Pygmies & Giants

I saw in the newspaper, a very famous IT industry leader and author comment about the second coming of Narayana Murthy to Infosys, saying, "Infosys was hurting. Pygmies were making wise comments. With the giant back, hopefully they will mind their own business".

Maybe, I am the only one, but I am confused in so many ways by this one statement. Maybe, some of you can enlighten me. 

• Is pygmy a respectful name for the various people he is referring to? 
• If it is a respectful name, then why is he is saying that they should mind their own business? 
• If it is not respectfully called, is he insulting the pygmies? 
• Is he insulting the pygmies because his company anyway does not do any software services for the pygmies? 
• Will he change his statement when his company starts a software center in the pygmy land? 
• When he says they will mind their own business, which business does he refer to? Infosys, or any other business? 
• Is being a giant a good thing? I have read about Goliath, who was not such a great giant, and not my role model. 
• Is he saying that you are either a giant or a pygmy, but nothing in between? 
• If it is all giants in our companies, then where do we have space? 
• Why did the giant leave behind only pygmies? 

Man, I am confused ! Too much for my brain to take in. Can someone help, please !!

Poverty Standards 2011

Last year I had written a blog called SpellCheck 2010 (http://let-it-rain-now.blogspot.com/2010/08/spellcheck-2010.html) after reading an article by P. Sainath who talked about a very innovative way the government of Maharashtra adopted long ago to remove famine. They just removed the word, famine!

If you are following the recent discussion in the media about the definition of poverty line, you'll see that you are poor only if your monthly spending is below Rs.781, or rather, your daily spending is below Rs. 26. Now note that this is not just for food. This spending includes everything, including what is known as non-food essentials. Utsa Patnaik, an Economics Professor of JNU, in an article in "The Hindu" today, highlights how this money is not enough even to get the basic nutrition, leave alone the non-essentials.

I am reminded of the story of a man who was walking in the forest and saw a bulls-eye on every tree, and an arrow struck right at the bulls-eye! He was amazed! Finally, I am going to meet the world's best archer! Then he saw a little boy, with a quiver full of arrows, shooting an arrow to another tree. Before the man could reach the boy, he saw the boy running to the tree, and drawing a circle around the arrow, with the arrow as the center of the bulls-eye!

Why do we do such games of cooking numbers by creating meaningless definitions? Aren't there more obvious ways of defining who poor, or is it turning out to be very difficult? New dictionaries, new standards, new arithmetics cannot solve real hunger!

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em

India in the past few weeks has been facing an interesting dynamics created by the great leveler of modern times - Twitter and Facebook, clubbed with a very active visual media. Many in the political framework were least prepared for this kind of an 'intrusion' into their privileges. To a large extent, even those who created the mass movement called Team Anna, were also new to this stage, and were at times doing certain embarrassing performances. They were not alone in these performances, since some from the political class also gave them company in these. Overall, on this new stage, with many performers, everyone looked quite novice - the leaders on both sides, the followers, all. Like the children who are first on stage.

However, what goes undebated is that this new stage can have a positive transition into a new equilibrium for India, if all the players accept each other, especially if the existing actors accept the new actors on the stage. The government has to perhaps have special focus on the voice of the people which is becoming very active on this stage. The senior leadership also has to accept the tweeting new leadership, whose influence on a large cross section of India is very high. The question is not whether everything that gets talked on this stage is right or wrong. What is pertinent is that there are a lot of prevalent perceptions which get debated on this stage. This cannot be ignored.

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em - the principle I learned in the Electronics textbook, while studying Klystron amplifiers. The emerging leadership from political classes, social sector, masses should adopt this principle, and start using the 'great leveler' as an effective tool. The technology visionaries in the administrative machinery should use data analytics tools to make sense out of this seemingly high noise on the stage. The connectors between the mainline and the social sector should dream big in effectively using analytics (speech and text, and even video) in the coming years to create the entire India as a greatly leveled stage.

All this is possible, if the leaders stop the current mud slinging, and start appreciating the fact that we are in a greatly leveled world, a highly transparent world, and then, we might as well embrace this new stage for advancements of our nation, advancement for all its people.

Jai Ho.

We worship you, Oh deadline god!

‘I don’t care how you do it, but you have to meet the deadline, coz the customer is waiting’, yells the manager, whose hands-on life was buried deep many years ago. In fact, the firm loves him, because if he is hands-on, in touch with realities, he cannot push the deadlines. The deadline god will not be pleased. Let us pour the blood of young lives which we fatten anyway through vulgar salaries, gyms and basketball courts in our campus. What else are we feeding them for, if not to offer them to the deadline god! The youngsters slog, day in day out, and they meet the deadline. Mails of appreciation flow, awards are given in the next meeting. The customer looks at this piece of _ _ _ _ (work) and is horrified. He calls the manager, only to know that the ownership has been shifted to the maintenance team!

‘Oh my God, the software is not working, and we have only four days to give it to the customer. If we don’t meet the deadline, we lose our face, we lose our reputation’. Here comes the priest of the deadline god again, the manager. ‘ Looks like the architecture is alright. But we don’t have time to fix. So let’s give a patch. That will meet the deadline. We will fix the consequences later’. So the patch comes in 4 days, and there goes the customer and the maintenances team to suffer the consequences for ever.

Looking at the crowds that support the mass movement, isn’t it silly to expect any different culture. The masses who have worshipped the deadline god always, they do not know any other god, they do not worship any other god. The god needs to be pleased, even if blood flows. The god needs to be pleased, even if the architecture strengthening needs more thought. The god needs to be pleased even if many millions have to suffer the consequences of this patchwork. But what else do we expect from the devotees!

