How's my Luck now?

Forward March!

2006-03-25T03:34:00.000-08:00

Here's the link to my new blog: The Generalist

Ending it all...

2006-03-17T20:10:00.000-08:00

Today is the last day of my MBA course - the Convocation day. Preparations have been completed and only the last few finishing touches are being put into place. The campus is filled with people as parents and other relatives & friends of the graduating batch visit the place for the convocation.

With this must also come the end of this blog, which was meant specifically to capture some of the things that I experienced during my stay here, and occasionally, my views on them. I have found blogging to be a good way to relax and mull over things, and I plan to create a new, absolutely general (i.e. non-specific) blog soon. I will not delete this blog, since it might prove interesting to some people.

And that's that.

Placement season

2006-03-08T21:59:00.000-08:00

The placement season has come and gone. The placements for our batch were successfully completed yesterday, a day ahead of schedule. Although I will not reveal the details here, the whole exercise was a lot less taxing than the summer placements had been. I do not have the numbers with me, but from the general reaction, it seems as if most people have got jobs in the field (and even sub-field) that they wanted. Whether this translates into less attrition (say, within the first year) from this first job remains to be seen. I did not have a personal stake in the process, having secured my position earlier. So I had a ringside view of the process and this was filled with a lot of different emotions, experienced vicariously - hope, despair, anger, frustration, humour. Finally, the curtain fell yesterday late at night, and as the tradition goes, a dholi beat his dhol all the way from the academic block to the mess, leading a procession of students. Euphoria overflowed in the mess in a half-hour of dancing amid splashes of water. An institute party followed, the last for our batch, and this lasted well into the morning today. Memories to cherish...

Last class

2006-02-11T05:27:00.000-08:00

I just attended my last class of the course, and perhaps of all formal education. I say perhaps, because of the possibility that the organization(s) that will employ me might sponsor some or the other 'management development programme' or some such thing in the future :). There is no great feeling of exhilaration or relief or loss at passing this milestone though.

What's in an MBA? - V

2006-02-10T20:12:00.000-08:00

Run-ins with administration

Our batch had a few run-ins with the administration here on various matters, giving the batch an unwarranted bad impression and leaving a bad taste in most people's mouths, on both sides. I am mentioning this here because this kind of thing seemed to happen unusually often with us.

Faculty & teaching

Having recounted some of the problems from the students' side, I have to note the problems we have had with some of the faculty and their teaching styles. Some of the faculty, including that in Operations, Finance, and Decision Sciences, have been really great to study under and I will remember these professors for a long time. However, it's a pity that the same can't be said of quite a few others. Either their
functional knowledge was not quite up to the mark, or their teaching style was too drab (with no attempt to make a subject interesting), or they couldn't handle case discussions very well, or they made really good subject outlines & topic lists but didn't cover them well, or their marking & grading schemes were inscrutable, etc., etc. Admitting that teaching is not an easy job, and the fact that at a time when the
economy is booming, it is difficult to retain good faculty, we are still in a less than desirable position.

Here I end this brief exposition on my MBA experience. These were opinions only, (although reasoned ones, I hope), and so I don't expect everyone, especially all of my batchmates to agree with me totally.

What's in an MBA? - IV

2006-02-10T10:23:00.000-08:00

Grading pattern & emphasis on grades

Academic grading here, as perhaps in most other b-schools, depends a lot on term-end (and mid-term) exams. The exam question papers in most subjects were very disappointing - the same old descriptive questions where the length of the answer was important, and which failed entirely to make the respondent stop and think. The marking of the answers then caused quite a lot of grief from time to time, and the next stage - grading - was quite unpredictable as well, especially for those who had
middling marks. Add to that marks allotted to projects and term papers (see previous post), and that unfathomable variable - class participation, and you see why grades occupied most students' minds for a disproportionate amount of time. The number which came out of this process - the beast called CGPA - the number mentioned to top
recruiters on campus, then achieved mythical proportions. Relative Grading (RG) became a verb (to 'RG' someone is to do something that will take away some credit from the counterparty and/or gain valuable credit for oneself). Many people gave up and stopped giving much, or any, importance to grades, for various reasons. This further fueled the feeling among faculty and administration that this batch had hit
rock-bottom in terms of attitude towards academics.

So is there a better alternative? A grading system giving more emphasis on project work or similar non-exam components, combined with an evaluation process giving genuine importance to quality of work and, in case of group work, to share of work can be conceived with some effort. (yes, this is a 'process re-engineering solution' :) ). Accountability can be brought to academic work by making sure - by meeting students, by asking them pointed questions in presentations, etc. - that work done is genuine, well-understood, and containing some individual insight, however small. Subjectivity may not be removed completely, but the experience might be very satisfying for both students and faculty.

Recruitment

"We help deliver genuine business value to our customers by consulting them on improving their business processes" - a line many recruiters in the IT and consulting space parrot in PPTs. Well, to them I'll say, look at your own recruitment process first. Very few companies can boast of low attrition rates of fresh MBA hires, and apart from the employee's own attitude, the flaws in the recruitment process might be to blame.

Group discussions are a part of many recruitment processes. The problem is, these are not used for discovering any potential in the candidates, but more as an elimination mechanism when too many people have applied and have been shortlisted. When there is desperation to get a job during placement week, the quality of GDs is mostly pathetic. And then, many a times the selections made for the next round throw up surprises, as happened with me in case of a prominent IT company in the laterals process last month. I am not saying all this just because I am bad at GDs (which I am), but because the same kind of elimination can be achieved by more careful vetting of CVs by the recruiters and giving out a shorter shortlist (there's no redundancy here :) ).

Many companies also have more exotic formats - games, presentations, case interviews, etc. I am not saying that recruiters do not have a solid basis for having such components in the process, but all that a long-drawn out process can do for a candidate during those three days of placements is cause exhaustion. This also suggests that concentrating all placements in 3-4 days might not be the best way to do it.

What's in an MBA? - III

2006-02-10T10:05:00.000-08:00

And now let's look at the unsavoury part. It's not a litany of woes but still the grievances are very significant. I am mentioning six prominent points here.

Work ethic (or the lack of it)

Over the last 1.5 years, my lingering memory in academics will remain one of trying to goad fellow project group members to do their share of work and document it appropriately. I am no saint, but I can say that I have acquitted myself well as far as effort in academic projects, term papers, assignments, etc. goes. The more we neared the end of the course, the less people were willing to work. There remain a handful of people who are dependable and do their work willingly, turning in a good performance. Projects and term papers were delayed until there hardly was any time before the deadline, and then of course, hasty work was hardly ever of good quality. I don't think I will ever understand why people failed to get enthusiastic about their work, even when they had chosen the subjects and project topics themselves. I sincerely hope this 'mutual shirking equilibrium' changes for the better when we step
out into the outside world.

Attitude toward learning

The popular perception of an MBA is that of a 'smart'-looking, jargon-spitting person, who may or may not understand what he/she means. While Dilbert's way of poking fun takes a rather extreme position on this, one would not tend to disagree totally with Scott Adams if one sat through b-school presentations (and gave a few
oneself, to be fair :) ). Project reports and term papers, examination answers, presentations - all of these generally have oodles of what we fondly call 'globe' (not counting the quantitative courses, of course). I don't really know the reason for this predilection with half-understood or misunderstood concepts and jargon - is it because a lot of subjects are packed into a relatively short time, is it because
students feel these are not really going to help them in the real business world, or, is it because students feel that whatever you actually do, it is how you package and present it that matters most? But this attitude meant that most people switched off mentally when project presentations were going on, not hearing what others had to
say, assuming that it wouldn't be something vitally important, and then went on stage, and said similar things themselves.

The corporate world did not help much in this area. Most people from the corporate world who come down to campus for pre-placement talks (PPTs) talk in similar mind-numbing jargon.

What's in an MBA - II

2006-02-08T05:33:00.000-08:00

Continuing with the positives:

People

I am not a naturally gregarious person and so I do not know many people of my batch, and of my senior and junior batches, closely. However, irrespective of how many people I personally knew, I have learnt things, directly or indirectly, from a lot of people. This might seem like a 'global', and ultimately meaningless, statement. But it isn't. It's certainly not the first time I have been with people from all regions of India, but in terms of attitudes, behaviour and goals, the people I have met here form a much more varied bunch than that I met with during my engineering days.

I wouldn't count more than a dozen people here as my closest friends, but these people have been absolutely wonderful to be with. A very capable bunch of people who are also great fun to be with, and the shared experiences with them are memorable. Besides these close friends, the class I was in in the first year (Section D) has been a fairly close-knit group, with most people being comfortable being with each other. Overall, I have liked the variety of people I met here, and have liked observing their capabilities, idiosyncrasies, and attitudes.

Facilities & resources

I found the facilities and resources (the computer centre and network, the library, sports facilities, some essential services like banks & provision stores, the course material) to be very good overall. Of course, each one of the above has its own set of shortcomings, and have led to much heartburn at various times. But the services they have provided offset the difficulties, at least in my case. In fact, I have not made as great a use of the library as I would have liked to.

Quizzes, talks, etc.

I must make special mention of the great time I have had in quizzes here. I was fortunate that Samrat chose me for his quizzing partner, since that gave me the enjoyment of winning a lot of quizzes :). I was also fortunate that we had at least a dozen people in my batch who were very interested in quizzing, which made all quizzes very lively.

Many of the speakers from various industries that came to deliver talks during these 1.5 years gave me a lot to think about. I have written about each of the talks I have attended on this blog.

The 'etc.' part includes the fun, the treats and parties, tremendous additions to my movie, music, and reading material collection, the experience of the city of Lucknow, the walks around campus, and many other memories. Of course, this is not part of the MBA course, but I am considering my entire experience here, so these should be included.

What's in an MBA? - I

2006-02-08T04:28:00.000-08:00

This is the last week of classes here, followed by three days of exams next week, then 3 more weeks before final placements and a further one week before the convocation. It's a good time to look back and see what one gained from the MBA programme, and also to consider the flip side,
what one liked least about it.

Some people claim that there is hardly anything to be gained from the course, and that there are so many shortcomings and problems - with the course, with the institute, with the people here - that they overshadow any positives completely. But I am not able to take such a cynical view. Firstly, I believe that what one considers as gain and what as loss is, by itself, a personal thing. Secondly, and more importantly, I firmly believe that what you get out of the course (and
indeed out of any endeavour) depends strongly on what you are willing to put in. If you have a positive attitude, try to do things that you think are good and of interest to you, there is a lot to be gained from the course.

With this background, I will start this short series of posts reflecting on my experiences in the past one and a half years. I hope to write another series taking a more humorous view of all that happens in a b-school.

First the positives, in no particular order.

Functional knowledge

I opted for elective subjects in Finance & Systems (where I have a major) and in Operations as well as Strategy. I must say that I have had an exhilarating experience studying these varied subjects, getting a conceptual as well as practical view on various aspects of business. I cannot speak for the areas to which I have had no special exposure here (namely, Marketing and HR), but in Finance, Operations and Strategy, learning has been an enriching experience. The faculty has not always been great, my own contribution to the study of each subject has not always been the best possible, yet there is a sense of satisfaction on having understood so much that was previously mysterious. Even greater is the happiness at having so many avenues for further exploration having been opened.

Now, interest is not the same as aptitude, and I must admit that although I have great interest in most of what I opted to study, my aptitude or expertise at much of this is of a rather mediocre level. In each of these areas, I know of several people in my batch who have excellent aptitude and knowledge. Many people who know me might think I am being deliberately self-deprecating, but I am stating this categorically, as a fact. I have always tried to compensate for lack of natural aptitude by having a keen sense of curiosity and putting in some effort, and I think that is why I feel whatever satisfaction I do.

'Rang de Basanti'

2006-01-30T04:02:00.000-08:00

I watched this much-awaited and much-commented-upon film yesterday with the gang at Novelty theatre, Aliganj. Although much of the story was known to me thanks to a front-page story in the Times of India, I found the film to convey something more than can be captured in a telling of the story. Directed by Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra (who belongs to, what I have termed, the 'YACS Club' - Yet Another Curious Spelling, that is thriving in the entertainment industry these days), it conveys effectively the indecision in the minds of youth today, who, despite realizing that there is a need to do something to combat India's current problems, are not really sure of how to go about the task. This essence of the film is described well in this review by one of my batchmates.

Some of the more prominent issues in India today are lined up in the film - the moral police, communal hatred and distrust, politician-industrialist nexus, the irresponsible and callous politician, police atrocities. Urban youth, as represented by Aamir Khan (D.J. or Daljeet) and his gang, are shown to be cynical in their assessment of this country's prospects. That is, until a Britisher, ironically, inspires in them a sense of the value of the freedom that India got. Alice Patten (Sue) comes to India to shoot a documentary on Chandrashekhar Azad and other revolutionaries and casts this unruly group of friends in her film.

The device used to show the gradual transformation of the group into serious, thinking individuals is this: their actions, following an incident which brings them face to face with harsh reality, mirror those of their characters in the film. The path they choose to come to terms with the reality and to 'set things right' is one of violence, though the ending of the film is such as to preclude the conclusion that this is the only means left to solve our problems. It is this non-preachy nature of the film that actually makes it more effective by urging the viewer to think for himself/herself.

The performances are all very good, including that of Alice Patten (who does indeed speak nice Hindi). Aamir Khan, though not quite successful at looking young, infuses energy into his character of DJ, totally carefree initially and the angry young man later. Kunal Kapoor's performance as Aslam and Atul Kulkarni's as Laxman Pandey are essayed well. I am beginning to really like Atul Kulkarni's performances. Even Soha Ali Khan Pataudi (who resembles Tiger quite a lot, in some shots) impresses in the role of an optimistic young woman. Waheeda Rehman, as Madhavan's mother, does not have a major role, but carries it off with the dignity of an armed-forces-wife and mother.

A. R. Rahman's music is in keeping with the nature of the main characters and with the situations, and must be one of his most varied scores, though it is not really my favourite. Adman Prasoon Joshi's lyrics are quite remarkable, and it is clearly an inspired effort. A good description and review of the music can be found on J. Ramanand's blog here.

