IndiaVichar

DISAGREE !! Democracy doesn't come in the way of India's economic growth as compared to China !!

noreply@blogger.com (Sidhyesh) — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 08:58:00 +0000

Democracy can never come in the way of economic growth if the growth is perceived by the majority to be beneficial to it. In cases where it is not perceived as beneficial by the majority then the notion of economic growth itself is questionable as it won’t benefit the majority of the country's population.

What we need to understand here is how we perceive economic growth. Building Roads, retails malls, office spaces, power plants and other infrastructure by acquiring land from individuals and then relocating them to places further far away from the development or where they won’t receive power from the plant they gave their lands for, would contribute a percentage or two to the GDP numbers. However in absolute terms this was detrimental to the individuals who sacrificed their land. They did not realize any economic growth in the process.

Democracy provides for representation of these individuals and they insisting on better returns for their land should not be viewed against economic growth but for it, as a better compensation will make them participants in the economic process. Economic growth needs to be perceived in terms of growth of the individuals against GDP numbers. In India over the last five years, GDP growth has certainly declined but the number of tier III towns, semi urban markets and rural commerce has increased many folds. Sadly this doesn't add much percentage to the GDP figure but is very essential in terms of economic growth and self sufficiency of the Nation.

On the contrary, China has adopted Build first Occupy Later strategy.
It provides more emphasis on development of infrastructure, facilities and services and then wants to realign its population to suit the same. This adds a lot to the GDP but reduces the freedom on part of individuals and society in general. This makes the masses highly dependent on the Autocratic Leadership and its policies and decisions. It reduces the impact an individual can have on building and sustaining his own economic growth. As an individual’s influence is largely reduced, this restricts the growth of self-sustaining centers of economic activity and the whole population is highly dependent on the Leadership to deliver.

China’s Regime has so far got its act right, rather we are forced to think so as it’s the same regime which controls dispersion of information out of the country. However continuing to do so will be a challenge and one wrong move can have massive implications on the country. India has been the tortoise in this race so far. India’s democratic process surely does take a longer time to take decisions, but it provides greater freedom to individuals to participate in economic growth thereby reducing its dependence on internal and external factors.

The challenges faced in Indian Democracy are those which need to be mitigated by democracy and not caused by democracy.

Note, I have refrained from citing the current political scenario and politics of religion and caste. Those who say these are affecting us because we are a democracy, consider what would happen if an All Powerful Regime imbibes the colors of religion and caste.

Deregulation of Fuel prices might not work with the middle class driven Indian Economy

noreply@blogger.com (Sidhyesh) — Mon, 02 Jul 2012 18:47:00 +0000

Fuel subsidies form a major component of India’s much debated public spending overheads and have been heavily criticised by free marketers and economists. The government, currently facing flak for the lacklustre GDP numbers and scuttled reforms coupled with growing domestic inflation and fiscal deficit, is for the first time seriously contemplating a move towards deregulating prices of both petrol and diesel. While petrol prices have already been partially deregulated, deregulating diesel would have a serious impact on commodity prices and amplify inflation.

While most of the debate is concentrated on this indirect effect on the pockets of the Indian middle class, we forget the more direct impact on middle class spending, which is the driver for growth in India. A car is not a luxury to many middle class households living in India’s growing cities. Many of these cities have very scanty public transport systems if any.

It is incomplete to argue whether the middle class can pay Rs 100 for a litre of petrol, rather we should ask if it is worth for the middle class to pay Rs 100 for a litre of petrol (which is essentially for transport) and still remain profitable in their domestic accounts. If the middle class can pay this price and still retain enough so as to not affect their spending patterns, then the government would have effectively passed on the costs from the Oil companies to the common man and the deregulation move would be justified.

