How To: Common Sense approach

Many times You must have noticed that people who work very hard in general studies are not scoring high marks but a candidate who is not even reading the newspaper regularly manages to score decently high marks in general studies paper. And we are left wondering "How does he manage to do this"?

Well, There is no rocket science. It is all about understanding examiner's psyche and capturing the demand of the question. Mainly the scoring on an answer depends on two things, one is content and second is the presentation. Here I am talking about content. We will deal with the presentation aspect in a separate post. We have already seen the stakeholder approach of content generation and 5-point approach of reading articles. Here I am discussing common sense approach which is used by most of these smart asses to outnumber a hardworking sincere candidate in GS question.

According to this approach, anyone investing too much time in GS content is a fool. For the simple reason, that GS is a bottomless borderless sea. With the same effort, we can improve more in subject or essay. Therefore, These candidates use common sense to generate points.

As per common sense, whenever you are asked various reforms in any system, you can put forth 10 universal points which work everywhere in the Indian context.
For example, Recently CJI T S Thakur made an emotional appeal to Prime Minister to play his part in the process of judicial reforms. In the light of above, Suggest the reform in the Judicial system of India?

With closed eyes and total ignorance of the issue, one can write
1. Need of reforms in legislative framework
2. Need to train more human resources and improve the capacity and skills of existing human resource
3. More efforts need to be put in research and development. Focus should be put on data analytics and in-house technology development.
4. We need to adopt international best practices in this regard.
5. Community participation is must to reform this system. We need to make the community aware and more participative in the process.
6. We need to involve more women in the system at every level. They can bring a perspective of care, sensitivity, and responsiveness in the system.
7. Institutional support needs to be spruced up. More infrastructure needs to be built to match the burgeoning need of Indian population.
8. Proper mechanism of auditing, monitoring and performance evaluation needs to be put in place to reduce corruption and promote transparency.
9. Practices of ethical good governance need to be adopted.
10. The Public should be made more aware. A mass awareness campaign should be launched.
11. Greater budgetary support is needed to put reform plan in action.

A comprehensive systemic reform is the need of the hour. Then only we can realise the vision of inclusive and sustainable development.

Now with this template in hand, one can easy write any answer. This same answer can be used for any kind of systematic reforms. Be it police reforms or press reforms or education or health or irrigation or agriculture or tourism whatever. A smart candidate pulls out this template of eleven points and fills it at certain points with whatever little bits of information he knows. And that's it. With a decent presentation skill, he'll have a presentable above average answer. This is like having a gravy. Put some pieces of paneer or other vegetable and you will have various dishes ready for consumption.

Even the same points of reform can act as points of criticism of any issue. Apart from this other general phrases of criticism could also be included. For like, cure worse than the disease, or mere lip service to promise, eye wash or handwaving or armchair theorising or devils in the details or data-agnostic or knee-jerk reaction and so on. These could be golden words for criticizing any government scheme or policy or bill or foreign policy initiative.

However, not many candidates have this macro bird-eye view of GS paper. Thus, people end up vomiting some random piece of information without arranging it in proper format and without capturing the demand of question. After all, Common sense is not so common. And this becomes the difference between success and failure. Merely knowing is always not enough, doing is the key to future.

Book Review: Fear by Osho

This book is part of Osho's "A new way of living" series of books. It aims to explore the root causes of human insecurities and fear and motivates a reader to shed all the fear and live life at full steam.

The book is divided into five umbrella themes namely understanding fear, exploring roots of fear, listening to your inner voice, a dichotomy of love vs fear and developing insights into fearlessness. As a text of philosophical underpinnings, it has abstracted the concept of fear. Therefore, the assimilation of concepts may take more than one reading. For instance, It is easier to say "shed the fear of failure because it hampers your full blooming and demotivate you" but understanding it at the level of your inner conscience requires a deeper interpretation of the subject. That is a probable limitation of all the text of philosophy. They try to explain practical experiences with the help of theoretical constructs.

However, Osho has done sufficient justice with the topic by citing numerous anecdotes, historical references and quoting some great figures. For instance, He quotes Nitzsche by elaborating on the idea of "Live Dangerously" and Dervish Rumi (Sufi saint Jalaluddin Rumi) poem of "Move within but don't move the way fear makes you move". It contains many references to Buddha stories.

The themes are covered in question answer fashion. This helps us in understanding the crux of the issue. It is supported well with humorous recounts and parables. Given the lucid and coherent English, a fast reader can finish the book in a day but that will not serve the purpose of the book. One needs to read the book slowly and consistently. It requires simultaneous introspection and identification of various thoughts and emotions within you and in your environment. Then only one can derive maximum benefit of the book.

Instead of writing a general overview of book, I would list my 10 learnings from the book.
1. Drop all should's, ought's and must's of your life. The day we do so, we will start living in a different orbit.
2. Start enjoying your insecurities. Accept them, observe them, understand them. Slowly they will go away.
3. When you are in danger, thinking stops. Thinking is a luxury. When people become secure, they think too much. So when the shadow of fear shrouds your soul, knock hard and enter the door. Be a fool. Don't think too much.
4. To realise one's destiny, one should go through a period of no-aim, no-direction and no-ambition. To shed fear, go through fear.
5. Follow your inner nature.
6. Ambition, politics, ego, success these are devilish in nature. Love, freedom, truth and emptiness is the way to go.
7. Giveaway control over your life. Enjoy the insecurities of life. We seek answers for everything so that we can control life and that's where we become miserable.
8. Repression of feeling leads to lose of aesthetic sense, grace and divinity. (Story of marine and monkey on the island)
9. The power need is driven by inferiority. Superior cares nothing about power. Therefore, love rather than domination helps us in shedding fear and rejoicing life.
10. Human life is akin to Japanese tree with no roots. It grows older and older and but it does not grow.
11. When you do something with enthusiasm then godliness takes it roots in you.

I would conclude this with the lines from the last para from the book. "Get up every morning with a great decision, a certainty, a clarity, a promise to yourself that today is going to be tremendously beautiful and you are going to live tremendously". Your suffering will become your joy and your fear will turn into an adventure.

Psychological tricks

If you wish to see the frustration tolerance level of a person then ask him intentionally an innocuous doubt. Something which even a kid can answer. For example: Ask him to explain how facebook works? or what is thirteen multiply by seven?

If you wish to test anger of a person then ask the same doubt again and again.

If you wish to find the politeness quotient in a person then notice words like kindly, please and sorry in his conversation.

To find what a person thinks about a certain subject, it is better to ask him in non-judgemental tone about his opinion on the issue.

To check out his commitment level, ask him to work overtime or skip food for work.

To check out his limits, ask him for some big request. For example, a manager may ask him to work on weekends straight.

To see his individuality, ask him to recall a decision in life where not many people agreed with him or when many people opposed him.

To read the mind, look at his face with intensity. Look at the eyes and facial nerves.

To test the positive tone of person's conversation, say something negative about the scheme of things. For example, raise your doubts about team's success or say something wrong about other colleagues.

To test the assertiveness of the person, do something which may hamper his productive activity. For example, sing in a loud voice when he is working or busy.

To test honesty of the person, ask him about his weak points or dig deeper into his poor performance area. For example, ask him to tell his 3 weaknesses.

To test his vengeful instinct, hit his ego hard. For example, say something bad about whatever he cares. For example, tell a girl you look ugly or you have dark spots below eyes.

To test his sensitivity, check how he treats people who are below him in rank or status.

To test his love, ignore him.

To test his altruism, give him 1000 Rs. and go together to some holy shrine where he can have an encounter with a beggar.

To test his reliability, give him some work and with words of hope, expectation and faith in his abilities.

To test his arrogance, shout on him

To test his flamboyance, see if he can wear a t-shirt inside out in the public market and can he stand with confidence and style even when he is the odd one out in the crowd. Can he take a hit at his public image without getting too conscious about it?

To test his adventure spirit, track his risk taking abilities in various life situations.

To test his decision-making skills, go shopping with him.

To test his show-off skills, analyze his dressing sense. Here his date of birth can also come handy. Generally, I find Leo's as image conscious.

To test his non-violence spirit, slap him.

China

Keep a cool head and maintain a low profile. Never take the lead - but aim to do something big. These were the golden guiding words of Chinese president and architect of modern day china Mr. Deng Xioping. In the context of chaotic power-driven world politics, the Chinese achievement of moving from 3rd world nation to first world nation seems miraculous. Ten plus percent growth for more than twenty-five years is more than the audacity of any one's imagination.

Sometimes when I study India vis-a-vis China, It leaves me wondering over the question whether China faced similar situations or not and if they did then how did they overcome these. How could China get away so easily with all those issues? And even today How does it justify its dual standard and dangerous non-cooperative policies in the sphere of international politics.

For example, China has literally monopolized all the water which flows from Tibet or Soth china to South and South East Asia and yet it has not entered into a single bilateral water treaty. The collective power of all these countries is not enough to budge China from its unilateralist and monopolistic stand. Even UN has not initiated any action on this issue which has the full potential of turning into full-blown water war in future.

