Monday, September 10, 2012

Hating India is a Democratic right; but not at a cost to India

Blind and fanatical belief in ‘ISMS’, Apart from sheer greed has become the hallmark of activism and ngos in India. hating India is a Democratic right; but not at a cost to India

Nobody (no one at least in his/her right senses) has ever said that balancing these conflicting priorities is simple. It has always been an incredibly tough, complex and demanding challenge, and will always remain so. Well governed societies with dollops of common sense seek a balance between these conflicting priorities. A democracy with the rights to free speech and protest offers the best method of resolving these conflicts. As philosophers have always known: democracy is a terrible way of governing and managing societies, but humanity is yet to find a better way. Indeed, the world is full of ‘isms’ and no sensible person will claim that the ‘ism’ they profess to believe in is the only solution.

The problem with contemporary India is that activists not just blindly believe that their ‘ism’ is the best; they also want to ram it down the throat of all Indians. God knows what ‘ism’ the Goddess of Small Things Arundhati Roy believes in. The fact is: Indian democracy has given her the freedom to rave, rant, protest, write, excoriate, condemn and demonise anything that tickles her fancy in a manner that no other Third World country would allow (I wonder what would be her fate if Arundhati Roy spouted venom of the kind she spouts here in Saudi Arabia or China or any of the hitherto Marxist paradises that existed before the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991). I personally think she has every right to speak the way she speaks because we are indeed a democracy. In any case, she had publicly seceded from India back in 1998 when the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government went ahead with nuclear tests. The problem is not that. The problem is the utter contempt she has for the other point of view; the complete unwillingness to even consider that India confronts twin problems of internal security threats and human rights abuses. No wonder she was wallowing in ideological pleasure when she described the murderous Maoists as Gandhians with Guns even as they were planning to ambush and kill more than 75 CRPF personnel – most of them poor Indians whose cause she claims to espouse. So she travels from seminar to seminar, rally to rally, protest meet to protest meet condemning the Indian State and the security forces. In her lexicon and world view: the only internal security threat that India faces is the Indian State.

Now, what would happen if policy makers actually implemented her vision and embraced terrorists from Pakistan and her Gandhians with Guns as the real patriots of India? I suspect, she couldn’t care less. As the Activist Number One of India, her job is to denounce and condemn. And Roy – and hundreds of thousands of activists like her in India – have learnt the art of propaganda very well. I feel proud of India as a democracy when people like her rave, rant and shout. But I really start worrying about the future of India when persistent propaganda leads the government to start thinking of doing what she wants. Taken to the logical conclusion, the Roy solution is to dismantle the entire Indian armed forces, the para-military forces and the police.

The manner in which the ilk of Roy are chipping away at the foundations of the Indian State and society is so insidious that many people like you and me do not seem to recognise the terrifying consequences of the sustained hate propaganda they have launched. But I have little doubt that India will soon pay a price.


Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.
For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.
 
IIPM : The B-School with a Human Face
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Saturday, September 08, 2012

So do Aliens really exist?

EU needs to come out with customized solutions for member states

Such mass protests that cut across nations are unprecedented since WW II. But then, in a unified Europe, the recent turn of events shouldn’t be so surprising. The resistance against Europe’s recent austerity drive heightened to the extent that protesters hit the streets across the continent. Among all EU nations, Spain saw the most widespread protests while Brussels saw around 100,000 people going on the streets. Angered by the government’s draconian budget cuts and labour-market overhaul, protestors across the Union disrupted day to day activities. The protest is actually against the governments’ decision to bring deficits under control by cutting public spending. This measure is the last ditch resort by the EU as most investors are denying requests for lending to member nations.

The European Central Bank and Germany are the prime supporters of such measures. Such steps by the EU government seems to have originated from the situation they found themselves in post the recent Greece crisis and the issues the nation faced with maturing debt. But such measures are deteriorating workforce confidence as working class are of the view that they are being penalised for no fault of theirs. In Greece, the protest is chiefly from officials who enjoy special tax free allowances and hefty pensions – not surprisingly, this class is also famous for notable corruption; while in Spain, the public sector trade unions are the main protesters as they would suffer a pay cut and a rise in the legal retirement age. Likewise in Belgium, normal and conventional shop workers are on strike as the government plans to lay-off nearly 2,000 people from stores and depots.


Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.
For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.
 
IIPM : The B-School with a Human Face


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Wednesday, September 05, 2012

Intel inside: For how long?

Could technology be weakening the ability of our minds to learn?

Movies like Inception are setting the box-office cash-registers ringing for their portrayal of how technology can be used to invade our dreams. At the same time, there is a real-world debate on how the constant presence of technology is weakening the ability of our minds to learn. The American technology expert and author, Nicholas Carr recently mentioned that Google may be responsible for us “losing our ability to engage in more attentive ways of thinking.” This isn’t the first time that Carr has raised this question, whose 2004 book, Does IT Matter?, raised a furore among top executives from HP, Microsoft and others. In 2008, he wrote an article titled – Is Google Making Us Stoopid? – where he highlighted that the Internet may have adverse effects on our minds’ capacity for concentration. In the same vein was his recent interview, where he proposed that Google should make its products tougher to use in order to give our brains some exercise. His stand contradicts Google’s philosophy, which is ‘to organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.’

