted in three years to a team leader, say. I could’ve made a more confident person, capable of doing something worthy in my field. Instead I’m doing some worthless courses that no one would use anywhere, churning out stupid reports that I myself wouldn’t give a second look and being extremely busy without being any effective.

So why am I here? Everyone says IIM is a cash cow. I once thought that it is so good a value addition that cash behooves the same. But I seriously doubt it now. It’s only that companies have this high esteem on us unworthy souls, give us those opportunities to excel which wouldn’t be given to ‘lesser’ mortals and most of us do excel. In psychology it’s called a self fulfilling prophesy. You become what others believe you are capable of.

All’s not bad. There is this IIM culture. It means you constantly try to learn new things that will make yourself more useful wherever you go. You take advantage of opportunities around you and go on refining your USP (the marketing jargon means unique selling proposition) and in effect try to live up to the aura that surrounds an IIM for the people outside.

I haven’t done much. I’ll try. So should everyone.    

PJ (poor joke) of the day:

How do you wish god when he goes to office?
Khuda office!    

Free power is the most expensive thing in the world

Last year The Hindu ran on an article series on farmers’ suicides in Andhra Pradesh. Surely after Rajasekar Reddy came to power on ‘free power’ plank, the farmers should’ve heaved a sigh of relief. Or have they?

Consider the classic case of Byra ‘borewell’ reddy, as he is affectionately called in Guntur, impoverished part of AP. He has the distinction of digging, hold your breath, 40 bore wells in his farm with no avail. Why has the water table gone down to alarming levels? Free power, of course. With no metering of water pumps for years, the indiscriminate pumping has turned fertile parts of AP to desert. With no security, banks are reluctant to lend these farmers and as a result, they are turning themselves moneylender vultures putting themselves in a debt trap where only way out is suicide.

Delhi consumers have boycotted their payment of electricity bills citing indiscriminate hike. Regulator DPC has been forced to rollback at the behest of Sonia Gandhi. Why hike? Free power and no metering has led to large power thefts (euphemistically called transmission and Distribution losses) which has put the two private distributers, tata and REL in severe financial stress which they tried to pass on to unsuspecting middle class.

There are countless more reasons why free power is not free. With no incentives, the farmers use the most inefficient pumps that guzzle power. Rich farmers divert the power to their homes. The subsidies put a huge drain on exchequer and translate into high inflation and fiscal deficits which is brunt by the poor which it is supposed to benefit.

So should government abolish free power totally? The intention is good, execution bad. The government could leave the power tariffs to market forces and target the poor by way of say electricity coupons like the rice or wheat coupons given to the BPL families now. A proper census to identify the poor farmers could be best left to Panchayats. The government should ensure that thefts (T&D losses is currently 40% against the world average of 12) are severely dealt with.

Populism is not plain bad. If exercised intelligently.

Operations Research Decoded: When simplex is complex…

Suppose there are a few wholesalers and retailers each having fixed stock and demand respectively. The trick for the wholesaler is to apportion stock so that it meets demand, has the minimum unit cost of freight and he has no stock left.

Sounds simple, huh? You may think we will be bothered with more such real world problems that entail a little math. No. We are just doing math all the time. Sensitivity analysis, graphs, matrices and its stupid row operations with all those zj,cj and what else. They even dare call it simplex! No person in the right mind will remember anything the day after the exam.

The mere subject name suggests it’s not for managers and only for researchers. Why trouble us with nitty-gritty when all you have to tell us is what sorts of problems have solutions in linear programming?

My Childhood part II

Age: 14

Till 14, I first went to a school which frowned on anything other than academics. I played a chess tournament at a well known academy and did well. The next day I was made to kneel down before principal’s room for missing the Independence Day celebrations at school.

Dad got a transfer option: Agartala for 2 years/Calcutta 3years. My sister and I were damn eager to get released from the prison and go to the scenic Agartala. So we did.

Agartala:

Capital of Tripura, NE region, it is 40 mins by air and 2 days by train (Train goes around Bangladesh). So even beggars travel by flight and only IA operates flights in this loss making route. My hopes of airhostess were dashed when a 40 year old lady roughly prodded the passengers to make way. Thank god for the competition in aviation now.

School is a posh convent in the beautiful hills of Agartala. Students were all 3 years older to me. Seems they do nursery till age 5 then go to kindergarden. My sub-5 feet lanky frame felt oddly out of place.

So there were odd love letters flying around and boy! Was I thrilled? I saw a cutie pie by the name of Ruchi Jain who had a twin brother whose name is guess what, Ruchir Jain. By sheer coincidence (!), I became a close buddy of Ruchir. Things were going well till Ruchi tied a rakhi. My eyes welled up, not because she made me her brother but because she gave a peck on my cheek and said ‘you are my kid brother from now on’. What a shame.

We didn’t stay there for long, but the memories are still fresh.

Are Prakash Karat and Buddhadeb Bhattacharya playing Dr.Jekyll and Mr.Hyde?