Similarly, Europe returns Indian goods on the excuse of violation of human rights or child labour or women oppression. What about China? It is an open truth and the whole world knows it that China has most violative labor rights. Yet their products are sold so easily in the whole world.

It makes me feel sad that China justifies her on banning of terrorist Masood Azhar and we are not even properly able to confront her. China keeps promising to open their market to Indian good and does not open it. On the other hand, we stand fully naked in front of them to exploit us. How can Indian manufacturing flourish when we have Chinese made product flooding our markets so heavily? I remember fifteen years back, we had nearly 30 labourers in our factory, manufacturing all the steel and wooden furniture but today there are hardly 15 of them. Reason being, we find selling Chinese furniture cheaper to buy and easy to sell in comparison to authentic Indian furniture which turns out to be bit costly.

India's diffidence in world politics in standing up to China on these issue gives an impression of lack of assertiveness in our foreign policy. Probably we are too much concerned about our "good boy image" in anarchical and hierarchical world order.

But wait, I see an olive leaf in this. Read the first line. Maybe we are keeping the cool head, maintaining a low profile and consequently avoiding any lead in the pursuit of doing something big. A basic prerequisite of our assertion vis-a-vis China is sufficiently positive economic growth. As long as India does not grow economically, it is futile to trade blows with China. It is only lead to deja vu of 1962.

Principles of design

Past few days, I am having some marathon meetings in the office. Meetings were centered about design and vision discussion of the company. It was more sort of brain-storming sessions on the overall flow of the product to enhance user engagement on the platform.

In this age of information overload, the Internet is flooded with numerous websites. Thus, there are two kinds of users. One who comes to the Internet for browsing only specific websites and other who comes to the Internet without knowing what they really wish to do. These first kind of users are most productive in their usage of the internet but they are not the early adopters.It is the second type of users who possess a high curiosity and exploration needs, who take up a product and popularize it. That is why some experts say that
a product developer should build a product keeping in mind the perspective of software developers. More specifically, when it is a universal platform. Software developers are early adopters and stress testers. If a product passes their barrier then it is bound to succeed.

A general user spends on an average 4 seconds on a new website. Thus, a product designer needs to place the content in such a manner which results in retaining maximum users. It means a website should be able to deliver important content in 4 seconds of time. Thus, where the content should be placed and what kind of content should be placed assumes great significance.

The general psychological studies reveal that a person's eyeball scan a new website in F shape. This means he begins from the left top corner and got horizontally to the 60% of the screen, then it comes back to the left top corner. Then it goes vertically down and goes horizontally for 35% of the screen and then comes back to the left midsection. Then it scans the left bottom. Therefore, a content designer should put the most important content on the left side of the screen.

There are many other design principles. For instance, Design should include structure plus experience. Design should reflect positive energy and should include the basics of the human-computer interaction.

How To: Stakeholder approach

Many times, we are not able to reproduce the points we had remembered. This occurs when we have not encoded the content properly or we miss the appropriate cues to recall the content from our long-term memory.

At other times, we are not really aware of the issue so we find it difficult to generate some points. However, given the breadth of the syllabus, it is not always possible to cover every single topic. Therefore, it is essential to develop the required thinking skills so that one can speak, or write on a relatively unknown issue. The stakeholder approach could be very fruitful in this regard.

Let us directly understand from an example. Suppose you have to evaluate the issue of IPL vs. drought situation in Maharashtra. If we are not familiar with the intricacies of the subject then it is very difficult to generate points. Even if we produce some insights, they would be scattered and unstructured. However, stakeholder approach comes to our rescue in this scenario.

Ask yourself 3 basic questions.
First, Who are the stakeholder's involved in this issue?
So in IPL vs. Drought case, IPL authorities, farmers who are committing suicide, poor people who are toiling hard to get water, the government who has the responsibility to provide water to everyone, court before whom the matter is pending and miscellaneous like civil society, players, IPL viewers, water regulatory bodies etc are major stakeholder. Now one can generate enough points to not only write a 200 words answer but even write a full 1000 word essay on the subject.

Second, What are possible perspectives from our general understanding? Who would say what?
Here, IPL governing authorities will say their water usage are minimal and they are becoming a victim of politics.
Farmers would say it is livelihood issue. The drought will force them to commit suicide.
Governing authorities would be considered apathetic, irresponsible, and lazy in the light of not being able to predict this development and not making arrangments for dying farmer and thirsty population.

Third, What could be the some facts, case studies or solutions related to the overarching theme?
In this case, the theme is water. So with respect to water, we can cite case study of Hiwre Bazar, Channai Rain water harvesting, Rajasthan canal network and many others. For facts, one can use common sense to say that India has become water stress and our water table is going abysmally low. For solutions, we can use our general knowledge to write some insightful solutions. For example, making more wells, storing rain water, focus on drip irrigation or reusing kitchen water in the toilet. Probably all the things you would do when you are faced with water crisis.

That's it. Now you can quickly write a beautiful answer, highlighting all the different perspective and suggesting some specific relevant solution. Your answer is not only content rich but also multi-dimensional, interlinked with other concepts and well supported with facts.

Once an aspirant practice this thinking style, he does not need to remember and he can write and speak extempore on most of the common issues. However, this can further be improved with the help of other approaches about which I'll write tomorrow.

How To: 5 point approach/stakeholder/critical point/summary/common sense technique

5 point approach:
A common mistake by most of the civil services aspirants is we try to capture maximum points from anything we read. Some of us even try to remember every punctuation or full stop in any article or book chapter. This approach has many pitfalls. One is a person can never remember every bit of information so he is unnecessarily overloading himself with redundant bits of information. Second, even if he is able to remember all the points, in the examination hall he has only limited availability of time, so he will face difficulty in reproducing the most relevant points. Thirdly, such approach will constraint his time. Aspirants often end up spending too much time on one article and in the end regret reading things to such extent.

Remember, UPSC is a generalist examination. It is not a test of your domain specific knowledge. The domain specific portion is tested in paper one of the subject exam. Here breadth of knowdlege is more important than depth of knowledge. This has become all the more important in the light of new pattern of question paper where a GS paper covers 25 topics from different areas of syllabus. In all, one ends up being tested in 100 topics in all four papers together.

Therefore certain preparation strategies needs to be adopted which would help in redducing information overload and saving time. This has some concomitant benefits like easy reproduction, giving the whole preparation a smart touch.

First is: 5 point approach
In this, whenever you read a big editorial of The Hindu or read a article from magazines like World Focus, Yojana etc., do not make notes while reading the article. You can underline things while skimming through the article (Even that has a trick to it). Once you are finished with the article, then ask yourself a innocuous but hard question which is "What are the five points I remember from this article?" Just jot down those five points and take a second scurry look at the article. Add one or two additional points and move on.

The basic philosophy behind this is "You do not want to put efforts into mugging something which you could not capture in the first go itself". So if we are not able to recall it now, how will be able to recall it after reading 3000 such articles and nearly 30 books and after nearly 300 days in the examination hall(examination cycle).

This approach worked very strongly for me in the first attempt. I used to write only those points which I could remember. This way I saved a lot of my energy which otherwise could have gone into remebering points which are tough to remember. This goes against established wisdom. Why should one be writing things which One can remember? Instead, I should be writing points which I can not remember. But my whole philosophy was to put my energy into something which I would be able to remember after reading 3000 articles.

Mind you, this does not mean I should leave all the tough points or compromise on conceptual understanding. Instead, I did focus on those things but in a light hearted manner without getting too emotional about it.

I will discusss other strategies in later articles. Enough for the day.

The luxury of being a Kumbhakarna

Soundness of a person's sleep is a barometer of his happiness. The lightness of person's sleep is barometer of person's commitment to his goal. So, if one is able to sleep light and sound then the person is bound to succeed. Sleep is the best meditation practice. Sleep helps you in rejuvenating and connecting with yourself in a better manner. It flushes out all the unfired or misfired neurons from your brain. It also helps in reducing dissonance and remove all the bad memories from your mind.

People often wonder, what is the appropriate length of sleep? Should one sleep 4 hours or 6 hours or 8 hours or 10 hours? From psychological research 8 hours sleep is suggested for healthy mind body coordination. However from my personal experience, length of sleep is related to how inspired do you feel to wake up? And inspiration for waking up depends on what you plan to achieve after waking up. So for aspirants of competitive exams, I think duration of sleep is measure of how inspired and motivated you are to crack a particular exam.

In general, sleep consists of various brain wave cycle. One cycles generally spans 90 minute where 20 to 25 minutes are for a special kind of deep sleep. In the state of deep sleep, person's eyes move rapidly. Thus it is also called REM sleep. First three cycles are of 90 minutes. Forth cycle is generally 75 to 80 minutes. The fifth one is 70 minutes. So in total, this becomes 7 hours.

From my experience 5 hour 50 minutes are sufficient for reasonably motivated individual. But otherwise also 7 hours sleep is enough to satiate all your physical and mental needs.

Sleep is also the biggest source of entertainment. You can watch so many dreams happy, sad, horror and drama. It is any day better than watching that banal face of Bipasha Basu or Aishwarya Rai on TV or Cinema hall. And if you are lucky enough then Sunny Leone herself can offer her exclusive services to you in the dream.

