Onsite Opportunity by Mukul Kumar

Some book reviews for DO not believe in God till you Experience Him

2017-05-07T13:54:00.000-07:00

Hi Friends

I thought of putting the links for some of the book reviews at one place. These are the links to the book review for my book by some of the well known bloggers.
So here they are:

https://ofthingsweneversay.wordpress.com/2017/04/15/do-not-believe-in-god-till-you-experience-him-by-mukul-kumar/

http://www.anureviews.com/do-not-believe-god-till-experience-mukul-kumar/

http://www.bookgeeks.in/dont-believe-in-god-till-you-experience-him-mukul-kumar/

http://bookvue.blogspot.nl/2017/03/book-review-dont-believe-in-god-till.html

http://bookvue.blogspot.nl/2017/03/author-interview-mukul-kumar.html

https://roadtodivinity.wordpress.com/2017/04/25/book-review-dont-believe-in-god-till-you-experience-him/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4d-sOcECjFM

http://thereaderscosmos.blogspot.nl/2017/04/dont

Read when you have time

best
mukul

Settling the little controversy around the title of my book

2017-05-06T17:47:00.004-07:00

Hi Friends,
It has been a while that my book has been out in the market and I am pleased with the volume of feedback and reviews that I have been receiving. One of the common themes baffling many of my readers is the long title of the book – Do not Believe in God till You Experience Him. “Do not judge the book by the Title” someone said. “The title doesn’t connect with the content of the book”. “Was it a marketing stunt to choose such a lengthy title?” “No comments”, “pseudo spiritual”. Some reviewers have taken potshots.

I understand the dilemma of my readers. Will attempt to elaborate on why I chose this title for my book. In reality the title came to my mind first and then the book followed. In the beginning, I was not sure of how the story would flow but I was convinced that this is going to be the title of my book.

As George Carlin said, “Everyone appreciates your honesty, until you are honest with them.”. That was my experience. I was perplexed by how many religious sects, cults, and spiritual groups encourage you to be critical about other practices while give an absolute unquestionable authority and righteousness to their own religion or sect head. How do you react when someone with a small Bible in his hand stops you on the high street and asks you to repent for leading a sinful life as Jesus is the only way? The blasphemy law that certain groups follow to exercise sovereignty over everyone’s freedom of expression?
There are cults led by real sociopaths who would make their followers believe that their authority is unquestionable and the followers would garner bad karma if they have an iota of doubt in their mind. This may sound very trivial but it happens for real. In south of India, a God man claimed to be Lord Shiva and asked his female devotees to submit to him as Parvatis. A father and son duo in West India, now languishing in prison had applied similar tactics with their disciples. The protagonist in my book encounters similar self-proclaimed God Man in Europe who claimed to be Greek God Mercury among many other manifestations.
With this book, I attempt to remove guilt from mind of any follower of such sects and cults if they doubt their leaders. It cannot be blasphemous to seek answers and establish the truth by questioning.

As Buddha said; “Believe Nothing, no matter where you read it or who has said it, not even if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.”

Do you agree to my view points? Do you have more such questions on my book?
I would love to attempt to respond to your queries. Do write them as comments.

Regards
Mukul

Excerpt 3: Do not Believe in God Till You Experience Him

2017-01-28T13:56:00.001-08:00

The students from my high school formed yet another social circle for me, after home. School provided me a space to create the second layer of my personality and value development. I was able to achieve good results without putting in much effort. Many classmates had private tutors who came to their homes to teach them. They had exotic reference books for each subject and other fancy things. Yet, I continued to score better marks than most of them.

I used to come second in my class. Rajarshi was a very serious and studious boy and he would score better than me overall in my section. Our school used to have three or four sections in each class with about fifty students in each section.

The fifty students in each section were like a tribe. We grew fiercely protective of each other because of our shared sense of belonging to the same section. We would have friendly fights with other sections of the same class in the school. Every new academic year, there would be some adjustments in our sections as someone would drop out and some new students would join the class. There would be one or two adjustments where someone from one section had to move to another section of the class. We loathed the moment and dreaded letting go one of our own into the enemies’ dominion. Children would cry and plead to remain with the same section but would have to go. For the next couple of years, that child would still keep coming back to the original section for lunch breaks and any social gatherings. Slowly, he would be assimilated into the new section.

Some of the best students from the entire state would be admitted to our school each year; that would result in a dip in my ranking, as I was not studious enough to go that extra mile to retain my rank in class. Since my school was one of the best schools for boys under the central board of secondary education, many parents preferred to move their children to this school.

It was a Parent Teacher Meet in school; my mother was hyper-active since the morning.

“Take me to every teacher. I need to know what goof ups you do in your class.”

My mother had a friendly rivalry with me. She was a keen critic of mine. She enjoyed finding fault with me as much as I loved to prove her wrong.

“Come and see for yourself. I have already told you, the Biology teacher punished me a couple of times for talking in the class. Apart from her, everyone will praise me. This time I have got more marks than Rajarshi!” I beamed with confidence. This time around, I was especially excited about bringing my mother to school. Something rare had happened. I had fared better than Rajarshi in the exams. Mathematics and Hindi had always been my forte. We were equally good in Science. English and Social Sciences were the two subjects where Rajarshi would take the lead over me. The lead in those two subjects would be far more than my modest superiority in Mathematics and Hindi. This time around, I had more marks than Rajarshi and I was extremely happy with my performance.

My mother dressed in a plain sari and looked shabby. If you did not know her, you could write her off as an illiterate woman, although she had a master’s degree. My mother entered my classroom with me.

Father Dominic, a Catholic missionary, was our English teacher. He smiled kindly at my mother and me. He talked softly in broken Hindi to my mother

“Aap Angrezi samajhte hain?”

My mother’s eyes lit up when she saw Father Dominic addressing her.

“Yes Father, a little bit.” She replied promptly.

Father pulled out my answer sheet from the bundle and passed on. “Your son has performed well.” He spoke in a reassuring tone.

My mother got down to the business of scrutinizing my papers. She caught some mistakes. There were a couple of questions from English grammar where one had to convert an active voice sentence into passive voice. I had committed some minor mistakes that Father Dominic had overlooked.

“Father, this conversion is wrong.” My mom called Father Dominic’s attention to this. This took Father Dominic by surprise. He smiled somewhat shamefacedly as he had initially assumed my mother did not know English.

“Please deduct his marks.” My mother requested in a firm tone. Father Dominic had no choice.

Excerpt 2: Don't Believe in God till You Experience Him

2017-01-17T12:46:00.002-08:00

At home, I learnt some tough lessons in life. I had a teenaged cousin, Sanjay, who was very strong and stubborn. He had alpha male characteristics like my father and perhaps he was eyeing my father’s position in the clan. He would bully me and my other cousins a lot. I was the special focus of his tyranny. He would devise all sorts of torture methods and punish me. One day, on some pretext, he decided to whip me with a stick made from the branch of a date tree. I would get goose bumps imagining the pain I feel while he dragged me to the date tree by the road. He had a knife that he had tucked into his waistband.

“Stand here while I cut a branch.” Sanjay ordered me.

He climbed skilfully onto the trunk. He fixed himself below the canopy of date branches, took out his knife, and started cutting one of the thin branches. I was looking at him tilting my head skywards. There was no point in trying to run away. He would jump from the tree and catch me in no time. I would be subjected to more severe punishment. I was imagining the beating marks that I would get on my body. In the beginning, they would be red and turn blue-black in a day’s time. Perhaps it would take a couple of weeks for the marks to go away. People would ask me how I got them. Was there any way I could escape? Not even the village elders would be able to save me from the tyranny of my cousin. He would not listen to them. Only my father could save me. Would he come to my rescue? There was a slim chance. My father would never return to the village at this time of the day. He would come home by 8 pm only. I was lost in my thoughts.

The date tree fibre was tougher than Sanjay had anticipated and it took more time to cut through the branch. I sensed that he was getting impatient and tired with his task. He was sweating and some of his sweat fell on me. He was distracted for a moment and the knife slipped. It ripped through his left hand. He lost his balance and came down with a thud. His hands and legs were scratched and bruised badly as they rubbed against the bark of the date tree trunk. In my village, defecating in the open was a common sight. All the streets and lanes would be lined with human and animal excreta; if you were careless, you could easily step into them. My brother fell on the excreta. When he got up, he was covered in blood and shit. He was a figure far worse than I was imagining myself to be.

Sanjay was a strong lad. He got to his feet and asked me to walk back home with him. He bathed after fetching water from the well in our house and entered one of the rooms. He took out an old sari from his mother’s trunk, tore it into many pieces and wrapped these around his bruises. Then he looked at me. “Get me a bottle of Dettol, Handiplast and cotton from uncle’s medicine shop. Do not tell anyone about this incident.”

I went to my father’s medicine shop. I waited patiently for my father to take a toilet break. I slipped some rolls of cotton, the Handiplast and a bottle of Dettol in my pocket and came back home. Sanjay did not trouble me for some time after that.

Excerpt1 from my book Do not Believe in God Till You Experience Him

2017-01-16T14:07:00.001-08:00

The big day arrived. I was ready. I wore the new clothes after bathing. We went to the initiation ceremony.
“Maharaj, please forgive my stubborn son. He has put a condition that he will ask you some questions before initiation.” My mother pleaded.
I glanced at the landlady. She had a constipated look on her face. I asked some of my toughest questions, which I was sure that Ramanujan Maharaj would not be able to answer. He was not perturbed by my questions. His smile remained intact throughout the conversation. He looked at me with lots of care and spoke slowly, “We have very little time at this moment. I would like to give you only one piece of advice at this junction. Do not believe in God till you experience him.”
Then he paused. “But do not write off the possibility of his existence.” Then he turned to my mother and other ladies who were sitting on one side. “Your son is not an atheist. He is trying to understand God with his intellectual capacity and that is positive.”
“Hinduism is probably the only religion in the world that accepts atheism.” Ramanujan Maharaj continued. “At least there are three lines of philosophy that talk about the nonexistence of God. You can find references to atheism in the Rig Veda and our Upanishads. In non-dualistic Advaitya Vedanta and Jnana Yoga, the method of neti-neti is prescribed. Neither this nor that. A seeker is advised that it is probably very difficult to identify Atman or God at first; but probably it is easier to identify all that which is not God. The aim is to reach the ultimate by the method of exclusion. Dayanand Saraswati practiced it, Ramakrishna and Vivekananda practiced it too. Your son is on the right path. Encourage him to have these doubts in his mind.”