With all due respects to all the people involved in the movement, am I the only cynic to see a parallel in the behaviour of the followers?

The gods must be crazy

Close to 20 years ago, I was part of an agitation for a 'just cause', led by a 'democratic' leader against the 'autocratic' authorities of an educational institution. The emotional frenzy, being part of a charged environment, was an experience by itself, which led us into unbelievable chaos, and when we opened our eyes to face the reality, the 'democratic leader' had more fiction than fact, the 'autocratic' authorities were not so autocratic after all, and the 'just cause' was more just to the people who led the movement. Since then, I decided I will not be part of mass movements and signature campaigns, since by design somewhere down the line they get diluted, sabotaged, and even surgically modified by other doctors without your knowledge.

For this reason, despite the presence of wonderful leaders like Kiran Bedi, Santhosh Hegde etc. in this movement, I still kept my independent thinking about the whole issue. But of course, I still respected the passion with which they were doing, since they share a common end goal with all well meaning people of India, which is to weed out corruption. So, while I did not quite approve the mass movement approach, which many a time get followed by many who cannot be the first ones to throw the proverbial stone at the sinner, I still observed with interest.

However, I was surprised at the way the Government handled the movement yesterday. I am still puzzled who went crazy. Or is it that there is a larger gameplan that the government has, only a part of which they were playing yesterday? Maybe not. Or else, why a 7 day imprisonment in the morning and a release in the evening? Why the unholy hurry in many decisions? Why the afterthoughts?

I see classic absence of leadership and effective communication by the leaders of the government. I see blindness by them in not seeing how the common man connects the various scams on one side, and Anna's movement as the only hope! Whether that is correct or not, that is the perception of the helpless masses of India, and that perception will soon become reality if not handled very carefully. It is too early to say if that reality would be the solution.

Why isn't there that boy in the government circles who is shouting that the Emperor has no clothes! Why is it there is no hurry in effective communication by the government to the masses? Why isn't the government touching the hearts of people who are tired of corruption that they will rally behind anyone who leads, without any careful look into the detailed agenda? Why is there a hard insensitivity by the leaders who are in a hurry to be more right than understanding?

Is it too difficult? Is running the government above common sense of common men like me? Or have the gods that be gone crazy!

1 < 1, 1+1 > 2

In lines with the thought of collective intelligence, there is a very simple concept which can be implemented by NGOs focusing on people with disabilities. Concept is straightforward. The disability a person has is typically in one faculty, be it in the eye, be it in hearing, be it in physical movement. Left alone, or even in groups of people with the same disability, they have a disadvantage. However, group the people of various disabilities together, and you together have the disability issue resolved, and the advantage of teamwork. A visually disabled person put together with a physically disabled person and a hearing disabled person make a great team if specialized coaching can be given on various types of teamwork. Disability hence do not any more become a disadvantage. They will also always enjoy the company of another person and hence monotony of work is gone too.

1 is less than one with the disability. However 1 plus 1 is more than 2 with the collective intelligence, just as in team cycling.

The thought was triggered when I read about a Chinese NGO working with disabled people whose name is One Plus One. I have checked with them if they follow this model. Respond to me in this blog with your views and also if you know NGOs who do this already.

Collaborate to Focus Better

Pranab Bardhan, a professor of Economics, wrote in Boston daily that "activists who romanticize the poor should keep in mind that the horrors of capitalism fade in comparison with the horrors of pre-capitalism". Many times we get lost in our own 'isms', thinking our 'ism well' is the world. With many 'isms' in the world, and each having its rightful place, we are running out of time in getting the pieces together into a master design. A master design where the red 'ism' and the 'green' ism all have a beautiful role to play and make awesome patterns.

The business world has been consolidating quite well in the last many years.This for sure has eliminated a lot of redundancy. Competition between players is definitely what makes different silos create competitive designs. However, in the business world, the paradigm of competition has moved up to extremely high levels of maturity.

If you take technology companies, years ago companies competed in bringing a new technology first to the market. Then when that became level playing, they moved to certain technological advantages within a certain standard. When that layer also became a level playing field, they moved up the value chain of competition to compete on pricing. Then came revolutionary companies who insulted the pricing game by ridiculously low prices which the giants got worried about. Over time, even that layer got leveled. The competition then evolved to service differentiations, which too did not take much time to level. Now the game is all about competing companies collaborating with each other to offer value-added solutions. The game is about cloud offerings where you no longer can live alone. Competition and Collaboration going beautifully hand in hand.

As a response to Pranab Bardhan's article, I wrote that a single brush stroke that paints all NGOs is too large to be real. What is needed is a constructive next step by leading NGO organizations and NGO consortiums in driving the thinking of Collaboration, where all who are focused on the people, be it NGO, be it corporations, be it governments, be it political parties look at optimizations in their own ecosystems, eliminating redundancies and boosting the strengths. The ecosystem, whether local or global, is large enough for everyone to pursue their passion, while still hand-holding and learning from one another.

If the business world is imaginative in this, we better learn from that imagination and apply it to the world that focuses on people - the social world. It is time we moved up the levels of maturity to a level relevant for the people. The business world moved up the layers to focus on the primary motive of their existence, which is profit. The social world likewise have to keep its focus on the primary motive of their passion and existence, which is people. The steps needed to achieve this are obvious, and there are many examples from the business world we can apply. We are also at a time in history, where technology itself is all oriented towards collaboration.

Let's collaborate and work systematically to focus better on the people.