'Men, Ideas & Politics' - II

2006-01-25T21:09:00.000-08:00

Two very good essays emerge from Drucker's own experience with Japan and the Japanese. In 'Japan Tries for a Second Miracle', Drucker outlines the astonishing economic progress Japan made in the decade since 1952, and attributes it to five things: new investments, creating a mass market for goods, advances in agriculture, in education, and in health. He outlines the new challenges for Japan - creating new markets in Europe, and in return, opening up their domestic market to foreign competition for the first time; solving the problem of Japan's high-cost economy; problems caused by such practices as lifetime employment; and, the need for able political leadership.

Eight years later (in 1971), Drucker wrote 'What We can Learn from Japanese Management', very lucidly outlining three traits of Japanese management that made Japanese business so effective - the importance of consensus, not so much in making a decision, as in actually understanding a problem and the need for a decision; the practice of lifetime employment and how it harmonizes job security with flexibility in labour cost; the Japanese mentorship tradition in organizations and how that results in developing able leaders for the future.

Drucker includes two obituaries in the collection. The first is that of Henry Ford, who he credits with bringing together isolated ideas of the 19th century to evolve the technique of mass production, thereby solving a lot of the problems associated with typical capitalist society of the 19th century which led to the birth of Marxism. Mass production, Drucker says, was not just a production technique, it was a technique of social organization. It gave birth to its own problems, during Ford's lifetime - no worker having skills to produce something entirely on his own, etc.

The second obituary is that of John Maynard Keynes. Like Ford, Keynes is also seen as a great man in his field (economics) who saw the grand success of his theories but also the failure of his economic policies during his lifetime. Keynes' introduction of the idea of money itself being an important psychological factor in man's economic decisions (and not just the economically rational factors of supply & demand) was revolutionary. It helped explain the phenomena of depression and unemployment, at a time when it was most required. At the same time, the economic policies he devised for Britain, and later, proposed for the international economy, betrayed the fact that his political belief was still that of the classical economist - a laissez faire economy with government doing only some slight nudging and pushing, and even that on the basis of purely economic indicators and not political factors. The failure of such policies was immediately visible in America's New Deal.

'Men, Ideas & Politics' - I

2006-01-25T20:46:00.000-08:00

This is the first complete book by Peter Drucker (Basic Books, 1971) that I read recently. It is indeed quite strange that one can go through an entire B-school curriculum without encountering Drucker's writing anywhere. Reading this collection of essays, I also felt that Drucker was the only eminent thinker on management to have knowledge and interests much vaster than this field. Consequently, he could make sense of and understand the significance of things others would ignore, as far as management thought goes.

This is a collection of essays written at various times, but all revolving around the theme of 'social ecology', as Drucker called it. It refers to the interaction of economic, political and social thought and action. I will touch upon some of the essays here.

In 'The New Markets and the New Entrepreneurs', Drucker does what he was considered great at - prediction. It consists of insightful observations about the next age of markets and consumers, the new workforce (for which he uses the term 'knowledge workers', which he
coined), the age of the multinational company, etc.

'The Unfashionable Kierkegaard' is on a totally different wicket. It's about the philosophy of the 19th-century philosopher Soren Kierkegaard - that man's existence is one of constant tension between his individuality and his citizenship in society. It is therefore fundamentally different from Marx's, Rousseau's and Hegel's ideas of man's existence having meaning only through society. It is the fact of death which makes Kierkegaard's ideas more believable, for in death man is ultimately on his own. The philosophy envisions man's existence as essentially tragic, but Kierkegaard proposed faith as the means to overcome the despair resulting from the tension of existence.

In 'Calhoun's Pluralism', Drucker outlines how the American government at the Federal level works. He asserts that American democracy functions in a unique way - through allocating work on all important issues to various Committees and Sub-Committees of the Congress. Each
Committee actually represents a special interest group, and thus the allocation of work to different Committees itself gives an indication of what kind of legislation might appear. Thus, the US is governed by the principle of 'sectional and interest compromise', rather than a clash of different ideologies. It is the kind of pluralism that the 19th-century thinker John Calhoun first wrote about.

Manfest - IV

2006-01-24T04:35:00.000-08:00

Talk by Mr. Ashok Desai

On the 22nd, I attended an impromptu talk by Mr. Ashok Desai. He is a person who speaks his mind, and clearly expressed his irritation with the way the previous day's panel discussion had gone. Whatever he wanted to say at the discussion, he would say now, he stated. It was only a 40-minute session, but Mr. Desai put forth certain ideas related to India's position in the world.

The two main ideas that came out from his talk were: one, that corporate India's earnings growth over the last several quarters has been helped a lot by India's favourable forex reserve position and low interest rates, besides increase in internal efficiency of enterprises; two, that India should allow Bangladeshis free entry and exit into and from India, arguing that their contribution to India's GDP would be more than the cost to the country of maintaining them, and of the cost of keeping them out. Dwelling on the first idea, he predicted that this high earnings growth pattern would slow down some time in the next financial year itself. It was a little difficult to agree with his second view. He argued that the Bangladeshis who came to India would go to places where jobs were available (like Mumbai and Gujarat) and do something, anything. Mr. Desai said he did not believe that there was a labour surplus in India, as everyone was involved in some kind of work (even if it was vending peanuts) to make a living. He did not consider the social cost of even more people emigrating to already overcrowded cities, competing with Indian people, and creating social tensions thereby.

Finance panel discussion

A panel discussion on the Indian financial markets went much better than the earlier discussion, but that too, was only because of the first two panelists mentioned below: Mr. Arun Kejriwal, equity market analyst and founder of KRIS, who also moderated the discussion (incidentally, his son is our batchmate here); Mr. Harihar, from the Derivatives unit of Karvy Stockbroking; Mr. C. V. Rao, a senior executive with SIDBI; Mr V. K. Garg, CMD of Power Finance Corporation; and Dr. M. Ravi Sundar, V-P of Morgan Stanley India, and till recently, professor of finance at IIML.

The first two panelists fielded most of the questions on the Indian equity markets, like: the regulatory setup and how it compared with the rest of the world; the valuations in the markets today; whether the current bull run is sustainable; whether and when global liquidity might stop flooding India; the trend in specific sectors like sugar, etc. They answered the questions very crisply and made their position as clear as possible. As for the other panelists, their contribution was not substantial.

Performance by Naveen Prabhakar

Naveen Prabhakar is a stand-up comedy artiste who has appeared in the TV show 'The Great Indian Laughter Challenge'. His hour-long performance was quite amusing. His jokes were pretty crude actually, but I liked his mimicry skills. The highlight of his performance was the way he produced the sounds of the ankle ornaments: the paayal and the paazeb.

What I missed

Apart from attending or participating in all the events mentioned above, I also missed a few. I missed the opening ceremony with a talk by Mr. Ishaat Hussain, finance director of Tata Sons. I also missed, though deliberately, a talk on the Indian retail sector by Mr. Arvind Singhal, MD of KSA Technopak. Due to a clash with the Business Quiz prelims, I could not watch the stage play. I could not attend a talk on trading and investment in equities delivered by Mr. Harihar of Karvy, which was crisp and informative. I gave the performance by the rock band Parikrama a miss. And I also missed the party which began in the wee hours of the morning of the 22nd, and which people say they enjoyed a lot.

Manfest - III

2006-01-24T04:09:00.000-08:00

Theme panel discussion

The theme of Manfest this year is "India: Global Torchbearers" and there was a panel discussion on this theme. The panel comprised of eminent people: Mr. Ashok Desai, currently consulting editor with The Telegraph, and earlier with Business Standard; Mr. P. Mohammed Ali, eminent NRI (or Pravasi Bharatiya) from Oman; Mr. C. R. Prasad, former Chairman of GAIL; and Ms. Shelby Quast, a visiting professor at IIML in the field of International Law and Business Transactions. The discussion was moderated by Mr. Chetan Sharma of NDTV. The panel discussion on Corporate Social Responsibility last year had set high standards and this year's discussion failed quite miserably to live up to those standards.

The problems were basic: one of the speakers had prepared a speech on India's energy needs and natural gas as the fuel of the century (which was great except that the connection to the topic was not absolutely clear; plus, it was a presentation, and there was no discussion). Another speaker spoke for quite a lot of time without really answering the questions posed by the moderator. After half an hour, the discussion was going nowhere, and I had to take the extreme step of walking out.

Session with Mr. Sunil Handa

We had an interactive session with serial entrepreneur and professor of entrepreneurship at IIMA, Mr. Sunil Handa. The session was totally free-form, as Mr. Handa, after a brief introduction to the course he teaches at IIMA (one of the most popular on campus) and the methodology he adopts (one-to-one interaction, no case studies), settled into a question-and-answer format. The attendees' questions relating to entrepreneurship were answered by Mr. Handa in a typical style which was at once entertaining and inspiring. Mixing Hindi and English freely, Mr. Handa gave his views: why it was not essential (or even desirable) to pursue a job for a few years before starting up one's own venture; how an entrepreneur had to have the ability to cope with failure, move on and identify new opportunities; the importance of negotiation, cost-cutting, and continuous improvement capabilities; the importance of honesty in the long run, etc. It was a relatively short session, so he could not deal in depth with questions like how to identify opportunities; how to select an opportunity from among several alternatives available, etc. On the whole, it erred a bit on the side of exuberance, but then, in a short session and talking in general on the subject, I suppose the job that could best be done was one of inspiration than delving into the nitty-gritties.

Musical performance by KK

The main attraction on the evening of the 21st was a musical performance by the playback singer and artiste KK and his troupe. I like this man's voice. It is fairly versatile, has a good bass, and is able to scale a fair range of pitches. As he performed one song after another, I realized that he now has a sizable number of hit movie songs to his credit. His performance was received quite well by people and it was clear from his face that he was happy with the response he got, although he did seem a bit tired near the end.

Manfest - II

2006-01-22T04:44:00.000-08:00

Stage play

Last year's stage play based on Vijay Tendulkar's 'Shaantataa, Court chalu aahe' was memorable. This year's play, again directed by Ms. Neelam Gupta of the NSD, and enacted by IIML students, was based on a comedy by the great French satirist Moliere. Its title in Hindi was 'Bichhchhoo'. Unfortunately, I could only watch the final 20 minutes of the play because of the (fruitless) time spent on the second round of the Business Quiz. So it's not quite right for me to pass judgment on the whole play, but somehow, I did not find it quite that good this year. As the director said after the play, comedy is not easy even for professional actors, and these amateurs were overacting, it seemed to me. This is not to say that they did not put in effort. The story too, did not seem to carry much import or make any biting comments on society, something that makes satire so insightful and enjoyable.

Sporting lessons

It was a pleasure and an honour to listen to two of India's best sportsmen in their respective fields - Geet Sethi and Lt. Col. Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore. Incidentally, both their sports (billiards and shooting) involve the crucial faculty of mental concentration, and they both dwelled on similar themes of achieving success or excelling through emphasis on concentration and on the process of performing. What they said applied more or less to most non-sporting careers as well.

Geet Sethi emphasised the point that your lifestyle determines your ability to concentrate, giving the example of the lifestyles of himself and of Prakash Padukone when in their prime. To him, excellence in an area of interest, or a job well done, was 'success', and to achieve it, one might have to go to the extremes of austere lifestyle. Concentration, consistency, and co-operation or humility, were the three virtues of the sportsperson (and indeed apply to other fields of endeavour). He also dwelled on what he called the 'sweet spot' - something which gives immense satisfaction when achieved. The frequency of hitting the 'sweet spots' increased with one's ability to become more single-minded. He reserved a few chosen words for the mobile phone, which he believed was a curse to mental concentration. He also touched upon stress, whose cause he defined simply as the tendency of the mind to wander into the past or the future instead of carrying out the present task as well as one could. Setting tight deadlines led to increased stress primarily because the mind would then tend to have one eye constantly on the future, decreasing the total concentration over the task at hand. He spoke forcefully and put across his point quite well.

Lt. Col. Rathore too, dwelt on success as being a very personal thing. Pursuing success as defined by others or by society, would not be much different from chasing a mirage. Single-minded effort on the present task was again emphasised. He said he had an 'I CAN' (Improvement which is Constant And Never-ending) philosophy. He derived his inspiration from certain individuals as well as through books. The important point he put forth, and which I liked, was that of a personal value system and the importance of means. As much as ends are important, means are equally so, and so personal ethics were all-important.

Manfest - I

2006-01-22T04:23:00.000-08:00

As I had said in my last post, the last three days (including today) have given me some good material to write about, as IIML's annual management fest - Manfest - was held. Besides some thought-provoking talks and panel discussions and some entertainment, this Manfest has also enriched me monetarily :).

Capital gains

I took part in two quizzes and two other competitions, and won quite a lot of money. In the Business Quiz, conducted by Gautam Bhimani, the man from ESPN-Star Sports, our team consisting of Samrat and I did not qualify for the finals. However, we won the General Quiz conducted by one of our alumni of the 2004 batch - Gaurav Sabnis (he maintains a very popular blog here). In another contest billed the 'Battle of B-schools' - a team game consisting of solving a series of puzzles, etc. - we again did not qualify for the final round. And finally, in the well-known Beer Game - a game on supply chain and the so-called 'bullwhip effect' - we won and collected a handsome amount.

Quizzes

I'll dwell on the quizzes first. Last year, the Business Quiz was a hit with the general audience because of its entertaining character, while the General Quiz could not have been worse. This year, it was the opposite, at least for me. Gautam Bhimani may have given it his best effort, but it failed to make the quiz very interesting. In fact, it resembled the well-known 'Brand Equity quiz' more than a business quiz. Most questions were of the fact-based, you-either-know-it-or-you-don't variety. There were a few good questions thrown in, to be sure, but they were too few. Advertising, marketing, brands and sports dominated the quiz. To be frank, I had set a much better business quiz last year in the inter-hostel event called Tansen. I don't understand why connects and other more exotic formats generally used in quizzes are hardly ever used by these professional quizmasters. Business history and business environment are very fascinating subjects, and they deserve a better deal. No team from IIML made it to the finals, which decreased the popular interest in the quiz somewhat.

