Blastphemy

Following the recent string of blasts in India, starting with Bangalore and ending (hopefully) with New Delhi, has been a harrowing experience. The fact that my dad lives in New Delhi, has only compounded the anxiety factor.

But it got me to thinking...When did it all start? What was the trigger? Why do these blasts keep reminding us with frequent morbidity that differences exist in our society and the way some people deal with them is by killing people. Killing people doesn't necessarily kill the problem or the differences, does it?

It is interesting to note the most prominent terrorist attacks (I am loosely grouping riots and terrorists acts into one) since 1990 have all been religiously motivated - the demolition of the Babri Masjid, Mumbai serial blasts, Gujarat riots, Parliament bombing, Coimbatore blasts and now the latest ones. They also seem to alternate between the two prominent religions in the country, each trying to take vengeance for the earlier act of cowardice by the other. As these acts of tit-for-tat, an eye-for an-eye and a tooth-for-a-tooth continue into perpetuity, the country will soon be blind, toothless and eventually dead.

Following this trail of terrorist acts, I cannot but point at the demolition of Babri Masjid as the seminal moment in terrorism in India. It is hard to trace any other act of violence before or after (including the Sikh riots in 1984 and the riots following the partition in 1947) that has influenced the thinking of the nation, more so that of a few select people, more than Babri Masjid did.

A thoughtless act of destroying a place of worship that was allegedly usurped by a ruler belonging to another religion 300 years ago, has sown the seeds for almost two decades of bloodshed. What led to it? Religion? Communalism? Simmering feelings of hatred that simply boiled over in a momentary lapse of reason? Politics? It is hard to point the finger at one reason. But the unavoidable yet common thread that connects all potential factors mentioned above seems to be...God.

So, what if there was no God? Well, is there God, in the first place? The second is a profound question that has been the point of contention between theists and atheists for ages, which I am not willing to answer.

But the first question is easy to answer. Without god will there be religion? No. Without religion will there be religious animosity? No. Would there have been the Crusades? No. Would there have been the Holocaust? No. Would there be Jihad? No. Would there have been the Gujarat genocide? No. Would there have been the Babri Masjid Demolition? No. Would there have been 9/11, 12/6, 12/13 and 3/12? Never.

Why then, do we need God? Irrespective of his existence, if the most devastating acts of terrorism/genocide in our country, and the world in general, could have been avoided without him, wouldn't the world be a much better and safer place to live in without God? Aren't we better off without the notion of this all-powerful, omnipresent and omnipotent concept that seems to have gotten a few of us obsessed enough to kill. Aren't we better off seeing the God in fellow men and women than in the few names that we address him by? Aren't we better off following our conscience regarding the rights and wrongs of life than the preachings of the so-called messiahs? Aren't we better off without God?

Yes.

My Olympic Moments: Phelps, Bindra and Vince Vaughn's Olympic bid

If watching Michael Phelps push the limits of human endurance over the last 5 days was the standout performance of this Olympics (so far, at least), Abhinav Bindra's gold medal was the cherry on top for me. As with most cakes, I am guessing there will only be one cherry for the Indians this time (or for some time to come).

While Phelps becoming the most celebrated Olympian of all time, surpassing the likes of Carl Lewis and Mark Spitz, was only a matter of time, Bindra's gold medal was a matter of "high time" for a nation of more than a billion people. For Indians who have often been embarrassed to see countries like Suriname and Zimbabwe win gold medals at the Olympics while India continued to falter at the biggest athletic stage, it is redemption of sorts. Shooting seems have become India's flagship sport during the last 6 years or so when the country has clearly fallen off the podium in Hockey. But what has surprised me is that we no longer have good track and field athletes (what happened to the good old Keralites who kept us in the hunt during the 80's? Have they all started driving their Santros to work).

Bindra's win in the Indian Olympics context is something to be cherished but it is at the same time a testament to individual achievement and not to India's sports system. Unlike China, which seems to have found a method to scout and groom Olympic champions through state-run programs, India seems to be content letting millions of dollars flow into Cricket while other sports die a slow and political death. If half the amount spent on the IPL had been spent on training talented sportsmen for the Olympics, our medals tally over the last few editions would have looked better than the beginning of the Fibonacci series.

To end on a lighter note, I was surprised to find that Baseball, a game hardly played in 5 countries, is an Olympic sport. What's next on the agenda - Dodgeball? Get ready Vince Vaughn!