However if the increased fuel cost is such that it does affect their savings considerably (which looks plausible given current inflation numbers) then this would also affect their spending on non essential commodities. Once the middle class goes into a self imposed austerity drive it would largely trim the profits of the consumption driven consumer industry and be detrimental to the economic recovery we are all hoping for. In other words the government would have only passed on the losses faced by the public sector oil companies to the common man and finally to the industry with no gains for the economy as a whole.

The subsidies on fuel in my opinion still remain a contentious issue which cannot be considered with merely the government’s expenditure in mind. A fully deregulated fuel market will have a much higher impact on the industry and this ultimately would have to be mitigated through reforms and by ending the policy paralysis – steps that require greater public backing which the government might just loose by removing the subsidies on fuel.

SAP ABAP| SAP Technical Consultants |SAP Modules |SAP course and training in India and fact that I don’t know SAP full form.

noreply@blogger.com (Sidhyesh) — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 11:03:00 +0000

SAP ABAP consultants are Technology Consultants for SAP implementation/ development/ upgrade projects. To take a holistic view, let’s first understand ERP and package implementation process.

ERP – Enterprise Resource Planning integrates internal and external management information across an entire organization, embracing finance/ accounting, manufacturing, sales and service, customer relationship management, etc. ERP systems automate this activity with an integrated software application (Read Package application). Its purpose is to facilitate the flow of information between all business functions inside the boundaries of the organization and manage the connections to outside stakeholders.

SAP is a German software giant. Full form of SAP is Systeme, Anwendungen und Produkte in der Datenverarbeitung in german or Systems, Applications and Products in Data Processing for the rest of us.

SAP is one of the many ERP packages available. So what’s the flow? Management consultants advise any company to go for ERP implementation to optimize their business. Depending upon the requirements IT/Tech consultants recommend one or more of SAP/ ORACLE/ Seibel /Sales Force/ TIBCO etc. - all these are package software.

SAP has many modules like SAP ABAP/SAP Basis/ SAP FICO/ SAP HR / SAP SD / SAP MM/ SAP CRM/ SAP SCH/ SAP Netweaver etc. These are products specific to niche areas in Enterprise resource planning. Like CRM for Customer Relationship Management.

So when an Enterprise (for example a Manufacturing Company) wants to implement SAP. They buy the product ‘SAP’ from SAP AG Inc. Then they require this product to be customized to their specific needs. That’s where SAP consultants come in. Functional consultants understand the client’s business needs and with help of their SAP product knowledge decide how the product needs to be customized.

SAP ABAP Technical Consultants are now required to use their technical skills to develop these custom requirements. ABAP is a programing language used to customize and develop new modules in SAP. As ABAPers we have to

1. Understand the Functional requirements and develop new Function Modules.

2. Develop user side/ client side application program. This is the interface used by the Sales Team/ Marketing Team or Logistics / SCM team of the client.

3. Connect this client side program to interact with the Client DATABASE in the backend. This involves retrieving data from clients inventory management system (can be in SAP or some other product might be implemented for this or it can be legacy systems)

4. Create special modules to interact with non-SAP systems and Exchange management systems to ensure data consistency across all the client systems.

5. Creating modules to generate automatic invoices and operations data using SAP Smart Forma or Adobe Forms.

6. ABAPers apart from programing these custom requirements also work on one or more of these

Creating WEB Dynpros – These are applications which are modeling environments used to deploy your client application interface over the internet
WORKFLOWS: This is a scheduling environment to trigger your ABAP modules / transactions based on some predefined conditions/events. Like if X occurs implement Y and if it does not then implement Z etc. Used for scheduling Batch process and emails etc.

Well that’s about it. SAP ABAP developers are Technical Consultants. Essentially they are different from normal developers JAVA/ .NET etc. This is because we have our expertise on a single product that’s SAP and the customization of this product. Functional consultants determine what SAP needs to do to best serve the client needs and Tech consultants understand this business scenario and determine how can SAP be best optimized to serve this purpose. Thus we are more of product consultants.