However, sleeping itself is not sufficient. One should be able to appreciate his sleep for maintaining the sanity of mind and body. I suffer from restlessness syndrome therefore I have never been able to appreciate aesthetic beauty of sleep. For me it always remained a functional tool to keep myself active. May be because I am yet to find my destiny. Only a person who has found his destiny and passion in life can sleep happily in the long term.

Psychology experiments

Well, I have been quite busy with my psychology practicals on last few weekends so I could not spare much time to write productive things. At last finally, today I finished my first-year practical file but second years file is still looking over my head.

The practicals were quite interesting. One was about finding any pathological problems in family relations. It had nearly 42 statements of multiple choice types. I will post the photos of the experiment sometime soon.
Another practical related to sociometry. This helps in finding out isolated members and star members of a group.
The Third one was social maturity scale. This was primarily for kids below the age of 15 years. This helps in understanding their level of social maturity and social developmental task accomplishment.
The two other experiments pertained to personality and intelligence assessment. Overall preparing the report was the fun experience. Some copy and paste and some original stuff went into it.

Now, I am looking forward to second years report. But I am little concerned about the time it may take to finish. Will post the pictures of the test once I reach home.

Some common managerial tricks

If you ever happen to manage people, then following tricks will certainly help you in winning an argument against your subordinates.
Let us assume a hypothetical situation where you have to convince your employee to work on weekends. What are the available tools of persuasion you have in your basket?

1. Inflated sense of future
A very common tactic like 'if you put in more effort, you will be rewarded accordingly in future'. Do not discuss numbers or quantitative details, just show him the dream.

2. Ignite sense of competition
See look at your fellow employee X, 'He is putting efforts on weekends. I am sure, he will soon become a manager'.

3. Establish your credibility
'Look when I was of your age, I used to work more than eighteen hours every day'. With this statement, you assume the authority position and now you can legitimately preach good things to your subordinate.

4. Patronize the subordinate
'See you are like my younger brother'.

5. Appeal the conscience of your subordinate
'See, You have to be honest with your work. What I need is more commitment from you.'

6. Ego enhancement of subordinate
'I have complete faith in your skills. I am sure you and only you can do it.'

7. Use your personal and emotional appeal
'I need you X at this moment. You know we are in tough times.'

8. Trust based appeal
'Look I trust you very much. You are the rockstar of the company.'

9. Putting responsibility on his shoulder
'So now it is your duty to open the office on Saturday.'

10. Fear appeal
'See I do not know How will it work if You are not able to extend your work hour on Saturday.' Do not mention prospects of firing.

11. Substantial award
'Is this about salary or position'? Don't necessary give it but talking about it will help in understanding employees mindset.

Two important thoughts

So I was planning to take a break from blogging because my backlog reached a count of 6. But then a thought struck me strongly.
One, Best should never become the enemy of good. The reason for not expressing myself in last few days was not lack of time. Instead, It was my desire to write something productive and articulate instead of writing something. However, I think at this moment, My prime focus should be on consistency over quality. So do write. Even if it is something not worth reading but develop a habit and get over the inertia of not writing.

I have found an easy way of developing confidence. Whenever you feel weak or down, just remember the moment. Get it entrenched in your memory. and then keep walking. Even a single step, but it matters. Just keep walking. No need to run or sprint. Just keep walking. Running and sprint will happen eventually. One friend gave me a very good formula. In Tamil, there is a saying, "charaiveti, charaiveti" which means "keep walking, keep walking". Life is like this only. One needs to be consistent and persistent. Here speed matters less than consistent. So if one keeps walking, sooner or later, one would get over the bad phase or downtime or weak moment. And Once you are out of that ditch, then recall the moment when you were down and you had made a self-commitment of trying, walking and persevering. The goosebumps you will get at that moment will make you feel your confidence and courage. And this will become your definition.

Time to take a break

Some random moorings of life

Have you ever thought How would India look like ten years or twenty years down the line? Nowadays, when I stand at some mall or station, I feel intimidated with the sheer scale of population. Sometimes, I see only human heads and heads on the horizon. This makes me doubtful of the future of India. And this makes me ponder over my own identity and existence in such a crowded setup. Questions like who am I and what am I doing buzz louder in my ears causing me a headache.

But when I sit in my solitude in my study room and switch on All India Radio or when I take a general bus and observe people around, I feel confident about Indian future. The kind of questions raised over AIR gives me a thrill of democracy that come what may, this country can not become dictatorial. Similarly, talking to a person in general compartment gives me hope about life and future that when he can have eyes brimming with expectations, dreams and hopes then why can't I?

Though this does not resolve my fear or question. Democracy has a threat of turning into mobocracy. The recent violence and arson in Haryana is a testimony to it. Similarly, A person full of hope and dreams would not take much longer to turn into a beast filled with greed and anger if his dreams are not fulfilled.

Anyway these were majorly fleeting thoughts. I feel good about all the powers I have. Powers about which I will write some other time.

Job vs. Business

As the fever of entrepreneurship is gripping Indian youths, most of the young kids and even the established players are facing the dilemma of whether they should live an easy less risky life of job or should they take the leaping jump into the world of business.

Well, there is no one answer to this. Job ensures some fixed salary at the end of each month. It has a defined career progress path and once you keep working on some profile, one can easily develop a niche which can help you live easy in foreseeable future. You can save a lot of time for your family members. However, there is a flip side to it. Most part of your life will be spent in buying a house or securing some property here and there. You will not be a leader. In the job, you will be fulfilling someone else's dream.

On the other extreme is the world of business where the risk is high but the dividend is also great. But only if you succeed. You will be working 24*7 but you will be a leader, a self-made, self-managed person. The most satisfying aspect is you will be job creator instead of a job seeker. However, barriers to entry are also relatively high and one may go penniless for some few years.

As someone said it crisply, Job is about live your present comfortably, while business is about compromising your present standard of living to live a royal life later. The decision of Job vs. Business is entirely subjective and personal decision. However, there are certain essential traits a businessman must possess. For instance Risk taking ability, self-managed lifestyle, disciplined behavior towards the job, passion for the dream and ability to take failures without getting bogged down at all.

However, the real twist comes when we have a third component like grade A level government job vis-a-vis private job and business. Grade A level job will only pay you enough to live happily without any savings provided one does not engage in corrupt practices. However, it is safe, stable and allows you sufficient time to grow in your job and do other extra-curricular activities.

Therefore, In my opinion, it is better than a private sector job where one takes all the risk and faces all job politics without any actual power in hand. However, it is debatable whether it can be compared with the opportunities which business offers.

An adventurous trip

It was well past four in the evening. My train was scheduled to depart at 5:30 PM. I was scrambling to pack my bags. I thought I was already late because the station was nearly 35 kilometers from my place. My brother called me up and asked me about my status. I listened patiently to his ranting on the possibility of missing the train. I opened mobile and searched for OLA icon. As an android expert, I have so many test applications on my mobile screen that invariably it takes a lot of time to find the desired app. Somehow, I found ola and tapped here and there in an attempt to book the cab. The Clock was already ticking fast. Faster than I anticipated. It was already 4:15PM. I continued with my effort but all in vain. The app kept showing error and sitting there, I was wondering about how unlucky I am. The moment I need this taxi most, the app is throwing all the tantrums of this world.

Anyway, I went for her alternative, The Uber. But as explained by the law of karma, Your karma comes back to you. I had not paid their money of the last trip so the app did not allow me to book a cab. Other options were not very feasible given the crunch timing. After some contemplation and persistent failure of Ola, I decided to continue with Uber by paying their money. Uber was quick to help me out and it found a cab for me. But already it was 4:30PM. I was at the far end of Noida and Wanted to reach Sarai Rohilla station which lies in the heart of Delhi. My brother called me again and enquired about my status. I told him about a possibility of missing the train becoming a reality. However, he asked me to take my chance and continue with the cab. So I hopped on the four wheels.

My undesired delay in leaving the house had got me thinking that how unlucky I am in crunch situations. This thought occupied most of my time on the journey to the station. The driver was an expert, well familiar with the route. Unexpectedly, he found his way in the complicated traffic grid of Delhi and dropped me to the station in just over 45 minutes. So, I was nearly 10 minutes ahead of my schedule. I thanked god for reaching on time. A flickering thought occurred that I am not so unlucky. Instead, Life is teaching me "how to remain calm in crunch situations?" I proceeded to the ticket counter and asked him about tickets fare. It was 265 rupee only. It was a premium train, first of its kind in India, The double decker. I reached my wallet and happily opened it. To my shock, I had only 120 rupees. There was no ATM nearby and even if there was one, there was no time left to withdraw money. This time, the clock was ticking faster than it was ticking an hour before. I again smiled on my luck and the futility of nerve-wrenching one hour trip I just had to catch this train.

To my fortune, My brother called me up a minute later when I was contemplating my course of action. It seemed it was his day of becoming my saviour. He asked me to hop on the train and he will buy the tickets for me from next station. The turn of events were amusing. I was supposed to buy tickets for him but it happened the other way around. I reached the platform and hiding from TTE's penetrating and suspicious eyes, I entered the train. To fast forward the story, The train started on time. My brother entered the train with the tickets. And now the story begins.