The General Quiz more than lived up to expectations. Gaurav Sabnis had set up a very enjoyable quiz, spanning a wide variety of areas, with intelligently set up connects. These were the best couple of hours of quizzing I have had in a long time. The contest was also close between our team and another IIML team which eventually came second, so the quiz was alive till the last round. We were both in good form, so winning gave added satisfaction.

A 'place' in the sun

2006-01-16T01:08:00.000-08:00

This ten-day long break is the longest that I have taken on this blog. The reasons are twofold and apparently contradictory (but not really so): nothing much is happening, and the lateral placements process (for which I am eligible) are going on. So something is happening - people are getting jobs, daily talk is dominated by who has got an offer from which company, whether he/she will accept it or not, and the merits and demerits of his/her decision. Yet this is not too different from the routine that placements in B-schools in India go through, so there is nothing extraordinary to report. I had applied selectively to only a few companies, and have so far failed to make any headway. So in the words of lyricist Shailendra (writing for the film 'Naukri'): 'ek chhoTii sii naukarii kaa talabagaar huu.N mai.n' :). Of course, students here don't desire a 'chhoTii sii naukarii' (expectations of IIM students being quite high and all that), so bargaining over pay and profiles is very common.

As IIML's annual management festival - 'Manfest' - approaches, there is hope of getting a lot of material to write about, as there are a lot of good speakers coming down to campus.

Sportsline

2006-01-04T21:47:00.000-08:00

The last week has seen little activity except in sports. The inter-section sports tournament consisting of table-tennis, badminton, volleyball, cricket, basketball and football has been keenly contested. Although the situation is that, with football yet to be played, the positions of the four sections have already been established, each game was played with a competitive mindset. Our section has not done badly at all, emerging second through the tournament. Every day, a couple of hours after dinner were devoted to watching some or the other match. The cold did not deter the players from staging some exciting contests. As always, I enjoyed watching, and, for a very brief while, playing, volleyball. The most keenly contested final was definitely the 5-set volleyball final. All in all, a good diversion towards the end of the course.

Happenings

2005-12-30T05:54:00.000-08:00

Just a few developments that I am noting for the record:

Academics are very light this term, but very interesting nevertheless. Management of Financial Services being a very practical course, International Finance having great intrinsic interest value and ERP having value in the lateral placements and being important otherwise too, the going is good so far.
Lateral placements start next week and some time has been spent in thinking about where to apply, in looking up information on companies and in actually applying.
After-dinner hours have recently been devoted to sports as an inter-class sports tournament is on based on the first-year class distribution. Old section loyalties have awoken and the competition has been good.
The cold has intensified in the last few days, largely unaccompanied by fog. This morning there was a heavy fog but it dispersed very quickly.
I completed another P. G. Wodehouse book - 'Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit'. It shares quite a lot, perhaps too much, with 'The Code of the Woosters', in terms of the plot, the roles of different characters, the situations, etc. Some excellent uses of the language fetch good laughs, but still the latter is much the better work.
The power situation has been abysmal here for the last few days. The computer is bearing the brunt of sudden and frequent power outages.

'Soros on Soros'

2005-12-26T10:21:00.000-08:00

I completed the reading of this highly interesting book by famed international investor George Soros (John Wiley & Sons, 1995) today. The book, as Soros says, is a summing up of his life's work. Set in an interview format, the book has three parts: the first part on 'Investing & Global Finance' (with Byron Wien); the second part on 'Geopolitics, Philanthropy and Global Change' (with Krisztina Koenen) ; and the third part on 'Philosophy' (with Byron Wien again). But in this description, I think I will start with the third part first.

Soros comes across as a 'first-rate mind' (as Henry Kissinger has said, on the back cover of the book) when one reads his philosophy - not only his theory itself but also the clarity with which he has expressed it. At a time in life when he had made more money than he could possibly use in his lifetime through investing, he decided to pursue philanthropy by using his excess money for a worthy cause. That worthy cause was that of helping countries of Eastern Europe develop into 'open societies' after the collapse of communism around 1989. Soros unifies these two main fields of his activity - investing & philanthropy - by means of the theory of reflexivity that he developed several years ago (around 1962), after he had studied under the great Karl Popper.

The theory of reflexivity relates to socio-economic fields of activity, as opposed to the pursuit of natural science. According to Soros, and unlike Popper's assertion, theories of natural science cannot and should not be applied to the 'social sciences', including economics. This is because, in socio-economic fields, human beings are thinking participants and not objective observers. Their perceptions influence reality, and in turn, reality influences their perceptions (reflexivity). When this realization is combined with the assumption made by Soros that all human understanding is imperfect (and hence all mental constructs flawed in some way), it means that participants' perceptions and reality can never be identical. However, the gap between thinking and reality tends not to be very large much of the time (near-equilibrium conditions). This is particularly so when participants adhere to some fundamental values or purpose. But occasionally, the gap becomes large (far-from-equilibrium conditions). The latter kind of conditions can in turn be of two types - static disequilibrium (when the thinking is systematically following, or being forced to follow, a dogma while reality is something else); and dynamic disequilibrium (when continuing self-reinforcing biases reach a peak and turn self-defeating).

Using this theory, he explains, in the first part of the book, the boom/bust sequence that is observed in many financial markets. Here, we see Soros' great financial acumen in picking the far-from-equilibrium conditions to speculate and make money. In the second part of the book, we see the same theory being used to justify his advocacy of an 'open society' (where man's imperfect understanding leads him to respect other views and where human beings have genuine alternatives in life), as opposed to 'closed society' (e.g. communism). In this part, we see his superb grasp of international economics, as well as of the politics and socio-economic conditions prevailing in particular European countries after the collapse of communism and the reunification of Germany.

The book gives a detailed look inside a complex mind capable of thinking critically, by his own admission, and in terms of abstractions. Soros' development of the idea of open society and its desirability, benefits and pitfalls is highly readable. Also interesting are: the speech he gave in Berlin in 1993 on how he could predict the breakdown of the European exchange rate mechanism after Germany's reunification and make money on it, and the testimony before a US House of Representatives committee on hedge funds and the inherent instability of financial markets, increased by sophisticated new instruments like derivatives.

I miss mentioning a few important points, but I think I have captured the gist. Although the book may not be that easy to read for a wide audience - the aim of the book - I definitely think it is worth a committed attempt for anyone who wishes to understand the perspective on a changing world and the right attitude towards it, of a man who has been in the thick of change.

'Julius Caesar' and Asimov

2005-12-24T04:03:00.000-08:00

During the term break, I watched the Hollywood classic 'Cleopatra' at home. This reignited interest in knowing the exact story of Julius Caesar, Mark Antony & Cleopatra. After coming back, I decided to satisfy this curiosity by reading my first Shakespeare play in the original - 'Julius Caesar'. I chose to read the play rather than find a historical source directly because I have an electronic version of 'Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare' in 2 volumes, wherein sci-fi great Isaac Asimov annotates, in lucid and interesting detail, each of Shakespeare's plays. In these two wonderful volumes, Asimov fills in historical and mythological details not obvious from Shakespeare's plays, explains finer points in Shakespeare's use of language, provides nuggets of trivia, points out anachronisms, etc.

This simultaneous reading of the play and the annotations has now made the events of the pre-Caesar, Caesarian, and post-Caesar periods and the role of different characters in these clear to me. The way Julius Caesar rose to prominence late in life, was killed as much due to fear of his ambition as due to envy, the tremendous vanity and consequent foolishness of Brutus, and the end of the conspirators achieved by Antony and Octavius are fascinating to read about. One does feel sympathetic towards Caesar because of the egregious way in which he was betrayed, even though he was a dictator and had ambitions to proclaim himself king.

Much of the play is based by Shakespeare on Plutarch's original version of the events. The play has several famous lines and passages, and it coins some phrases which are in common use now. Cleopatra does not enter the play, and Asimov only mentions that when in Egypt, Caesar met Cleopatra. The film shows that Caesar had a son by Cleopatra and that Cleopatra had entered Rome in a triumph as ordered by Caesar. These do not seem to be historically correct. To complete the story which the film covers, I will read Shakespeare's 'Antony & Cleopatra' next, but not immediately.

'The Code of the Woosters'

2005-12-20T01:07:00.000-08:00

Believe me or not, this is the first P. G. Wodehouse book (Rupa, 1992) I read while travelling to and from home to the institute recently. How this author, so popular among Indian readers, as I have been able to note, came not to be read by so voracious - if that is the word - a reader as I so far is rather inexplicable. I knew this bird wrote well, but somehow I always came to prefer reading something else. Finally, this time, I thought it might make a good travelling companion, and "Right ho!", I said, and borrowed the book.

Bertie Wooster, as usual I suppose, gets himself embroiled in a growing web of difficult situash-es, implicitly following the code of the Woosters ('never let a pal down'). He has to rely on some of his own skills of oration and a lot of Jeeves' quick thinking to wriggle out of one difficulty, only to find himself immediately landed in another. Overall, quite humorous, this PGW.

(In the above, I was just trying my hand at imitating Wodehouse's writing style :). As stated in the foreword, though I found the reading humorous, I initially thought its appeal would be limited. That is, after a few novels, the reader would feel bored by the same nonsensical situations and the same turns of phrase. But every time I left the book, I had an urge to go back to it and have a good laugh. And having immediately borrowed another Wodehouse book now, I think I am beginning to understand why people enjoy his humour so much, even though the situations and the settings are typically British.)

Last hurrah

2005-12-18T07:10:00.000-08:00

After an extremely brief vacation lasting only 4 days, I am back at campus for the last term of the course. A shorter term, lasting 2 months and consisting of only 3 subjects, means that there will be a lot more time to utilise for some (hopefully) useful purpose. Of course, with the lateral placements happening during the term and the final placements following the term, activities related to these (like CV preparation, filling application forms, etc.) will take up some time. Let's hope this term also offers as much variety and opens up as many avenues in terms of studies as the previous two terms.

Nearing the end

2005-12-12T05:03:00.000-08:00

Term V ended for me today with all exams going surprisingly well. Now we are left with less than a 100 days to go before the course ends. The need to take stock will soon arise and then I plan to write a series on the lines of 'Making sense of my MBA experience', which was one of the assignments in a course on Leadership this term (I hadn't opted for it). The last term will, hopefully, be a breeze, with only 3 subjects and no mid-term exams. The break is extremely brief this time - less than a week - and I don't think my time home will be felt sufficient.

Task scheduling

2005-12-09T03:57:00.000-08:00

The end-term exams are on. There's nothing particularly interesting happening. Given how things work here, it's ironic how the last one or two weeks before the exams are very hectic with the project submissions and presentations, and when it's exam time, one actually feels relief :).

Normally hard-pressed for time in many descriptive exams, I have completed each one of the 5 exams so far ahead of time. Of course, the papers were a bit shorter this time. But the main difference is in how I went about writing the paper. Normally, I would look at the watch, see how much time is left, and calculate backwards based on safe estimates of how much time each remaining question would take. In other words, I would backward-schedule, and set intermediate deadlines mentally for each question.

This time I am constrained as my watch has run out of battery power and I don't have the time or inclination to go to the city and get a new battery. This means I have no time reference with which I can set intermediate deadlines (cell phones are not allowed in exams and the wall clock is generally too far away for me to make out the time). So I just do each task (e.g. reading a case, then writing the answers, etc.) as fast as I can (without too much loss of effectiveness, I hope). And I find that this way I am finishing papers faster.

Exactly the advice Eli Goldratt would have given me, and a good practical experience of the project scheduling methods outlined in 'Critical Chain', about which I have written earlier.

Time squeeze

2005-12-02T00:05:00.000-08:00

The familiar experience of leisure time vanishing near the end of the term is back. I am just hopping from project to project, from a submission to a quiz and then back to a submission. Of course, in this term, wilful neglect of projects early on in the term due to the spate of competitions that many people took part in, is a contributory factor to this situation. Generally, the quality of projects and term papers suffers because of this last-minute rush. But I have managed well so far in all my group projects and assignments.

Last weekend was the Index weekend - the marketing fair (or 'market intelligence event' as it has been repositioned to) conducted in Lucknow city. The Nehru Bal Vatika ground at Aliganj was the venue. Although the venue is smaller, the response from the Lucknow public was better because of Aliganj being a residential area, and the avoidance of a head-on clash with the Lucknow Mahotsav, which clashed with Index again. I was not involved with the event in any way, so a few of us just went there for half an hour or so.

The end-term exam, the penultimate exam of the course, is scheduled to start from Tuesday, the 6th. Preparation is shoddy so far, but fortunately, only a couple of subjects have some kind of heavy preparation to be done.

Death of a salesman

2005-11-25T05:40:00.000-08:00

One of our alumni, S. Manjunath, of the batch of 2002, was murdered in Lakhimpur-Kheri district of UP, allegedly by the owners of a petrol pump which he had sealed due to sale of adulterated diesel there. Manjunath was a sales officer of Indian Oil Corp. and was in charge of 35 petrol pumps in L-K district. The crime was reported in the print media only two or three days later (stories can be found here, here & here). The perpetrators have been caught, two of them red-handed (with the dead body). But one has to keep one's fingers crossed till they are actually convicted.

While this shocking incident brings to light the issue of petrol pump allotments and criminal elements having penetrated this business, it also brings to light the immense pressure under which honest sales officers of oil companies have to work under the operating guidelines for them. What it also highlights is the serious law & order problem that UP as a state has. For the last ten years or more, when one asked anyone about the worst governed state in India, Bihar's name would invariably come first. I argue, after having read about UP politics & crime and having watched a couple of excellent films on this issue, that UP is really not that different from Bihar in terms of lawlessness. Violence has become quite entrenched in people's minds. Murder is so common that only Sahir's biting lines do justice to the situation:

yahaan ik khilaunaa hai insaa.N kii hastii
ye bastii hai murdaa-paraston kii bastii
yahaan par to jiivan se hai maut sastii

Indeed, ye duniyaa agar mil bhii jaaye to kyaa hai?