My latest book is here!

2017-01-07T14:42:00.002-08:00

For India
http://www.amazon.in/not-believe-God-till-experience/dp/9352017498/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1483794678&sr=8-1&keywords=do+not+believe+in+god

For US
https://www.amazon.com/not-believe-God-till-experience/dp/9352017498/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8

Dear Friends
My latest book is finally here. I look forward to recieve feedback from all of you.

Love
Mukul

What Happens in Vegas has Happened Before

2016-05-24T15:37:00.001-07:00

Last 2 weeks passed in a frenzy. A colleague pulled out of a conference at the 11^th hour and I was asked to fill in. There was a slight problem. The conference was in Las Vegas and I did not have a US visa.

“Business Visas come quick. Give it a try.” I was asked. Mysteriously my visa got processed in 5 days.
Things cut so close that I received my passport with visa on Friday evening. This also meant that I did not have the luxury to book my flight tickets in advance. I returned from the US consulate in Amsterdam and placed a request with my office travel agent for the tickets. The only flight I got was for Sunday morning at 8 am. It was Delta Airlines via Detroit. Not a very convenient timing. I remained awake on Saturday night and took a taxi from my home to Schiphol Airport at 4 am.

It all went smooth from there and I boarded the flight at 7:30 am. I could not realize when I slipped into slumber while the plane was still taxiing. I was half asleep and had some awareness that the flight was taking off.

Half sleep and half awake; I felt that the plane was flying in a strange manner. It was taking sharp turns; it would nose dive in a moment and shoot up the other. Suddenly I realized that the flight almost brushed past a cliff. The plane was flying in a reddish mountainous terrain at dangerously low heights. I could see a curvaceous river meandering below. “A passenger plane doesn’t fly this way. Something is seriously wrong!” In a state of panic I looked around for clue. I was surprised to see some colleagues from my office though I was sure that I boarded the flight alone. Then I realized that there were more belts strapped on my body than the normal flight seat belt. To my horror, I realized that there was no base below my feet. My shoes were dangling above the clouds in the sky.
Strangely, I was not hurt. The flight was able to manoeuvre without hitting the mountains.

“This is definitely dream.” I told myself. I struggle to open my eyes but not able to move. It was as if I was paralyzed. With struggle, I shake off my slumber and open my eyes. It was dream indeed. Tiredness from the day took its toll. I was dreaming in a tired exhausted state. The flight was fully air borne by this time flying at a height of 30000 feet.

I found Delta Airlines hospitality to be good. They served very generous portion of food. Even the water bottles they served was of half litre size. Lots of drinks, snacks and ice creams every now and then.

I arrived in Las Vegas and checked in MGM Grand Hotel and Resorts. That was the venue for the conference. It was all surreal. Next 4 days passed quickly. The schedule for the conference used to be pretty tight. We would have our breakfast from 6:30 am and then get consumed in the proceedings for the day. After attending the keynote speeches from the host company; we would man our booth in the exhibition area, collecting leads from prospective clients who would visit our booth and enquire about our offerings.

On the last day of the conference things wrapped up by 12:00 noon and we got free early. People had been departing since morning. I and a few of my colleagues had flight for next day morning so we wanted to see around the city. Till now we had just got glimpses of the glittery city in the night. We had some short walks on the famous strip at night passing by those iconic hotels and casinos and brushing against some crazy people on the street.

“Shall we visit the Grand Canyon?” A colleague from India was very enthusiastic in particular. My knowledge of American geography is not very good. I still do not remember which cities are on the east coast and which ones are on the west coast. I had no clue that the Grand Canyon is nearby.

We went to the hotel information desk to enquire about day trips to the Grand Canyon.
“All the road trips to Grand Canyon start at 6 am in the morning. It is a 14 hours return trip. You can only get helicopter trip now.” The lady at the desk explained.

“How much does it cost?”

“There are multiple tour companies that cover the Canyon. The cheapest one would be 400 Dollars.”

“No way am I going to spend that money.” I made a resolve internally.

My other two colleagues seemed to be excited about the trip even after hearing the price.

“Let’s go out to the strip and enquire at some tourist offices on the street. Everything in this hotel is pricey.” One of the colleagues suggested.
We went out and found an agency booking the helicopter trips.

“You are late! Let me still call up all my contacts to find out if there is any possibility.” An energetic middle aged lady talked with gusto.

“I will not go; you two please carry on.” I suggested my friends.

The lady at the desk was making calls frenetically. I observed her. She had got a lots of Botox on her face and lips and had applied heavy makeup.

“There is only one helicopter left. It has 3 seats available and they will give out those seats to a group of 3 passengers.” The lady announced.

To give my friends a company I conceded.
I was not very excited though. We had to wait for a couple of hours at our hotel and a cab would come and collect us from the reception and would take us to the helicopter base.controls

The cab came and we reached the helicopter base. The helicopter could take 6 passengers apart from the pilot.

The pilot and the crew gave us some safety instructions before the flight. We were asked to follow the command of the pilot diligently and abide by all the rules.
“You cannot touch any of the controls on the dashboard at the front. Only the pilot has authority to touch them.” The instructor spoke in a stern voice.
We were clubbed with a group of 3 people from Saudi Arabia. The Pilot had to decide who would sit where.

“People from Saudi Arabia; please take the back seats.” The pilot announced. I got the front corner seat by the window.

The helicopter took off and moved steadily towards the Grand Canyon. In the beginning it flew over plane terrain. Slowly the helicopter entered the mountainous zone. The pilot would take sharp turns along curves to give us the best view of the canyon. At one juncture he almost took a nose dive to show us the Hoover dam below.
I gazed below and saw my legs dangling in air. The bottom of the helicopter was made of glass and I could see the sky underneath. It was déjà vu! I looked up to realize that I have more straps on my body than the normal airplane seat belts.
I hurriedly switched the video mode on my camera and took amateur video of the flight. The scenes from dream seemed to be replaying. This time I was wide awake.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSnRTr0M5O4

I also want Azadi

2016-02-23T15:04:00.001-08:00

Last few days India had been a divided nation over sedition charges on some JNU students. All for shouting a slogan; “Bharat tere tukde honge; insallah; insallah”. I fail to understand by what yardstick this measures up to sedition and anti-nationalism. Probably all poor JNU Students have said is that if God willing; India will be broken into many pieces. That simply implies that our destiny is in hands of God. If God is willing; India will be broken. If God is not willing; India will remain united. If God is willing; Pakistan will conquer India; if God is not willing; Pakistan will get down to its knees and plead to India to be accepted back in the family. If God is willing; China would surround and choke India from all sides. If God is not willing; China will come to India with a begging bowl to seek investment in its fast declining economy. God reigns supreme. That is all the poor guys have said.

I remember our music teacher taught us a song in the middle schools:

Teri hai jameen; tera aasman
Tu bada meharbaan tu bakhsish kar
……………………………………………………….
……………………………………………………….
Tu chahe to hame rakhe; tu chahe to hamme mare
Tere aage jhuka ke sar; khade hain aaj ham saare

This in essence meant the same thing.
Oh God; if you wish; you keep us alive; If you wish; you kill us.
We all are standing with bowed head in front of you.
No one was charged with sedition then. This song is still played freely.

You may say that I am playing with words. Umar Khalid and his associates actually want to see India broken in to pieces and are letting the God take a final call on the decision.

If you think so; you are raising the stature of Umar Khalid to almost Jesus Christ.

"Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done."

And then there is Kanhaiya Kumar. He perhaps did not speak much but got thrashed blue and black. I fail to understand the shock people are expressing over Kanhaiya’s fate. All the Kashmir Separatist lobby guys managed to get into secret hide outs and surrender at mid night and are taken to undisclosed destinations. Poor Kanhaiya had no place to hide. He was beaten in police custody; in the court; on the street. Three lawyers came out in front of camera valiantly and gave graphical details of how they beat him and their plans to go into the jail and beat him again.
Please remember, Kanhaiya is Bihari. Bihar has no negotiation power. China or Pakistan does not lure it to drift away from India and join their side. Bihar has got junk status. Bihar does not supply water or electricity to Delhi. Alas, Modiji’s party also lost it badly in the state elections in spite of promising vulgar investment packages. Kanhaiya is also Hindu. Those thug lawyers or administration have nothing to be scared about Kanhaiya. Kanhaiya can be made an example for other detractors. A Kashmiri; a North East guy; a muslim guy incites fear of repercussions. Those lawyers would not have come on camera if they would have hit a Kashmiri muslim boy.

Do not shed tears for Kanhaiya either. He is perhaps more like the ones prosecuting him than you and me. I remember in 1990 Lalu Yadav became chief minister of Bihar. Most of us had not heard about him before. We were in high school. Till that time, we boys had always seen successive Congress Chief Minister taking turn.

One of our classmates father recounted Lalu’s political background from Jayaprakash Narayan’s movement and student agitation days. During emergency period in 1975; student agitation started in Patna under guidance of JP. My friend’s father was journalist in a local newspaper then,

The students would gather at Dak Bangla crossing to register their protest. Lalu Yadav, Nitish Kumar, Ravishankar Prasad, Sushil Kumar Modi et. al. used to be students’ leaders.
The moment police would come charging with their batons; Lalu would spring into action. While most of the others would recede; Lalu would ensure to take up the first blow. He would hog the newspaper front page due to his constant bleading head. Eventually Lalu took lead in student politics over Nitish, Ravi Shankar Prasad and Sushil Modi by virtue of getting beaten up first. A lead that he maintains till this date.

Lalu became renowned politician by getting thrashed. Once he came into power; his arrogance and tyranny superseded his predecessors. Arvind Kejrival gained prominence by his famous dharnas and forced evictions by police. When he came to power, the same person now gets his opponents kicked out including the poor 3 BJP MLAs in Delhi Assembly and old time collaborators Yogendra Yadav and Bhushan and son.