Will complete later..

The How To series

Last year, I had prepared a how-to series of articles on "How should one prepare for civil services examination." I will take up that series now and whenever I will be short of ideas or events to discussed, I would pick topics from that series.

In my times, I never used to stack my books on the shelf over one another. Civil services preparation does not happen in silos. When I am studying history, I would often relate it to geography or economics or the polity. Now often it happens that we keep only relevant books on the table and rest are stacked in Almirah and lying on bed burdened under loads of other books. I find it an unintelligent way of studying.

When You are sitting on the chair for a couple of hours, you develop some sort of inertia. This inertia demotivates you from getting up from the chair and pull out the relevant book from the stack. Moreover, if the stack is arranged over one another then the motivation to pull out the book or register is reduced by a factor of 10. One needs to use all the force to pull out the register and in the process, some ten other registers fall from the stack or at the least, their arrangement is disturbed. So the very thought of pulling the register from the stack or the effort required to find out the relevant register is enough to desist one from interlinking concepts and understanding the concept thoroughly.

So, I observed this for a number of days and as a result, I rearranged my whole book stack. I kept all the books side by side and began keeping pointers to the most frequently used material. I brought a separate rack and kept all the necessary tools like history's spectrum, geography's maps, polity's Laxmikant and other most often used books at a distance of my hand from my chair. This way, I won't have to get up from my chair again and again. This helped me immensely in analyzing, interlikning and understanding the concept in details.

Fear

I am reading Osho's book titled Fear nowadays. It talks about understanding and accepting insecurities in one's life. IN the course of the book, I started introspecting about my own fears in life. But before dwelling into that, I wish to clarify the interlinkages between fear, dislike, frustration, and reluctance. Anything which we do not want to do in life is either rooted in fear or relates to value conflict. But even prospects of value conflict reduces to fear of something after a point.

Let us understand this by an example. For example, If a girl does not want to eat too much, then she is possibly having a fear of becoming fat or she may have some medical problem which again will reduce to fear of death. Let us say, Girl does not want to steal something. Definitely, it is not because of fear of being caught and branded thief. Instead, it is because of her values of truthfulness, honesty and so on. So here the denial of performing something is due to value conflict. But why there is any abhorrence to such value conflict? What if the conflict occurs? It will cause dissonance in one's mind. The dissonance will distort girl's self- concept. so again it reduces to the fear of disturbing my peace of mind.

Therefore, fear itself can be divided into two parts. One kind of fear promotes my peace of mind and other kinds of fear disturb our peace of mind. In theory, Fear is a human defence mechanism which aims at promoting our peace of mind but in the process, it turns humans into diffident, servile and weak creatures. So Here I am talking about those fears who either disturb my peace of mind or turn me into servile creatures. This fear induced servility is a very dangerous thing in our life. It distorts our sense of destiny. It stops us from blooming into our full inner core and acts as a membrane which separates our inner core with outer behaviour. I introspected to find out such fears in my life. So here I am listing one.

First, The fear of becoming irrelevant. I feel that if I do not work in technology domain then I may become irrelevant in the future. Look at the pace of technology. It is breathtakingly fast. So despite having a family business, or teaching opportunities or the entrepreneurship, I have opted a job in the technology domain.

Second, Fear of having an unproductive day. I wish to have a sense of achievement every day. If my day turns unproductive, it disturbs me and at the core of it is my fear of failure in certain exam or competition in the life. So this is why I have never been able to appreciate my sleep or aesthetic beauty around me. If I oversleep or engage in social loafing, I feel the tinge of dissonance. I strongly feel this is because of my strong desire towards my goal. Maybe once it is settled either way I will be back in the normal orbit.

Third, Reluctance toward marriage or affair. This is partly due to my commitment towards my goal. And rest is due to fear of losing the trust of my parents (in the context of an affair).

Fourth, Fear of becoming bald. This is fast becoming reality. It is rooted in my desire to look handsome.

Fifth,

Six, Like-Dislike toward Porn. I do watch porn but it generally occurs in short duration burst which lasts for a week or so and then I develop some sort of dislike. I just do not know what drives me to watch porn. And I do not know if this is the right thing to do or not.

Anyway, Osho says balanced growth is a 3 step process. First, drop the idea of dropping fear, Second, accept it as part of yours and third watch it, observe it and understand it. That is the key to real happiness.

Is tradition over Constitution?

This one has been long pending. But I wanted to write about this issue at leisure so that I can fully express myself on this.

An interesting development unfolded at Shani Shingnapur temple in the Maharashtra. A group of female activist led by Trupti Desai under the banner of Bhumata Rangragini brigade broke the age old tradition of ban on female entry in the inner sanctum of the temple. This is a watershed moment in Indian socio-religious and feminist history of India.

The next logical development is entry of women in the inner sanctum of Sabrimala and other temples. This reminds us of Guruvayur movement by K. Kaleppan in Kerala in pre-independence era wherein he sat on a hunger strike for 12 days. Eventually Maharaja of Travancore decreed a temple entry proclamation in 1936 which led to entry of backward classes in the temples.

However, as put by anthropologist L.P. Vidyarthi, separating humankind from religion, culture and nature is very slow and difficult task. Many people like Kerala CM Chandy are unwilling to assume activist stance on the issue. Its a virtual fight between customs-rituals vis-a-vis progressive-feminist-liberal thoughts in the society. The orthodox section claims that customs should be respected. Some even cite a possible increase in violence against women in the society due to female worshiping god Shani. But progressive section calls for greater equality, rationality and constituionalism in the society.

Demographic transition theory explains, change in social attitude is a slower than change in economic or technological orientation of the society. Despite 150 years of Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar and Raja Ram mohan Roy, we still witness large scale atrocities against Dalits and other socially marginalized section of the society. In this context, the achievement of Bhumata brigade holds immense significance.

However, this development alarms danger bell for part of my identity as well. It poses existential threat to the practice of Digambar Jains. Digambar jains has a custom where only male member can perform 'tirthankar abhisheka'. For that too, they needs to bathe and wear particular dress. As this movement will gain full steam, it would definitely spill over in Jain temples as well. I wonder, how this is going to play out in such situation.

The society is definitely not prepared. Those who advocated this in past have turned shwetambars, thus resulting in schism in the religion. Even from constitutional perspective, we have article 25 to counter article 15. If article 15 prohibits any discrimination only on race religion caste sex and place of birth only then article 25 allows minority to profess, propagate and practice their religion in free manner.

The general argument regarding prohibition on females in performing such ritual is rooted in mythological stories and cleanliness. The cleanliness argument would certainly stand defeated but mythological argument is entirely a matter of faith and belief. How would the court or legislative arm of the state counter this is yet to be seen?

The matter of sabrimala temple entry is sub-judice and pending before supreme court. It would be interesting to see how supreme court would try to steer the matter. This again raises a oft repeated fundamental question before us which is "Is the law made for society or Society made for law"?

In simple terms, Should law try to steer a process of social change at all? Is this top down approach going to be sustainable? Should we not wait till the time society matures enough to accept these changes? And alternatively should we not steer the change in social attitude through long term channels like education which can help in preparing the society for this custom evolution?

I remember writing a book review for Zia Mody's book: Ten judgement which changed India. I am eagerly waiting for supreme court doctrine in this case which has the potential of bringing a social revolution and at the same time causing social havoc in Indian socio-religious-cultural landscape.

An odd day

Today was a complete waste. The frustration of job spilled into my regular schedule and I ended up wasting my whole day without doing anything productive. I am tired of living a life of variables. It gives me a headache. All I want is one job where I could work with people of great caliber and great learning. The present job is not at all satisfying.

Nowadays, I spent a substantial time of the day in solitude. Though most of my life I have spent talking to myself. But this time around, it is more fun and insightful. I studied my own behavior in last few days. From my observations, I firmly inferred, our desire of fulfilling certain goal is a direct function of our estimation of the probability of success in achieving that goal.

Sometimes, I strongly wish if someone could douse this "restless behavior syndrome" in me. The desire to become a superman, the urge to do everything, the quest to become a master of all. Though I am quite aware of my priority activities but even that is longer. I wish to read books, newspaper/write blogs /run and exercise /watch youtube inspirational videos but all these things are not possible every day. That too when I have a regular 9 hours job.

Every once in a while when I have such experiences, I feel how fragile I am. I have full knowledge of philosophical constructs of happiness and chilled out life. But I am yet to achieve that inner calmness. The peace of mind does not exist within me. Though with the current and past experience I can claim that I am inching closer.

One of the problems lies in my obsession with being productive. Earlier I wanted to be productive every day. I wanted to utilize every single second of my schedule in a useful manner. Over time, I learned to let go of things and loose a little bit. But traces of the trait remains. I can let go of a day but how can I let go of a week or month. Again the trigger is if I am unproductive for a week then how will I pass a certain exam or achieve a certain goal. Well, the spiritual literature explains that let go of this desire to achieve things. And precisely here the conflict occurs. If I do not dream then how can I really achieve anything? If I am not rationing my day or week in terms of productivity then do I deserve to achieve my dream. How could I have written this blog If I had not desired to learn English?