This is the article which I sent to ET last week unsuccessfully. If ET has one million readers, my blog has potentially millions (forget the adjective)


Noted economist Paul Krugman says that capitalism triumphed and communism didn’t work because ‘For much of the past century and a half, men have dreamed of something better, of an economy that drew on man's better nature. But dreams, it turns out, can't keep a system going over the long term; selfishness can’. The apparent contradictions within CPI (M) over the reforms and FDI has thrown open the issue of relevance of communism today. The embarrassment caused by Mr.Buddhadeb Bhattacharya’s pro-reform stance may have made him the evil Mr. Hyde among his comrades, but it has given an opportunity for the Left to make its policy clear towards reforms.

Since UPA assumed power, the reform initiatives of Manmohan-PC-Montek combine has been hitting roadblocks, thanks to the bellicose attitude of the Left. The recent Bhel divestment initiative, which was scuttled by Left citing violation of CMP as an excuse, does not hold water either, as CMP clearly states “Navaratna PSUs shall remain as public sector but can go to the market to raise capital”. Clearly, even a 10% divestment will leave Government with more than 51% stake. Mr.Bhattacharya on the other hand, has been going out of the way to woo foreign investors to his state. This hypocrisy does not bode well for a party that professes to be the conscience of the government.

Rigid labor laws and high exit barrier has been the single biggest deterrent to entry of FDI in the country, thanks to the political class in general and left in particular. Mr.Bhattacharya rightly points out that issues of productivity and quality are not the headaches of management alone, but must be shared by the workers. Left can play the role of facilitator so that the benefits of reforms reach everyone. For that, it must shed its old dogmas of no-foreign-investment-at-any-cost and worker protection even if it compromises efficiency. Communism in its pristine form has lost its relevance and should find a place in history text books (though that may spark a confrontation of different kind!).

Review of Salaam Namaste

There is this scene where Arshad Warsi tells a drunk Saif ‘….Its 2005’. Thanks for the reminder. Till that moment, I thought this movie is shot in the year 2500 AD.

To make the long movie short, Preity is a surgeon-cum-RJ for guess what, ‘salaam namaste’ station, Melbourne. Saif is a head-chef in a restaurant. They start with a jagada (as all hindi films should), meet each other in a marriage, saif ‘thinks’ he had fallen in love at the end of marriage. He successfully persuades her to move with him to a penthouse, so that he could decide whether its love indeed. To ‘verify’ love, there must be one, right? So they make love for the next two months! She becomes pregnant. Now he refuses to take responsibility for the child (marriage), but still loves her. She is pissed off, but refuses to leave. In the end a baby video, a few self help books and expert advise from from subordinate cook changes his mind and to quote a cliché, all’s well that ends well.

If you are wondering where our ‘salaam namaste’ Indian culture fits in, join the club. I am a conservative tamil Brahmin, but the movie would have made even those pepsi/beer drinkers- who speak english in their tongue tips and frequently twist their fingers and scream yoyo!- agape. A lot of Saif’s antiques reminded Friends, so it did for those Shah rukh-college student Rahul-movies but atleast the underlying thread there was Indian.  May be this is how the directors take Indian cinema to a higher plane.

In a country where sonography test to find the sex of prenatal baby is banned, the film potrays a prenatal video positively, to promote the motherhood message. Saif’s recipe for controversy? (forgive the pun!)

Saif played his part well, except for the overuse of ‘crap’ that made me calculate the mean time between arrivals! Preity looks ravishing in the title song, but its tough not to notice her sagging cheeks in a few scenes - she almost resembled a cute bulldog.

Javed jaffry’s English grammar evokes laughter at times, yawn other.

The refreshing aspects of the film- Arshad warsi as his friend, a caricatures-rid comedian and Abhishek Bachan’s comedy in the last scene.

If you are unperturbed by logic (which we are anyway) but more importantly unperturbed by culture shocks, Salaam Namaste might just be your money’s worth.

My Childhood (part-1)

Childhood is one of the most wonderful times of a person’s life – filled with follies and ingenuities, anger, happiness and sorrow for the most trivial of things…. Lets cut the crap- come join me for this multi-part article about my childhood

Age – TYTR (too young to remember)

These people never stop/stopped telling me this

Sridevi (My elder sister) – You saw our nanny undergoing a uterus surgery and asked me anxiously, ‘will I need such surgery too?’

Ramachandra Iyer (Dad) – You managed to forget the school bag and went to school with only lunch bag. An embarrassed I came scurrying after you with your bag.

Nanny – You were difficult to be woken but I found a way (clever she). I used to scream ‘coffee’ and you used to jump from the bed and come running to me.

Class teacher – I once mixed up leave letter with provision list. An amused teacher kept cracking intolerably poor jokes throughout the year. (the jokes were poor alright. That it was poked at me made it intolerably poor)

Should World Bank give aid to Africa?