Capital tour

2005-11-22T00:10:00.000-08:00

I went to Delhi with a friend over the weekend to participate in a corporate finance contest at the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade (IIFT). I was visiting Delhi for only the second time. The first visit had been 15 years ago, and was for only a day. This time again, the visit was limited to 24 hours. Reaching Delhi was a breeze, as we took the Lucknow-Delhi Shatabdi Express, but the return journey had the usual problems - RAC ticket, late train, etc.

IIFT is located in the Qutab Institutional Area in south Delhi. This area houses several institutions: private business schools, the Lal Bahadur Shastri Sanskrit Vidyapeeth, the Indian Statistical Institute (Delhi centre), the offices of the Central Water Commission, etc. That distances are immense in Delhi became apparent from the time it took us to reach it from my friend's house in east Delhi. On the way, we passed through Rajpath and the India Gate, a road leading to Raj Ghat, AIIMS, IIT Delhi, etc. The journey was made pleasant by the wide roads that New Delhi enjoys, along with a reduction in pollution due to extensive use of CNG as a fuel.

The contest itself was a part of IIFT's management fest called Quo Vadis. The activity levels at the institute were pretty low and there seemed to be more informal events than more serious ones. Having reached there at around 11am in the morning, we were handed a copy of the National Steel Policy (released recently) and asked to analyse the prospects of a global steel company wanting to enter India using any external data on the industry that we wished to use. So most of the time till 4pm was spent looking up relevant facts and statistics on the steel industry and loosely devising an approach.

The contest had 6 finalist teams, and consisted of three written rounds of 15 minutes each, involving the three corporate finance decisions of Investment, Financing and Dividend. These were evaluated by a panel of two judges - executives from the steel industry (from SAIL and Nova Steel, respectively). The overall strategy was then to be presented to the judges. Although we couldn't see the presentations of the other teams, I think most of us harped on the same points (locating near the source of iron ore; breaking up the supply chain of steel and performing each part where it was cheapest; importance of transportation costs, etc.). In the end, we lost out mainly because of one glaring mistake that we made in calculating and presenting the debt-equity ratio we wished to keep for our venture. But overall, it was well-organized and the experience was good. One of the judges also clarified some important facts about the steel industry after the presentations (the segmentation of steel products into long products and flat products, the differences in their demand characteristics; how semi-finished steel production provides economies of scale, rather than finished steel production; that Mittal Steel and others were entering India not out of love for the country, but because of its rich iron ore reserves :) ).

Surrealism

2005-11-17T07:44:00.000-08:00

Recent happenings on campus seem almost surreal, straight out of a dream (or rather, a nightmare). The proliferation of animals is giving some real problems. The dogs are as wild and as numerous as ever. After the dog-bite incident, another stunning incident happened yesterday evening. Right in front of the academic block, a rampaging nilgai gave two first-year students no chance of reacting as it grounded them. One of them fell unconscious and sustained a hairline fracture in the arm. So fast was the nilgai that this guy never actually saw it - before or after the incident. And who should be behind all this but the dogs. Two dogs, which must have been troubling the nilgai, had aroused the excitable Big Bertha to charge down to the academic block.

Later, at night, two of my friends discovered a dead dog near my hostel. This dog was in rigor mortis, with horror on its face and no apparent signs of injury :). Possibly, it might have suffered from a poor heart, and the sight of a nilgai at full throttle was too much for its heart to bear :).
Another weird sighting in the evening today was a dog with something resembling a shirt collar on its back, looking like it had just returned from a fresh attack on someone.

Today we asked a guard on our half-walk (the full walk is rendered impossible by the bovine creatures) about the nilgai. He said there was a whole family of them on campus, some of which were walled in when the campus wall was built! Now, they can jump the wall, and go in and out at will. Some dogs were foolish enough to kill a baby nilgai, igniting the dog-nilgai battle.

Now the list of animals spotted on campus reads as follows: dogs, nilgai-s, snakes, foxes/jackals, (allegedly) hyenas, tortoises, porcupines, peacocks. Enough to declare IIML a sanctuary and earn revenue through tourism.

Owing to the numerous holidays this term, the class schedule has also gone for a toss. Scheduling is a nightmare, and notices on classes are coming thick and fast. Perhaps a stock ticker-type announcement mechanism is required, the regular noticeboard won't work :).

Guest lecture on data mining

2005-11-14T08:15:00.000-08:00

As part of the BIDM (Business Intelligence & Data Mining) course, we had an interesting guest lecture delivered by Mr. Rajiv Pratap, COO, Virtual Gold. His company, co-founded by him and other IBM employees in the US in 1997, has developed cutting-edge data mining technology which they have deployed in several different industries for their clients. It was an excellent, first-hand insight into a business model based on data mining technology.

What captured the students' attention most was that they had begun with an application in a relatively unlikely area - sports. A data mining application called Advanced Scout was developed for basketball coaches for analysing basketball games (pre-match, post-match and even real-time) to discover patterns in their own and opposing teams' plays and exploit these patterns. Sports is big business in the USA and this must have been a lucrative foray, because the software is quite expensive. But there is an outcome uncertainty here: if every team starts employing the software, games can either improve in quality, or become more mechanical.

After dwelling on this software, Mr. Pratap took us through the conventional data mining process. Then, he introduced us to autonomic reporting, a technique developed in-house to proactively alert managers or decision-makers to patterns in data that the decision-makers are currently exploring through more conventional means (like OLAP-based queries). This integration of OLAP with data mining in a single web-based interface is a good development. As Mr. Pratap said, in most cases, users used the OLAP part much more and used the data mining application only in cases where there was a recognized problem which had to be investigated. Now, with this integration, many inquiries can be accompanied by a pattern discovered by mining relevant data (normally pre-discovered and stored in a pattern store), enabling greater use of data mining.

'SCM & IT - the Asian Paints Story'

2005-11-10T20:24:00.000-08:00

This was the topic of the talk delivered yesterday by Mr. Soren Malekar - General Manager, Materials for Asian Paints. The talk was to cover Asian Paints' experience with successful IT-enablement of their own supply chain. Unfortunately, I could not attend the full talk because I was participating in an online contest. Still, I was there for an hour or so.

The talk was delivered very informally, encouraging participation from the audience. In fact, it was as entertaining (perhaps more so) as it was informative. Most people from industry bring this slightly cynical, slightly sarcastic attitude with them, particularly towards theory and towards consultants and their practices. Mr. Malekar has been with Asian Paints for 14 years now in various capacities, and so had a very good overall picture of the business to offer.

The session opened with an introduction to Asian Paints' complex, 5-layer supply chain. The lesson was that while designing a supply chain and while IT-enabling it, the emphasis should be on how the firm can gain competitive advantage from it. AP decided to make quick and reliable delivery for their fast-moving paints products through an integrated supply chain their competitive advantage. This competitive advantage also included an extensive and motivated sales force. AP owns three layers of the supply chain - the paint factories, the regional distribution centres and the sales depots. The final layer - the dealers (hardware stores and the like) were not fully IT-enabled as yet, because of various reasons: the prohibitive cost of IT-enabling 18000+ dealers; space constraints in most dealer stores; low immediate value from point-of-sales data for a product with predictable demand (note: not stable demand, as paints demand shows seasonality, especially on festivals like Diwali). Certain other areas explored in SCM theory, like trans-shipment, were shown to be difficult to implement in practice.

Mr. Malekar then went back to the period of 1997-98 when the IT initiative began at AP. Earlier, they had an in-house SCM solution and a long-term relationship with the consultants Booz-Allen & Hamilton. But this solution was proving to be too difficult to scale. Indeed, several attempts were made by independent entrepreneurs to 'optimize' AP's supply chain, to no avail. Certain key decisions were taken at this stage, including: deciding that it would be best to go for state-of-the-art IT infrastructure despite having a commanding market share of the Indian market; zeroing in on i2 Technologies' as their implementation partner, etc. They implemented the IT system in three layers: the Execution layer at the lowest level; the Transaction layer in the middle (consisting of SAP R/3 ERP); and the Decision Support layer at the top, which included i2's SCM modules like Demand Planner, Master Planner, Production Scheduler, etc.

The next part of the talk was to deal with each of these modules, but I couldn't attend it.

Summers and winters

2005-11-09T09:58:00.000-08:00

As winter gains ascendance over Lucknow, it was time for summer placements on campus for the last few days. It was, as usual, a busy time for both batches - the PGP1's getting placed and the PGP2's conducting the entire process. I had my share of running around to do. But it had its positive aspects, two of which were: getting to know many more people of the junior batch in a short time; and observing the behaviour of people coming here from various industries and companies. From an observation of the latter, it becomes clear how pervasive 'corporate culture' is: an example comes from two leading firms in the FMCG industry in India, whose people behaved in totally different ways - one aggressive and demanding (perhaps overly so), the other more friendly and accommodating.

'Thinking Strategically' - I

2005-11-06T09:29:00.001-08:00

I took a month to finish this fabulous book by Professors Avinash Dixit and Barry Nalebuff (W. W. Norton & Co., 1991). The book's sub-title is: 'The competitive edge in business, politics, and everyday life'. It deals with 'strategic interactions' that individuals and organizations experience in their everyday life from the perspective of game theory.

The book is basically a very informal and example-laden introduction to game theory and its applications. The numerous examples are stylized versions of situations found in sports, politics, business, and other social relationships. The premise of the book is that every person must behave 'strategically', by which is meant that in making any decision or undertaking any action, one must be rational oneself, as well as assume that one's competitor(s) will behave rationally too. In the book's words: 'strategic thinking is the art of outdoing an adversary, knowing that the adversary is trying to do the same to you'. Thus, game theory becomes a theory of competition (the reason we study it in the ATSC course). The book succeeds in capturing the reader's attention throughout by its lucid language and interesting and entertaining examples.

The importance of game theory lies in its wide range of applications, a fact which is corroborated by the awarding of the Nobel Prize in Economics to pioneering game theorists (John Nash, as well as this year's winners, Aumann and Tom Schelling).

However, game theory alone cannot function as a theory of business strategy and competition. It is a theory of social interaction, and has applications in business strategy, but isn't the be-all and end-all of it. One notable criticism is that adopting only a game-theoretic view of dealing with competition may make an organization fail to develop any fundamental source of competitive advantage, spending all its time only in moves and counter-moves to competitive behaviour; in other words, too many tactics, too little strategy. Another is that competitive situations in real life (in business or otherwise) are seldom so simple that all outcomes are known with exact payoffs for each competitor. Lack of information or incorrect information can break down many of the techniques. As for its social applications, the game-theoretic assumption of mutual rationality is far-fetched, as most of us have experienced. One doesn't need to deal with a lunatic or a brainwashed terrorist or an egoistic dictator to realize this. Most of us make decisions on an emotional or non-rational basis every day.

'Thinking Strategically' - II

2005-11-06T09:29:00.000-08:00

Now for a description of the book and its contents, which go beyond business alone (as reflected in the sub-title). What follows may not be immediately comprehensible to readers not familiar with game theory, because I have summarized the contents of the book in brief, and as such, the concepts are taken out of their context and shorn of detail.

The book is divided into three parts. The first part deals with the most basic concepts of game theory: dominant strategies, dominated strategies, Nash equilibrium; first, in sequential games and then, in simultaneous games. These concepts help in 'anticipating your rival's response', and 'seeing through your rival's strategy'.

The second part deals with more advanced concepts. The famous 'prisoner's dilemma' is introduced and its solution by mutual co-operation of players is explored. Related concepts like detection of cheating, desirable characteristics of punishment and tit-for-tat strategies are discussed. The chapter on strategic moves deals with moves that 'are designed to alter the beliefs and actions of others in a direction favourable to oneself'. In this context, unconditional moves and conditional moves (threats and promises) are explored. A related concept is that of credible commitments. In order to make a strategic move credible to your competitors, you must make a commitment which might leave you with less options than before, but makes your path ahead clearer. This chapter shows eight ways to achieve credibility (by use of reputation; contracts; cutting off communications; burning bridges behind you; leaving the outcome to chance; moving in small steps; teamwork; use of mandated negotiating agents). In case of games where there is no dominant strategy, and no Nash equilibrium, players have to used mixed strategies (random or unpredictable strategies). Just how unpredictable each player should be and how moves should be mixed up is the subject of another chapter.

The third part has chapters dealing with very specific topics in game theory. The chapter on brinkmanship defines it as: 'the deliberate creation of a recognizable risk, a risk that one does not completely control; the tactic of deliberately letting the situation get somewhat out of hand, just because being out of hand may be intolerable to the other party and force his accommodation'. The most common example of brinkmanship is in nuclear deterrence. The next chapter deals with situations in which Adam Smith's 'invisible hand' of self-interest fails to achieve common good. Thus, it deals with implications for public policy in such situations where some things don't have a set price. The chapter on voting strategies deals with the limitations of majority rule in deciding outcomes, less common voting schemes like 'approval voting', etc. The chapter on bargaining, a short one, deals with how 'looking forward and reasoning backward' applies to bargaining, application of brinkmanship to bargaining, etc. Finally, the chapter on incentives deals with how to construct incentive schemes to motivate a worker to give off his best effort; and to ensure truthfulness and efficient outcomes in case of joint venture contracts and sealed-bid auctions.

The book ends with a chapter which only has case studies - puzzles solvable by applying the concepts introduced in the book.

Planning under uncertainty

2005-11-04T21:11:00.000-08:00

Faced with an uncertain environment, should one plan less or more? We have encountered this question a few times under different courses here. Even in very uncertain environments, planning by scenario-building helps build expectations, more than anything else. I built two scenarios for my Term IV GPA, a best-case scenario and a worst-case scenario, faced with the uncertainty of the way grades are allotted, as well as the uncertainty arising from my middling, ambiguous position in most subjects. The best-case scenario predicted a TG of 7.4 and the worst-case one, 6.33. It turns out that, with minor internal adjustments, my TG has actually come out at exactly 7.4. Maybe I'll become a good strategic planner :) (of course, I didn't have to make any personal resource allocations based on the scenarios).

Diwali, dingos, etc.