The Indian religious literature is somewhat pessimistic in this regard. It teaches the person to abstain from desire. So from where should I draw my motivation to perform the task? I understand one aspect of it which may mean that person should set goals but should not at all be flustered with the outcome. But is not the goal and desire conjoined twins? Both are interconnected. And What confuses me more is when our spiritual literature says that humans are merely actors who are playing a fixed script which is being directed by the director. That's where the whole concept of karma and bhagya gets mixed up.

So by this concept, if I were to achieve peace of mind then I should internalize this fatalistic attitude without holding any desires. I should forget about productivity and passion. This way I would be free, independent and relaxed but can I make it big this way? Would I be able to rise the ladder with this attitude? I have seen people who espouse such attitude. This is not a very impressive path.

I think the answer lies in can money or fame or position buy you happiness? If yes then pursue that path and take this frustration as a daily struggle in achieving that goal. Develop some indifference to this frustration and learn that not every day will be same and some days are ought to be worse in comparison. And if Happiness is the goal and leave everything to that script and the director and live free.


Anyway: I found this blog to be really helpful in building my piece of mind.
http://tinybuddha.com/blog/40-ways-to-create-peace-of-mind/

Relevance of traditions in our institution of marriage

The institution of marriage is the most unique and trademark institution of the Indian society. A common Hindu or Jain wedding has countless strange, exciting and curious traditional ceremonies. A deep analysis of each of them shows their relevance and provide a possible explanation of how they came into existence.

Here I am listing some of the traditions and highlighting their relevance.
Bhaat is a ritualistic tradition in which the paternal side members of the mother of the bride come to attend the wedding ceremony and give some gifts to their sister. In this way, they share some expenses of bride's marriage. This may have been rooted in the rationale that earlier there was no trend of dowry and girls had no say in their parents property. So to balance things out, girl's brothers are supposed to contribute in the wedding ceremony of their niece.

Two, Sawasini is the tradition wherein the elder sister of the bride or groom, who was most recently married comes to the wedding house few days in advance. She is not just invited but also escorted to the house. She looks after all the wedding related preparation and many important ceremonies starts with her. This may be rooted in the fact that she being the most recent to the overall experience of the marriage, she may have better understanding of the rituals. This will also be her learning for taking senior roles of responsibility in the family.

Three, Brother is supposed to see-off her sister (whose wedding is taking place) to the outside of cities limit. This way the transition is gradual. The event of 'Vidai' is always so painful and heart-wrenching. The girl has to leave her house and move to a totally different circumstances, surrounded by totally different set of people. This is a tectonic shift in girls life. So in this moment of despair, fear, and anxiety, girls brother is supposed to accompany her for some distance. This way girls initial anxiety will be reduced.

Fourth, In Kanyadhan, all the family members, kith and kin are supposed to be gift some artifacts or monetary resources to the girl. This is considered to be girls property and the groom or his family has no right on this. This way girl is assured of some social financial security. This certainly has an empowering effect on girls. Though in practice, this money is usurped by groom's family members.

Fifth, The girl is supposed to take seven sacred vows with the groom. They take seven rounds of Agni (controlled fire). This signifies that their bonding is for seven birth and not limited to just this one. This way, both of them learn to accommodate, adjust, and assimilate each other's liking and disliking. The seven vows are also very interesting and aimed at inculcating mutual respect, trust, and love between the husband and wife. Most importantly, for the first six fere, Girl remains ahead of the boy signifying her lead in domestic matters but for seventh one, she puts boy in front of her showing a spirit of interdependence and mutual partnership.

Sixth, girl offers her last prayers to Devi Devta before leaving. This way girl offers her last prayers to her maternal ancestors and move on to adopt new ancestors of her groom house.

Seventh, Peeli Chithi: In this a formal invitation is sent to the family of groom to come and attend wedding ceremony. Earlier when courts were not there then this would have acted as a proof of wedding. There are two copies made of peeli chithi. One for dead ancestors (Devi devta) and other for groom's family. If groom's family reject the proposal of peeli chithi then wedding does not takes place. See how systematic.

Eight, Sagai and God bharai: This are some pre-wedding rituals which creates the whole atmosphere for wedding. In one boys family members come and put a formal request for the girl's hand. Then a formal period of courtship begins. In other, a peeli chithi is prepared and sent to groom's house. The Sawasini makes a formal beginning of god bharai event and later brother's sister takes the peeli chithi and delivers it to groom's family members.

Ninth, Juta Churai. This is an event to establish the bonhomie between groom and his sister-in-laws. The bride's sister steals shoes of the groom and groom is compelled to gift something to brides sister in return of the shoes. This helps in establishing rapport and fun culture in the family.

Tenth, Once the girl is married and enters her new home, both girl and the boy, now husband and the wife perform this fun ceremony. In this, a ring is dipped in the non-transparent water. Both of them search for the ring in the water. Whoever finds it first, is one who is assumed to call shots in the familial life in the future. In this three chances are given to both of them. A good husband is one who finds it but hand it over to the girl under water. A good wife is one who if find it, then prefer to hand the ring over to boy under the water. And perfect partnership is one where both pulls it out together, holding it together.

There are countless other ceremonies with each having its own relevance and significance. Overall the process of marriage is gradual, all inclusive and systematic. However, sadly nowadays the whole concept is distorted. Earlier when marriage used to take place, whole village member would work in the wedding alongside family members of the bride without taking any food. But now the whole atmosphere is vitiated.

The culture of dowry has spoiled the concept of Kanyadhan. The culture of grand marriages full of pomp, ostentation and status-orientation distorted the feeling of inclusiveness, kinship and love in the family. Now focus is more on number of items, kind of items and size of baarat in the ceremony. The concept of love marriages has taken away the spirit of inclusiveness. Marriage was traditionally considered a bonding of two families and not just two individuals but now they say "When Mian biwi raji to kya karega kazi". No offence to love marriage. It has its own pros and cons. The spirit of accommodation, acceptance, and mutual appreciation has somehow degenerated into individualistic orientation and compromises with suspicion and mistrust.

What is right and what is wrong is not a issue here. The issue is change. and a Change which sweeps away so many positive features of our culture and tradition. Now I am going to attend the first love-cum-arranged wedding in my kinship network in next coming days. Let us see how the drama unfolds there?

10 short stories

These are some parables and anecdotes which I came across in last few days. These were inspirational, curious, and historical so I am listing them here.

So, we all know Napolean Bonaparte. He was considered a meteor of the France. A formidable military commander who shook British empire which his confrontational and ambitious imperial policy. He was considered invincible before getting dusted in the battle of Waterloo. It is said that his big strength was his battlefield commanders. They were the fearless fighter. But as goes the story, Napolean used to take a final round of interview with them before deputing them on battlefield. And strangely the question was "Are you lucky? Are you lucky enough to survive and win?" For him the difference between life and death, win or loss, and success and failure was luck. UPSC is the modern day Napolean. The only difference is here the chance is embedded in their admission procedure itself.

Another story belongs to Mozart the musician. He is said to have written his first opera at the age of six years. Once a young kid of age ten or eleven years went Mozart and asked him, How should I write an Opera? Mozart responded back saying 'young man, you ate too young to write an opera so go and write a ballad first". The kid felt offended. He retorted back and said to him "you wrote your first opera at the age of six and you are asking me to go and write a Ballad first". Mozart politely looks into his eyes and said, "my dear, I never had to ask anyone about how to write one". It was a god gift for him. Many people in the society find right mentor, right direction, a right passion so early in their lives. It is definitely a god's gift to be an early bloomer. Most of the great personality of our times have all been like Abhimanyu who learned the chakravyooh trap while he was in mother's womb.

But god gift comes in many forms. Once a kid was given a letter by his teacher which was to be delivered to his mother.The Kid reached home. He gave the letter to his Mother. The mother read the letter and tears welled up in her eyes. She kept the letter in one safe box. The kid asked mother, "What happened, mom? Why are you crying?" The mother said your school authorities have written letter saying that you kid is very extraordinary and our teachers are incompetent to teach him so we request you to not send him to the School from tomorrow. The kid studied at home for rest of his primary and secondary education. Later in life after the death of his Mother, one day he was clearing the Almirah and he found that letter. He opened it. The letter read as following. "Dear Ma'am, Your kid is suffering from addle's syndrome. He is not fit for studies. Thus, we are restricting him from attending classes in the school." The man cried a lot. His name was Thomas alwa Edison, the inventor of the electricity and the bulb. His mother lied to him and taught him herself during those initial years. This is the power of mother's love. The purest thing existing on this earth then it is a mother's love for her child. I remember watching a youtube video where a bull fights a group of lions to save her calf. This is the power of love. And this is also a sort of least appreciated god's gift.

There are few others also. Will keep posting them.