There is one school of thought, championed by economists like Jefferey D.Sachs, advisor to Kofi Annan on Millenium Development Goals and Jean Dreaze (advisor of Sonia Gandhi - championed the Rural employment Guarantee scheme, pseudo-socialist in my opinion) which says that developed nations should share their spoils with developing and third world nations so that they can be lifted out of poverty. The idea of 0.7% GDP contribution came from leaders like Tony Blair and billionaire philanthropists like Gates and Buffet in the G-8 summit last year. Jeffrey Sachs also came up with innovative ideas like transit fee for all trans-national air traffic, international vehicle licenses to fund this Aid Africa effort and write off African debts. Their economics is compelling and intentions noble, but does Africa deserve it?

True, a debt write-off may greatly reduce the burden off the shoulders of the governments, but such efforts are not new. World Bank has always assisted Africa with soft loans with pay back period of 25 years or more with interest of guess what, 0.75 percent!!! If these nations had just put the money in US T-bills which yields anywhere between 2.5-3% based on fed interest rates, they would have still paid back the money. But why haven’t they?

Most of these nations are run by autocratic governments who wouldn’t care less about people and divert the loans to fund their luxuries (remember Idi Amin?) And these nations don’t have strong democratic institutions – courts, election commission and the like. Nehru was a dreamer and glib talker but he was right once, when he said ‘Strength of Indian democracy is its institutions’. This is why India, for all its corrupt political and bureaucratic systems, has never defaulted in its international loan repayments, even during 91’ crisis. World Bank, which now thinks about writing off African debts, charges whopping 10% or more interest to loans given to India. All this to cross-subsidize African bad debts. India should never privy to this.

So what should be done? Not all African nations are run by autocratic regimes. Nigeria is poor despite good institutions and vast reserves of oil. Such nations should be eligible for debt write-offs and others contingent to their cleaning up their systems. This would prove a sufficient incentive for autocrats to mend their ways. Gadaffi, after facing international isolation for long, recently confessed to 1998 US embassy bombings in Libya and agreed to pay compensation to victims.

Carrot and Stick sometimes works better than one-size-fits-all approach.
          

Classes today

Operations Management:  Talk about pun, sushil (prof) cracked one unknowingly. The mike malfunctioned as usual and after some tinkering, worked. Prof checked it and said ‘sounds okay’. Each day brings a wealth of information to be added to you repertoire, if only you are intent on getting it. (I can’t recall the subject information though)

Economics: Business as usual. Talk of World Bank, hey, I know something about it. Read my other post on WB.

Organizational Behaviour Decoded:  A manager should not say ‘From his views, I find the chap smart, so I trust him’. He should say ‘By evaluating his normative statements, I rate his cognitive abilities high. Therefore I will build a relationship structure based on mutual trust’. The two statements mean the same, but the latter obviously comes from a smarter person. So Shailu (prof) made us a shade smarter by his 90 minute lecturing.

Thank you, peers

The food-poisoning incident is not something that should happen all the time, but it brought the best out of you when it did. You may not be Mother Theresas, but you didn’t shy away from the tasks which honestly, I myself would’ve found menial, like sponging. Thanks for the courage you shown in these sordid circumstances. Thanks for the care you showered on us when we were celebrating flu and going through the motions-pun intended!

Market Survey means freakin’ out

So there is a market survey on guess what? Man made fibers. MAN MADE FIBERS !!!! You know, polyester, viscose, flax etcetera - study the demand for them. So my friends and I prepare a questionnaire for dealers and customers – that was an ordeal in itself, got that okayed by economics prof and went to hazratganj, the posh area of lucknow and aminabad, the kirana locality. We split into two grps of three and other group went to Bombay dyeing, Raymond et.al while we got smaller shops.

Shop 1: I go to this shop which sells sarees. IIM brand means atleast we weren’t told ‘don’t bug me’ by dealer. Asks what is man made fibers. We explain patiently about different things. Dealer retorts ‘Cotton and jute clothes doesn’t come from sky. They are also man made. Excellent start.

Shop 2: Dealer is warmly receptive. Unfortunately he was more interested in IIM – average salary, companies, streams blah,blah,blah. In the end we weren’t sure who surveyed whom

Shop 3: Chap must have a lot of problems in life. Whatever questions we ask , ‘bhaiya, what is the percentage of cotton-polyester clothing you stock?’, he retorts ‘you tell me, what might be the answer’ Bhaiya, if we were to guess, we would have been saved from the trouble of surveying.

Now to customers- as expected didn’t have a lot of clue except polyester.

We surveyed one kid. When he knew we were from IIM, his face glowed. ‘Bhaiya, I am preparing for CAT. Tell me how to prepare’. Sigh. Forget market survey – Intuition works quite as well.

My friends had lucknow’s famous kabab-Boy! Smells heavenly. Too bad I don’t have too much options as a vegetarian. Had to be satisfied with kheer – another speciality. And roamed the streets – technically called ‘feeling the market pulse’.