Author Archive for Naveen

Coup in India

Published by Naveen on January 10, 2010 in General.
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What if there was a coup in India – not by armed forces but by administration. Chief Secretary takes charge and all politicians are removed. Will the governance suffer? For better or worse? All that the coup shall do is eliminate top layer of policy making. A layer that is superfluous in any case. Politicians are nor portfolio experts neither experienced in matters of governance. They rely totally on inputs from the administration & advisers. One thing is for sure that the country will save lacs of crores of rupees that is spent on upkeep of politicians. Corruption would be less if only due to the sheer reduction in number of takers.

One could argue that the IAS brigade might be no better. True. Could they be any worse? Unlikely. Atleast they have the qualifications & experience & hopefully values that better resonate with middle classes – the backbone of the civil society.

Let’s discuss this. Put forth your point of view. Dont be silent.

One could improve on this model by introducing a thin political layer. Let’s say we elect only the PMs & CMs who in turn choose their teams not from politicians but administrators supplemented by external subject matter expert advisors.

My first post on this forum was entitled “Govt needs an OD overhaul”. By & large, the consensus is that we have a large government machinery that is ineffective. It is elephantine & slow to respond. We the citizens are paying for sustenance of this governance without getting bang for the buck. If we were to analyse how to maximise value, we will seek to eliminate the most expensive & least bothered layer. We instinctively know that is the political layer. Lets dig in & find out if our instinct is backed by the facts or not. Pl contribute to this discussion.

East vs. West

Published by Naveen on December 30, 2009 in General.
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The prime difference between cultures of East (most of Asia) & West (most of Caucasia) is how the age is viewed & treated.

East respects its elders as a fundamental cultural axiom. This deep inculcation extrapolates to valuing traditions & finding solace in ancient glories, real or imagined. Myth & history merge. Bottomline is that a skewed focus on past dominates and even the current or future is interpreted in a framework of bygone references.

West, in contrast, is forward looking. Rather than simply hand down the cultural baton from one  generation to next, it expects each generation to renew its culture whether in arts, technology, lifestyle &/or sciences.

Western culture thus is always work in progress. That makes it unstable & tumultuous but keeps it fresh & alive. East, in contrast, may stagnate. River roars while the lake is calm & serene. The difference is between flow & relative stillness. 

Cultures get passed on via parenting. When the teenager rebels, East tends to induce conformity by labelling the act as disrespectful. West may get worried that the child might be a wimp if upon attaining adolsecence he/she does not challenge authority. In such a case, the child is goaded to assert, to not be afraid to throw his best punch even if that invites a harder blow in return.

In East, children are provided a secure, warm, comforting environment right at the onset.  West does not mollycoddle as much and lets the child experience his aloneness & bears the discomfort of the child’s initial pain that is thus caused.

My brevity is due to non-interactivity on this blog…I could go on…the reason this subject is important is because it has a major impact on the nature of leadership that a society produces.

The simple fact is that in the past 500 years, almost all that can be bracketed under “progress” has been created / invented / discovered by West. East consoles itself  by digging out what its societies did thousands years ago.

We have had a long run of being mere spectators in a world that is not being created by us. To turn the tide, we got to look ahead. To prepare generations that could do so, we ought to shift focus from past to future. From old to young. From ancestors to inheritors. And it all starts with how we rear our offspring.

More, should you comment….

Are we a Just society…rather Can we be a Just society?

Published by Naveen on December 15, 2009 in General.
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Prima facie, India has a strong independent judiciary. In practice, getting justice is rare. Conviction rate is low. Procedures outweigh the objectives. The system is convoluted & defies principles of natural justice. One would think it is quantum physics the way it is counter-intuitive and against common sense. We all know of lakhs of undertrials in prisons for periods much longer than the maximum sentence for the laws that they allegedly violated. We all know ‘open & shut’ cases which take eons with shifting goal posts with ever evolving theories. Then again there are relatively simple crimes that never get cracked and no one is ever held responsible.

There are so many cases that never will be concluded in one’s lifetime. By the time they do, it hardly matters. Deed is done, damage is done. Time heals and people reconcile. How’s that any different than the total absence of any judicial system? Prime purpose of the system ought to be deterrence by escalating the costs of crime. For that Justice ought to be Swift, Sure and Seen & not forgotten as is the case in our nation more often than not.

With all of our intellectual prowess, we cannot get simple things like rent act in place. Who is responsible for this? Do we need a law minister to come out with gems like “shady character should not become judges”. We all know the “shoulds”-what is needed is to devise systems to ensure that they happen rather than muse over them as wishful thinking.

Laws are broken with impunity all around us and none of us know what to do? Who to report to? The beat constable neither knows the laws nor is empowered to “challan” or arrest. He is mostly a meek figure amenable to bribes rather than an officer who can challenge or chase a criminal. Chor Sipahi game that we all play as kids would be hilarious were it to reflect realty?