Ring story: Yeh bhi Badal sakta hai
Virat Kohli's story

Five things to learn from Modi

Machiavelli in his "The Prince" described the principles of statecraft for the king. He described the desirable attitudinal and behavioral qualities of a ruler. Modi Ji has gained a king like status in the country, at least within his own party. He has become the most followed leader around the world. Thus, I felt the quest of learning from his larger than life persona.

So he first, As Machiavelli had rightly said, "A king is better feared than loved". Modi Ji has a dual personality. He spreads the love with his programme like Man ki Baat but he does crush his opposition in his speeches and from his actions. The cleanness of heart which is shown towards a common man is not reflected in his actions against opposition. Maybe he sees a genuine culprit or maybe he knows the game he is in. On one hand he teaches the junta about ethics, cooperative federalism and spirit of dissent in the democracy while on the other hand, his is hell-bent on unseating congress from all the major states.

He thinks big. He has grand visions. An amazing quality and a must for India's prime minister. Be it the idea of revising solar policy or visiting as many countries of the world as possible, he has the energy, vision and force to push things around.

He is a great media manager. He knows when to pose for a photo or what to say and what not. His speech skills combined with his media management abilities makes him invincible in many situations. It's a deadly combination. He has immense knowledge about India's past, present and the future. He is really good at coining new words. He speaks extempore. He dresses well and remains neat most of the time.

As a politician, one must possess the art of reading the mind of people. So here comes the fourth. His psychological abilities to predict the expectation of masses is unmatchable. He knows his audience be it the opponent or a common man. His rhetorical oratory skill gives goosebumps to hardcore patriots. He understands what people are looking for and speaks in their language. See his electoral jumlas like getting 15 lakh in each account from black money. As Machiavelli said, a new ruler must decide beforehand what all injuries he will need to inflict. Modi seems to have made up his mind in this regard.

Lastly, he has made some tectonic changes in the administrative setup of the country. This is a task easier said than done. However, Modi Ji managed it with his deep understanding of how bureaucracy works in the higher echelon of power. So the assertiveness and art of persuasion could be learned from him.

Summarizing Modi in five points is an injustice to his hard-earned talent. He has silenced his hard-critics with his behaviour, actions and demeanour. Yes, voices are rising again given the complexity of Indian economy and booming aspirations of masses but at the personal level, he has managed Media very well. How long does this honeymoon of Indian junta last with him is a matter of speculation? But in the meantime, we can learn various qualities from his living example.

Book Review: India Shashtra by Shashi Tharoor

Shashi Tharoor, the blue-eyed poster boy of Indian media has once again displayed his scholarly depth and breadth of experience through this book. The book is the last leg of his trilogy of which the first two were The great Indian Novel and India: from midnight to millennium.

Tharoor has touched the issues of contemporary social, political, economic, cultural and international relevance to India. The book is Tharoor's commentary on 100 issues from as varied a range as Freedom of Expression to Modinomics to the discussion on the presidential form of politics in India.
Typical to Tharoor's writing, each of these commentaries is filled with anecdotes or scholarly quotes or insightful observations which Tharoor brings out of his hat with his excellent analogical skills.

An avid Tharoor follower may find some lack of freshness or novelty because essentially these 100 topics are a compilation of various talks, essays, or editorials written by Tharoor in last 10 years. But his lucid and commanding language skills make it a light read.
It gives you enough material, anecdotes, and quotes which one can use for months to entertain colleagues or people around.

To dig deeper, Tharoor has made judicious use of facts and figure. His has used a personalized manner of writing wherein he describes incidents or issues by connecting them with his own administrative, political and social experiences. So in a way it could also be a good source of content for his autobiography.

The book is divided into eight sections. The first two sections revolve around Modi. The writing shows his mixed feelings towards Modi. He seems to buy his talks but wish to see this matching his actions. In this context, He has given some concrete suggestions on governor's appointment and criticized Modi's foreign policy for its U-turns.

He takes a leaf from history and discuss the issue of the War Memorial and legacy of Gandhi to list a few. In a typical Tharoor style, he says "Gandhism without moral authority is like Marxism without a proletariat." He invokes Swami Vivekanand's thought of "Atmano Mokshartham Jagad Hitay Cha" and Tagore's poem "Where mind if without fear and head is held high".
Further, he discussed Idea of India, where he discussed the relevance of democracy to India, paradoxes of India and many other relevant issues where he frequently quotes political scholars from John Locke to Hegel.

His breadth of knowledge is evident from his frequent quoting of various scholars ranging from Philip Corsby to W.B. Yeats to Rudyard Kipling (Whose he is not a fan) and many others. Describing Indian Culture, He termed India as a Thali where various sub-cultures are placed in different bowls, not mixing with each other but together they all make a very sumptuous meal.
He discussed issues of excellence and education in India. He describes 4 E's i.e. equity, expansion, excellence and employability in our education system. In the process, he touched on the tahzib of Stephans.

The list and range of topics covered in the book are very long and diverse. Every chapter provides some insights or case studies which overall makes it interesting and exciting read. Though at some places, he turns preachy but in the overall scheme of things it could be ignored. Overall, the book is bulky but it need not be read punctuation to punctuation and some familiar topics could be simply skimmed through.

A better title for the book could have been "Shashi Tharoor unplugged" as it gives us a window into Tharoor mind and tells us what he thinks of contemporary India. I wish I could have separately written all the poems, quotes, and observation which Tharoor has made using this book.

Importance of money in life

Most of us grow up as a socialist in our early twenties. As a socialist, money is considered an instrument which divides our society. Even our religion teaches us the principle of "aparigraha" (Not to hoard more than what you need). Therefore, I often hear many of my socialist friends saying "Why do I need to be rich?" or "What will I do with loads of money? I would be happy with some minimal income and I would prefer to pursue my this or that interest in life?" Some view the rat race to accumulate money as greedy and the pursuit of unhappiness. Many scholarly type people also make a similar claim that money has no importance for them in life. Even I make these claims all the time in my daily routine. And then somewhere, I have this dissonance about underestimating the functional and existential importance of money.

Well, one may survive with the minimal amount of money assets. But survival is not what people are born for. One can survive with no money as well. India is a philanthropic country and one can always find his meals in temples, gurudwara and other places of punyarjan. But can we realise our free spirit without money resource? Can we really live our life happily with some the miminum resources? What is that minimum? one lakh or two lakh or one million?

I once listened to Rajat Gupta. He was describing his experience of building India TV. He beautifully summarized my thoughts on the subject. He said, In India, only riches are free. You can pursue what you want only when you have enough money in your bank account. A poor man can not afford a number of things in the society. He sits on the fringes of the society. He is so exhausted with his fight for survival that he can hardly think of higher maslownian needs of life.

Our society is resource constrained. Thus, everything comes at a cost. Possibly that is why people say money can buy you everything. Even the so-called intangible things like love, kindness, and politeness come with money. No father would agree to marry her daughter with a poor fellow howsoever deep is the love. Even girls back out most of the time. Rarely, we show the same level of politeness and kindness to beggars which we show to a rich or powerful fellow. Most of the time, our conversations with the homeless, the poor are ridden with scorn and suspicion. Thus, money is the primary need to be able to think about higher goals of life, let alone do them.

Once a person is educated or become a responsible member of the family, everyone in the family looks up to him with hope and promise. Inevitably the societal arrangement puts a responsibility on the person's shoulder to pull the whole family out of the ditch of ignorance, poverty, and hopelessness. And the one assured way to fulfill those expectations and hopes is money.

And think about situations when you may have an urgent need of money. An accident of loved one or one's own, a robbery or theft in the house, an unnecessary and uninvited court battle, an ill-advised or nonsensical government policy is enough to uproot you upside down and taking away all your money related comforts. Your hedges collapse like a the peck of cards. And that's when you wish, you had more money. Someone may say, one can not plan for every eventuality or one can not live in fear. But In Indian ecosystem, such eventualities are inevitable. They are bound to happen. Sooner or later.

One can talk about decent living and dignified life. But what do you call a decent living in a society of such a spectrum of inequalities and income levels. Your participation in the society is measured by the money you have.

From my general experience, The societal environment has a stronger influence on individual attitude than the hereditary factors. So either a person should have extremely strong hereditary genes in relation to materialistic orientation or his environment (friends, family or past experience) should be strong enough to motivate him in money-agnostic attitude. However, sadly this kind of environment does not exist in our society. Today, money has become an existential need for our survival.

There is no one answer to this puzzle. The best defence is to develop an attitudinal orientation which is insulated from a societal rat race of money. An attitude which is indifferent to the pomp and ostentation of the riches. I agree when someone says that don't spoil your present in order to ensure your future. But it also smells of instant gratification tendencies.

And possibly for all these reasons, I believe happiness does not come naturally. You have to guard against negative thoughts and keep a vigil against all the social evils and social influences. Filter each one of them and accept and assimilate only what you feel fits well with one's self. It is all about knowing one's like, dislikes and priorities in life and sticking to them in good or bad times. They may change over time but then the self should be mature enough to deal with self-correction induced dissonance in an amicable manner.