It would be premature to predict that our Kanhaiya would also groom in to a national leader sometime soon. I would not be surprised if he follows the same path.

Everybody is shouting slogans for Azadi. Witnessing the rampage of the Patels in Gujrat and now the Jats in Haryana; I also want to shout out my heart.

Mujhe chahiye pichadi jatiwad se aazadi!(I want freedom from backward caste attitude).

How to suck out Delhi's pollution

2015-12-27T15:55:00.002-08:00

Recently Arvind Kejriwal led AAP Government hit the headlines for coming up with a formula to curb the pollution of Delhi. But for VIP, women drivers, two wheelers; public transport vehicles and perhaps some more categories; vehicles having odd and even registration numbers would be able to ply on alternate days on Delhi roads.

This reminds me of headline grabbing stunt of Kejrival in his last stint when AAP came with innovative idea of using dysfunctional DTC buses as night shelter for relatives of patients being treated in AIIMS during winters.

By all means; the current idea is not innovative. I heard of this formula being used by some cities in other parts of world some 20 years back.

Boss Kejrival; there is a saying in Hindi that you cannot quench thirst by licking dew drops.
While this is a noble idea and should be implemented in Delhi; this would not bring any perceivable change to Delhi pollution levels which is choking the Delhiites.

Let’s muse a bit on what other things can be done in Delhi. Perhaps we need to attack the situation on multiple fronts and a number of initiative may bring a cumulative impact which result in a much more livable Delhi

1. Let everyone attempt to move closer to their workplace; so as to reduce daily commute time

This will definitely not be practical for everyone. But maybe; there are many people who may be able to make adjustment. The aim to reduce need to commute on a monthly basis. Lesser is our need to commute; lesser will we exposed to polluted air and lesser will we contribute to pollution by burning our fuel. Companies may allow 1 day work from home every week for non-production units.

2. Use vacuum cleaning vehicles instead of brooms for removing dust from Delhi roads; cement all the open area or apply green patch
Municipality cleaning staff using broom to sweep the dust from onside to the road to other is just a wasteful exercise. The dust only diffuses in the whole air and practically remain there. There is a need to suck them out and dispose appropriately. Along with this; ensure covering all the bare open muddy patches with greenery or cementing them. Further invest in arranging water sprinklers for the roads. This also means arranging lots of non-potable water for sprinkling on the roads.

3. Identify alternative means of transport of goods to avoid trucks entering the city area

I can think of places like Chawdi Bazaar/Old Delhi wholesale markets; Azadpur fruits and vegetable Mandi and other similar places which would need a lot of trucks to supply the merchandise to the markets. How about supplying the goods by train to the nearest railway station and building some aerial cable cars to bridge that last mile connectivity? This needs feasibility study and investment. This can be a great solution to traffic stagnation and pollution.

4. Divert all the inter-state trucks passing through the city by effective bypass roads.
This is self explanatory

5. Install Smog sucking towers and make diamonds out the smog carbon.

These diamonds can be sold to recover the price of setting up the towers.
http://www.takepart.com/article/2015/07/28/smog-sucking-tower-turns-air-pollution-into-diamonds

Alternatively, we can make fuel out of the CO2 in the air.
http://www.fastcoexist.com/3051240/these-enormous-fans-suck-co2-out-of-the-air-and-turn-it-into-fuel

These initiatives must be costly. Why cannot Mr Narendra Modi/Kejriwal invite these innovators under “Make in India” campaign? What is the price of life of all the Delhi citizens? How much of it can our industrialists happily contribute under their CSR schemes? How much of it our citizens would be happy to contribute towards for their own health and that of their dear ones?

6. Replace all the coal fired power stations in Delhi
In a phased manner, slowly replace coal fired stations like NTPC badarpur etc. with solar and wind power stations. Start a movement in Delhi to let all people have solar panels installed on their roof tops and generate as much electricity from cleaner source as possible to meet their daily consumption. If they are able to generate more; let them have the option of sending the unused electricity to the grid and gain credit points from electricity suppliers.

We should have a target of couple of years to bring down the pollution level consistently by focussed effort on multiple fronts and track our progress on a monthly basis.

My two cents to Modiji on the clean India Mission

2014-10-02T14:27:00.005-07:00

Dear Modiji

My compliments to you on your aspirations for India of the future. You master the act of capturing imagination of the nation and your conviction is contagious. Though you do border on boastful deceit at times; I have started admiring your self-belief. It is indeed the sheer power of your undivided focus and self-belief that you cut the ranks in your own party to be the Prime ministerial candidate. No matter what kind of money you spent in your campaign and what all quid pro quo you allegedly did with corporates and the media houses; the thumping victory that you had in such a divided electoral is no mean feat.

Many people are writing about your Japan and US trip. I would dare not tread that path. I am not qualified. Likes of Shashi Tharoor do a superior job.

I feel urged to write about something closer to my heart. I would like to applaud your clean India mission. However, I must admit, your ministers like Ravishankar Prasad, Ramvilas Paswan look very comical with the brooms in their hands. They are holding the stick precariously and give an impression that they have never done the cleaning job; save the photo ops. You definitely know how to make a buzz. So much so that the original broom bearer also came out of his slumber and swept your backyard.

I must admit, on this occasion you did not measure up to my expectations. For your elections; you had state of art audio visual gadgetry; in US you address the Indian diaspora like a rock star with all the fanfare. Do you really intend to clean India of its filth with the humble broom?

It may be my cynicism; a conspiracy theory pops to my mind. I suspect that you have timed your clean India Mission with Delhi Elections in sight. This idea would have been pushed into your agenda by the PR agencies and the psephologists you have hired. It is no secret that symbolism plays a big role in swaying the mood of the voters. During BJP regime under Atal Bihari Vajpayee; BJP floated the buzz word “India shining”. To counter that in 2004; Congress think tanks came up with a question “Aam admi to kya mila?” (What did the common man get?) This caption really rubbed the shine off “India shining” captions. Come 2012; Arvind Kejriwal announces formation of a new political party to clean the menace of all the old political parties like yours and Congress. The naming of the party took lots of time. After much deliberation and posturing; the name was made public; “Aam admi party”. Call it Political plagiarism. The name of the party struck the right cords of the masses. People forgot that Congress was the first to flirt with the Aam admi concept.

Now is your turn. Did you pose with the broom to steal the symbol from Kejriwal? If the Delhi elections are announced; what will the AAP members do? They will come out on street with their brooms. With your master stroke; this act would look pale and repetitive. Your band of ministers have already posed with the brooms and people would get bored of seeing politicians with broom in their hands.

Forgive my dysfunctional mind Modiji. Too many conspiracy theories keep rumbling in my head.
Coming to clean India mission at its face value. It is a laudable effort. However; please bring the same modernism to the cleaning act that you bring to your election campaigns. I lived in Delhi for many years. Every morning, I would watch thousands of safai karmchari in utter disbelief. They come out on the streets and just push the dry leaves and dirt from one side to the other. Wind would again blow the heaps of dust and Delhi would always remain full of suspended pollutions.

Introduce mobile vacuum cleaners; water sprinklers to Delhi streets. Make lots of artificial water bodies on barren grounds. Let there be no exposed land. Either it should be covered with green patch or cemented or with water bodies. Introduce effective waste segregation, recycle and processing plants. If needed; introduce seeding and artificial rain during the dry summer months. Learn from countries like Israel how to create a clean and green ecosystem in desert. These things can be done with fraction of your rock concert addresses. If a country of 8 million can achieve it; definitely 1.25 billion can make that happen.

Measure the success of your clean India mission with the drop in suspended ppm in the air of big cities.

Kind Regards
Mukul

White Dwarf Arvind Kejriwal

2014-05-17T14:35:00.000-07:00

Finally the much awaited results of Indian General Elections are out. The agility of world’s largest democracy has taken the world by awe. India shows the world how to decide the fate of a nation in most peaceful and perhaps most constructive way.

While the elections have sprung many surprises; none compares the fate of the newly formed AAP (Aam Admit Party) and its founder Mr. Arvind Kejriwal. To many, he was the youngest star born on the horizons of Indian Politics. His rise was unconventional and for a good time he gave all those veteran seasoned politicians a good run for their money. His guerilla warfare antics kept all on their toes.

The pinnacle of his popularity and success was the point where AAP made its debut in Delhi Assembly elections. Kejriwal humbled the Goliath in Congress and BJP to claim the top seat in Delhi Elections.

Kejriwal had two choices here.

Choice 1:
Toil as Delhi Chief Minister and attempt to fulfill all the utopian promises made to win the elections. Grow from strength to strength. Show sincerity in accomplishing the claims made in the state elections manifesto. At the same time; grow organically as a national party; perhaps focus on PHD (Punjab, Haryana, Delhi) in the upcoming National Elections.

Choice 2:
Takht ya Taboot

Go all out for whole of India. Delhi Chief Minster seat is too small to fulfill the ambitions of Kejriwal. It is not possible to do justice to the seat of Chief Minister in Delhi and follow the national dream. Dump the CM seat and go back to the streets and take all the bigwigs head on. The risk is to lose whatever is at hand and the reward is the top post of the nation.

I am no political pundit or psephologist but what gives me liberty to make my own version of audacious analysis and hindsight is that probability of me being right or wrong is same as of those who are doing this for a living:- 50%.

We all know that Kejriwal led AAP went for Choice 2 and now we all know the consequences of it.
Let’s try to muse a bit on what would have happened if AAP went for the first choice.

Simulation, if AAP went for Choice 1;

Both Congress and BJP would be too happy to keep Kejriwal contained in Delhi region and would have conceded to a number of his eccentric demands. After Delhi results; there was a fear psychosis in BJP and Congress circles about Kejriwal’s ability to churn out unpredictable results in national elections.
Kejriwal could have shown off his moral and character superiority on BJP and Congress and perhaps would have won 20 odd seats in PHD region. There was a clear BJP wave this time. BJP had a set of staunch supporters who were adamant to vote him to power. AAP and Congress divided amongst themselves the votes of people who were anti BJP/Narendra Modi. If AAP had not fielded its candidates from all the constituencies; due to vote consolidation; perhaps UPA could have won 30-40 more seats at national level. In that scenario; BJP would have to seek alliances from other regional parties to form Government.

