More 'food' for thought

As I write, around 200 people have been laid off in my company here in India. Well, imagine being laid off! Hmm..wouldn't be so bad if you don't have any family to support or loans to pay. You can live off from a minimal single room easily till you find another job. But, the question of having to work goes back to the fundamental need of food. Clothing & shelter probably a little later in the priority list. Imagine, if these 3 primary needs are won over - minimal food, minimal clothing & minimal shelter - wouldn't one be free! Well, this is not really my theory. Ancient wisdom says - minimize your needs, the happier would you be. However, no man would want to be a 'loser'. So, even if he is laid off, he would fight and get a 'better' job so that he can afford all he wants rather than minimize his needs. That seems to be the way life is.

Let's look at this basic need for food. If you were a vegetarian like me, you could probably live on roots & shoots. Or even curd rice the whole of your life. But, if your perception of what food is, is a little more - let's say a chicken piece, a burger, with some mayonnaise, some sauce, a pepsi - just a minimal burger. The more exotic ones I am not even remotely aware of. So, satisfaction is what is driving one to get exactly those set of things for oneself. So, the problem (or the key!) actually lies in the mind which perceives some things as right, some as wrong, some as sufficient and some as not! So, if it is only mind which perceives, what will happen when there is no mind??? Hmm.....would we still exist?

Individuals & choices

What a coincidence! In the last blog I talked abt 'individuals'. Can you believe this fortnight's edition of one of the popular Indian magazines carries a cover story on such fashionable unattached individuals who opt to remain single and unattached since they value freedom & individuality!!!

Well, it is rather difficult to be unattached, I accept that. But non-attachment is a centuries old philosophy. I doubt if they mean the non-attachment that Upanishads have talked about. The best example of non-attachment is a lotus leaf that lives in the pond but remains unsticky and afloat.

So, they say - 'The Choice is Mine now'! Hmmm...the choice has always been with the individual, so it really baffles me when people say that they have no choice!

Ab kahani mein twist! Is there any choice at all if there is a need, so how far can one go with the aspect of choice??? Taking the last blog further - do we have a choice when we feel hungry!!! We have to eat. Can we make a choice of not eating and still surviving??? I would love to get some keys to that. Food is a lovely thing, but, not while one is engrossed in work. To have some rest is wonderful, but it is more wonderful to remain forever energized and ready to take on anything! Hmm...sounds interesting!!!

Hunger and Work

Occasionally, just like any other normal human being, my work gets a 'break' because of pangs of hunger! Ah...why do we have to feel hungry? And, why do we have to have sleep and rest.

Food drives so many things in this world. In the animals, it is what they live for pretty much every day save for a few like Jonathan Livingston Seagull. Man was intelligent, so he formed a society of interdependence and thereby co-existence.

Society has become such a negative word nowadays! It either refers to the rich, (in)famous & influential or to rumour-mongers, backbiters and the like. So, we are living amidst the 'modern' thinking of 'individuality', 'independence' and 'freedom'. Each person wants to be an individual. What can be more free than not having to search for one's food the whole day! So, is it 'a thankless society' or 'thankless individuals'? Makes me wonder.

If everybody becomes an engineer, nay a software engineer (as it is in India), who would produce the crop, who would run the state transport or collect the garbage?

What lacks in India (and possibly other parts of world as well) is respect for work. The holy text Bhagwadgita hails work and establishes the path of work as one equivalent to that of Knowledge or Love(Bhakti) - "Work is Worship". How can a job be menial if 'Work is worship'? So, it is not only the software engineer or the software company CEO who makes the economy flourish - shouldn't we be thankful to those who produce the crop that we eat thrice daily without fail!

While all including me are happy about the sunrise sector called IT in India, I am certainly eternally grateful to every human being who has contributed to my peaceful living today!

Porter's competitive advantage theory for India

Thanks to Manoj for this wonderful article -

http://in.rediff.com/money/2004/dec/29inter.htm

Guess it says it all - India is celebrating a partial success way too soon. Couple of NASDAQ listings and a boom in IT & ITES is not a sustainable strategy for competitiveness of a country. Kudos to IT certainly, but IT alone does not make a country. Newer arenas are opening up. There is a great role that government can play here and that depends on the mindset. Let me not discuss on the mind set on corruption - a topic that has no end, really.

What repeatedly hits me is productivity that Porter is talking about. In a recent talk at Wharton, Vivek Paul, Vice Chairman of Wipro too mentioned productivity as one of the four primary issues that need to be fixed for India.

Refer http://economics.about.com/od/economicsglossary/g/productivity.htm on what productivity is. In terms of labour, to me, it is the monetary value generated/person hour.

What does it mean to when GDP grows and productivity drops - meaning labour productivity drops? I'm not an economist, no way. But, this sort of indicates that there is considerable automation/ exchange rate differences. I'm more inclined to attribute some exchange rate differences to this. So, if productivity is low, an investor is taking some more "risk" (sort of), and that is why, probably, Vivek Paul argues that expected ROCE (Return on Capital Employed) is higher when productivity is low. This is really getting too interesting. Expect more posts on productivity.

Tsunami Warning Systems

http://www.newkerala.com/news-daily/news/features.php?action=fullnews&id=53012

I can certainly expect that and much more from Our Honourable President. I also can expect that to be actually in place within a short duration of time. It would not be a promise undelivered. Nothing can be more inspiring than having a leader who has been at the helm of scientific advancement to lead a confused religion-torn nation. That brings me to a recent article that I read about the relief work in Colachel, Tamilnadu. One can see the unity that such a calamity brings to a country of mindless riots in the name of religion. Several hundreds of displaced survivors of the Tsunami have been camped in Churches - and are actually being helped by local Hindus and Muslims alike. I hope to live to see the day when the man next door is seen as a human and not anything else.