Organisational Politics

Politics is ingrained in the human DNA. Some people are expert in playing politics while others act naive in these matters. So the application of politics varies from person to person. As the size of the organization grows, the roles allocated to people starts intersecting and overlapping. Thus giving rise to manipulation, mutual push and pulls, bargains, and compromises. This is essentially called organizational politics.

Humans are electrically wired to take the easiest path to any problem. So, when they see some organizational manipulation taking place, they tend to avoid it instead of taking it head on. For example, if some member is adopting ill-practices in the organization then most of us prefer to close our eyes and ignore the problem instead of directly confronting the issue. Many of us have grown up talking about idealist values. One oft-repeated line in ethics paper is "As a concerned officer I will not tolerate corruption" or "As a concerned officer, I will not compromise on the organizational values" blah blah.

In reality, when we enter in any organization, we meet new people. In the initial days, we develop a culture of bonhomie, and mutual harmony. Everyone becomes friend with each other. Especially, corrupt people are most friendly and helpful. So when one fine day, You find out that your friend or acquaintance is engaging in the corruption, you face emotional ambiguity.
As a result, we first deny any such possibility. When it becomes crystal clear, we prefer to avoid it and rather develop an indifference to the whole issue. General justification goes like, why to interfere in others matter? I am clean and that's enough for me. If he is doing, let him do it. Who all will you stop? It is a systemic issue and we can't take on the system. "kyun kissi ke fatte mein taang adana?"

Forget about corruption. Even if a person is creating a negative atmosphere in the office then we generally tend to forgive him. As long as he does not lock horns with you. But if the situation worsens and he falls on your trajectory then you would possibly be taking things up. But this is more because of your personal vengeance rather than your emotional professional commitment towards the organization.

In the past, twice I have faced the situation where my colleagues were involved in attitudinally disoriented behavior vis-a-vis organizational goals. They had their reasons for their disgruntled behavior. In those instances, I felt the pressure and brain waves which a whistle-blower generally faces. It is not always easy to simply stand up and confront the issue or even talk about the issue.

Similarly, I recent met an IRS friend. He is quite bold and someone who plays life on front foot. Even he had developed a condoning or escapist attitude on the issue of corruption. It is always said that confronting a stranger is always easy. But confronting the people who you may know is difficult because it leads to dissonance. Somewhere some myths, perception, and stereotypes are broken.

For this reason, I respect Rahul Gandhi. He may not be a good orator but he has organizational skills. He has introduced the system of primaries in a bulky organization like The Congress. This process of change is a real big deal. Not many leaders are prepared to take such changes and later own up the responsibility for the outcome.

People says he does not share the same political ambition as his ancestors. But I think that has more to do with his upbringing. He always had the power so what should he aspire for? Ultimately, only when you loose it then you realize the worth and develop the aspirations.

For this matter, I respect our PM as well. Though he may not have done visibly enough to change the country and ignite the engine of development. But he dared to abolish planning commission and brought many inter and intra-ministerial level changes which have helped in streamlining processes in the higher echelon of power.

Anyway, Coming back to the topic, How to deal with the organizational politics? The answer to this question depends on where in the organizational structure do you fit in and how you are placed vis-a-vis this chakravyuha of politics? And what sort of existential threat does this pose to the organization?

Why do Startups fail?

Well, I am not a startup expert. Neither I can cite innumerable case studies on the failure of startups. But In past 7-8 years, I have worked with a number of startups of different sizes and organizations which were at a different level of business. Some fizzled out, and some are striving hard to stay relevant. From this experience, I am extracting my inferences.

First a few words on Startups. We are passing through the age of startup revolution. Generally, every progressive economy passes through this phase. In India, this phase is going to last longer than other competitive economies. The reason being first, the slow start of the phenomenon. The 'startup revolution' is taking place at a very slow pace and companies have not been able to sustain themselves beyond series C. Very few companies have reached to the IPO stage. So, it will require some more time for the startup flight to take off. The runway is proving little bit longer than expected. And many companies like Housing or Tinyowl are losing all their fuel on the runway itself.

Second, the breadth is relatively limited. Startup bug has spawned hardly in 2 or 3 sectors. Mainly it is seen in Online Taxi, Online marketplace or real state or food delivery. Others are yet to become household names. Given the size of Indian middle class and Indian economic space, it offers huge space and possess huge scope for future business activities.

Third, It is limited to services based IT-enabled business models. We are yet to foray in the manufacturing or non-IT startups. We have businesses in online wash, online plumber, online taxi etc but we are yet to see a food processing chain industry rising from dust and making it big or an agricultural startup plugging the backward-forward linkages in the economy.

Fourth, We are largely revolving around services based model and product based startup market is still untapped. Primarily this is attributed to our investor class inclination to see quick revenue model in any business. The Baniya class wants quick and assured returns so they press for services based business model. Products take some time to build and achieve product-market fit. Thus, revenue generation in product startup begin at a later date but once it starts flowing, it'll fill your coffers sooner than you expect or imagine.

There are other reasons but a discussion on them requires a separate article. Anyway, Startup culture is something not new. We have been doing businesses across roman and Persian empire since the beginning of time. However, this time, it is a difference of scale, speed, and space. The time it took for Flipkart to reach 1000 crore club was less than five years. Similarly, earlier businesses were small or mid-sized businesses but the one spawned in the current age and who have become the face of startup revolution in India are reaching scale. For example, a number of transaction on Billion day sale or number of taxis booked on Ola are really high. And powered by IT, they are going national or global in no time. Earlier it used to take a decade or two to open new branches in different cities and states but current age startups are directly reaching to their customer with the help of Information Technology.
However, interestingly one thing remains constant. Earlier trade models were dominated by Baniya and specifically Marwaris and even the current age young entrepreneurs also predominantly belongs to the same community.

Every successful startup has its own success story. However, there are denominators which are common to all of them. To list a few, a balanced, closely bonded, core team, prehistory among core members, power of the platform, business skills like selling and marketing, the problem statement and innovation quotient of the solution, good tech team and leadership. Largely one can factor it in two heads the Team and the Idea. And if I have to choose one then it would be Team because if the team is motivated and competent enough, they can always find one or two unsolved or half-solved problems in our surrounding.

In the recent times, we are seeing a number of startups failing. Some fizzle out before even beginning but other go off-track before taking off for example food tech startups. Thankfully for India, no mid-air crashes have happened except the case of housing. Thus, we have some pertinent questions on why do startups fail and is this startup thing going to work in India?

The ones which are not even able to start are primarily startups with unbalanced or fragile teams. For example, nowadays a number of management graduates think about opening a startup but they are not able to find the complimentary skillset of technology in the market. Thus, organizations become top-heavy most of the time. The other team problems like lack of clear division of responsibility, everyone's desire to become a photo face of the organization, ego-clashes, and lack of trust among core team members leads to tyre-burst before even beginning the journey.

Secondly, the Idea. Generally, if first is in place then you can make a solid beginning. But how fast the team pace up on the runway is decided by the nature of the problem which the team is trying to solve. In general parlance, some problems are vitamins (luxury items for the common man) and others are painkillers (must solve). So the team must know what is it trying to solve? If it is painkiller then trying out different solutions is more important instead of delivering a quality solution. Thus a good interactive GUI or classic user flow are features which come in the phase of expansion rather at the launching of the product. However, if the problem is luxury then the quality of experience matters from day 0. Further, sellability of the idea also matters. But these are fringe factors. Given the size and diversity of India, one can always find appropriate product market fit.

The Third factor relates to the last point. That is the speed of startup. A slow startup will always be beaten in the race because that somewhere down the line it becomes the culture of the organization. So if team members are not thinking about the idea while eating drinking relieving then it does raise my doubts about its success. The speed enables you to try out different models in short time. It runs on the "try fast, fail fast" model. This helps in finding the quick product-market fit thus giving the company a first-mover advantage if the problem is new. Remember the law of nature, there are always seven teams simultaneously working on similar kind of problems from some underground garages.

If the first three variables fall in place then the fourth one is automatically taken care. It is about investment. Finding an investor is akin to finding a right university in the USA. Every aspiring MS or MBA candidate gets an admit from the US universities provided he knows his profile and applies according to his Aukaat. One has to mould the company profile, his own profile, team profile and product profile in order to put the hat on investors head. Investors money acts as a fuel which allows the company's plane to take off in the start-up world. However a point of caution, an investor should only provide fuel. He should not provide pilots. The responsibility and rights of piloting the place lies with the core team only. And always take good fuel i.e. always accept good money. Don't allow investor to take your plane or occupy too many seats in the plane in return of some ounce of fuel. These investors are new age Bollywood avatar of Lala, the famous money lender character of our 70's or 80's movies.


Now comes the two most important things for the in-flight journey. First is expansion plan. An indiscriminate hiring during expansion phase will sound the death-knell of the startup. So one should ensure that next line of leaders shares the same vision and energy as the core team. But evidently, the core team has monetary motivation for being energetic. What about new hires. Thus, organizations should be forthcoming in sharing their stakes with team members. More importantly, core team members should watch out for attitudinal disorientation among next line of employees and should immediately fire people with negative thoughts. As one says, one rotten apple spoils the whole barrel. One negative influence can bring down the motivation of the whole team.