SAP ABAP Jobs are lucrative and reserved for the few. In India Infosys, Accenture , HCL, IBM provide SAP consultancy. Check out SAP Service partners in India. Check out SAP Education Partners .

Since SAP optimizes the entire operations of an industry, working as ABAPers you will understand how the internal functioning of the organization works. So if you work on SAP CRM project you will now understand the Sales and Marketing operations of your sector like Retails or Manufacturing etc. ….

SAP ABAP is a rare niche to have. SAP Technical Consultants have much more industry interaction than any other Tech profile out there. Kudos to ABAPers !!

JAN LOKPAL BILL Plotting an Ideological Revolution of Modern India

noreply@blogger.com (Sidhyesh) — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 14:48:00 +0000

The lines are clearly drawn now, sides taken and the first set of salvo fired from both sides- clearly this round to TEAM ANNA. The events of the last few days have transformed this country into a sea of young Indians having answered the call of their conscience, willing to participate and question the highest order in our country.

This storm has taken everyone by surprise especially the political class for whom it seemed was a prerogative until not long ago to protest and arm-twist the people of this country. The battle for the JAN LOKPAL BILL has touched many a different chords now. Here is a modest attempt to make order out of chaos.

The mood on the streets is different.

If you scan the streets today, people are angry, irate and are demanding a change. A single bill with contentious clauses cannot possibly trigger such kind of a response. It’s not the first time a very controversial bill has made it to the front page. The Nuclear Liability Bill came very close but others like the Women’s Reservation Bill and Reservation bill never created such a stir. The Lokpal Bill however has now turned into a revolution. This bill was special simply because the fight was now out of the gutters of Indian Politics into the open where Anna Hazare and the Civil Society members with morals of impeccable order questioned the intentions and commitment of the government – which the government certainly failed to salvage. Through this bill the dark tactics of the government and the politics of suppression were witnessed by a whole country only further establishing the need for an independent watchdog – THE JAN LOKPAL. It’s now about fighting this suppression and insult that the Government unleashed on simple Indians – a cause bigger than what any Bill represented.

People today have seen the true colors of this government. The government’s handling of this bill has been shoddy to say the least. We are disturbed to know that we are being run by people who can stoop down to any limits to mask there incompetency and unwillingness in passing this legislature.

Why is India Angry?

Back in April when Anna first went on a fast the demand was simple to bring the Lokpal bill into effect – a bill pending for over 40 yrs. A joint drafting committee formed was just to postpone the issue and buy some time – the motives more clear now – but a resilient and resolute Civil Society did not bend. The mudslinging which followed was targeted at every member of the civil society. My Question: If you believed it to be true, why share the table with them in the first place? What were you doing so long?? The accusations leveled against Team Anna were so sickening and baseless that it fuelled belief that the government shall go to any extent to block this bill as if it was all a personal battle with too much at stake for the grand old party of India. Congress and its ministers – Sibal, Chidambaram, Digvijay Singh and Manish Tiwary – treating a 74 yrs. old Gandhian with such pathetic language is totally unacceptable to any Indian. Anna today says he regrets his decision to end his fast in April – we understand why.

The anger is against this arrogant government who believes that with a weak opposition that exists today it can get away with anything. It is against the group of ministers who consider themselves above the law and believe the numbers in the parliament gave them immunity against public disapproval so much so that they speak of the parliamentary system being above the constitution and the people who elect them. It is against a party which never lets the all-powerful de-facto rulers face any scrutiny or accountability. It is against the government which measures Indians with different yardsticks. It is against the government which can abuse power to an extent of completely ignoring the misconducts of its ministers till the Supreme Court steps out of its way to directly question the Prime Minister and still this party brashly denounces it as unnecessary judicial activism. People are outraged to a government which sets up inquiry panels only to disown its finding and disgrace its members publicly. People also hate the party that appointed a very capable individual as the head of the state only to turn him into a puppet with no powers to take decisions. People hate the manner in which one family is somehow portrayed above the law and concessions prearranged for them by the government.