It is said that behind every successful man there is a woman and behind every unsuccessful man; there are two! Narendra Modi attributes his success to one woman; his mother. Imagine the situation where BJP did not have clear majority and Narendra Modi would have to depend on two women; Mamata Didi and Jayalalitha Amma! NDA might still have gone ahead and claimed the power at centre but it would have been a much humbled and limited in capacity.

I feel very thankful to Kejriwal that he went all out at national level. This allowed BJP to have clear majority. In my opinion; the growth vision of Congress and BJP are more or less the same. It is only the limitation of working under the control of irritant and demanding allies that slows down the progress and materialization of all the progressive projects.
I am sure; NaMo will do a sterling job in taking the growth of Indian nation to a new height. Congress could also have done similar things if they had clear mandate. Also job rotation is good as it helps flow of out of the box ideas that have incubated all this while. So, I expect more from BJP at this point of time.

Coming to the fate of rising star, Arvind Kejriwal; I am tempted to draw an analogy from a branch of Astronomy, Formation of stars. It is said that the new stars like our own sun undergo fusion reaction under the force of gravity where Hydrogen atoms combine to form Helium; releasing tremendous amount of energy in the process. When all the Hydrogen exhausts; under constant gravitational pull; the Helium atoms undergo further fusion to form Carbon atoms and thus goes the formation of heavier elements. This does not go on forever for all the stars!. The big stars, which are 8 times or more massive to our own Sun explode in a spectacular Supernova. If the mass of the star is similar to our own sun; the most probable fate of the star is to become white dwarf. After all the Hydrogen has converted into Helium; the smaller stars swell into a red giant stage and eventually shed off the outer layers. What remains is the corpse of the star; a dim remnant where no Hydrogen fusion occurs. No fireworks come out of them.

Kejriwal attempted to explode like a Supernova but has shrunk to a white dwarf. He and his Aam Admi Party may remain there for a good long time but I do not expect any spectacular rise of his party again. The novelty of AAP antics has turned into predictability and an all-powerful Modi Sarkar will crush his road side agitations with brutal force if he tries them again. He is also expected to lose much of his red-giant layers of supporters as people have got disillusioned in masses and have their doubts in ability of this man to deliver anything tangible apart from dharnas.

So, I take the liberty to write off Mr. Arvind Kejriwal.
R.I.P AAP

Should India continue with Caste based reservation?

2014-02-09T11:18:00.003-08:00

Caste based differentiation of people in India remains an enigma and a tricky topic to deal with socio-politically. At times I get surprised by the simplistic view some of the westerners have about the evil of caste system in India. I understand their situation. It needs first-hand experience of living and growing in the Indian society intimately and mere fancy spiritual and adventurous sojourns do not offer the right insight into this complex social system of India.

A quick recap of the caste system:

Among the loosely coupled group of people in the south east Asia, who call themselves Hindus; the society is believed to be divided into 4 class of people or the 4 castes: The Brahmins, or the ones who derive their livelihood by rituals, worships, priesthood etc. acting as a channel of communication between human and divine; the Kshatriyas or the ruler and the warrior class; the Vysyas or business community and lastly, the shudras or the lowest rung of people meant for doing the menial jobs.

Though it is seen as a parallel to apartheid, the basis was different. People were categorized based on their profession rather than colour or creed. They had flexibility to change their caste by switching the profession; however, over the time the practice became degenerated, oppressive and disgusting. The lower caste people in India were oppressed for generations. They had little opportunity to excel and were out rightly downtrodden. They were considered untouchable; did not have access to temples, place of worship, public amenities and education.

Provisions for quota or Reservation System:

When India got independence and its constitution was written, many progressive leaders felt the need for upliftment and inclusiveness of this section of the society. It was felt necessary to make provisions for rapid progression of this society. It was agreed that this was a temporary measure and the need for reservation should be reviewed periodically and should be abolished in a period.

This led to the reservation system in India. Though it differs from state to state; roughly the reservations as they stand are:

Scheduled caste = 15%
Scheduled Tribe = 7.5%
Other Backward Caste = 27% (This was added later on recommendations of Mandal Commission)

Apart from these broad categories which account for nearly 50% of the seats; there are some more provisions for Defense personnel and their dependents, women, minority communities like Sikhs, Muslims, Christians and now Jains. These quotas apply to all the educational institutions, government jobs, promotions in jobs and there are electoral seats reserved for people from reserved category to ensure representation in the parliament. From a reserved seat, only people from reserved category can contest elections. Scheduled Caste and Scheduled tribe people are also protected by very strict legislation against exploitation.

Though started for a noble cause; the Reservation system soon became a tool for the corrupt Populist politics in India. It has become clear now that the maximum benefit of reservation system is being reaped by the rich and affluent people of the reserved category. The poor people under reserved category are still not able to get suitably benefitted by the reservation provisions as those are consumed by more resourceful rich people under reserved categories. Reservation in technical higher education and promotion in jobs raises a serious question on negligence of merit in the field of technology, life sciences, research, governance and policy making. A very large number of people below poverty line also belong to the so called upper class castes. They remain deprived of these provisions of reservation for the weaker section of the society. This also creates lots of frustration and rebellion in the heart and mind of underprivileged upper caste poor people. The hatred and the chasm between castes remain wide open.

Arguments given in favour of continuing with the current provisions of caste based reservations:

Most of the political leaders from backward classes vehemently support the caste based reservations and are equivocal on when these provisions should be resolved or if they should be resolved at all.

Ram Vilas Paswan, president of Lok Janshakti Party who used to hold records in Guinness Book of World records for winning Parliamentary elections with largest vote margins is of the opinion that caste based discrimination prevailed in India for thousands of years so the caste based reservation should remain for a very, very long time. The solution as per him is that all the boys and girls from upper caste should willingly marry the girls and boys from lower caste. This way, the social stigma of caste will be abolished and everyone will get similar benefits.

Mayawati, head of Bahujan samaj party and former chief minister of Uttar Pradesh has based her carrier on the dalit or oppressed card. She wants to be seen and remembered as the epitome of dalit empowerment. To prove a point, she loves to splurge the government money on commissioning hundreds of statues of her own self, public parks and gardens dedicated to herself; all carved out of tax payers’ money. She accepts donations and buys palatial houses for herself costing billions, likes to be weighed in gold at public ceremonies. During her regime, she built a road from her residence to the CM office which would be shut for public. The road used to be dusted and sprinkled with water before her trip to the CM office and the road would be hurriedly closed after her caravan of vehicles would have passed. She would move around with Z+ level of personal security with scores of commandoes; had half a dozen food tasters who would consume the food prepared for her before she would take the plunge. Her take on caste based reservation is not very clear. Lately she seems to agree in principle to consider the poor people from upper castes as well to be considered for the reservation benefits. The details are not clear.

Lalu Prasad, supremo of RJD has been a champion of Mandal Commission implementation and had been a hard player of caste based politics.

Congress Party has been speaking about this for some time and now the rhetoric is getting louder that they want to implement the caste based reservation to the private sector jobs as well. This step looks inspired by populist politics more than any larger ideology. Congress Party seems to be out of game in these upcoming national elections and they are struggling to make a last moment impact.

I am not very aware of what AAPs vision on caste based reservations is. Probably they are yet to include this on their election agenda.

What I make out:

“Moving on” is the need of the hour. Indian politicians and people of some communities should stop lobbying for things for personal advantage and should not differentiate between the needy people. We are a country of limited resources and unlimited asks; let us spare a thought for all the needy people irrespective of the castes and help them come out of it and participate in the all-inclusive growth of the nation. Seeing the political situation in the country; looks highly improbable in the near future.

Remembering Jayaprakash Narayan and Ramdhari Singh Dinkar

2014-02-01T17:01:00.001-08:00

It was a lazy Saturday some 25 years back. That time, I was studying in St. Michael’s high school in Patna. My mother was a teacher in a government school, Sir Ganesh Dutta Patliputra High School on Jagat Narayan road, Kadam kuan.

I used to have both days of the weekend (Saturday and Sunday) off while my mother would have to go to her school for half a day on Saturdays. This particular Saturday, my mother wanted to take a casual leave. The procedure for this was to write a formal leave application (in Hindi) to the principal of the school and submit at his office before start of the classes. My mother tore off a page from my notebook and scribbled her leave application. She read through, made some corrections and crushed the page into a ball and threw it. One by one she wasted 5 pages from my notebook before she prepared the final leave application and handed it to me to submit at her head master’s office. I liked making fun of my mother.

I took the application and read it aloud. It was written in chaste Hindi.

श्रीमान,

सेवा मे सविनय निवेदन है कि व्यक्तिगत कारण से आज मैं विद्यालय आने मे असमर्थ हूँ| अतः मैं प्रार्थना करती हूँ कि श्रीमान मेरे आक्स्मिक अवकाश के आवेदन को स्वीकार करके मुझे अनुग्रहित करें| आपकी इस अनुकंपा के लिए मैं सर्वदा श्रीमान की आभारी रहूंगी|

भवदीय

After spending sufficient time, laughing at my mother’s application, I took on my bicycle and rode to my mother’s school. I knocked at the door of the headmaster’s cabin and entered the room with best of my etiquette. The headmaster stared at me with his probing eyes. On realizing that I was son of one of his staff, he took interest in knowing a lot of things about me. Finally I was able to get off the hook and started my journey back.

I had gone just a short distance from the school in the narrow lane that I saw some people, sitting in a jeep waiving at me and asking to stop. My eyes went on the number plate of the jeep. The vehicle was from West Bengal. It was not long ago that I had learnt how to interpret the number plates of vehicles.

“Where is JP House?” An elderly Bengali man demanded of me from the jeep. “I don’t know.” Pat came my reply. My answer seemingly annoyed the elderly man. “You do not know Jayaprakash Narayan’s house? Do you know who was JP?”

