Hey Ram

I’m not as religious as my parents. But I will consider sacrilege any suggestion that the characters in Ramayan dont exist; Even if it comes to support a legitimate cause, a simple dredging activity to build India’s own Suez Canal.

I’m all for sethusamudram, and even if it doesn’t bring the economic benefits similar to panama or suez, to protest the project on religious basis doesn’t appeal to reason; Surely Ram, the noble and benevolent god will approve the actions of us mortals. As for as cost benefits go, no large project is without some costs.

But when someone suggests the mythical bridge is not man made but a natural formation in the Indian ocean because the builder Ram doesn’t exist, I can only think with my heart. I can only think of the fatwas that gets issued for prophet cartoons, the fatwas for Salman Rushdie and Taslima and countless others who have dared to suggest far less; Hindus are as spineless to blasphemy as India to terrorism. I’m frankly surprised by how strong my emotions were, for am I not the educated elite? Perhaps this is why a party like BJP gets voted in spite of the countless loons in its ranks. You only need a pea-brained congress to create a BJP.

The sad part is the project will get delayed for all the wrong reasons once again. In times like these, I wonder if democracy and freedom of expression is a hindrance. Look at what the Chinese are doing to the sacred Mekong. They may end up damaging the habitat, but no one can accuse them of one thing – inaction.

Life @ ICICI bank

That’s where I got an offer at campus. Campus life officially ended at 17^th of March with a glitzy convocation. I had done well academically after an ordinary first year and like everyone else in my batch, felt on top of the world.

After a period of rest and ennui, I joined the bank officially on 22^nd May. I had 3 week training at IFMR, Chennai and actually joined dept in mid June.

Okay, enough of timelines, as if I’ve undertaken a world quest. I’d asked for a risk profile, and they had assigned me in credit risk. At IFMR, people from different departments gave an overview of their depts. Following an unflattering portrayal of credit risk group by a person working there, I developed cold feet. Upon returning, I discussed with my group head (a nice gentleman) in my first meeting and got my profile changed to market risk.

Seat is a problem in every organization. The next batch of trainees’ had gone to IFMR, so I thought I’ll occupy one of their seats temporarily till the secretary scavenges me one somewhere. After 3 weeks, no seat. Fine. The problem was there was no seat literally. In the mornings, I used to go to the corporate library and exhaust all the papers and magazines and then go for lunch. After lunch, I’ll go to my boss’ cabin for 2 reasons. One, otherwise he would forget I exist. Two, bug him for a seat. Then, I tried to read all the big documents that I’m supposed to read and when I got bored, I frequented Learning matrix (It’s a place to learn new modules related to banking Eg. Anti-money laundering).

You can’t have an MBA drawing hefty pay (according to them) and not give him no work right? So, in the 4^th week, my boss started giving me small work and said they aren’t tight deadlines. But that still needs a computer. Hey, you are talking to a professional, an organization man. No problem, I told my boss. There is a Bloomberg terminal (Have you seen one? It has a twin monitor and a colorful keyboard. Sells information like Reuters) I started working on it. When someone wanted information from it, I worked on their computers. Since I needed the half finished data, I used to mail it to myself (you can’t copy from computer- IT security) Like this I worked back and forth, forth and back…

One day, Bloomberg terminal crashed. No one left their seats to collect data so that’s it.

After 6 weeks of sustained pressure, I got a temporary space without any computer, telephone or drawers. Mission workstation. That’s on next episode.

Even IIM needn’t automatically guarantee success

Getting a good CGPA is pain you know. Attend classes (no proxies), take notes, make presentations, and class participation, study. Sacrifice sleep, frequent eat-out, parties, free-riding etc. Why shouldn’t it form part of your resume for final placements? After all, committee selection is done by seniors, the rookie HRs. Win contests, well, one elusive cherry for the majority. In the end, acads is one area where rewards are commensurate with efforts. Good CG reveals a lot of positive aspects about a person- commitment, desire to excel, hard work, consistency etc.

Does good CG guarantee jobs? I don’t know. It definitely is important for shortlists to good companies and decider for marginally better ones. Converting is your talent.

Disclosing to select companies doesn’t make sense. If 8+ CGs can tilt the balance in slot 0 companies, 7+ CGs tilt in slot 1, 6.5+ CGs in slot 2 and so on, ceteris paribus. How do you know when anything can become critical? Why should a bunch of cool-dudes stop loser-muggus from getting even a tiny edge? I’m not passing any judgments on low graders, for the moment, let’s talk evidence.

IIM doesn’t select its students by first-cum-first-serve basis, does it? In fact IIM-A, the goliath wants consistently great acads for final selection even if you clear one of the toughest competitive exams on earth. Personality and interpersonal skills can wait. Merit is the raw material.

It’s not as if people didn’t know the importance of CGPA. The fact that this will happen was told by Profs right at induction. It can be argued that a relative grading system ensures that someone will get 4 no matter what. But a person cannot screw up all courses if he works, he has only himself to blame otherwise.