Money for nothing and checks for free!

"Money for nothing and chicks for free" - crooned Mark Knopfler in 1985, to express his views on the music industry. With a single syllable change, it applies to the Indian Premier League (IPL), the newly conceived 20/20 cricket league set up in a franchise structure like the soccer leagues in Europe or the sports leagues in the US.

While the IPL might turn out to be the most defining development to happen to cricket since the Packer saga in 1978, and might take the salaries of players to be on par with those of soccer stars and NFL superstars, yet, when players like Manoj Tiwary, whom I saw in a recent game in Australia and wondered how he even got selected, and Ishant sharma, who despite being the star of the Australian tour was a virtual unknown a couple of months ago, fetched $675,000 and almost $1 MM respectively, the deal seems to have more holes than a sieve.

True that when business tycoons like Vijay Mallya, Ness Wadia, and Mukesh Ambani are rubbing wallets with Bollywoood stars like Preity Zinta and Shah Rukh Khan, there are bound to be excesses. After all, isn't this the marriage between the two biggest passions of a billion Indians - Cricket and Bollywood?.

Let's take a look behind all the glitter and analyze if there is gold.

First and foremost factor in the success of a venture is the product, in this case 20/20 cricket. There is no doubt that it is exciting and probably the best suited version to really bring people to the stadiums and have fun after a hard day's work. But beyond an exciting and serendipitously successful World Cup, there isn't a proof that the version is worth the millions of $$ in bets that are being placed - huge risk with uncertain return - an investment that would make me look like Ford betting on the Edsel.

Secondly, the HR, in this case cricketers, are an impressive lot - established players and upcoming ones with its share of have-beens; overall some of the best players in the World are on display.

Thirdly, the cost of hiring these cricketers - a mind boggling $633 MM - is where the logic behind all this looks as thin as soup in a college mess. Given that the people and the companies involved in the league are some of the biggest in the country and are proven winners this is definitely not a joke. One look at the salaries and more importantly the $$/hour, which is astronomical, it reveals the lack of common sense. E.g., M.S. Dhoni is expected to earn $1500/hour, which according to The Economic Times was higher than what Mukesh Ambani, ironically one of the team owners, earns. Then there are other operating costs that need to be taken into account like those of marketing, support staff, travel etc., that will ultimately make the figure fatter than the priest at my wedding.

I am a great believer in creating a market before creating a product and more importantly earning a few cents before betting millions. The IPL fails on both counts.

Hopefully the IPL will not suffer the same fate as that of the Indian stock market in April 1992, when blinded bullishness brought about the fall of many a millionaire, and Lalit Modi, the brain behind the IPL, will do better than Harshad Mehta.

Profit and Philosophy

I was compelled to name this post as I did since I thought it will be an appropriate follow up to my earlier one on profit and philanthropy - after all they are phonetically very similar and on a lighter note, when I was young and ignorant I thought philosophy and philanthropy were one and the same, neither of which I really understood.

I recently re-read Sun Tzu's The Art of War, a book I had read in grad school but never really appreciated its relevance then since I had neither worked in a corporate setting nor fought a war, and it triggered me to find out more about the impact of philosophy on modern business. After all, The Art of War, though originally a military treatise, has been revered and has found more relevance in the business world (sports & politics to some extent) than war in recent times. It is broadly read within the business world as the basic primer for competitive strategy and is widely regarded as the oldest and most definitive text on the topic.

Zen, which has been embraced by business leaders as a "way of life", probably comes a close second to the Art of War. Zen's emphasis on daily practice, teamwork and self improvement is a perfect recipe for success in the corporate world and leadership seminars often propose Zen concepts like the Eightfold Path, the Four Noble Truths, the five precepts, the five aggregates, and the three marks of existence as a means to solving to day today business problems.

Though Stephen Covey and Deepak Chopra's works are popular amongst business leaders, my personal thought is that their concepts are nothing more than simplified versions of ancient Chinese or Indian philosophies - nothing original. (Refer to this article for an illustration of my argument)

As I read more about the influence of ancient Chinese doctrines on business, I began to wonder if the business leaders and personality development gurus were oblivious to what the Indian counterparts of Sun Tzu had to say on this matter. After all, Lord Krishna's counsel to Arjuna was not too dissimilar to Sun Tzu's and it is not a small matter of coincidence that both the Bhagwad Gita and the Art of War are set in the backdrop of war! Just as in other spheres of business like manufacturing, outsourcing and technology, in philosophical influence too, if China is the first stop, India is the next, as this article from Business Week indicates.