“I do not know where his house is. Do not waste your time and ask someone else.” I replied wryly and moved on.

Of course I was aware of Jayaprakash. I have heard tits and bits about him. Ramdhari Singh Dinkar and Jayaprakash Narayan apparently were my two celebrity neighbors, a stone throw distance from each other. One was called Loknayak, leader of the masses, for some reason and the other was a rastrakavi, a national poet. The names were ubiquitous. JP Golambar, JP Narayan Aerodrome, JP Murti, Dinkar chauraha...

I must confess, I was more aware of Ramdhari Singh Dinkar than this JP guy. There was a nondescript statue of Dinkar on our school bus route. For years, our school bus would stop there to pick up students.
One day, suddenly we saw the statue getting some face-lift. They painted the statue with bright colours. A barricade was built around the statue and some plants were planted and a small manicured garden was built around.

Some of Dinkar’s poems were included in our Hindi text book. I loved to quote him in my Hindi essay assignments.

“क्षमा शोभती उस भुजंग को जिसके पास गरल हो; उसे क्या जो दंतहीन विष हीन विनीत सरल हो|”

Forgiveness looks good on a snake with venom, not on those who are toothless, venom less and simple.

Coming back to Jayaprakash, I was vaguely aware of him being a national leader who was a freedom fighter and also opposed Indira Gandhi and started a popular agitation, JP Movement, against her corrupt government around 1975. Many of the non-Congress national leaders came out of JP movement.

Shambhu Sharan Lal, or just “Lal sir”, our history teacher was a staunch supporter of Congress party. We enjoyed his classes because he always talked as if he was giving first person account of incidents. Jayaprakash Narayan had inspired people to join hands against the corrupt government of Indira Gandhi. Indira Gandhi had a humiliating defeat and was sent to jail in 1977 on corruption charges. - This was one of the most painful pieces of information that Lal Sir had to pass on to us as part of his teaching duties.

He would be quick to complement this with what happened after the Janta Party came to power. They did not have leadership qualities. Morarji Desai and Chaudhry Charan Singh messed it all in internal tussle and JP went and told to Indira, “Daughter, you were better!”

“JP was a great visionary however his movement generated leaders with dubious records.” Lal sir would smile ear to ear telling us.

I stumbled upon this TV report on Jayaprakash Narayan recently.

http://aajtak.intoday.in/video/aandolan-on-aaj-tak-jp-movement-emergency-and-indias-second-freedom-1-753139.html

This helped me close my gaps in understanding about JP whose house I passed umpteen times. A man of vision, fearlessness and great grit. A man who brought the power blind Indira Gandhi to her toes with his vow of non-violent principled means.
I also came to understand why everyone from Anna Hazare to Baba Ramdev to Arvind Kejriwal prefer to have their protests at Ramlila Maidan in Delhi. It is this place that JP delivered his famous speech reciting his friend and neighbor, Ramdhari Singh Dinkar.

दो राह, समय के रथ का घर्घर नाद सुनो, सिंघासन खाली करो की जनता आती हैं ।

Hope this country has more Jayaprakash and Dinkar. It was very unfortunate of India that JP died of ill health soon after Janta Pary came to power. (some say he was poisioned while in jail in Chandhigarh during emergency)

When I see Lalu Prasad, one of the prodigy of JP movement, Sushil Modi, Ravishankar Prasad et al; I also understand what Lal sir meant by JP having unworthy inheritors. Nitish Kumar, the current CM of Bihar also came out of JP movement and he still gives lots of hope.

AAP –From Doubt to Disappointment to Disgust

2014-01-15T15:44:00.001-08:00

Swearing in ceremony of Arvind Kejriwal left me spellbound. His song from the podium gave me goose bumps. It felt like witnessing a history in the making. I could identify myself with him. Here was one amongst us; a middleclass intellectual young man who showed the courage and grit to take on the bigwigs of dirty Indian Politics.

In all honesty, I had my quota of criticism and cynicism about him all along and had been speaking my mind in my blogs for some time now. Nonetheless I admired his grit; his focus and fearlessness. There was a wishful part of me which wanted to give him all the benefits of doubts. I hoped to be proven wrong. I secretly enjoyed when my “die-hard Kejriwal fan” friends and colleagues picked on me for my cynicism. I enjoyed getting bashed up as I always wished to see Kejriwal succeed in his mission.

The Doubts crept in:
For a week, Kejriwal and his ministers used shared auto / public transport to come to office. Then came the news of them getting Toyota Innova cars. These cars are priced at around 10-15 lakh rupees in India. “They will not have the red beacons”, clarified the CM. Mr. AK then tried to sneak into a 10 room bungalow in central Delhi. “Only 5 rooms for my family and 5 rooms for my office work. Compare this with lavishness of ex CM’s house” AK spoke with his assuring poker face. “Shiela must be using her bungalow for running a massage parlor, aerobics classes and gourmet restaurants.” He wanted us to believe. Somehow, his supporters were not convinced. True to his style; AAP asked people to send SMS and his wish to move in the bungalow was declined by his supporters. Then there were water and electricity subsidies which drew flacks.

Honestly, these were not big issues for me. Ministers are entitled to accommodation, conveyance, a decent salary to be able to discharge their duties and also deserve to have a level of comfort for the services they provide. If Mahatma Gandhi was alive today, even he would have approved of these amenities. I saw the hypocrisy and took this more as a learning curve. “We have given so many chance to corrupt people. Let’s give some time to mature to honest people.” I like many others chose to ignore these comical circumstances and looked forward to more substantial actions from them.

Then came the Disappointment

At the stroke of a pen, Kejriwal reverts the ruling of FDI in retail sector in NCT. This was a ruling duly passed by the legislative council after much debate. For a trivial thing like shifting to the chief ministerial bungalow, he went for referendum and tweets and SMS; for FDI, he did not feel any need to debate.

Now there are strong for and against lobbies for FDI in retail sector and it can be an endless debate; here is my take on this:

We live in a world of reciprocity. If US expel an Indian diplomat; we feel obliged to send two of theirs back (sans cavity search). Mr. Kejriwal not necessarily came to power by support of poor people but by aspiring middle class youth; many of whom are connected to IT. IT is our biggest foreign export. If other countries take a cue from this and start refusing to do business with Indian IT companies, what should we do? Protectionism beyond a point is highly counterproductive. If Indian farmers were in a happy state; probably there was not much need to try anything different. Today hundreds of farmers in rural area commit suicide; live on less than 1 Dollar per day in spite of no FDI in retail. Will their situation further deteriorate? Farmers in India are the exploited lot. I do not see any way the Walmarts and Tescos or for that matter our own Reliance and Tata paying lesser price to farmers than the unorganized sector full of middlemen and Kiranawallahas. Farmers will get better price; consumers will get cheaper products and better quality due to competition.

No process or option is fool proof. No matter what we choose; we need to have regulations, quality control and checks. It is much easier to implement all the checks on organized sector than the kirana owners.
One of the arguments given is that the number of people employed in retail sector will fall drastically if big players come in. That can be a blessing in disguise. In India, we not only suffer from unemployement but also hidden unemployment. A piece of land can be tilled effectively by 1 person but 4 brothers till the same land as they do not take the effort to try to do something else. If we get the flab out of retail sector; they can contribute elsewhere in the economy.

Now the Disgust!

My worst fear came true. In his obsession to come to power at any cost; Arvind did not miss a single opportunity to attack the then Government of Shiela Dixit. He held her responsible for rapes in the city, held candle vigil and felt it justified to derive all the political mileage out of these sorry and unfortunate incidents.

Now, this inevitable social vice has surfaced again in Delhi. A Danish national got raped at knife point. I expected Kejriwal and his team to have the spine to apologize and take moral responsibility and reflect on their act of brandishing the previous government and settling using this for political mileage.

Arvind and his team are on the back foot and they are circumventing the question. Sad to see how quickly the lust for power can erode our conscience and moral standing. Perhaps this was the reason for which Anna Hazare was proscribing to join the seat of power and work as a social activist.

AAP and Hype Cycle

2014-01-11T14:43:00.002-08:00

AAP and the Hype Cycle

Hype cycle is a branded graphical tool developed and used by IT research firm Gartner, representing the maturity, adoption and social application of specific technologies. It is amazing to see how beautifully this Hype cycle curve fits in most of the phenomena of day-to-day life.

Basically Hype cycle talks about 5 phases of any new product/technology that is launched:

1. Technology Trigger: A potential technology breakthrough kicks things off. Early proof-of-concept stories and media interest trigger significant publicity. Often no usable products exist and commercial viability is unproven.

2. Peak of Inflated Expectations: Early publicity produces a number of success stories—often accompanied by scores of failures. Some companies take action; many do not.

3. Trough of Disillusionment: Interest wanes as experiments and implementations fail to deliver. Producers of the technology shake out or fail. Investments continue only if the surviving providers improve their products to the satisfaction of early adopters.

4. Slope of Enlightenment: More instances of how the technology can benefit the enterprise start to crystallize and become more widely understood. Second- and third-generation products appear from technology providers. More enterprises fund pilots; conservative companies remain cautious.

5. Plateau of Productivity: Mainstream adoption starts to take off. Criteria for assessing provider viability are more clearly defined. The technology’s broad market applicability and relevance are clearly paying off.

Let’s map these 5 phases to rise of AAP (Aam Admi Party)

1. Mass Movement Trigger: Kejriwal and the team associated with the movement worked on a number of groundbreaking initiatives; Right to Information Act; Jan Lokpal Bill, Mohalla Sabha and Referendum participation of citizens in decision making process for welfare of the locality.

2. Peak of Inflated Expectations: Kejriwal makes the sensational announcement of forming the AAP and contest Delhi elections. Promised to bring the electricity bills down to a fraction; free water; abolish VIP culture; no red beacons, no government cars or bungalow for the ministers, use of public transport, no security for the ministers, charge sheet all the corrupt politicians and government employees, upliftment of governance, infrastructure of NCT, bring the crime down, everything in Delhi to be hunky dory, every citizen to feel empowered and on sky 9 under the rule of Kejriwal.