The lines are drawn. Earlier it was the divide between religions, communities, casts, between the rich and the poor; now the line divides the power abusers and the abused. People of this country have refused to be treated secondary to the political class and the power abusers. The politicians suddenly find themselves in unfamiliar territory where a simple Gandhian has united the people of this country into an awakened force which having seen the dark side of their leaders refuses to be taken for a ride.

Anna Hazare has done something no one had done before – change the lenses through which we scrutinize our leaders. Anna Hazare has bought the political class down within sight of the common man where he can understand the dirty game the politicians play so well. The JAN LOKPAL BILL has done more than just sought to eradicate corruption, it has actually implanted seeds of a new IDEOLOGICAL REVOLUTION in the India – AJAADI KI DOOSRI LADHEE SHUROO HO GAYI HAI !!!!

Also Visit : India Against Corruption , Referendum Results Lokpal Bill Public Consultation

Moral Policing in India

noreply@blogger.com (Sidhyesh) — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 15:01:00 +0000

As if Indian politics wasn’t murky enough, moral policing in India took a bizarre turn when on Sunday night Mumbai police detained 31 youths for ‘Dirty Dancing’ at Oro Lounge at Malad. Furthermore the police fined them Rs. 1200/- for indecent behavior under Bombay Police Act. While the police justify their action – thought absurd - on moral grounds, apparently the reason for the raid in itself was to check on the owners of the lounge for having a deejay without adequate permissions. TOI in its Wednesday edition reported Tiff between officer, local cops led to raid? So here may be another example of how innocent citizens who were at the wrong place at the wrong time may have had to face the brunt of the police simply because they seemed as an easy target. This time around though the netizens have attacked back on facebook . The community www.facebook.com/stop.moral.police had 517 followers on last count.

So who decides the morals in the first place and why does it always apply to citizens only. Why can’t someone come up with morals to follow in the parliament or at an election rally? The level of politics in India has plummeted into such darkness that (right, left, center or whichever way you see it) that it almost seem a prerogative of the powerful to abscond from things too obnoxious to deserve a mention.

What about moral policing the authorities? The recent development in regards to the Lokpal Bill should serve as a wakeup call to the government; after all it’s only a kind of moral policing that they are doing. Let’s assume for a while now that the incident reported by the police was correct and they took the action that they very much vindicate. So why only this incident caught the eye of the Mumbai Police ? How much fine have you collected from ‘munni ’ and ‘sheela’ ? After all they were caught on camera. Or maybe you can raid high profile new year parties at some of the famous five star hotels and fine some business honchos or a few celebrities. That should test their resolve

Since I referred to the civil society movement to get the Lokpall Bill passed undiluted as a sort of moral policing I must mention that a certain level of morals and ethics should be maintained by the society in general – without the self-portrayed wardens of Indian society taking a bite at it. I shall recall some incidents like when media had once reported that an Indian lady was not allowed inside Taj for wearing Indian footwear. Sometimes the judiciary and the government are helpless over such issues where a private organization which is at liberty to decide on a dress code for itself might end up discriminating against some Indian formalwear. The media and a few eminent speakers had then campaigned against the hotel and the rules were made to change. This intervention by the society was needed to maintain a more inclusive atmosphere at the hotel.

This is also very evident in most of the educational institution across India. The admission season is currently on, if you go around the city you will find admission forms selling from somewhere around Rs 1000 to Rs 2500 and that doesn’t even guarantee an admission. A private organisation is free to charge any sum for the services they offer but what service are they providing in selling admission forms? And the kind of money they are demanding cannot be justified. This is complete blackmail and the police or the government cannot take any action against this. It is here – where the society in general in suffering – that morals and ethics need to be expounded. Moral policing is different from deciding what an individual’s behavior should be or what kind of clothes women wear or dance choreography for that matter. The industry violates many aspects of ethicality and morals on a daily basis. We need the public to voice their opinions and curb them. When such incidents are revealed very few voices are heard. Where are the moral police??