We have laws against dowry, child marriages, child labour, corruption & what not…and politicians cite them as evidence that such ills do not exist in the society while the law enforcement is almost nil. The science of evidence gathering as practised is dismal, crime scenes are treated as a show with hordes of onlookers & dozens of cops lounging around without a clue as to what to do.

Effective law formulation, enforcement & speedy justice are basic building blocks of a society. We are not even at 101. Naxals, Maos & such movements are a natural outcome of an unjust society. It is mere vanity which makes us aspire for a permanent seat on UN Security Council, worthy of it, as a nation, we are not, although as individuals, our contribution to world bodies are significant.

I had a long interchange with an American colleague, both of us in International sales & thereby travelling the world, who wondered why Indians do so well outside India and not in India. He concluded that the reason is laissez faire, rahter lack of it in India. As an ambassador, I defended my country. My argument was when india was born in 1947, it inherited a large populace that was very poor & disadvantaged. To throw them to wolves would be genocide. Just like as parents, we protect our children till they can be on their own, India needed to be socialist in early years and shall gradually move towards the capitalist end of the spectrum as its population becomes strong & competitive.

Regretfully, it was evident even in early 80s that India couldnot carry all its people, it might as well have thrown them to the vagaries of a dog eat dog world in its earliest years  rather than create a hugely expensive pretence of a just society. I wrote in a publication in ‘89 that while China may kill its own people, India forces its people to kill themselves or simply let them wither away to die. China gets outrage & India pity + charity. The difference is in what crave as a nation from the world community. Affiliation or respect? Approval or hate? The tone for India was set by its first PM Nehru. His own psychology shaped the persona of the country.

So Can we be a Just society?? I await some comments before I expound.

P.S. I am surprised no one has proposed a single alternative to Taj Mahal as an icon of excellence. In ~500 years India has not created anything that can compete with Taj. Surely not. ….Or is it?

Aesthetics & Excellence

Published by Naveen on December 8, 2009 in General.
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All of the metro cities of India were built by ‘foreigners’. We native Indians upon attaining their charge ended up messing up each one of them. One hardly needs to expound on this as perhaps every reader lives in one of these high priced urban jungles characterised by incessant assault on senses, gridlocks, pollution, crime and a glaring lack of aesthetics. Portuguese Bombay, British Delhi, French Pondicherry are distinctive & highly prized while North Mumbai is hardly any different from any other crowded, dirty town of india with the ugly shutters and grimy dust lined main streets. The so called Silicon valley of India was already bursting on its seams in early 90s and yet we kept on founding new businesses in there. The original Silicon valley would be justified in suing for defamation.

At a talk at REC Kurukshetra, I pointed out that one reason South Mumbai has retained a bit of liveability is because the 3 wheeler auto-rickshaws are banned there. At the same forum, an industry colleague in his talk on pursuit of excellence used “taj” as an icon of excellence 27 times in an hour. As the next speaker, I abandoned my prepared talk on “Moving up the value chain” and instead challenged the ~400 members of the audience to collectively come up with alternative icons of excellence other than Taj. We struggled but could not come up with anything that could be credited to post colonial india. Perhaps, the reader of this post could respond with some ideas.

Once again, I shall stop here & wait for interactivity on the subject

Why Indian Software & not Hardware

Published by Naveen on December 4, 2009 in General.
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At an India – US Business Alliance, Santa Clara, US, I was invited to speak on “Future of Software in India”. That led me to think of history of software in India and I realised that India has always been good in software. Much before computers were invented. Software in a larger sense. Not just bits & bytes. Rather thoughts & insights. Creations of mind rather than creation of hand. India continues to excel in software as in literature, cinema, ads, designs, programming in any media and last but perhaps most important spiritualism.

If one would to guestimate the combined valuations of “wealth creation” by Osho, Chinmayanand, Sri Ravishankar, Mahesh Yogi, Krishnamurthy, et al; I wager, it would be manifold of the cumulative “software exports” from india.

Why India always exceled in mind work and performed poorly at hand work?

I think the reason is two fold. First the climate. Though India has all the seasons, by & large, the characteristic weather is “hot”. Focus on the genesis of Indian civilization. It originated by the banks of the rivers in highly fertile plains. It was easy to be agrarian. Throw the seed, rest & enjoy the fruits in time. By & large the weather was pleasant, hot & hotter. A cold harsh weather would have induced physical activity to generate ‘heat’.  To build shelters. To hunt for clothing. For our ancestors, the weather was conducive to relax under shade of a tree to muse & meditate.