2005-11-01T06:15:00.000-08:00

The hostels and other buildings are illuminated with lights and rangoli-s are being created in each hostel as Diwali gets celebrated on campus. There was to be a round of fireworks in the Commercial Plaza as well. Let's see what's for dinner today. But otherwise, it has been pretty much like any other holiday. When we went to the city a couple of days ago, it seemed to be gearing up for the occasion, with myriad small stalls selling all kinds of stuff set up.

There has been some development on another count too. The stray dogs on campus, who have multiplied prodigiously in recent times, have suddenly turned more aggressive and wild. There was a dog-bite incident at night a couple of days ago to which we were close witnesses. The following day, a few of the dogs were picked up and taken away, but many of them continue to fight internecine wars and trouble people. With all due respect to animal lovers, these dogs are a big menace and must be treated accordingly.

'Competition in Markets'

2005-10-30T08:23:00.000-08:00

This was the topic on which a talk was delivered by Mr. Amitabh Kumar, Director-General of the Competition Commission of India. This talk was as part of the event called IBLC organized by the Innovision committee. Following Mr. Pradip Baijal's talk some time ago, this was the second government regulator/monitoring authority we were getting to interact with in a short time. And this interaction was also as good as the first one.

For the students of the strategy course called ATSC, this was actually like a guest lecture for the course. Mr. Kumar opened wittily by saying that he was going to prepare a speech for this occasion, but keeping in mind the teaching methods in B-schools, he had decided to make a
PowerPoint presentation. And the presentation was beautifully structured, each slide to the point and maintaining flow.

The aspects covered included the things that competition regimes (including Acts and monitoring mechanisms) across the world normally monitored: prohibiting anti-competitive agreements; prohibiting abuse of dominant position; regulation of combinations ('merger control'); and advocating competition. Each aspect was defined and the considerations involved in determining whether a party or parties had undermined competition under each, was discussed. Some of these considerations were: defining 'market power' and the whether a party
had used it unfairly; defining 'dominant position' and its determinants; defining 'relevant market' for each case. Some details of the Indian Competition Act, 2002, were discussed. All of the above was discussed using several examples from around the world in a range of industries, from shipping and railroads to software to bananas. The questions posed by the audience were also answered more than adequately, with more examples.

Mr. Kumar is obviously very well read and has wonderful knowledge in his area of work (including minute details of famous cases and judgments involving competition-related issues). It is always a joy to listen to and interact with a person who knows his job very well. Two hours very well spent today.

What's in a game?

2005-10-30T08:20:00.000-08:00

Four of us took part in a game called 'minDunes' yesterday. This was a sub-event of an event called IBLC conducted by the Innovision committee here. Our team had not qualified for the entire event, for which an elimination round had been held earlier. But competition for 3 IIML teams was thrown open for this particular sub-event, the teams to be chosen by a short quiz. We made it to the event through this route.

Besides 4 teams from IIML, the event had teams from IIMs A, B & I, and XLRI - a total of 10 teams. The game consisted of devising a growth strategy for an Indian telecom firm, each team being given a different company. Through three rounds, we had to react to regulatory and competitive developments in devising our strategy. Besides, we had to make a decision on whether to acquire four different firms which were up for sale. Our team had got a very weak player, whose fundamentals were going nowhere - making losses and having a negative net worth, even after 5-6 years of operation. So we decided that the most suitable strategy for us would be to find an interested strategic investor or a fellow Indian telecom firm and get acquired.

Finally, all teams had to present their strategy to the judges. While some of the teams had reasoned quite well in building their strategies, some were without focus, and even plain wrong. The telecom industry is not an easy one to understand, considering the vast array of services that are included, and the technologies and regulatory constraints present. So some terminology was used incorrectly. Our presentation was by far the simplest. We did not find any use for acquisitions, and instead declared that we were up for sale ourselves. We did make an elementary accounting mistake, but it did not have any impact on our strategy. We also answered the questions posed fairly adequately. However, the judges apparently didn't think so, for we ended up at or near the bottom of the pile. I don't think our performance was that bad, but then, what's in a game? (No actually, there's a lot in a game, but the above statement was just an attempt at self-consolation :) ).

Talk by Mr. Raman Roy

2005-10-28T10:21:00.000-07:00

As part of an event called 'Nirvaan', we had the 'father of the Indian BPO industry', Mr. Raman Roy, speak to us on 'Entrepreneurial opportunities in the BPO/KPO sector' today. It was a great opportunity to listen to the man who is on to his next venture in this sector called Access Intellect.

Mr. Roy chose to talk, not of specific emerging opportunities in the BPO/KPO sector, but of his own experience as an entrepreneur who not only created a company (Spectramind), but founded an industry when he was with American Express; and also of the immense & continuing potential of the BPO sector, as well as some of its challenges. His passion and wit were both great to watch and listen to. After outlining certain characteristics of an 'entrepreneur' (self-belief and belief in the business idea, execution capability, risk appetite, customer-centricity, 'creating a workable environment for delivering what the customer wants'), he defined the three main things that an entrepreneur in the BPO industry had to manage: infrastructure; technology; people.

On infrastructure, he commented on India's groaning infrastructure and how international customers feel the software & BPO firms have created an 'oasis in a desert' in their campuses. Over the years, they have had to struggle with infrastructure, creating their own wherever possible. Technology had to be adequate, but not necessarily the best or the latest. People management is the real tough problem. This is where an entrepreneur has to 'make everyone else believe in his dream, and together with them, make the dream bigger'. He said he was proud of an employee who, on being asked in a one-on-one with a customer representative on a due-diligence visit about what made Spectramind different, said: 'yahaan par gadhe se bhii ghoDe kii tarah kaam karavaayaa jaataa hai'!

He dwelled on India's minuscule share (1.6%) in the global BPO market, and that this itself showed the vast opportunities still inherent in the case, even though the media has started trashing the BPO sector as essentially dead. Add to this the fact that the definitions of an enterprise's core and non-core business activities are changing (what is core today becomes non-core and outsource-able tomorrow). But, he said, in moving from a simple cost-arbitrage business model to a model where the quality and skill content of work became order winners, 'this industry needs professional help'. So, roles for management professionals are becoming clearer in the industry.

The talk was delivered with style and self-belief, and it was certainly an excellent opportunity to listen to him. In the end, the correspondents of a couple of warring newspapers were brushed off disdainfully (perhaps because of the same old questions on handling attrition, etc.). He did answer the question on attrition by saying that the attrition rate from the industry was 20%, which is fine. At the company level, it may be 3 or 4 times that, and that just reflected a supply shortage situation, where a higher salary would definitely wean employees away from one firm to another. As demand and supply of workforce become more equal, this attrition rate will come down. Till then, firms just had to manage.

Mid-terminated

2005-10-26T04:29:00.000-07:00

The last mid-term exams of the course (there won't be a mid-term exam in the last term) ended today. It may be that all's well that ends well. But what if all goes well except the end? That's what happened to me as I wrote the first 6 exams quite well, but was checkmated in the last one - Financial Derivatives.

But then, everyone else was stumped as well. The subject is highly quantitative, and requires extensive use of calculations. But this paper did not require the help of a calculator. It required the abilities of Shakuntala Devi in order to do well (i.e. complete the paper in 2 hours). One of the questions required so much calculation that I spent 5-10 minutes just wondering if there was a trick or a shortcut to the answer. The paper did not require conceptual strength much at all, so I wonder what the point of it all was. I feel bad about this because I really like this subject, and I think I am quite sound conceptually.

Bulldozed

2005-10-22T20:08:00.000-07:00

My friend Samrat got a taste of the wild environs here yesterday evening while he was on a jog. He came nearly face-to-face with a blue bull (nilgai, as we call it; and which is not a 'bull', but belongs to the antelope family). Now these nilgai-s are infamous around here for attacking people, even vehicles. (This was strange to me, because I knew nilgai-s as troublesome - particularly to farmers around Vadodara - but not menacing animals.) Samrat nearly managed to excite the animal's attention and caused some tense moments. How and whence this Big Bull came inside the campus is a mystery.

Lately, we have seen a few snakes, jackals and a small tortoise on our walks here, besides the usual peacocks and other birds.

'Seven Samurai'

2005-10-22T07:22:00.000-07:00

It's been some time since I wrote two exam papers without making some major mistake. And so the mid-terms are going well so far. I just found time to write about this acclaimed Akira Kurosawa film which I saw over the last few days (in 4 sessions, since the film stretches to 3.25 hours).

Having watched Kurosawa's 'Rashomon' before, I had high expectations from this film. And besides, I had read so much about it. It has inspired the spaghetti Western genre in Hollywood and samurai movies in Japan, besides our very own 'Sholay' (to some extent) and 'China Gate'. This film remains one of a kind though, and I really enjoyed watching it.

This is not art-house cinema, though it can be viewed from the point of view of analyzing Kurosawa's cinematic devices, technique and expertise. It performs best as a story well told - the story of a Japanese village of the 16th century harassed no end by bandits who come down from the hills every now and then; the story of 7 brave, duty-bound and unemployed samurai who decide to defend the village and destroy the bandits, while taking as compensation only three meals a day and no monetary reward.

The story is developed at a leisurely pace - consider the fact that the first bandit encounter with the assembled samurai team does not occur until we are 2 hours into the film. But that doesn't make the film uninteresting. The abject poverty of the villagers, and yet the small treasures they have hidden away; the assembling of the samurai team, each one of a different disposition and having complementary skills; the tenuous relationship between the farmers and the samurai because of the farmers' earlier experiences with samurai; and other things give the viewer a glimpse into Japanese culture, values and social norms like no reference book can provide.

And then there are the fight scenes. Even in black-and-white, the scenes inspire awe (at the expertise with which they have been shot), a bit of revulsion (at the brutality with which the villagers kill isolated bandits), sadness (at the killing of a villager or a samurai). The final fight scene is especially brilliant, shot in pouring rain, with people fighting and running all over the place in mud and slush. The final dialogues between two of the three surviving samurai give another glimpse into Japanese culture: the villagers don't seem to want these heroes to remain in their village, as they get back to their work; and the leader of the samurai says: 'Again we're beaten. The real winners are those farmers, not us.' Duty-bound, the samurai must have walked away, as before.

The acting performances are brilliant, especially from the wise and battle-worn Takashi Shimura - the samurai leader, and the loud, bumbling and over-energetic Toshiro Mifune. It wouldn't be right to leave off writing about this film here, but I don't think I can comment meaningfully beyond this, so I'll stop here.

Strategic intrigue

2005-10-18T06:14:00.000-07:00

Though many subjects have interested me quite a lot during my time here, the subject on the theories of business strategy has actually intrigued me. It is fascinating to read about the various ways of thinking about what really determines the competitive advantage of a firm. One of the views is called the resource-based view (RBV), in which the internal 'strategic assets' (intangible assets like knowhow, intellectual property, managerial competencies) distinguish one firm from another and lead to creation of competitive advantage. Prahalad and Hamel's famous 'core competence' paper falls into this category of theories.

One of the subsets of the RBV is the knowledge-based view (KBV), which identifies knowledge (both explicit as well as tacit) as a major strategic asset that drives competitive advantage. This has been particularly so in recent times, and even staid 'old economy' firms are starting to realize this. One interesting thing that a paper mentioned was that this was an age defined by two things which existed to a much lesser degree in the past: 1. a globalized world, consisting of much freer trade than in the past several centuries, and 2. increasing returns to strategic assets (as opposed to the traditional view of diminishing returns to factor inputs), whereby if a market leader and a challenger both deploy similar levels of strategic assets in business, the leader will reap greater returns than the challenger. In other words, the leader will increase his lead, while the challenger finds himself in a worse position. The question this raises is: is it inherent in globalization and free trade, in this knowledge-driven world, to cause wider and wider disparity in the incomes of countries and peoples? I have yet to read anything substantial on globalization (like the book 'Globalization and its Discontents' by Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, for example), so I can't comment on it further. But this is an important question worth exploring.

Marks-ism and some developments

2005-10-18T00:40:00.000-07:00

My posting frequency has decreased because of the relative uneventfulness that has characterized this term. A few developments have happened however, which I would like to note, if only for the sake of record.

The corrected papers of all Term-IV subjects, save one, have been shown. I am lagging far behind my relative position in all other terms, and so expect the worst term GPA among those that I have got so far. There are many marks-ists here, believers in marks as a kind of Holy Grail to be pursued with all your might. How trivial this pursuit seems when put in the perspective of an entire life or career! In this respect, at least, two appropriate lines by Sahir need to be heeded:

jo mil gayaa usiiko muqaddar samajh liyaa
jo kho gayaa, main usako bhulaataa chalaa gayaa

The last mid-terms of this course are approaching. However, there is still relatively little to read up. Concept-wise, this term has been fairly rich so far, but thankfully, that hasn't translated into commensurate academic requirements.

Chill has set in, particularly in the evenings, at night and early in the morning. It is also slightly hazy at night (light mist) and the ground is wet in the morning with dew. Another chilling Lucknow winter approaches...

Festival break

2005-10-11T20:51:00.000-07:00

It is rare to get two holidays in a row in the middle of a term here. But Durga Pooja yesterday and Dashera today ensured that we got them this term. It is a welcome break, although academic activity has not reached demanding proportions yet. Entries to a few competitions are over and done with, although I must say I haven't done very well in those. Some activity is happening on campus to generate some festive spirit, like a faculty-students cricket match, dinner, some informal events, etc. However, many people have left for hill-stations - Naini Tal, Almora and Rushikesh being the most popular - for the holidays, so aggregate activity is less.

Added later:
As part of the Dashera celebrations, some of our professors sang a few songs (though not quite related to the festival). I liked the rendition of 'man re, tuu kaahe na dhiir dhare' - the Rafi-Roshan-Sahir classic. There was also supposed to be a Ravan-dahan after a long time at IIML (I couldn't stay to watch). For the highly politicized state that is UP, however, burning of effigies of political Ravan-s is not uncommon. We must note that this comparison is unfair, because the Ravan of the Ramayan was quite a learned person.