While India has had a big impact on global economy in the last 15 years or so, its biggest impact yet might just be around the corner and the day saffron-clad swamis ring the opening bell at Nasdaq may not be far away!

An Eye for an Eye and Lunchtime Logistics

In my ongoing tryst with innovation, I was fascinated by the companies that are repeatedly cited for being innovative, especially in the last 25 years - Apple, Toyota, 3M, Intel, IKEA, Disney, Starbucks, Southwest Airlines, Sony and Dell, to name a few from core industries and of course, Google, Amazon, EBay, MySpace (NewsCorp) and UTube from the times post-Internet invasion.

While the stories of these American/European companies have been well documented and their innovations well imitated by their competitors to become BAU, I was wondering if any Indian companies could be part of this elite group.

Though companies like Infosys, Wipro, TCS and myriad other start-ups are the first ones to cross my mind, I wonder if their success was just a natural by-product of pre-existing economic conditions and HR abundance in India that resulted in cost-effective product/services development rather than through truly innovative products like those developed by some of the companies that are mentioned above. Since that would be a debate that I would like to take up on a different day, I have decided to focus on non-tech companies in India that have developed truly path-breaking products/services/operations.

The two organizations that I chose to be the most innovative - one from health care and the other from an industry it created out of its product - have both developed their systems out of the economic and cultural scenario in India, rather than use it as an excuse for stymied growth.

Aravind Eye Care System in Madurai, India: Founded in 1976, by the charismatic Govindappa Venkataswamy, M.D (or Dr. V as he was fondly addressed), grew out of the need for an eye care system that would be appropriate to and supported by the economic conditions in India. Dr. V's vision of providing quality cataract care to the masses of his country resulted in his brainchild that has evolved into a world leader in eye care, ophthalmic education, and the development of appropriate technology for cost-effective surgery. Its model has proven to be one of the most effective programs for addressing the enormous backlog of blindness in India. Designed to be self-sustaining while providing high-quality care to an underserved population, the fledgling hospital relied on fees paid by about 30% of patients to subsidize free care for the remainder, plus a formula based on low costs and high volume. The success of the system is also due to the non-regulatory nature of health care in India and the limited legal intrusion into health care as evident in countries like the US. The system has been widely acknowledged by many management gurus as one of the truly innovative services, none more so than C.K Prahalad in his book, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid.

Dabbawallas of Mumbai: This is innovative services at its best. Born out of the cultural preference of home cooked food over cafeteria cuisine, the dabbawalla system overcame the logistic hurdles posed by a growing Mumbai in the 70s, and is widely recognized as one of the most innovative logistics systems by management gurus.

So what makes the dabbawallas so unique? And how do they work? I stumbled upon this Deck that explains the organization, their system and even their P&L.

As India continues to churn out innovations in IT, these two organizations have stealthily set the bar so high for services and operations innovation that it will be tough to reach, let alone beat. But hold your thought there; after all Wal-Mart is coming to India, and that can only be the beginning of a new era of innovation in India that could break new ground.

Thank You

I want to thank every person who has visited my blog in the last 3 months. The number of visits has crossed 1,000 as of 10/3/2007 and the site has logged its 300th unique visitor (No, it is not me clicking away to make up the numbers; I have excluded my IP addresses from all counters). While visitors from the US and India contribute 50% of the visits, followed by Australia, Canada and UK (25%), it has been very encouraging to see visitors from countries like Poland, Russia, Cyprus, Lithuania and Romania logging a significant number of visits. The site has also achieved significantly high organic rankings (as high as #3) on high traffic keywords on Google. The highest # unique visitors on a single day so far has been 35, recorded on 9/27; apparently Google likes people blogging about it.

Happy Reading!

Sincerely,
Naga

Profit or Philanthropy?

On one of those happy hours after work, my colleague and I got into a debate on companies and their social responsibility. His view was that a company's only responsibility is to make money for its shareholders and that they should be blamed neither for problems in the society nor ignoring their responsibility towards society - pretty capitalistic indeed. My view was that though profit remains a company's primary motive and shareholders their primary focal point, companies must be profitable within the realms of social responsibility. Remember, I am not a communist by any means, neither am I a total believer in Ayn Rand and her theory of objectivism. I believe in capitalism where society plays a significant part - a middle ground of sorts.