Carr’s discontent is not with Google alone; he has expressed his worry about the ease with which we have information available. Prolonged and unchecked Internet usage could cause Attention Deficit Disorder, Internet addiction, or even social isolation. We are also getting used to reading information in snippets from various sites instead of spending time on a single web page. Prof. Maryanne Wolf at the Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Development at Tufts, has expressed her concern over the effect technology could have on the reading abilities of the coming generation. “The problem of a less potentiated reading brain becomes urgent in the discussion about technology. We human beings are not just the product of what we read, but how we read. The essential question is: how well will we preserve the critical capacities of the present expert reading brain as we move to the digital reading brain of the next generation?” said Wolf.


Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.
For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.
 
IIPM : The B-School with a Human Face
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Tuesday, September 04, 2012

Is India ready to become a hot spot for the spotted one?

The project could see the cheetahs on Indian soil in three years, though some experts predict that the process might take longer. On arrival, the cheetahs will be confined to semi-wild locations before they are moved to the forests. “The return of the cheetah would make India the only country in the world to host six of the world’s eight large cats and the only one to have all the large cats of Asia,” said MK Ranjitsinh of Wildlife Trust of India. Gajner in Rajasthan and Kuno-Palpur in Gujrat are two possible areas that could host the cheetahs.

Apart from hunting and skinning, loss of habitat and prey is one of the most prominent reasons for the extinction of the cat. Even the tiger is at the receiving end of the eminent ‘forest drought’, which further raises questions pertaining to the welfare of the animal if brought to India. Secondly, the cheetah is the most inbred member of the cat family due to the genetic bottleneck they faced some 10,000 years ago. Due to this, they have pitifully low sperm count and are prone to inbreeding-depression. Thirdly, it feeds on livestock hence making it a susceptible target around the human settlements. Also more than 100 human settlements stand to be displaced in order to accommodate the cheetah. To make things worse, cheetah experts are apprehensive about bringing the African Cheetah stating that the natural habit is more suitable to the Asiatic sub-specie.

Jairam Ramesh may propose “ethical and ecological” reasons to bring back the animal but let us hope that despite all of that and the ‘pride’ in the backdrop, the ‘responsibility’ we inherit upon bringing the cheetah home is not shunned.


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Monday, September 03, 2012

Weighty issues no more

Kareena Kapoor has been noticed (and praised) for her efforts in gaining weight and getting past the size-zero obsession. In fact, the actress has been quick to quell rumours about Karan Johar having asked her to get back to her thin frame for his upcoming movie tentatively titled Short Term Shaadi. In Delhi recently to promote her latest film, We Are Family, let us ‘weight’ and watch for Kareena’s performance in this re-make of Stepmom.


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Saturday, September 01, 2012

RIDING ON INTO THE DUST STORM

R. C. Bhargava, Chairman of Maruti Suzuki talks to B&E’s Pawan Chabra about competitve threats from foreign players launching better technology cars and the high royalty payment issue.The secret to profits has, and always will remain competitive pricing and satisfied employees, says a Least Worried Bhargava.

When R. C. Bhargava (the topper of the Civil Services Examinations of 1956) wanted to join Maruti Udyog Limited in 1981 as the Director (Marketing), people advised him against leaving BHEL (Bharat Heavy Electrical Ltd.), where he was serving as the Director of commercial operations for about three years. Maruti was then perceived to be a political project with a dull present and a lifeless future. He chose to try out Maruti for three years. What followed changed his life. He gave up IAS and chose to live the Maruti dream. He’s seen it all, from the launch of India’s first People’s car (the Maruti 800), to the entry of foreign competitors in India. Undoubtedly, he has an emotional connect with Maruti Suzuki that dates back to about three decades. Today, he’s the Chairman at Maruti, and the carmaker is under great threat of losing dominance in India. And of course, he hates to lose!

 B&E: Amidst JVs in the Indian automobile industry that have gone sour, the JV between Maruti and Suzuki has proven to be different and fruitful. What as per you are the factors that are responsible for the success of your JV?
R. C. Bhargava (RCB): For any JV to be successful, both the parties should look at bringing their respective expertise on the table. It is extremely important that both the parties work for the benefit of the JV rather than looking at getting the other party out of the picture. It is like a marriage, wherein you will have to trust your partner if you are looking at a fruitful and long relationship. It’s the trust that has made the JV between Maruti & Suzuki such a long and beneficial relationship.

 B&E: The company has grown hand-in-hand with the Indian automotive industry. And for ever, you’ve focussed on differentiating your offerings on the basis of prices. Your comments...
RCB: When we entered the Indian automotive market, there was practically no competition. In a way, there were products like the Padmini and the Ambassador that were selling in the Indian market. But they had an outdated technology and we entered with the latest technology that set a new standard. Maruti Suzuki clearly took the market by storm and being a market leader with over 50% market share there is obviously a price advantage that the company enjoys. The formula to deal with competition in the Indian market is very simple – if you can’t match the price levels of the market leader, it will be very difficult to succeed in the Indian market.

B&E: With so many new launches in the small car segment, Maruti is presently under great threat. There are also doubts whether Maruti can defend its market share. What’s your next move?
RCB: It’s not exactly true that we are under any threat. The new entries will surely make the competition more intense in the small car segment, but we are confident of our strategies. The scenario was similar even before during the 1990s when Hyundai and Daewoo entered India. We were able to defend our market share then too and we believe we will be able do it even this time. The strategy to do so will be as simple as introduction of new models and aggressive pricing.


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