Moral Policing is different from dress code policing or cultural policing.

Volkswagen's Perfect Indian Dream - Das Auto !!

noreply@blogger.com (Sidhyesh) — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 15:10:00 +0000

If you read any market entry strategies, then contrast those to the entry of European giants ‘Volkswagen’. The company was already present in India through sister company ‘Skoda’. Yet the launch of Volkswagen saw no mention of the Czech rebel (you would like to read skoda’s history). Volkswagen wanted to come in fresh and you could sense its intentions were big when they set up their manufacturing plant in Chakan, India’s Automobile hub near Pune.

'Volkswagen India' started with the Passat and then followed the Jetta. Now the traditional people’s car from Europe had established itself in the premium luxury car segment in India, right between the Skoda and the Audi (both brands belong to Volkswagen). There were plans for a hatchback on the lines of the European ‘Golf’, but did you expect this? The bug came in first. Volkswagen’s most celebrated and legendary car, The Beetle was in India. What followed was the greatest marketing exercise ever. The newspapers were full of the Beetle, Volkswagen even came up with a two page add in ‘Times of India’ explaining the genesis of the Beetle and Volkswagen, its name (‘Folks – Wagen’ as it should be pronounced). Quickly Volkswagen graduated to become most sought after car brand in India, which in turn helped it to build a good dealership base.

At Rs. 21 Lac ex-showroom Mumbai, how many Beetles does Volkswagen expect to sell? – I would be tempted if I had that kind of money- but still not many will be sold. So why would Volkswagen spend so much on marketing of this car? Simple, the ‘Polo’ was to come next. This car was coming out of the Chakan plant and the Hatchback segment is the hottest one in India. Polo sold like hot cakes – I remember a point when dealers would demand 50K premium to get that car to you and you still had to wait 3 months. It was as if Volkswagen was saying “Look at the Beetle, that’s how good our cars are. That is what we are all about. But since everyone can’t have the Beetle, we got you the Polo.” Now wouldn’t you buy a car from the same guys who make the Beetle? Yes!! said India. Volkswagen's marketing strategy in India has been spot on. Ever since its entry into the premium hatchback segment in India Polo has outsold all its competitors. The new ‘Vento’ based on the Polo’s platform has displaced ‘Honda City’ as the bestseller in the entry level sedan segment. The Beetle has simply made the Brand so very special. It has helped Volkswagen sell every other car they had an offer. Hopefully other India manufacturers -read Maruti - can learn from this. Maruti still gives the new K series Alto more media space than its ‘Kizashi’. Volkswagen is here to stay in India and is the Brand to beat in the Indian Auto space.

Volkswagen is steadily increasing its dealer network across Inda. It has acquired 20% stake in Japanese giant Suzuki, a step which will open out the Asian market for Volkswagen. Today Volkswagen represents nine brands – Audi, Bugatti, Bentley, Lamborghini, Scania, Seat, Skoda, Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles (Volkswagen Nutzfahrzeuge) and Volkswagen Passenger Cars. In its bid to become the world’s largest automaker, it surely has India’s admiration.

For Google to find me !!

noreply@blogger.com (Sidhyesh) — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 14:36:00 +0000

I have been keeping myself away from the social media for some time now. It started when notifications from my accounts left me searching for some real mail. Soon all trace of me on the web was lost. Coming out of isolation I want Google to find me and what better way to do that than a blog of my own. Thursday was spent searching a suitable name and today I finished most of the design work. It feels great, doing something out of my own wish rather than my manager’s.

The work is not done yet, but I want a post on the page and so this informal first blog. One that follows next will introduce IndiaVichar to its audiences, what it stands for, who it represents and the Thoughts, Aspirations and Ideas it portrays.

As IndiaVichar prepares itself, your best wishes I seek.