Second reason, perhaps an offspring of the first, was & is the caste system. The highest status was accorded to the “mind” work and lowest to the “hand” work  and this continues till date. We are incilned to outsource manual work to an abundance of cheap labour. By & large, we aspire to be “Brahmins”. The learned. No dignity can be found in labour.

Contrast this with the way Japan, Korea & China harnessed labour to become manufacturers to the world.

As the posts in NextIndia forum are perhaps not much read, I shall stop here. Please treat this post as a discussion. Hope to hear from you.

Natural Laws, Human Flaws

Published by Naveen on August 18, 2009 in General.
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Gaussian distribution is not a mathematical construct but a natural law. It is normal distribution that occurs in populations, events and seemingly random & mass instances of all sorts.

Another natural law that should be easy to agree upon is that what is good for Earth is good for all life forms dependent & residing upon it.

Also, common sense would dictate that Earth is limited as to how much life can it sustain.

Hence, Death is not merely desirable but essential. Else, earth would soon be devoured by life’s longing for itself, its innate goal to proliferate.

Predation, therefore, plays a crucial role in maintaining the health of our one & only home. So does calamities, wars, diseases & so called natural disasters.

—

Morality, on the other hand, is not Natural.

It is a man made construct. It seeks to eradicate pain, suffering & death. All forces causing so are termed Evil.

Yes, it does accept non-violent, painless natural death but essentially its basis is man’s fear of pain, suffering & death.

Morality as a common code of conduct for humans, as commandments to regulate behavior is required but it has unduly drawn focus away from health of Earth to health of Mankind.

Under the guise of morality based on common fear of masses, mankind, for ages, has eroded Earth & other life forms on it. It has devised systems, theories, religions, sciences, etc. based on concepts like justice, fairness, equality, virtuosity & such. The combined effect is a significant tilt towards the welfare of people & not the planet without which they cannot exist.

Mother earth, consequentially is getting sicker and has developed fever & shivers as a starter. Global warming & icy winters are merely a warning. If not treated, health of our home can only worsen.

One thought which is being pursued is search for an alternative home, like mars or moon.

But isn’t it conceivable that Mars is not our future but our past. That like Earth it was once a hospitable planet which hosted human beings and their activities increased the carbon dioxide in its environment and made it hotter & hotter till it became unlivable & decimated all life on it.

Perhaps a few escaped. To Planet Earth.

(That may explain the sudden onset of industrial revolution only in Caucasian Europe while Indigenous Indians lived at peaceful co-existence with nature elsewhere in Americas, Australia, Africa, & the polar continents).

Only to repeat the cycle … to make another Mars in the offing.

 —

With the context above, let’s examine one man made concept, the Democracy. More specifically, the system of governance, not devised but practiced by us, the Indian Nation.

Democracy is based on one person one vote – all equal. Monarchy allowed the fittest to emerge as the Natural Leader with one person holding all the votes. Both extremes are against the Gaussian law. By law the population would appear as a pyramid. With majority at the base. And decreasingly fewer on the upper rungs.

If democracy was imposed in a jungle, surely an insect or a rat would emerge as the leader. Insects & rodents would vote en masse to elect one of their kind. In the hope that they shall do them the maximum good little realizing that the ones elected from their kiln would abandon them rather quickly because they shall try & hasten their evolution to the next rung in the ladder. They would want to become bigger predators. Though disappointed, the voters would understand and may even empathize. After all the desire to evolve is innate, they even take pride that one of their ilks has made it to the next rung.

Tigers would hardly vote. They know they simply lack the numbers to make an impact on the outcome. They would become disengaged and rely simply on their own strengths to get by in the jungle. (I am in the process of writing a book extending this scenario to all beings of the forest and the resultant state of the jungle)

The Gaussian distribution is simply a reflection of the reality. In the above context, we know that species which breed more tend to be lower on the food chain. And vice versa.

Anthropologic studies have established similar patterns in humans everywhere. Those whose survival is assured do not bother much to reproduce and if they do they keep the quantity small so as to ensure similar quality of life for their offspring. In ghettos, on the other hand, a culture of hopelessness pervades. Life is lived on a day to day, one breeds simply because there is no responsibility towards the offspring.

Once again, what is described above are two extremes. For majority, the boundary arguments do not apply. The point, nonetheless, is that a system which is based on quantum alone is apt if the assumption that all are equal is warranted by rather limited variance in quality.

There is much more that I can say. I’d rather have a dialogue. Pl contribute.

Provide Feedback on Right to Sex Legislation

Published by Naveen on August 15, 2009 in General.
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Amidst all the bills on right to education, food & employment, one right for which no legislation is required is right to reproduce.

As if it is a birthright: as in right to give birth.

A pre-requisite right which also is unspoken is right to get married.

It is taken for granted that everyone deserves to get married & breed.

Hardly an argument there but must the marriage be delivered on a platter?