If disclosing CG means multiple offers and possibility of entire batch not getting placed in record time, so be it. No one should assume that admission to any institution, even an IIM, guarantees success.

PS: I don’t have a great CG, only a disclose-able one.

Which is better, lot of attention or no attention?

Tata acquires Corus for a whopping price, so India has arrived! Indian media goes gaga, British papers cannot stop talking about BRICs and so on.

In the middle of madness, I wonder if we are missing a point. How do we know we have arrived? By generating attention? Till 1960s, we lived at the mercy of the Western donors for food. Aid used to generate a lot of media attention (We were proud we got aid!) But after Indo-Pak war in 1965, when Nixon administration stopped food aid, we were forced to modernize our agricultural systems and within a decade, went from being a food importer to exporter. Food aid no longer hogged attention.

As we grew, we cut down all aid which came with caveats. When tsunami struck in 2004, we were an international donor country in spite of losing almost 100000 people and billions of dollars of wealth. When we turned down aid from the west, it generated a lot of media attention. Now barely anyone thinks about foreign aid for rescue.

When Vajpayee signed an epic Nuclear cooperation agreement with Bush (precursor to the current Nuclear deal), some media critics said he is turning India a junior partner to US. We were junior beggars when we were getting aid. Now junior partner seems like a stigma -Signs of change.

A couple of years back, I used to see a M&A deals with deal size of less than a $100 million being splashed in headlines of all national dailies. There was only one Indian MNC, the Aditya Birla Group. Now, anything less $500 mn is relegated to middle pages. Amtek Auto, a nobody till an year back, has presence in a dozen countries today.

Ah, Tata Corus! But in a few years, those kinds of deals would be so frequent no one would care. That’s the time would we have truly arrived. That time beckons.

A little sunshine?

Last couple of weeks has been great. I won a “National” level contest (at least on paper… in final stage all teams were from my institute only because teams from other institutes couldn’t make it), got a shortlist for one more, my grades shot up last time, Gravitas 2007 is a blockbuster success with articles from President of India and top industry honchos, got (rather stole :)) airtime in Zee Business about Budget 2007. At this rate, I’m beginning to feel that the paper I sent to World business dialogue at Cologne, Germany on Changing Societies might get selected (Please god, STRETCH MY LUCK!!!!) I’m so exited I can’t feel the ground. A little sunshine in otherwise mundane life?

Service manufacturing or Manufacturing services?

Ford is remembered for his production genius. But he was actually a marketing genius. He figured out that if he can make Model T cheap, he can sell millions of cars to American public and make a lot of money. His production is the result of his marketing acumen, not the other way round. Thus born the assembly line that Charley Chaplin makes fun of, in the movie of same name.

Overtime, the production system is being perfected to such an extent that any job can be broken into separate parts and studied, what Taylor did in scientific management. This led to phenomenal productivity although it assumed worker is also a machine (alternative was Hawthorne studies which said happy worker is productive worker)

But services were a different ball game. How can you increase the productivity of a knowledge worker? But that is exactly what the BPO companies are doing. They have deskilled every aspect of the work, creating standards for tasks like answering the customer call to creating research reports, Financial statements etc. in the process driving down costs for big companies. The companies like Asian paints have the practice of checking the workers’ lunch boxes before they leave after work for expensive parts, while BPO companies have eliminated paper, banned mobiles during work and scan employee mails and implemented a thousand other policing strategies to protect equally expensive data.

Not just BPO, even SAP, which was once considered the domain of consultants have been deskilled to such an extent that office boys do the entry now. Standards have been created for every application, be it mining data or preparing chef’s special soup. Due to this, services are slowly acquiring the flavor of assembly line manufacturing, creating a similar productivity revolution.

If service is becoming manufacturing, what is manufacturing becoming? In olden days, modern factories (GM tried unsuccessfully to build an automated factory at a whopping $50 billion) were a sign of triumph. Not anymore. The less the company produces the better. GM is now an assembly line with all functions from design to manufacturing of complex parts being outsourced to Chindia. What is it left with? After sales service, of course. The companies are discovering that a lot of money can be made with maintenance and service contracts.

So, with the line becoming thin, what is the end? Infosys BPO CEO reckons people especially in developed countries who had been long doing what was once complex jobs may suddenly find jobless unless they learn newer things, or work in India!

Have you tried Yahoo! Answers yet?

It is a wikipedia type service only that people answer your questions, not just share knowledge on general topics. I had a very specific question about Art, and was fed up googling and thought why not give it a try. An Art consultant with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree answered the question in less than two hours!! (wikipedia.org/wiki/Bachelor_of_Fine_Arts)

With Google spreading its wings everywhere and gobbling every bright idea that emanates anywhere (youtube being the latest), I thought it’s only a matter of time for Yahoo! (I’m a fan of yahoo. I think the new yahoo beta is an ultimate mail interface) to get gobbled up. But no, time and again they have proved they can come up with a few aces and beat Google at its own innovation game (Google answers is a failure). Way to go!