So, profit or philanthropy? Competitive advantage or corporate social responsibility? Where does one end and other begin for a company (or an individual, for that matter). Can everyone, like Buffet and Gates have proved successfully, follow one up with the other? If all companies were socially responsible, wouldn't we all be buying groceries only from Whole Foods? Wouldn't every car manufacturer switch to hybrids?

When Nike faces a consumer boycott because of media reports on its labor practices in Asia or when McDonald's and KFC are held responsible for obesity in the US, it raises a debate in my mind - Are we right in pointing the finger at companies for flaws in the individual or the society? Or are companies and their practices the causes of the flaws that we are talking about? It is a classic chicken and egg question. After all, Who is John Galt?

In pursuit of more clarity on this issue, I came across this article in the Harvard Business Review by Porter and Kramer (yes, Porter of "Porter's 5 forces" fame), winner of the 2006 McKinsey Award for the Best Harvard Business Review Article.

Porter discusses both sides of the issue but agrees that there is a "moral purpose of business" and proposes a framework by which companies can integrate business and social needs into their value chain. Among the many cases he uses to highlight this concept, I found that of Nestle to be the most interesting (refer text below) and most explicit in highlighting how a company can contribute to economic and social growth while increasing its profits; a win-win.

Maybe there is John Galt!

Integrating Company Practice and Context: Nestlé’s Milk District

Nestlé’s approach to working with small farmers exemplifies the symbiotic relationship between social progress and competitive advantage.

Consider the history of Nestlé’s milk business in India. In 1962, the company wanted to enter the Indian market, and it received government permission to build a dairy in the northern district of Moga. Poverty in the region was severe; people were without electricity, transportation, telephones, or medical care. A farmer typically owned less than five acres of poorly irrigated and infertile soil. Many kept a single buffalo cow that produced just enough milk for their own consumption. Sixty percent of calves died newborn. Because farmers lacked refrigeration, transportation, or any way to test for quality, milk could not travel far and was frequently contaminated or diluted.

Nestlé came to Moga to build a business, not to engage in CSR. But Nestlé’s value chain, derived from the company’s origins in Switzerland, depended on establishing local sources of milk from a large, diversified base of small farmers. Establishing that value chain in Moga required Nestlé to transform the competitive context in ways that created tremendous shared value for both the company and the region.

Nestlé built refrigerated dairies as collection points for milk in each town and sent its trucks out to the dairies to collect the milk. With the trucks went veterinarians, nutritionists, agronomists, and quality assurance experts. Medicines and nutritional supplements were provided for sick animals, and monthly training sessions were held for local farmers. Farmers learned that the milk quality depended on the cows’ diet, which in turn depended on adequate feed crop irrigation. With financing and technical assistance from Nestlé, farmers began to dig previously unaffordable deep-bore wells. Improved irrigation not only fed cows but increased crop yields, producing surplus wheat and rice and raising the standard of living.

When Nestlé’s milk factory first opened, only 180 local farmers supplied milk. Today, Nestlé buys milk from more than 75,000 farmers in the region, collecting it twice daily from more than 650 village dairies. The death rate of calves has dropped by 75%. Milk production has increased 50-fold. As the quality has improved, Nestlé has been able to pay higher prices to farmers than those set by the government, and its steady biweekly payments have enabled farmers to obtain credit. Competing dairies and milk factories have opened, and an industry cluster is beginning to develop.

Today, Moga has a significantly higher standard of living than other regions in the vicinity. Ninety percent of the homes have electricity, and most have telephones; all villages have primary schools, and many have secondary schools. Moga has five times the number of doctors as neighboring regions. The increased purchasing power of local farmers has also greatly expanded the market for Nestlé’s products, further supporting the firm’s economic success.

Nestlé’s commitment to working with small farmers is central to its strategy. It enables the company to obtain a stable supply of high-quality commodities without paying middlemen. The corporation’s other core products—coffee and cocoa—are often grown by small farmers in developing countries under similar conditions. Nestlé’s experience in setting up collection points, training farmers, and introducing better technology in Moga has been repeated in Brazil, Thailand, and a dozen other countries, including, most recently, China. In each case, as Nestlé has prospered, so has the community.