‘Naukri & Chaukri’- ‘Livelihood & Spouse’ are the two fundamental goals that we must be competent to attain.

They ought not to be arranged by ‘Pitaji’s’ sifarish & ‘Mataji’s’ goodwill.

These are necessary rites to adulthood for which we get 20+ years to prepare.

How to woo & court, seduce & mate are as essential to learn as the fourier transforms.

Otherwise there is no growing up, simply growing old.

Just as we compete for jobs so we must compete for mates. We got to earn these life rewards not merely have our parents arrange them for us.

Competition breeds competences and society as a whole benefits by honing the quality of the next generation.

Not everyone will succeed as not everyone ought to succeed. This is a fundamental realization that we must accept.

Just as some students will fail in exams, some employees will be fired for incompetence, not every male will be successful in courtship and not every female

will be able to attract a spouse. As simple as that.

As it stands, it is far too simple, the bar is too low. If one is unable to secure a spouse in Haryana, one can always buy a bride from Assam.

It is simply trafficking under the guise of holy institution of marriage.

The supply as well as demand for such brides & grooms is non stop & plentiful

What’s worse is that both the bride & groom are products of marriages of convenience and in turn shall breed more candidates.

Talk about a self-perpetuating system. This is surely one.

In such a system where ugly, infirm, psycopaths, incompetent, the evolutionary laggards find it so easy to breed,

the next generation’ qualitative enhancement is severly impeded if not eroded.

The process of natural selection is simply bypassed. A blatant violation of a natural law in the name of “culture”.
Sexual urge is natural too and attempts to realise that urge is totally legitimate.

Must the desire for sexual fulfillment equate getting married.

Perhaps the Haryanvi would not need to marry the Assamese if an outlet for sexual urge was handy.

India has the world’s largest number of prostitutes but in the eye of law they are virtually non existent.

And in the eye of morality, they are repugnant.

We are okay with sex as an act of procreation but not as an act of recreation.

Why cant a person who might be aware enough of his or her inability to afford marriage &/or offspring, cant simply enjoy guilt free sex.

(S)He would be doing society a big favour.

By afford, I am not suggesting finances alone, it takes emotional maturity & life understanding to be effective parents.

So, inadvertently, we encourage child marriages. They might be legally of age but the couple may have only that as a qualification.

Both enter marriage with little or no maturity emotionally or sexually.

It is unlikely that they are going to discuss contraception before conssummation.

Other than condom, all other contraception has to practiced by female.

If she explores that subject prior to wedding she runs the risk of being viewed as promiscuous.

Inexperienced male on the wedding night is anxiety ridden to deflower and condom is an unwelcome pullback to prove his manhood.

I bet the first born in most such marriages is conceived within the first few months of the wedding night.

Second born is then rationalised to complete family.

The cycle continues.

It is well established that the cultures that are liberated in views on sex are now faced with the problem of a negative population growth.

Governance in such nations is attemtping incentives to breed.

Governace need in India is exactly the opposite.

It calls for social engineering, moral relaxation, effective lawmaking.

Indeed what is needed is a law for Right to Sex.

Effectively delineating that from right to marry or breed.

For that the law of nature must prevail.

Government needs an OD overhaul

Published by Naveen on July 14, 2009 in General.
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Like past President Kalam & late PM Rajiv Gandhi, Manmohan Singh, too is a reluctant politician. Upon becoming PM the first time, he announced that no new policies are needed, what is needed is administrative reform to ensure the effective implementation of the existing policies.

The solutions to the problems of India are mostly known. Problem is in the structure & HR policies of the Government of India. It is an OD issue. People who join the government are motivated mostly by security & power. Once in, they will earn till they die, they cannot be fired, at worst they can be transferred. This must change, what we need is people who are motivated to acheive & accomplish. Today, such people will simply not join government because its HR policies attract exactly the opposites.

 The appointment of Nandan Nilekani as a Cabinet Minister equivalent is a very positive and refreshing development.
 
A loose federal structure allows things to fall between cracks, there are no accountabilities. Results are in form of reports not actions & outcomes. The checks & balances are based on mistrust rather than fail-safe strategies. What we need are institutions headed by strong personalities who identify with its successes & failures. Delhi Metro & ISRO are two such examples.
 
Once elected, PM is nation’s leader including that of opposition. Opposition’s perennial role to destabilise the government tantamounts to sedition. PM must be empowered not undermined.
 
A captain can be only as good as its team. We can keep on changing the captains but the team remains the same. 
 
The top down and bottoms up approach to change must converge. As much as we need to weed out corrupt politicians we need to weed out the ineffective middle and bottom layers too.
 
There is no problem that India faces for which the solution is not known, what remains unknown is how to change the government structure, systems & staff. Who is responsible for that? How do we iniate a HR & OD overhaul? Where does one start? Any answers?