'Sehar'

2005-10-08T21:47:00.000-07:00

I watched this recently released film on the computer yesterday, and was really impressed with it. Debutant director Kabeer Kaushik has really made a hard-hitting film on the UP mafia raj (in itself a refreshing subject after so many movies on the Mumbai underworld). This is a timely film, for the state of UP is going to the dogs, given the horrific law and order situation.

The film's timeframe is 1997-98, and is about newly appointed SSP, Lucknow, Ajay Kumar (played brilliantly by Arshad Warsi), who gets to know the sheer ruthlessness of rival UP mafias. Internal mafia politics, aided and abetted by politicians, mean that the star of Gajraj Singh, alias Gajju Bhaiya, (played superbly by Sushant Singh) is rising. He breaks the old order of clearly demarcated boundaries of various gangs with respect to region, target activities, etc., by killing off rival gang leaders and establishing his varchasva (an effectively used word in the film) over the crime world. Realizing the enormity of the challenge, Ajay convinces his superior and also the CM of establishing a Special Task Force for cracking down on organized crime. Systematic attack on Gajraj's and other gangs shakes their foundations, but they fight back and several valiant STF officers lay down their lives. The film culminates in a gunfight on a train where Gajraj and Ajay are both killed.

Kabeer Kaushik shows the rot in the political, administrative, and law enforcement setup in the state very realistically. The scene in the beginning where Ajay first meets his superior is excellent. The ADG tells him the Lucknow that was by referring to a shop called Avadh Thandai which said on its name-board: 'zaraa muskuraaiye kyonki aap Lakhnau men hain'. At that moment, he receives a call from the secretary to the CM, and is forced to break the meeting. Looking meaningfully at Ajay, he says: 'Welcome to Lucknow'. The hell that is Lucknow University at election time (and otherwise) is shown, as is recruiting done by the mafia from the students' ranks. The shots of Lucknow town and various familiar places, very nicely shot, make it particularly interesting for us here at IIML. Overall, the (almost) no-nonsense and realistic character of the film makes an impact.

The performances are superb; not only from Arshad Warsi (he should really stop playing sidey to people like Salman Khan), Sushant Singh (he displays the required ruthlessness and wilfulness excellently) and Pankaj Kapur (as an old academic who becomes part of the STF because of his ability of tracking the newly introduced cell phones), but also from the supporting cast (Warsi's mother, the ADG, the STF members, the sidekick of politician Mishra, etc.). It was a pleasure to see old TV veterans like Rajendra Singh and Ravi Jhankal after a long time. The romantic diversion with Mahima Chaudhary is quite unnecessary. Ajay's personal life is shown adequately in his reminiscences of the past (his father had committed suicide after a court martial in the Army), and in his interactions with his mother. The dialogues are also very well-written, the old and sweet tongue (of Warsi's mother) and the new, rough, dehaatii tongue (of the gangsters) used appropriately. Overall, a film worth watching as congratulation to a commendable first act of the director.

The End

2005-10-06T09:46:00.000-07:00

Life can end suddenly, in a flash; irrespective of circumstances, place, time; irrespective of its effect on the people left behind. The knowledge that death is certain is no help. There is so much uncertainty about when and how the blow might fall. The best-laid plans of men, then, are rendered meaningless. Jim Morrison's words ring true (except that there may be plenty of surprise):

'This is the end, beautiful friend...
Of our elaborate plans, the end;
Of everything that stands, the end;
No safety or surprise, the end'

The Super Series

2005-10-05T00:39:00.000-07:00

It would be interesting to watch how the Super Series - Australia vs. ICC World XI - goes. Although quite hyped, I daresay it has lost some of its sheen of being a 'best vs. the rest' kind of encounter, as the aura around Australia has been well and truly dispelled by England. At the same time, I would say that Australia start favourites, mostly because this is an unequal contest. The World XI team looks formidable on paper, but it is true (cliched, but true nevertheless) that 11 good players may not necessarily make a good team. And these are players from various countries, who have so far been used to playing against each other, rather than with each other. If in spite of this, they manage to win matches (or ideally, both the series), it would be a tribute to their teaming skills (or to Australia's decline :) ). Let's hope that such a thing does indeed happen.

Post-match update:

So I assumed right. At least in the first match, things came unstuck for the World XI. The captain, Shaun Pollock, has said that 'the guys are hurting' and that their pride has been dented. But I think that is more rhetoric than anything else. I find it difficult to imagine where the players will get the motivation to play for a nebulous World team. Examples of past series, notably the ones in the '70s are cited as counter-arguments, where matches were very competitive and players like Barry Richards felt highly motivated. But that was then, and this is now. With so much cricket being played, do two or three bad matches really dent the reputation of these players? And the upside (adulation) will also be more when performing for the national side than for a motley World side. So, unequal contest it is.

Beyond the obvious

2005-10-03T11:42:00.000-07:00

I am a voracious reader and sometimes can be quite undiscriminating about what I read. Certainly, not everything that I read gives me the same feeling of pleasure that the best reading does. I have found that any written piece - whether a book, an article, a technical paper, or whatever - that goes beyond the obvious, or distinguishes the unseen distinctly from the seen, gives me the greatest pleasure. For instance, I was reading an absolutely superb paper by two well-known academics in the Operations area - Hopp & Spearman - on what is the essence of 'pull production' and 'lean production'. This article brings out, in 16 pages, how these concepts have been widely misunderstood and misapplied over the last two decades, and consequently have fallen far short of expectations. It points to that essence of both 'pull' and 'lean' which really drives the potential benefits from their adoption. I was awestruck by the clarity of thought displayed. Perhaps that is why I like reading philosophy so much, its job is to go beyond the obvious. A certain poetry flows from such writing.

I also find that cultivation of a mindset of going beyond the obvious is also very important in practical, day-to-day life. As just one example, one can cite that of assessing the true nature of a person who we have to work with. A deeper assessment of the true nature of people will help a person become a better people manager. Many people have the experience of being misunderstood because of such superficial assessment by others. Take the example of Kishore Kumar. This man, from outward behaviour, seemed a wacky, crazy person who had little respect for any established system and loved money for the sake of it. It takes deeper probing to reveal the humanity in the man, which only people who interacted closely with him (S. D. Burman, R. D. Burman, Leena Chandavarkar, etc.) knew about. (Caveat: some people may be correctly judged even in a superficial assessment. Here the example of Mohammed Rafi is appropriate. From outward behaviour alone, one would have gauged this man to be good, in every sense of the word. And it turns out to be the right assessment.)

We can shape our destiny

2005-10-01T05:56:00.000-07:00

As I have said earlier, one of the topics in our Business Environment course is to trace the influence of deeper determinants of economic growth of a country. These have been put into three broad categories: institutions, integration into world trade, and geography. By institutions is meant not only the legal and government policy infrastructure, but also social peculiarities. Two authors, Gregory Clark and Susan Wolcott did a country study of India to find out why India did not show spectacular growth (until change arrived starting from the early '80s).

Their finding is striking. They say that India did not lack in diffusion of technology, but in efficient employment of technology, i.e. the same technology as that in developed countries has been employed much less profitably in India. They blame this largely on the Indian attitude of only putting in as much effort at work as justified by financial incentives or supervision. This is unlike most developed countries, where workers put in much more effort at work. In telling jargon, they say: 'India is characterized by a mutual-shirking equilibrium rather than a mutual gift-giving equilibrium. In this view, India's poverty is largely unconnected to government policy or public institutions.' Pretty damning.

Thus, one way out for India could be skill development, so that we can make more efficient use of our infrastructure and equipment. However, a change in the noted 'crab mentality' of Indians - the tendency to pull each other down - might be something that would have greater impact than skills upgradation. This is where the Japanese have been so good. In the words of Sam Pitroda: 'One Indian is equivalent to ten Japanese. But, ten Indians are equivalent to only one Japanese'. We do hold the key to our own future as a country.

Routine

2005-09-27T05:56:00.000-07:00

I am short of topics to write on these days. This term has proceeded in a very routine, unextraordinary manner so far. This is not to say that it is not interesting. On the contrary, this term might perhaps be the most enjoyable so far (I think I say this for every succeeding term :) ). There are a lot of competitions, contests, online games, etc. going on in the B-school world currently. I am myself participating in a clutch of competitions (four, to be precise). Besides this, on the three days of the week that are very light on classes, I pick good English movies to watch (there is no dearth of them on the LAN here). There is a library book that I got with great enthusiasm, but has been lying unread. So as usual, there is a lot to do in limited time.

A history lesson - Take 2

2005-09-25T06:14:00.000-07:00

Eight months after I last visited Lucknow's three main attractions - the Bada and Chhota Imambara-s and the Residency - I visited them again today with my friends, who were visiting them for the first time. I must say that I enjoyed the trip as much as I had enjoyed it the first time. Those buildings, and the scenes of old Lucknow city, do inspire visions of how Lucknow must have been like a century and a half (and more) ago. The magnificence of the Bada Imambara and its labyrinth (which we tried out this time, with much handholding by the guide); the ingenuity of the Bauli (step-well); the profusion of chandeliers in the Chhota Imambara; and the ruins of the Residency, inspiring, at once, respect for British resilience, sadness for those who lost their lives over five months of oppressive battle on both sides (but particularly, the young Britishers who lie buried in a foreign land now), understanding of how opulently and comfortably the British lived - all these were worth experiencing again. I also learned that the building of the labyrinth was not intentional, but arose out of uncoordinated work by the poor labourers (for whom Nawab Asaf-ud-Daula had ordered the building of it, as relief work in a famine). This time, we also visited the Art Gallery near the Chhota Imambara, which had full-length portraits of the major Nawabs of Awadh, including Asaf-ud-Daula, Mohammed Ali Shah, Saadat Ali Khan and Wajid Ali Shah. Each of them had the quality that as one moved across the painting from one side to another, some part of the painting - the eyes, the shoes, the leg, etc. - seemed to keep turning towards you all the time. It was clever work. Small pleasures, like eating a faaludaa at Hazratganj, sweetened a day well spent. Hearing a few sentences of excellent Urdu was also nice.

A theme for the term

2005-09-19T00:52:00.000-07:00

Somewhat coincidentally, four of the seven subjects I have selected in this term together form a theme - one of exploring the very basis of a business enterprise and investigating the 'deep determinants' of the growth of both a business in particular, and an economy in general. A course in strategy called Applied Theories in Strategy and Competition deals with various theories which try to establish a basis for the existence of the firm and the managerial actions carried out. Corporate Restructuring and Mergers & Acquisitions look at the basis of growth strategies of firms and particular ways in which such growth may be achieved, from a financial and strategic point of view, respectively. Finally, Business Environment looks at the fundamental forces in the environment of a business enterprise which affect its managerial actions.

'Only the Paranoid Survive'

2005-09-17T09:25:00.000-07:00

I just completed this book written by former Intel Chairman Andrew Grove (HarperCollins, 1996). The sub-title of the book says: 'How to exploit the crisis points that challenge every company and career'. Accordingly, this book is about change and its management by companies and individuals. But this is not the everyday change that businesses encounter that Grove is talking about. This, in his words, is '10X' change - some force(s) governing the business has intensified by an order of magnitude. How an adaptive organization can be built to navigate through such fundamental changes is the subject of the book.

The book is written in conversational language, with very little jargon. Grove uses Porter's Five Forces framework and adds a sixth force to it - the bargaining power of 'complementors', i.e. businesses complementary to your own and which have interests similar to your own. The 10X change can occur in one or more of these forces and this brings the organization to a strategic inflection point - a term coined by Grove which has since gained currency. This inflection point is a period of time when a business is in the midst of a heavy transition, and at the end of it, the business may decline never to rise again, or reach an entirely new level of growth, depending on how it manages the transition.

Having introduced this concept, Grove goes on to give numerous examples of industries which have experienced such inflection points. The recurring examples are those of Intel itself - the 10X intensification of competition from Japanese firms in the memory business, which transformed Intel from a memory chip vendor to a microprocessor firm; and the flaw in the Pentium processor's floating-point unit which made Intel take a fundamental relook at who its real customers are.

Grove then tries to explain how a business can realize when it is going through a strategic inflection point, and when it is experiencing non-fundamental change. When there is a fundamental change in your perception of who your key competitors are; or when the skills of your people suddenly seem inadequate or obsolete, it may indicate the presence of an inflection point. Realization of such change generally reaches top management last of all, and even then only if the lower-level managers and field personnel are allowed to speak their mind in the organization. Thus, many organizations find such change overwhelming.

From Intel's experience, Grove suggests that the first step for senior management to take after the realization of fundamental change dawns on them is to loosen control - 'let chaos reign'. Experimentation, trying out of alternative strategies, etc. should be encouraged. A stage will then be reached, when senior management will have to call a halt to unbridled experimentation - 'rein in chaos'. Now is the time for management to form a clear picture of what lies at the other end of the inflection point for the organization, and communicate this new strategic direction to the organization. Thus, a fine balance of top-down and bottom-up strategy formulation is required for businesses to successfully survive such major changes.

This is a slim book, easy to read, but with a compelling message. Its message goes out not just to companies and their management, but also to individuals, because individual careers often get a new turn in the face of such major changes in the organization.

More rain

2005-09-15T05:31:00.000-07:00

Rain has been following me for the last week, like it did the Rain God in 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'. It rained while I was at home; then, as I boarded the Delhi-Lucknow flight, a thunderstorm struck the Delhi airfield out of nowhere and the flight was delayed by an hour. And now, a cyclonic disturbance coming from the Bay of Bengal has struck Lucknow, after passing over MP. It is good for Lucknow, which has so far received less than 50% of its normal annual rainfall. But it makes the weather gloomy. A lot of people like such rainy and windy weather, but it makes me gloomy. I just don't like to turn on the tubelight at 5 in the evening. One has to make an effort to retain cheer in such weather. All the same, the first day at classes has gone off well and the next two days are extremely light.

Fifth gear

2005-09-13T08:33:00.000-07:00

I am back from a week-long vacation for the penultimate term of the course. It promises to be gruelling, although perhaps less so than the fourth term.