3. Trough of Disillusionment: Slowly the sheen of promises made by AAP starts wearing off. Kejriwal gets judged and stopped by his own set high standards to move to a decent Chief Minister bungalow. His ministers get Toyota cars minus red beacon. The announcement of electricity and water rates looked more like rejig and misleading jugglery of numbers with little net benefit to the citizens. Refusal of apparent security cover by AAP members indirectly adds 10 times more burden on police to arrange sheath security. Rakhi Birlan added to confusion by making noise about her car being attacked by opposition, only to discover that it was just a cricket ball which came in the way unintentionally. Kejriwal asks hurriedly to withdraw the case. People feel disappointed that suddenly Kejriwal and his side kick Viswas stopped their relentless rant against the corrupt politicians (Rahul baba , Shiela Dixit, Vijay Goel and others) whom they vowed to bring to books after coming to power. Night shelter in 5 unused bus for homeless people was a noble gesture but not up to the expectations people had formed of AAP.
CItizens nervously wait to see something more tangible; more radical than this. The chaos at the first junta durbar set up by Kejriwal did not help the cause either. Critics start raising their head. Murmurs get louder and AAP feels the heat of public glare and scrutiny. Helplessly they realize how the opposition takes them to task for every statement they make. Embarrassingly Kejriwal has to refute Prashant Bhushan’s statement on Kashmir security and his side kick Kumar Vishwas had to apologize for his insensitive remark about Muslims 8 years ago!
Kejrival and his team learn with pain that now they also need to apologize for their actions and look for covers. Till this time, they only knew how to attack. They felt the whole world owed them an answer and they had birth right to make any allegation on any public figure.

However, this is the most important juncture for AAP and can be a game changer.It is to be seen if Kejrival and AAP learn their lessons and get through the Slope of Enlightenment and Plateau of Productivity. Public voted them to power as they gave the hope of cleaning the system; bring effective governance and sustainable growth, prosperity and security to the common man. They have a tight timeline and formidable competition in Narendra Modi and BJP. One wrong move and you are out of the equation. The common man has always been impressionable. For starters, Kejriwal and his team succeeded to make the right first impression but if they do not rise through the next 2 phases of Hype cycle; they might get reduced to another political party.

Kejriwal - the good thief

2013-12-25T07:12:00.001-08:00

Once I was invited by my friend for lunch at his place. At the dining table; my friend and his wife had a small problem. Their 2 and half year old bundle of joy was adamant she wanted pasta for lunch while they had prepared rice. No matter how much they would plead and cajole; the kid would not relent.

Thanks to having 3 younger siblings; I have some experience in babysitting and handling obstinate toddlers. I started a conversation with my friend, pretending to totally ignore the child.

“Look, all this rice is for me. Do not give any rice to Nimmi. Give only pasta to Nimmi. Only I will eat this tasty rice. This rice is only for me.”

“Mama, give me rice” Nimmi suddenly announced.

“No, you cannot have rice. You have to eat pasta only” I played tough.

“No! I will eat rice only!” the kid screamed in a determined voice.

It speaks volumes about Kejriwal’s acumen and shrewdness that he handled the veteran seasoned politicians of Congress and BJP with the same ease as I handled the kid.

I remember the 2010-11 period when Anna’s movement (mastermind by Kejriwal) had caught the imagination of the Indian public. Cornered by the mass movement; Congress and BJP were daring team Anna to join mainstream politics. As if to get them committed on their words; Kejriwal went on length to reiterate that they are apolitical and will never come to politics.

I remember Manish Tiwari, a spokesperson from congress singing “Tadbeer se bigdi hui takdeer bana le; apne pe bharosa ho to ek daun laga le”. “File your nomination from Chandni chowk” he challenged Kejriwal. Many others made similar comments.
“He is not fit for a municipal seat” others mocked.

All these words were music to the ears of Kejriwal. Congress and BJP got castled completely. Now Kejriwal announced his plans to join active politics. The immediate fall out was split in Team Anna. Kejriwal had already calculated the price he had to pay. The good news for him was that Congress and BJP had lost their chance to accuse Kejriwal’s political ambition behind his movements.

Circa Dec 2013 feels like déjà vu. AAP has astonished everyone with its performance in Delhi Elections but just falls short of clear majority to form the government.
Kejriwal beats the rhetoric. “I vow on my 2 kids; I will never form a government with support of Congress or BJP.”
Congress and BJP both bite the bait and start prodding Kejriwal to accept the mandate given by junta and form the government. Kejriwal ignores them. He chooses to be silent for next 10 days. Congress and BJP get buoyant on their conviction that they have caught Kejriwal on the wrong foot. What Kejriwal was doing was to wait and let Congress and BJP make all the persuasion to him to form the government.

Now he accepts to form the Government in Delhi. Congress and BJP appear fools in front of him. They have lost their opportunity to taunt that Kejriwal is power hungry.

Now, the breed of politicians in our country is thick skinned. I do not expect a Manish Tiwari or Kapil Sibbal or Vijay Goel or Dijvijay Singh to look apologetic and ashamed. However, they are alarmed and intimidated. For now, Kejriwal has beaten them on their own turf. What Kejriwal has achieved is no mean feat.

Am I elated by the win of the common man? Not still. My instincts tells me that Kejriwal’s win is not win of light over darkness and hence no cause for celebrating an early Diwali. Kejriwal has just won the battle of wits. How virtuous he is and how just his governance would be; is to be seen. In all fairness, we need to give him time of next 1 year to deliver and run the government.

Let’s recount some of the handles Kejriwal used to garner his popularity; some of the moves being highly populist and unfair in my personal opinion.

Ø He gets some picture of Sheila Dixit sharing stage with singer Honey Singh and declares her responsible for all rapes happening in Delhi

Ø A girl is brutally raped in a moving bus in Delhi and Kejriwal caught the opportunity to blame it on Sheila Dixit. Thousands of young men joined him in condemning Shiela’s government. None of the youth in the crowd is asked to retrospect and accept if they ever were involved in eve teasing; stalking or making unwelcome move towards the opposite sex.

Ø He found some people not willing to pay for their electricity bills; he goes and reconnects their electricity lines.

Ø Promise to regularize all the illegal colonies in Delhi.

Ø Promises to provide free 800 litres water to all the houses.

Ø Promises to slash Electricity bills by half.

Ø Encourages people to take law in their own hands

What he is doing is not something done for the first time. I find many of his traits matching with Mamata Banerjee. She has been ruling Bengal by her populist policies; not necessarily by bringing better governance or making significant upliftment in the lives of masses. When these movements get uncontrolled; they turn into point of no return like naxalite, maosit menace we have seen in India.

What is Kejriwal’s message here?

Does he approve of everyone who wants to encroach and put up illegal settlement in Delhi or is he saying that he has done it only one time to win the elections and after he comes in power; no one should settle illegally and respect law?

Similar questions pop up about electricity. Do the electricity companies have right to discontinue supply if the consumers stop paying for bills or not?

What will he do if Haryana or UP refuses to provide free water to Delhi?

Knowing the grit of Kejriwal, I know he is in for a long haul here. He has already thrown hints of his game plan. He has told that he would not shy from prosecuting Robert VAdra, Sheila Dixit of BJP politicians. He can use this effectively to blackmail the Congress and BJP to give in to his demands; no matter how unreasonable they may sound.

Key point is; Kejriwal has nothing to lose while the Congress and BJP have everything on stake. If his government is toppled; he will say that Congress and BJP were scared that he will prosecute their corrupt practices. So, I expect a lot of dirty linens being washed in public. Nonetheless, is very good for our democracy. Feel very happy with defeat of the veterans by the rookie.
Time will tell if Kejriwal was modern day Jayaprakash Narayan or just a V. P. Singh. Hypersmash.com

What do you say to people on the streets who ask you “Do you believe in Jesus?”

2013-07-28T14:36:00.000-07:00

Or for that matter, members of “Hare Krishna” movement; offering you free books on the street; or Muslims handing you pamphlets assuring that Mohammed was the last real prophet and everyone has to convert to Islam or be doomed?

Recently I have moved in a small town, Den Bosch in Holland and I love the old architecture of the place. The cobblestoned streets are charming, the old brick buildings and church add perfectly to the ambience and the meandering canals make the picture complete. Strolling comes natural to me. I love to walk without any desire to reach the destiny. Going for a walk gives me kicks. It fills some fresh oxygen in my brain and I am able to take my mind off the 1001 problems from office and home that keep me otherwise very preoccupied.

Except for Fridays and Saturdays, the streets in my neighborhood get sparse and lonely in the late evenings. This poses a challenge to my quest for walk. You are susceptible to being approached by some people who would like to talk to you and the deserted surrounding can make you feel intimidated.

Street crime in Netherlands is thankfully much lower than UK. Here in Den Bosch, people are very friendly and kind. Mugging, snatching or knife crime is unheard of and that is very assuring indeed. Probably that is the reason why I am able to garner courage to walk alone.

I do get in uncomfortable situations if I venture out further from my home. Once in a while some drugs junkie would approach me and tell that he did not had food for last 2 days and if I could spare some money for him. I apologize that I was not carrying my wallet and walk ahead steadily.

Today, two well-built guys approached me as I was on my stroll. They did not fit the bill of an addict. My instinct made me quickly look around and check out the escape routes but I kept a straight face. One of them approached me and started talking in Dutch.

“Sorry I do not speak Dutch.” I tried to make excuse and move on.

“I speak little English” the guy in red t-shirt did not want to let me go off his hook.

“Have you heard of Jesus?” he started.

“Yes” I replied. I completely understood in which direction this conversation was headed.

“Do you believe in Jesus?” came the next question.

“Yes, I do believe in Jesus, AND all the other masters like Mohamed, Buddha and Hinduism; religion of my birth.” I was at my religious correctness best.

“That is no problem. You see one thing is a concept we make from hearing what others say and it is entirely different to reach a conclusion by direct experience.” The man went on with his convincing spree.

“Someone may tell you I am a good or bad person; but if you really need to know me; you will have to take me out for a coffee. Sit at the table and talk to me in person. Same holds true with our relationship with Jesus.” The poor fellow was trying to captivate me with his limited verbal abilities.