However, most of the things which I have written here are common day knowledge and possibly most of us are aware of these things. It is a matter of how you do it. Simply knowing what to do is not sufficient. In this regard, I must apologize because there is no one rule-book, there is no magic wand and there are no defined strategies. If there is one thing which captures the "how-to" then it is organizational leadership. Of the 100 employees, 90 will look up to leadership in awe for inspiration and motivation. 95 will seek direction and vision from the core team. And 99 looks up to them for the salary and selfish gains. The leadership quality lies in understanding these human whims and fancies and executing the plans accordingly.

A leader should guard the organization culture in a zealot manner. It needs to be positive, open and purposive. As Kunal Bahl says, everyone is looking for a purpose in life. If a startup is able to show its employees the path and the core team can run on it from the front then startup will continue to fly. Else either it'll crash in air or will make a hard landing.

Why am I doing this?

Everyone once in a while such existential question keeps arising. The reason being passion requires some purpose. Everything needs an anchor. So if you are a runner then better set a target or find some purpose.

This first paragraph reflects the reason why I need to write more and more. Writing is nothing but the reflection of your mind onto paper or blog. If one uses a lot of backspace button then this reflection is censored. For me, The precise reason for writing daily blogs is my wish to develop a skillset of error free writing, with a mix of journalistic, philosophical, humorous and aad aadmi attitude. This would also help in developing the skill set of a good storyteller. Further, I wish to clear my mind every day and develop the art of coherent writing embedded with powerful expressions. Sometimes I wonder if this sort of motivation good in the long term?

Psychologists have defined two types of motivations. First is extrinsic motivation, other is Intrinsic motivation. Extrinsic motivation has various sub-categories like identification, introjection, and amotivation etc. As the name signifies, Extrinsic motivation is maintained due to expectations of external rewards, or external factors like idolizing some sports star. However, Intrinsic motivation is driven by love for what you are doing. It is akin to doing things for the sake of doing. So for example, Ambani is making loads of money because he loves making money. Sachin keeps playing all these years because he loves playing cricket.

No need to mention that intrinsic motivation is more stable and sustainable than extrinsic one. Thus, parents and teachers and coaches often try to push a person from territory of extrinsic motivation to intrinsic motivation. This is achieved by following the principle of CAR i.e. Competence, autonomy, and recognition.

I often see people are afraid of taking some assignments or doing certain jobs. Sometimes it may be inherent disliking or disinclination but in many other instances, a person may not be interested in the job because somewhere deep inside he is not confident enough of being successful. He does not consider himself as competent enough for the job. So building competence is the first essential step in Intrinsic Motivation.

Next comes Autonomy. If a person who is fully competent is not provided his freedom of pursuing things then he would not be intrinsically motivated. So hypothetically I play good drums but if the environment restricts me from playing drums then I would not be falling in love with the activity.

Third is Recognition. Whatever one may claim but the fact is everyone loves appreciation. Why do leaders or politicians gets so attracted to sycophants or boot-lickers? They are criticized for every small step of yours day in and day out so somewhere the self is destructed and hurt. In such situation, when someone come and appreciate leaders, leader feel confident and prefer to keep these people in close circles. So one needs constant appreciation in order to internalize certain attitude and behaviors.

I have the autonomy and recognition from so many generous and loving friends. I need to develop competence to take off in the world of writing. Anyway enough gyan for the day. Will post the rest later.

Corruption: To what extent is this justified?

Ratan Tata was once asked "What kind of ethical rules or codes apply in a startup culture which is surviving month-to-month, with no certainty of paying employees beyond a year?" "Shouldn’t the survival of the company and feeding your employee’s families be the priority, even if it means knifing someone in the back, or paying bribes in Indonesia or Vietnam"?

Tata turned pensive and said “I’m afraid I have to take a view that there’s no difference. Because it’s not a band that you cross, it’s a thread. You cross that line, and you’re on the other side.”

Staying ethical is relatively easier when you’re a massive group with 100 subsidiaries but what happens when you are a newbie and the whole world around you is playing devilish and creating barriers which are near impossible to jump without crutches of unthical practices. Could Microsoft, Facebook, Apple, Uber, Samsung, Reddit, Twitter, Oracle and many others would have made it so big without following those shady practices in their early days?

Some people believe it's OK to veer towards the shade of grey till the time you pull yourself out of a hole of obscurity and put yourself in position to do what’s right.

I wonder if this principle applies to paying some bribe to get a government job? Or by this principle, Is it justified on the part of politicians to use money and muscle power in fighting elections? They may do it on the pretext of greater good which they intend to bring to their locality. Is it justified on the part of budding entrepreneurs to give some kickbacks to bureaucrats or the politicians to get some business? See ultimately it is Business. If you put some money somewhere, you got to recover it. And it is not always about money. Simple situations like data manipulations in order to impress investors or customers here and there to gain some short-term benefits may also fall under this category.

Generally, Companies follow the model of VUEIM in resolving this. V stands for vision, U for users, E for employees, I for investors and M (Me) for the CEO or chief decision maker. This is followed in the decreasing order of priority.

The problem with violating these code of ethics, as beautifully summarized by Mr. Tata is It is a line which you cross and not the band. And it requires commanding nature of self-control and renunciation to say enough, just this last time for the sake of company. And nobody does it for others or company or organization. At the end of the day, we do it for ourselves.

But at the same time, such idealism is not considered pragmatic. The trees which do not bend are the first to be uprooted when the storm comes. Either your roots should be strong enough to bear the storm or be ready to be uprooted. Means, either the leader should be very adamant and stubborn to his principles and be prepared to take loads of criticism with a huge grin and wide faced smile or be casual about compromising his position.

So it is all about knowing yourself. What is your like dislike and limits and accepting the truth as it is. This situation is so difficult in a culture where corruption has become so integral part of our life. And it also depends on whether you believe in next life or not.

One very simple thought experiment can help in resolving this dilemma. If somebody hit you, what action do you take and why? If someone slaps me and I slap him back, then there is no point of claiming sainthood, You will do corruption when it is forced on you due to your opponent. If you do not slap him back because of being beaten blue or red then it indicates you'll do corruption when you could. If you do not slap him back because of your conscience then you are the next saint on this holy earth. Please post your charan here. I will touch them and take your blessings. :)

West Indies "The champions" and English "The forgotten"

How close were the English but how far it proved? Everyone is gung-ho about the magical ruthless powerful sixes of Braithwaite but my sympathy, my heart goes out to Stokes who became the victim.

But as Nitsche has correctly put, "Whatever doesn't kill you, makes you stronger". For Ben Stokes, this was the most vulnerable moment of his life till date but this would also prove to be the strongest moment of his entire life. Whenever he will be down or depressed, all he has to do is close his eyes and think of these four balls. Nothing can go worse than this. This was the bottom. And probably this would prove to be his liberation.

A colleague explained me the nature of fear yesterday. He said 'Fear is like a spring'. The spring in normal position is in a natural state. When we stretch it, the tension increases. The farther you move away from the normal position, the greater would be the tension. Physicists have described it as the function of displacement. However, after a point, the spring reach to an irreversible state. After this point, there is no more tension. There is no desire to go back to normal position and there is no force pulling you back to the origin. Fear is analogues to this. When you induce excessive fear in some person, after a point the fear of fear just go away. You become fearless.

I do not know whether who I would have loved to see winning. Ultimately, it's a game and someone has to win and other has to lose. But given the hardships which WestIndian team faced, It was wonderful to see them coming out with flying colors and win against all odds.
I just wish Ben Stokes recover from this shocker and do well in future.

Friends

Last night, I went to meet some friends in Delhi. They had all gathered from different places. We played cards and discussed a number of things. Some were from government sectors. Some including me were from the private sector.

It was good.

Power lies in the Network

Hanna Ardent distinguished between Power, violence, strength and other connotation of power like force. She says strength is individualistic. Force has some element of violence. But power lies in the network. Power comes when a group of people comes together for a common cause. And power disperses the very moment you recede back in your personal sphere.

I saw a message on whatsApp. A person goes to fruit vendor to buy some grapes. He asked the price of grapes bundle. The vendor replied 80 rs/kg. In the side of the bundle, some unbundled grape pieces were lying. They were same. They got plucked or got separated while handling the bundle. Out of curiosity, the person asked about prices of individual pieces. The vendor replied 30rs/kg. The person was left amused. He received a lesson in the power of the network.

Yesterday one of my colleague was managing some file. Out of curiosity, I asked him about what is he doing. He asked me to come and see. I got up from my seat and went to his place. He was inserting some visiting cards in a big file. I flipped through the file which was essentially a visiting cards catalogue. It had nearly 10000 visiting cards, well catalogues and of people who holds a responsible position in various positions in the government or private sector. No surprise, the file belonged to my manager. He has meticulously managed all the visiting cards he has received over the years in a catalogues file. It took me not less than one second to understand the power of network and importance of connecting with people around.

Sadly, today power is confused with influence or ability to distort rules and do vices. However, in a true sense, power is the most sacrosanct word of the dictionary that characterizes the social capital and convey the ability of humankind to do the impossible.
Hail Power. :)