The past week was not altogether happy for me, as the first three or four days were spent in overcoming one of the most severe stomach upsets (and consequent problems) I have ever had. In fact, I had reached home in a dazed state, having travelled the whole day without eating anything. So I was not much in the mood for watching movies - lately the interest that consumes most of the vacation. Instead, I read three excellent Gujarati books (two of them translated from Bengali) and the entire stock of Gujarati magazines accumulated during the three-month absence from home.

And I watched, with great satisfaction, as Australia tried and tried, but couldn't pull off a series-leveller, and England finally and deservedly lifted the Ashes. The end of an era in modern cricket, surely. Because of my ill-health, I couldn't watch the best of US Open tennis action, which happened late at night. Interestingly, the men's and women's tennis scene seem to have been interchanged of late. 7 or 8 ladies now seem equally capable of winning a given Grand Slam tournament, while (barring the French Open so far), Roger Federer winning the men's tournament is an inevitability. Unless real competitors like Safin (and not pretenders like Roddick or Hewitt) pull up their socks, Federer is going to stamp his greatness on the world of tennis unchallenged.

That does it

2005-09-04T05:10:00.000-07:00

As the last of my exams got over today, slightly more than an hour ago, I felt fatigued - both physically and mentally. The last two weeks have been draining, and when things don't go your way, the fatigue is compounded. So yet another exam has passed by with no sign of my doing very well. Again, the marks are unimportant, but the feeling of not having done well rankles. It has so happened that I have been unable to answer the tougher questions, and that does not boost confidence. But, I am not ending the term on a sour note here. In many ways, it has been an important term, laying the foundations of knowledge in vast fields spreading out afar.

Rapidfire

2005-08-31T09:20:00.000-07:00

The end-term exams began today, and barring one holiday in between, I have 7 exams in 4 days. In a way, of course, it will be good to get it over with quickly, but in terms of preparation, it's a race against time. Yet again, the exam has gotten off to a false start for me, in terms of the Commercial Bank Mgmt. paper today, in which 15 marks (out of 60) is my Value at Risk :), and 20 or more is the potential Extreme Loss. Frankly, I was not happy with some of the questions asked, a common feeling today for many. I had simply not prepared for something I thought was not supposed to be asked in an exam. The next two days have four exams in store. Let's hope I recover like England did in the current Ashes series.

The Ashes are smoking

2005-08-28T10:33:00.000-07:00

England have just stuttered to a vital and famous victory and have gone 2-1 up in the Ashes. The match could have been wrapped up so much more easily by the English, but they managed to make the Aussie fight seem more valiant than it was. Warne continues to mesmerise the English batsmen. In fact, if you remove England and South Africa, I think Warne has only slightly more than half of his 600-odd wickets left. He owes a lot of his greatness to the ineptitude of batsmen from these two sides. Besides the Warne factor, England also seem to be finding it difficult to digest the fact that they are dominating Australia. That is why finishing games has been so difficult for them in this series. Now of course, I just hope they keep their nerve enough to at least draw the last Test (preferably winning it, of course) and wrest the Ashes from the Aussies, who have kept it far too long.

Janmashtami

2005-08-27T09:41:00.000-07:00

There was a Janmashtami pooja in the mess today, followed by the singing of bhajan-s and devotional songs by a bhajan-mandli called for the purpose. I must say they were not exactly music to the ears, not least because the volume was kept so high. Normally, hearing country and folk singers is a new and refreshing experience, because of the raw emotion that is incorporated in their voice. But this mandli was, what is best called, karkash. It also did not help that today was an inexplicably hot day. I have been sweating at every step. Eating dinner in a hot mess with loud noise in the background was not a great experience.

Big Crunch

2005-08-23T06:41:00.000-07:00

I don't know if every term here starts in a Big Bang, but it surely ends in a Big Crunch :). The crunch time is here again, with one week to go for the end-term exams. In the next few days, I have the following things on my agenda: two project submissions, two term-paper submissions, one assignment, one book review, one subject viva. And I definitely don't have the greatest workload - many others have yet more things to submit. Preparation for exams and readings for the remaining classes should be counted over and above all this. In such times, the half-hour spent cycling on most days is a great freshener. After another spell of rain in the last week, the weather in the evening is, in textbook-ish language, salubrious. The colours in the sky at twilight are delightful to see, although the thicker clouds do play spoilsport.

Tele-talk

2005-08-21T08:40:00.000-07:00

We had a wonderful opportunity to listen to Mr. Pradip Baijal, Chairman, TRAI, today. He was here to judge a paper presentation contest and then delivered a keynote address. One can't have more firsthand insights about the Indian telecom sector than from him. He has been in one of the hottest seats in India for some time now, and is handling it with aplomb.

The hour-long talk was insightful, wide-ranging, humorous, and full of anecdotes. The presentation had nothing but charts and tables, and yet each number had a story behind it. Beginning with an expression of personal regret that he could not introduce power reforms when he was in the power ministry, Mr. Baijal emphasised that in a 'network industry' (power, telecom), it was extremely essential to have an independent regulator - one who does not 'cosy up to' any operator. The introduction of private competition had energised even the public sector behemoth BSNL and this was shown using comparative statistics of the telecom industry from 1948-98 and '98 onwards. Some of the important events in the history of Indian telecom were narrated in an anecdotal way - the setting up of TRAI, the initial disputes between operators, Reliance's 'breaching of the spirit of the (then existing) license', decisions on interconnect charges and calculation of termination charges (good decisions, he said, happened by accident in the government), Reliance's 501 Monsoon Hungama ('Mr. Mukesh Ambani lost Rs. 1500-1600 crores in that hungama, and the Indian newspapers viewed even this marketing debacle as a scandal' :) ), issues with the TDSAT, etc.

His emphasis was also on emerging opportunities and changing realities in the telecom sector. So far, on any year-to-year basis after introduction of mobile telephony, India had done better than China in terms of growth in subscriber numbers. But to sustain this growth, it is essential to tap rural India, where the absolute number of middle-income people equalled that in urban India. Thus, the O in USO did not stand for Obligation but for Opportunity. New technologies are rendering old obsolete. Most of BSNL's 6,70,000km fibre-optic network is dark, but BSNL is not willing to share the network with other operators for a fee, because it considers it a goldmine. Mr. Baijal said that with the arrival of wireless broadband technologies, this 'goldmine' may soon become trash. So also with the TV industry. In India, cable TV connections exceed fixed line phones. Again, broadcasters might want to consider sharing the infrastructure for penetration of telecom, since it was technologically feasible. The mobile phone might become the most attractive medium for advertisements if TV lost its sheen with the introduction of technologies like IPTV. 'Next generation networks' might become reality (see this interesting study paper), as the dividing line between mobile and fixed becomes blurred. Finally, even though all this convergence is technologically feasible, it will be extremely difficult to formulate a 'unified service license' covering fixed & mobile telecom, cable TV, ISPs, etc. because of the entrenched interest of each industry which will feel threatened and shortchanged. All the data Mr. Baijal used is available here.

Mr. Baijal seemed to be impressed with the presentations made by the students, and praised them profusely. However, as his talk went on, it became clear that at least some part of that praise was meant in a sarcastic way, because the ideas suggested were actually debunked by him. All in all, a great experience.

Mr. Saleem Haq, Head of the Prepaid Division, Reliance Infocomm, also delivered a short presentation showcasing Reliance's offerings and their foray into rural markets.

The business of entertainment

2005-08-20T09:14:00.000-07:00

This was the theme of the industry interaction session held today. The speakers were: Mr. Tarun Tripathi (an IIML alumnus of the 2002 batch, now Marketing Head of Yashraj Films), Ms. Avisha Goswami (Marketing Head of Fame Adlabs) and Mr. Tushar (from Mindshare Entertainment). The aim was to familiarise people here with the dynamics of the entertainment industry in general and cinema in particular. The value chain of the industry was sought to be explored.

I could not stay for Mr. Tushar's talk in the end, but enjoyed those of the other two. The common theme running through the presentations of both the film production & distribution house (Yashraj) and the exhibition house (Shringar) was that of diversification in the sales mix. A film is the basic product both of them get a bulk of their revenues from. But, like in Hollywood, ticket sales & box office collections no longer constitute the only revenue stream. The film is ridden on with various marketing alliances, advertising, merchandise sales, food & beverages and a whole lot more. On the whole, a field full of possibilities, an exciting field to work in. There were many other interesting tidbits, as can be expected from this industry.

I believe a major source of this diversified revenue mix strategy is the corporatisation and professionalism being infused in the industry. We are still very far from a scenario where enough data about consumer preferences on film subjects, directors, stars, etc. exists, and films are made according to the viewer's tastes. So, individual creativity and inspiration (of all kinds :) ) basically drives the films that are made. All marketing is after the fact - selling a movie already made or being made. This is why nobody is able to reliably predict which film will be a hit at the box office. Now, once you are listed on the stock market, the share price is a disciplining factor, and you cannot rely on the fickle tastes of the public as the sole revenue stream. Hence, this strategy. Of course, a major factor contributing to the success of this strategy is the wealth that urban and semi-urban India is witnessing, and the high disposable incomes of people. In fact, the way every industry talks about grabbing the individual's 'share of wallet', every product/service might just become a substitute for every other product/service not far in the future. As a preparation for such a future, C. K. Prahalad's exhortation of identifying the 'fortune at the bottom of the pyramid' might be good to follow.

Good days, bad days

2005-08-19T07:41:00.000-07:00

Everyone has their good days and bad days, but considering that much of this goodness/badness may be one's own creation, without enough self-regulation, life would become a series of one-day cricket matches. What you achieve at the end of the day would depend on how well you played on that day, and history would not matter too much. (Of course, the more adventurous would actively seek such a life, but very high volatility is not for me).

I had a really bad day yesterday. Thursday and Friday are the most gruelling days of the week in terms of class schedule (5.5 hours each day with uneven breaks in between). But yesterday, there were two quizzes as well. In the pre-announced quiz in CBM, it turned out that I was ill-prepared, while in the surprise CorVal quiz, I was inexplicably hasty and unthoughtful. We also received the Strategic Mgmt. mid-term papers, and I found that I had done worse than I had expected. After dinner, I could not concentrate and wasted a lot of time.

By total contrast, today has been a wonderful day. Attention levels in class were excellent, and I gained a lot from them. I am also feeling energetic and upbeat about the rest of the day (there are about 5 hours before I retire to bed).

'The Warren Buffett Way'

2005-08-17T04:27:00.000-07:00

I took a long, long time in reading up this book on the 'investment strategies of the world's greatest investor', written by Robert G. Hagstrom, Jr. (John Wiley & Sons, 1995). Written in very simple language, it details the simple and logical, but unconventional, tenets of Warren Buffett in choosing his investments. The timing in reading this book was good, because a background of Valuation helped in easily understanding the basics.

Warren Buffett is a 'value investor' - a person who closely examines a business for its fundamental value before investing in it. He received most of his principles in investing from two great financial minds - Benjamin Graham and Philip Fisher. Buffett's great skill lies in operationalising this set of principles successfully for decades.

Easily the most important lesson for all investors - whether institutional or individual - from Buffett's approach is that 'diversification is necessary only for those who do not know each of their investments enough'. If a close study of each business is made before investing in it, you can get extraordinary gains from only a few investments. Diversification across businesses and industries is not required. So, the investor should look at each of his investments like a business, not merely as a stock price.

A lot of detail is given on most of the major investments that Buffett has made over the years, mostly in common stock (equity), but sometimes in fixed-income instruments as well. His acumen, not only as an investor, but as a businessman & a manager is evident from reading these. The 'Warren Buffett Way' is condensed into four simple, but difficult to employ, steps by the author:
1. Turn off the stock market
2. Don't worry about the economy
3. Buy a business, not a stock
4. Manage a portfolio of businesses

As one can see, these steps are difficult because they are so unconventional. When evaluating a business, Buffett's principles are crystallized into the following tenets by the author:
a. Business tenets:
- Simplicity and understandability of the business
- Consistent operating history
- Favourable long-term prospects
b. Management tenets:
- Rationality of management in allocation of earnings
- Candour of management in sharing firm-related news with shareholders
- Resisting the 'institutional imperative', i.e. blind imitation of other firms
c. Financial tenets:
- Focus on return on equity, not on earnings per share
- Focus on 'owner earnings' (net income + depreciation - capital expenditures)
- High profit margins
- At least one dollar of market value created from every dollar reinvested
d. Market tenets:
- Finding the value of the business
- Buying a business only if it is available at a significant discount to its intrinsic value (the stock market helps here)

While the reading of the book was highly educational, it raised a question: if, like Buffett, everyone wants to buy 'simple and understandable' businesses, and not invest in sectors like, say technology (Buffett has never invested in a tech stock), then where will these firms with evolving business models get their funding from? Perhaps the private equity firms which are mushrooming today are doing this job more and more today. It would be interesting to compare their investment strategy with that of Buffett. And, I think, we do need a new Buffett who understands the new dynamics of business today, who can bring sanity to markets.

A great game of cricket

2005-08-15T12:51:00.000-07:00

I watched one of the best Test matches in a long, long time - the third Ashes Test. What a series this has been! England are finally behaving like equals and Australia are finding themselves in desperate situations and having to dig deep into their reserves just to survive. I like the situation :). This series has been good for Test matches in general. The matches have been far more engrossing than those stupid one-dayers on dead pitches in dull Sri Lanka.

The most cited reason for Australia's bad performances on this England tour has been that this is an ageing team. But the team did not age suddenly, and most of the players are still able to give superb performances. In my opinion, the biggest contributory factor to the Aussie debacle so far is arrogance and complacency. No one typifies this attitude more than Matthew Hayden. In this respect, I have liked England's attitude when dominating. They have been sporting right
through, something the Aussies simply seem unable to be. Steve Waugh seemed to me to be a stabilizing influence on the team, having seen bad days in his career. And thus, England might be doing a service to Australia if they bring them down to earth. An Australian team with more grounded beliefs about their relative abilities will be more dangerous, whether ageing or not.