“Hang on. May I ask you a question?” I turned on to him.

“Do you believe there is only one God?”

“Yes, Indeed. I do believe there is only one true God.” The man replied.

“And you believe there is only one true messenger of God and that is Jesus Christ.” I was asking close ended questions to cut our loop in a loop discussion short.

“Yes my friend, I believe there is only one true messenger, Jesus.” The man replied.

“We have a difference of opinion here and I would like end our discussions here. I believe in multiple true messengers and you in one.” I closed the discussion and took their leave hurriedly.

“Have a good night.” The man waived at me.

I feel deep respect to this charitable, altruistic aspect of humans. People take a break from daily chore of making the ends meet and try to help others with what they truly believe is superior. These people on street did not have any ulterior motive. They did not expect monetary benefit from me in return or to receive any other favors. They try to talk and convince me with something they strongly believe is good for all.

They might be right or wrong and that is not so important for me. I salute their desire to take up a charitable cause.

50 Shades of Morality in India

2013-07-25T14:27:00.001-07:00

Recently I came across an article by one of my favorite bloggers, Sharell Cook. She is an Australian, settled in India and writes extensively on Indian idiosyncrasies. She was making and observation on “Morality forRich vs Morality for Poor in India”.

This triggered some stream of thoughts in my mind and I scribbled a response to her blog.
Here is what I wrote:

Hi Sharell

A thought provoking article as always.

I am merely trying look for reasons for Indian double standards (or rather quadruple standards) and not to justify any of the practices. To begin with; Indian society is a far more complex mix of cultures, civilizations and schools of thoughts and accepted moral values than any other contemporary civilization or state.

There was culture of Indus valley civilization; it went through its own diversification/degeneration over time and then got forcefully impacted by the Arabs. Forced conversions; forced imposition of a foreign moral system. The place of women in Indian society has been influenced by Arab incursions. The system of purda; woman remaining indoors; having poor education is a mix of Indian and Arab culture. Then came Christians from different parts of Europe and ruled different parts of India. They came with their own agenda of influencing; controlling the behavior; put value system in Indians mind to make their job of ruling the country easier. One of the common characters of invaders is that they try to shame, insult and demoralize their subjects. Arabs called the mountain range between North West Pakistan and Central Afghanistan as Hindu Kush; which literally meant “kill the hindus”. If you read some of the memoirs of the Arab invaders; they described the Indians as very ugly; dark people fit to be either killed or converted. White people, at height of their success seriously thought they have the “White man’s burden” to colonize and “civilize” rest of the world. Of course there is free will and freedom of choice but in any culture; a very small percentage of population has that wisdom and majority fall under the “follower” group.

It is remarkable in some sense that India was able to retain its core character while still being impregnated by all the foreign influences. India is a country; always in transition; from being ruled to becoming independent; from being poor economy to emerging economy; from being under supremacy of Hinduism; to being under Islamic influence to being under control of Christians to becoming a secular state. It needs time to stabilize. Is like the new mountain range of Himalayas which is still growing; active; having landslides, earthquakes, tectonic imbalances; while many others have reached stability of a plateau. (I don’t know if I overshot in the comparison!).

In India; not only is there gap between rich and poor (which probably is there everywhere to different extent); we even have generation gap; gap between regions and on every parameters. I see in west; the society is stabilized. There is off course gap between the generations but not as pronounced as in India. In Indian society; within the same family; mother and daughter would have different moral judgment and point of view about choice of clothes; smoking; drinking, body piercing, tattoo, partying, live in before marriage; vegetarian and non-vegetarian food. Where else do you see such pronounced differences?

Interestingly; Indian culture has historically emphasized on having different yardsticks or morality for different people (for good or for bad!). We have so many Gods or deities that everyone can afford to have a personalized God. Hinduism also divides people in 4 castes (In ancient times; we are told that people had choice of their own caste. They chose their caste by the profession and occupation rather than by birth.) These 4 castes were prescribed different moral values. What was moral for one caste was immoral for the other.

Within the same caste; each individual’s life was divided in 4 stages or ashram; Brahmcharya (celibate), Grihastha (family man), Vanprastha (elder of the family) and then Sanyas (renounced). In the later part of Sanyas; a person would desire death voluntarily. There are prescriptions about in which stage of life of your son, you should treat him with love; which stage you should beat and discipline him and at which stage you should treat him like your brother and equal.

Before Arabs came to India; there was no tradition of stitched cloth in India. Being topless for women was the norm (even for the richest ruling class) rather than some taboo. In Ramayana; in the episode where Surpanakha (sister of Ravana) went to the brothers Rama and Lakshmana and expressed her desire to have sex with them; his brother Ravana felt offended when he came to know that some men have refused his sister’s desire to have sex with them. That was the moral value of the time. In Mahabharata; Krishna and many of the Kings had multiple wives and we have cases of Draupadi who had multiple husbands (5 brothers married to one wife). That tradition is still carried in some north Indian communities and it is accepted to be perfectly moral by that community.

I also realize that some of the moral dictates have been just enforced to do larger good to the society as it is assumed that not everyone has the capacity to figure out the best for himself/herself. I will give you one example from my life. I grew in a lower middle class family and as a child; I always saw that those who liked to have meals in restaurants were considered spoiled; those kids who liked outdoor sports were considered bad and they were reprimanded and refrained from their life vocations. I realize now that it came from self-preservation and the fact that for the lower middle class people; being more academically inclined and having a restrained life style would help the kids to have a brighter future and a possibility to afford all those vocations in future.

Bringing the same thought to having different moral yardstick for rich and poor; if poor people continue to give into indulgences; they would never save enough to invest in their kids’ education; elevate their living standards; save for old age; health expenses etc. This is a reality in many of the slums; daily wage workers; coolies etc. They slog whole day to spend their earning on alcohol; spend on dance bar or gambling or other things like that and are not able to come out of it for whole life. Off course end of the day; it boils down to each individual’s responsibility for his/her own life. May be; educating and motivating these people for a better life strategy is the most ideal thing; refraining them in name of morality might be a practical tool which perhaps does more good than bad to those individuals and their dependents. There is a method in Indian madness. Is not the most ideal one; is not universally acceptable, is questionable and debatable but probably this is what keeps India moving.

Why we give in to Temptation

2013-06-13T15:01:00.000-07:00

I fail every day to my temptations of sorts. Getting up early and doing exercise would give me a healthy body but I give in to the temptation to be in the bed. Doing deep meditation everyday would give me great focus for my day ahead; I give in to temptation of day dreaming and distractions. Taking my work seriously in office would do wonders to my declining and stagnant career graph; I give in to the temptation of taking it easy. If I become stingy; I can get rid of all my loans and build a small fortune; I always give in to my temptations to spend.

I am not alone in my weakness against temptations. Sreeshanth allegedly gave in to temptation of making quick bucks in betting and so did Kundra, Shilpa Shetty and our beloved Vindu Dara Singh! Phaneesh gave in to temptation of carnal kind and the list is endless.

I close my eyes and try to imagine a world where humanity has control over its temptation. I open my eyes with shock. Imagine what would happen to world economy if citizens could not be tempted by the corporate? There would be no cigarettes, liquor, high end fashion outlets, coke, pepsi, smart phone wars on the high street. You would come across only life saving drug stores, organic unprocessed food stores and khadi outlets in city centre.
Temptation is probably nature's best tool to keep the wheel of samsara rolling. . If everyone starts waking up early; do exercise, meditation, have controlled and good diet and lead a very disciplined life; perhaps the life expectancy of the world would rise to 200 years. How would mother earth provide to this ever increasing population? If all the successful people never get distracted by temptation; would the underprivileged stand any chance to excel and succeed in this world? If the citizens of prosperous and well heeled countries do not become distracted by their comfort; would the third world countries ever get a chance to progress? Nature recycles the limited resources judiciously by the necessary evil, temptation.

What will it prove if NRN succeeds in his second stint with Infosys

2013-06-01T10:35:00.001-07:00

Majority of the Infosys employees have breathed a sigh of relief at the news. While the actual outcome of this move is to be seen in times to come; it has brightened the moods like the pre monsoon showers in Bangalore. We live in an era of instant gratification. Eggs are counted before they are hatched. It is not very difficult to imagine that Infosys stocks will reach highs in coming week (unless and until counter balancing news of some US federal rulings about visa usage irregularity by India based Software service providers hit the news headline).

NRN’s return to Infosys draws comparison with some other famous comebacks like that of Steve Jobs to Apple or Pele’s return to Brazil’s national squad for 1970 world cup though he had announced retirement post 1966 world cup. The 7.5 Billion Dollar question is; “Will he be equally successful at that?”

There are critics and skeptics within and without the organization. I have heard the arguments that success of Infosys can also be attributed a large extent to the timing rather than the pure brilliance and talent of founders. TCS, Infosys, Wipro, Satyam, HCL, Mahindra BT; almost every India based IT companies grew handsomely in the first 25 years of their existence (1980 – 2005 era). Government showered the IT industry with ample tax holidays, there was no backlash in US, Europe for outsourcing jobs; recession was yet to hit West in the way it has been hitting in the recent times. There was untapped market and Indian companies reaped the first arriver’s award. The test of the true mettle is going to be the next 25 years (2006 – 2030). What attributes have got the Indian companies to this status in last 25 years doesn’t guarantee the same trajectory in next 25 years. Everyone needs to reinvent, adapt and innovate to avoid dinosaurs’ fate.

Irrespective of the changed industry dynamics; NRN as an individual, commands respect. He is and will remain one of most admired entrepreneurs in India. He has led by example when it comes to imbibing the values of sharing credit, sharing fortune, not letting success get into the head, non-attachment to position of power, building successors, leading a controversy free life and what could be loosely termed as compassionate capitalism. He put his integrity and transparency above everything else. Some values that have really defined the character of the company, Infosys. One can only admire the decisions of Infosys like not bidding for any work for National UID scheme launched by Government of India when Nandan was chosen to lead the project; or not to make any attempt to gobble any of the assignments being executed by Satyam when it went bust.