East or West, India is a land of snake charmers at its best

I saw two ads on cable TV today (Vitamin Water & Tanqueray Rangpur) on different channels within a span of 20 minutes and interestingly enough both featured India, symbolized not by the Taj or the Himalayas, not Gandhi or Aishwarya (supposedly the two most recognized Indians in the world) and definitely not the sprawling IT corridors of Bangalore or Hyderabad. India was proudly represented by the antediluvian images of snake charmers and their pets showing off their latest moves. I would have had a good laugh had the ads shown a call center in Bangalore or Noida.

So what is it with the West and its perception of India as a land of magic, swamis, snakes and most bizarre of cultures and spiritualism. Is the West oblivious to the developments that have taken place in the country over the last 20 years, from becoming the services hub of the world to housing R&D centers for global leaders like GE and Intel and becoming the twelfth largest economy in the world in that process (with a GDP growth rate of 9.4% in 2006-07)? Or is it just a blurred vision of a few that keeps reinforcing the stigmatic images of the country that was made popular by BBC shows and the Indiana Jones adventures? A third possibility is that though the West has embraced India when it comes to recruiting its brilliant engineers, setting up its latest product centers or accepting the importance of Yoga and Karma in their day today lives, it continues to market the country to its common man as it has always done - deliberately choosing to ignore the sublime growth of a new nation, perhaps as a result of the inertia to preserve the mystique and exoticness that has been long associated with the country. Having spent the last 6 years in the US, my personal opinion is that it is the listless work of a few that continues to project India in such deprecating ways.

The Presidency is dead...long live the President

I am as sad today as I was happy 5 years ago when I heard about the election of Dr. Kalam as President of India. After a famed reign at the highest office, inspiring a billion countrymen along the way, the aeronautical engineer goes back to the company of students and scholars, far removed from the muddled world of politics that prevented him from a second term. Like a lotus over dirty water, he was never comfortable with politics nor was he tainted by it, but nevertheless he blossomed amidst the politicians. Whether his successor will inspire the country or be swept away in the tides of politics will decide Pratibha Patil's legacy.

Wikipedia describes the POI as "the head of state and first citizen of India and the Supreme Commander of the Indian armed forces. The President's role is largely ceremonial, with real executive authority vested in the Council of Ministers, headed by the Prime Minister. The powers of the President of India are comparable to those of the monarch of UK." To paraphrase, the POI is powerless and ceremonial; a rubber stamp of sorts. Why then do we need a President? After all, the qualifications needed to become one are as exploitable as those needed to get into nursery school. All the executive powers of the President that we studied about in 8th grade Civics being the reasons, the primary one is the fact that the President has discretionary powers which give him the ultimate power - to over rule the government on critical issues. So, the ideal candidate should have two important qualities - neutrality and objectivity. One look at the President-elect and I can see neither.

The POI is also the "first citizen" of the country and the face of the country around the globe. Hence the person should have distinguished himself in his chosen field of excellence, be it science, law or public service. A retrospective look at the past Presidents made me feel that most of them fit the description - most of them - be it the brilliant law maker in Dr. Rajendra Prasad (freedom fighter and President of the Constituent Assembly that framed the Constitution of India), the scholastic Dr. Radhakrishnan (of Oxford and Harvard fame), the idealistic S.D Sharma (Harvard Law) or the ultimate diplomat in K.R Narayanan (London School of Economics and Ambassador to the US, UK and China during the difficult NAM days). Along the way, there have been others like Zail Singh, who was more famous for his subservient attitude towards Indira Gandhi than his social reforms in Punjab. But no one brought more honor and elegance to the position than Dr. APJ - the people's president who increased the amplitude of the position and redefined its appositeness. So, who is Pratibha Patil? Is she the equitable doyen or the government's pawn?

For starters, she is a politician, and unlike some of the inspiring names mentioned above she doesn't quite tickle the "I am proud to be an Indian" nerve in your body. Nor has she achieved anything of note apart from being a Congress activist and the Governor of a state, a feat achieved by myriad others. Numerous controversies and allegations preceded her election and the one billion dollar question (one for each person in the country I suppose) is - Why her? Couldn't we find a candidate in the second most populous country in the world, that befitted the position and filled our hearts with pride? The answer is that the politicians didn't bother to find one and thats what makes me sad today.