It pains me to see that a man has been forced out of his well-earned retirement as the successors faltered. He is 67 years old now and has taken up the role for next 5 years! Perhaps it is not a burden for him as I see it. After all Infosys has been his middle baby. I wish him good luck as I wait and watch out for his magic touching my life one more time. J

Throw your stone at Phaneesh Murthy

2013-05-21T12:41:00.002-07:00

Phaneesh Murthy has a knack for 2 things; he makes his employer and his secretary rich. The man who joins Infosys at the age of 27 years and in next 10 years plays a key role in taking its worth from $2 Million to $750 million; falters. For the same reason that Adam was thrown out of heaven; Phaneesh is shown the doors of Infosys. Somebody walks away with $3 Million in out of court settlement.

Next 10 years, the man works in sheath to grow another company to 4 times its original size at the time of his joining. In the process, buying Patni Computers, the organization where the 4 founders of Infosys started their careers. Probably a symbolic defiance to his mentors and previous employers.
When everything was looking like a second dream run; the man does it again. He is named and shamed and fired again. Same weakness gets him down on two occasions. Will he rise one more time?

At least one man is wishing him good luck and success. The lawyer who filed the law suit against him twice.

Solution to the acute water shortage in India

2013-04-14T07:41:00.000-07:00

Since our childhood we have been warned of the ever depleting natural resources and most importantly drinking water. Unplanned urbanization; exploding population and consumerism are certainly taking their toll. I remember my early childhood in Patna, taking cloth bags or jhola to the local grocery shops for buying vegetables, sugar, salt, masala and biscuits were the norm rather than an ecological fad. The provisions would be weighed and packed in paper bags made from old newspaper and books. Polythene was unheard of and unseen till some point in my growing up when it just became ubiquitous.
We would sell our old newspaper, books, plastic bottles, glass jars, nonfunctioning tube-lights and electric bulbs to scavenger boys who would collect the old articles door to door. Tight fitting piece of clothing would be passed on to the younger lot in the family; old clothes would be used as sleeping suits and finally would be spoilt and torn apart during Holi, the festival of colours. The torn clothes would serve as mop for a very long time in the household. We recycled everything. I would have taken my old rubber slippers to the cobbler at least 5 times before discarding them. Same would be true for my shoes.
These extreme conservation practices were not necessarily out of our consciousness about the environment; love for our mother earth or any of those traits from responsible citizen charter but affordability. Average household could not afford to be wasteful with their limited means. Thanks to the liberalization and capitalism; households which once used to be content with a gross income of 5000 rupees per month, find it a struggle to manage with an income of 5000 rupees per day!
We call it inflation; we say that the value for money has gone down; the purchasing power of rupee has gone south. We were able to buy a lot in those good old days. All this is true along with the fact that if I start having a lifestyle that I had in my childhood; I would probably be able to live on a tenth of my monthly expenditures.
There is another aspect to it. If I stop longing for those gadgets; changing that watch, upgrading that smartphone; going for bigger, sleeker HD Flat screen TV or changing furniture and upholstery of my house every six months; probably the big companies will go into slump; they will bring down the markets; economy will fall apart; people employed in these luxury industries would lose employment; They will pull out India’s name from BRICS; we will be out of the league of progressive countries. Probably America and China will attack India vent out their frustration and disgust for India being such a pull-down. We pay the price of modernization. Capitalism looks like riding a running lion with no way to step down.
Anyways; the purpose of me writing this blog is a question that sprung in my mind while watching these news channels and knowing of the worsening water crisis we are facing in most of the big cities in India. Mainly the two cities close to my heart; Delhi and Bengaluru.
Is the water crisis really that hard to crack? We are surrounded on 3 sides by water still we do not have access to portable water. I read reports about new economic corridors being built between Mumbai and Delhi. Is it not possible that we lay big water pipeline along Mumbai-Delhi highway? It should be something like the oil pipelines we lay for transporting oil; albeit much cheaper and simple. Pump the sea water from Mumbai in this pipe all the way to Delhi! Identify naturally occurring rocky reservoirs on the way and reinforce them appropriately so that they can be used for storing water. Fill all these open tanks and lakes on the way from Mumbai to Delhi. This should result in lots of evaporation of the sea water filled in lakes and tanks and hopefully should increase the rainfall in the area. The rain water would be fresh distilled water and not salty. This will increase the water table in the area and also increase the green cover. Spread these water pipes to the deserts of Rajasthan. Have very robust arrangement for rain harvesting and make sure that the rain water doesn’t drain back in the sea water containing lakes. These sea water reservoirs should be land locked like Dead sea and should not have any connection with water source. In 5-10 years of time; when our rain harvested tanks get filled with sweet water; the sea water reservoirs can be allowed to be emptied by evaporation (and no replenishment by pumping sea water). We probably would be able to extract the salt by scrapping the bottom of these reservoirs commercially.
If the Dutch can claim land from sea by building dykes; why cannot we reclaim fertile land and forests from Thar desert?
This could be applied to Bangalore with much less effort. Bangalore is just 150 km from Sea! And maybe we will put an end to the acute fresh water crisis that India is facing for good. It might have a ROI period of 30 years; but this should definetly deliver.

Tell me guys am I missing a point here?

Comparison of Infosys and TCS in light of Q2FY13 results

2012-10-23T11:11:00.000-07:00

Infosys and TCS have announced their Q2 results for FY13 and it is a good time to compare the two and see where Infosys stands in comparison to TCS. This quarter has been important for Infosys, who in recent times has lost some of its reputation as being the industry bell-weather. Last few quarters have been in tough for Infosys and the peers have performed much better. TCS on the other hand has only consolidated its position as undisputed market leader.
In the analysis of the data below; we will try to see the signs of recovery and possibilities for Infosys.

INFY Vs TCS (comparison of size)

Parameters	INFY	TCS
Q2F13 Revenue (Million US$)	1797	2852.6
Quarter on Quarter Growth (%)	2.6	4.6
Operating Profit Margin (%)	26.3	26.7
Net staff	153761	254076
Attrition Rate (%)	15	11.4
Net staff addition in Q2F13	2610	10531
% Utilization	67.5	72.8
Revenue per staff per month in US$	3895.656	3742.44

TCS has done a sterling performance when in comes to quarter on quarter growth and curbing the attrition rate (amongst the lowest in the industry). What is remarkable is that it has overtaken Infosys on Operating margin as well!
The takeaway for Infosys here is that it has shown flexibility to reduce its margin. The revenue per staff for Infosys is higher than that of TCS though it has a lower utilization figure (67.5%). In fact if Infosys was able to increase the utilization to TCS level (72.8%); additional 43.5 MUS$ could have been generated in the quarter (theoretical). This could have pushed the QoQ growth to 5.5 from current 2.6.

Revenue from Verticals

Some of the observations are:

1. Banking and Finance contribute the most for TCS while MFG contributes the least.

2. In Infosys, the spread is more even with ECS being the smallest of all the verticals.

Note** For simplification; I have consolidated the verticals in TCS to match Infosys nomenclature

· ECS = Telecom, Energy & utility and media & entertainment

· RCL = Retail & Distribution, Hi Tech, Life Sciences & Healthcare, Travel & Hospitality and others

· MFG = Manufacturing

· Finance = Banking, Financial Services, Insurance

Geographic Breakup of revenue

Infosys has a much bigger exposure to North America and smaller exposure to Europe and India compared to TCS. This can be seen as a risk. Incidentally Infosys has just announced that it has completed the ground work for Infosys 3.0 strategy. As part of that strategy; Infosys has a vision to have a spread of revenues coming 40% from North America (and Canada); 40% from Europe (and UK) and 20% from rest of the world. Infosys also aspires to get even revenue; i.e.; 1/3 revenue from Transformation; 1/3 revenue from Optimization and 1/3 revenue from Innovation. (Interestingly that will not be by reducing the current revenues from high contributing area but by increasing the revenues from low contributing area. Talk of human ambitions!) New focus area like Sustainability, Engineering, Cloud, Products & Platform have been included. Infosys also aspire to do atleast 15% local hiring abroad to build a truly global company image. Infosys 3.0 is aiming at balancing the portfolio; strengthening the core and growing new business area. Incidently the credo for Infosys 3.0 is "Building Tomorrow's Enterprise". The credo for Infosys 2.0 was "Win in the Flat World" and that for Infosys 1.0 was "Powered by intellect; driven by values". How effective has been the implementation of Infosys 3.0 is to be seen in the times to come.

Top Contributing clients

Million Dollar Clients	INFY	TCS
>US$ 1M < US$ 5M	413	538
>US$ 5M < US$10M	205	269
>US$ 10M < US$ 20M	134	182
>US$20M < US$ 50M	195	108
>US$ 50M < US$ 100M	127	45
>US$100M	14	14

Infosys seems to have a significantly higher number of clients contributing revenue between 20 to 100 Million US$. This looks favorable considering that a smaller percentage of overhead cost (compared to revenue)will be incurred to serve a smaller number of high end clients .

Conclusion

Infosys seems to be moving in the right direction. If the Infosys3.0 strategy is to click and bear fruits; we will see Infosys regaining its bell-weather tag. Acquisition of Loadstone; announcing salary hike for employees and keeping a low profile and cautious approach to the future might just work well for Infosys. TCS on the other hand is at the peak of its success and the expectations have already gone through the roof with its shares valuated at more than 14 times premium. Will be interesting to watch out for the last 2 quarters of the FY 13.

Note: The opinion expressed on the blog are my personal views. The data for the analysis has been sourced from the quarterly results published by both the companies on their websites.

Book Review by Anuradha Goyal

2012-10-15T10:29:00.001-07:00

A prominent Blogger, author and book reviewer Anuradha Goyal reviewed "Onsite Opportunity" recently.
You can read the review here:
http://www.anureviews.com/onsite-opportunity-by-mukul-kumar/

Book Review on the Vault of Books

2012-10-07T06:38:00.002-07:00

Review for "Onsite Opportunity" appeared on a popular Book review site www.vaultofbooks.com
You can read the review here.
http://vaultofbooks.com/?s=onsite+opportunity