I-Day programme

2005-08-14T21:21:00.000-07:00

I am just back from the Independence Day flag-hoisting ceremony. It rained yesterday night, and the morning is also overcast. Though the threat of rain was there, the ceremony went off smoothly. After the usual formalities and the unfurling of the flag, the institute music group 3.4 sang a few patriotic songs, and this genre being dominated in Hindi films by Rafi, 2 out of 4 songs were Rafi songs. 'jahaan daal daal par sone kii...' came first, and although it was sung well, it lacked the punch of the original. Similar was the case with 'kar chale ham fidaa...', which sounded more like Sonu Nigam than Rafi. A male version of 'ai mere vatan ke logon' was performed, and it was done quite superbly. Finally, 'har karam apanaa karenge...' from 'Karma' was performed.

'Yugaant' - II

2005-08-14T06:36:00.000-07:00

The next essay is on Draupadi. Here, a comparison between Sita and Draupadi, both daughters of the earth as such, is made. But unlike Sita, Draupadi is shown to be a 'true daughter of the earth', in that she had very earthly emotions of pride, hatred, revenge, etc. Astonishingly, the author says that when Duhshasan was committing great indignity to her in the Kaurav court, she wasn't actually praying for help from Krushna. Instead, she was vociferously debating a legal point with the Kaurav elders on whether Yudhishthir could indeed stake her, once he had himself become a slave. She was quite jealous of the Pandavs' other wives, particularly Subhadra, Arjun's wife. Ultimately, when the Pandavs leave for the Himalayas, she is the one to fall first because, as Yudhishthir said, out of her five husbands, she really loved Arjun the most. In her dying moments, Draupadi is shown to realise that it was Bhim who really loved her the most.

The next essay is on the Pandavs' great palace called Mayasabha, built in Indraprasth. The story of how this palace came to be built is narrated. The Khandav forest was burnt to the ground by Arjun and Krushna, and so ruthlessly that they allowed but a handful of animals and humans to come out alive. An asur called Maya, in gratitude for sparing him, built them the palace out of multi-coloured ceramic tiles (when most of the Aryan housing used to be made of wood). In real terms, the author says, this is meant to show how the Aryans actually acquired land for cultivation. They razed the forests around the vast areas on the banks of the Ganga to the ground, leaving the great Gangetic plain that we see today.

Drona and Ashwatthama form the subject for the next essay. Drona, originally a poor brahman, is shown to take revenge on Drupad, his 'batchmate' :), by having the Pandavs attack him and annexing half his kingdom. In the Mahabharat times, unlike the later empire-building era, Kshatriyas kings could defeat other kings, but only receive a tribute from them, not annex their kingdom. Drona, a brahman, did not need to follow this tradition. Although neutral during the formative years of the Kauravs and the Pandavs, during the war, he suddenly turned fiercely against the Pandavs and during the three days he was general, killed large parts of the Pandav army. His son, Ashwatthama, was even less of a brahman than his father. He was sly and cunning, learning the use of special weapons from his father, unknown to Arjun. He had no qualms in killing Draupadi's sons and brother at night, but showed great cowardice in running away from a dying Duryodhan as the Pandavs approached. Here is one character in the Mahabharat who really had nothing much to redeem himself with.

Karna is widely perceived to be perhaps the most tragic character of the Mahabharat. But he displayed numerous failings in his life. His obsession with the injustice done to him at birth made him so headstrong that Bhishma did not classify him as a mahaarathii at the time of the war. He was also not as great a warrior as he is made out to be, as he was also routed by Arjun in Bruhanallaa's guise. He was also defeated totally and escaped when the Gandharvas once attacked the Kauravs' hunting party and took Duryodhan prisoner. His personal obsession and jealousy towards Arjun sometimes took precedence over his famed friendship with Duryodhan. This is shown in the fact that he promised Kunti that he would try to kill no other Pandav but Arjun, when in fact such a promise was not at all necessary. Again, at the moment of his death, he needlessly tried to extricate his chariot from the mud instead of taking a reserve chariot. Thus, Karna's tragedy was more self-wrought than inflicted by others.

The essay on Krushna is absolutely fascinating. The author says that, the Bhagavat being composed later than the Mahabharat, godhood was actually given to Krushna in the latter. In the Mahabharat, Krushna never appears as an incarnation of God, but a very astute man with great political acumen. His friendship with Arjun is dwelt on, as are his politically significant moves in killing Jarasandh, keeping brother Balram from actively siding with the Kauravs, handing his Narayani army to Duryodhan while himself siding with the Pandavs in the war, etc. He is shown to have had a personal ambition of being called a Vasudev. In those times, only one person in an era came to be called Vasudev, the greatest of men. Ram was one in his time; Krushna wanted to be one, and he achieved his ambition. After his death, godhood was given to him by the tribe of Abhirs, who captured Dwarka after the destruction of the Yadavs. Being cowherds themselves, the Abhirs made Krushna a cowherd and made all those stories about the gopii-s and the butter-stealing.

The last chapter is an excellent summary of the theme of the book. The end of the Mahabharat is shown to be the end of a yug, an era in the modern sense. The next few centuries were times of changing social climate in India, as Brahmans first gained ascendancy, then were subdued by the advent of Buddhism. The empire-building era started. The Mahabharat, a concise and matter-of-fact epic about the true nature of human beings, was modified to make additions to make characters more heroic or villainous than they were. Hero worship began, which continues to this day. The author gives the example of two versions of the story of Harishchandra to show this process of change. Other practices, like the eating of beef and the drinking of wine, came to be looked down upon and eventually banned. Interestingly, horse-riding was actually learnt by the Indians in this later era, while in the Mahabharat times, the most highly regarded skill was to drive a chariot.

Such nuggets are but small pieces of the puzzle that the author puts together to give us a new, radical, matter-of-fact view of ancient Indian society.

'Yugaant' - I

2005-08-14T00:44:00.000-07:00

I am grateful to the friend who lent me this wonderful book, written by Dr. Irawati Karve (Disha Books, 1991), first published in 1969 in Marathi. Interestingly, to cater to her Western students, the author, instead of translating the Marathi original, actually rewrote most of it.

The book is a collection of essays on various characters and events of the Mahabharat. These essays present a humanistic interpretation of the Mahabharat, based on scholarly research on the epic. Thus, as far as possible, the effort is to explain the behaviour of the characters in the socio-economic setting of the day, shorn of all divine interference. They also assume that the Mahabharat is a description of some real events and a real war that occurred around 1000 BC. I must say that it is one of the most personally valuable books I have read. So I will dwell upon it in some length.

The Introduction sets the tone for the rest of the book in terms of writing style, giving a brief look into the history of the Mahabharat. This reveals some facts which are little-known in the popular sense: the Mahabharat was originally called 'Jay' (triumph); it might not really have been composed by Vyas, but merely put together from the words of bards belonging to the suut caste who used to sing out the story for centuries after the events happened; many of the events described in the epic, and which have a place in the popular imagination, are actually established to be 'later interpolations', as the epic fell into the hands of Bhrugu brahman-s. Hence, the author bases her essays on a critical edition of the Mahabharat published by the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, Pune.

The first essay is on Bhishma. She presents a new perspective on Bhishma - of a cursed Vasu who got further and further entangled in the affairs of his extended family. He is shown to have a misplaced sense of duty, overdoing things & taking terrible vows; but at the same time, having a desire to wield authority, ruling Hastinapur for four decades, till Dhrutarashtra's sons grew up. In the fight between the Pandavs and the Kauravs, he remained neutral throughout. But as Kaurav general in the main war, he effectively stalled proceedings and fought an inconclusive battle for ten days before he fell. The author also says that there is no substantial evidence to show that Bhishma was a very great warrior, and he was one of those routed totally by Arjun (in the guise of Bruhanallaa) in the Viraat cattle-herding episode. Even the blessing of deciding when he would receive death turned out to be a curse for him, as he lived for six months after the war and the destruction.

The next essay, on Gandhari, disputes the popular view of the queen as a sacrificing wife who tied up her eyes for life on knowing about her husband being blind. Actually, what is more likely is that Gandhari nursed a lifelong grudge against Bhishma and others who arranged her match with Dhrutarashtra for having been kept in the dark about her husband's blindness. The author imagines a conversation between the old couple when they stayed in the Himalayas after the war was over. Here, Dhrutarashtra finally tells her that she had really paid back all the wrong done to her, and finally, the couple stand up and embrace death by being consumed in a forest fire.

The essay on Kunti depicts her as a strong-willed Kshatriya woman who managed to protect, advise and admonish her sons through life. She had been wronged by her father who gave her away to the childless Kuntibhoj, who in turn made her serve the sage Durvasa. Now, according to the practice of the day, in this service to a sage, the daughter might even bear a child to him as well. Indeed, the author surmises that if we discount the blessing she supposedly received from Durvasa about bearing children of Gods, it is very probable that she actually bore a son by Durvasa - making Karna Durvasa's son! She had warts as well: she was envious of the more beautiful Madri and allowed the latter to be burnt as sati on Pandu's funeral pyre; she had done incalculable wrong to Karna, and then later went to beg him to join the Pandavs in the war for selfish reasons. But at the same time, she treated Nakul and Sahadev as her own sons; made the strong decision to make Draupadi the wife of all five Pandavs; admonished Yudhishthir to right the wrong done to them, even if by force.

The next essay, on Vidur, drops another bombshell. Based on the existing social practices of the day, it shows that Kunti might really have borne a son by Pandu's half-brother Vidur, making Yudhishthir Vidur's son! This is sought to be substantiated by the parallels in the life and nature of Vidur and Yudhishthir, both being incarnations of Yam or Dharma, and Vidur having been totally partial towards the Pandavs throughout. Vidur's life is shown to be one of not having received the kingship that he best deserved among the three half-brothers, being the most physically and mentally sound. But he played a most dutiful role in supporting Dhrutarashtra through life and meeting death only some time before the latter.

'Mangal Pandey: The Rising'

2005-08-13T11:54:00.000-07:00

I watched this much-awaited movie with the gang in a stall seat (with paan stains on the back of the seat in front of me), at Novelty theatre in Aliganj. We had been forewarned that the film fell below the high expectations of people. And we found that this was quite true.

What can be the motive(s) of a director in choosing a historical topic for a film? There can be many: the dramatic: catching the pulse of a people in the midst of great upheaval or portraying the hopes and struggles of a nation, etc.; the narrative: telling an interesting historical episode in an engrossing way; the glorifying: making heroes and heroines out of historical figures; the allegorical and/or didactic: hoping to convey morals and lessons from history; the revealing: busting popular myths and setting the record straight.

This motive is very important because it drives important decisions, perhaps the most important of which is: whether and how to fill in the gaps that we find in existing historical records. And it is here that this film stumbles. The motive, as professed by Ketan Mehta and by Aamir Khan, is both to glorify Mangal Pandey as the first martyr in India's quest for independence, and to convey the message that it is just not right for an economically and militarily more powerful nation to subjugate a weaker one. Mangal Pandey's history is not exactly well documented, and the gaps are filled in a typically 'mainstream' Hindi film manner.

According to what I read recently, it is rather doubtful how important a status Mangal Pandey's action enjoyed among the revolutionaries of 1857. In all probability, he might be an accidental hero, a person with greatness thrust upon him. Here he is shown to have a conscious and well-developed political ideology (democracy) and a conception of India as a nation. He is shown to have been forced by circumstances (the leakage of the revolutionary plan and subsequent expediting of the Queen's Regiment from Rangoon to Barrackpore) to take the kind of action that he did. I thought this was absolutely vital information, and if this is the true course of events, it is really curious how our school history textbooks painted Mangal Pandey's action as totally rash and one having adverse effect on the revolutionary plans of Nanasaheb-Tope-Laxmibai. I really don't know which one is true.

It is a well-known fact that Pandey was hanged secretly a few days before his scheduled hanging by the British. But a public hanging is shown here, with Pandey bellowing 'hallaa bol' as his final words. This seems designed more to inspire jingoism than anything else.

The performances from Aamir Khan and Toby Stephens (who plays Captain William Gordon, a Britisher sympathetic to the Indian interest) are very good. Aamir Khan does come up with an intense performance and creates the fearless and true hero image that was sought to be conveyed. Toby Stephens' effort in learning Hindi must be appreciated, and this is a memorable effort. The courtroom scene at the trial of Pandey is very well done by him. The ladies, Rani Mukherjee and Amisha Patel, have a token presence for a few scenes each. So all hype about their roles is to be neglected entirely.

The biggest howlers committed by the director are in the songs department. One very badly timed song (the Holi song), one unconvincing mujaraa, even an item number. A. R. Rahman's effort also does not seem particularly inspired, producing insipid tunes, particularly for the mujaraa, which has seen some of the best tunes in Hindi cinema. Instead of using traditional UP Hori folk tunes for the Holi song, he uses a garba-like beat, a surprisingly elementary mistake. Only the title chant of 'Mangala, Mangala' carries some spirit and is picturised well, with singers mounted on an elephant.

The redeeming features of the film are the performances by the two main characters; the obviously sincere effort that has gone behind the making of the film; the sets; some good cinematography in showing the landscape on the banks of the Ganga, the advancing Rangoon regiment, etc.; the revelation of British corruption and opium trade carried on by the East India Company; the sheer cruelty and injustice of the British, etc. All in all, a film with its share of big flaws, but worth a viewing nevertheless, for it is like balm in these times of absolutely stupid films like 'Maine pyaar kyon kiyaa?'

'Paheli'

2005-08-07T12:13:00.000-07:00

I stole time over the last two days to watch this latest directorial venture of Amol Palekar. Produced by Shah Rukh Khan's production house Red Chillies, this is an unusual film because it is based on a Rajasthani novel written by Rajasthani literary great Vijaydan Detha, and is a supernatural love story.

The story goes like this: Kishenlal (SRK) is the son of a wealthy Marwadi merchant (Anupam Kher). He marries Lachchhi (Rani Mukherji), and while the marriage party is heading back home, they stop for a rest. Here a ghost residing in the area sees Lachchhi and falls in love with her. Kishenlal is business-minded, like his father, and he leaves Lachchhi to go to Jamnagar for 5 years the very morning after they reach their village of Navalgarh. To the grieving Lachchhi, the ghost provides succour, which takes the bodily form of Kishen. The ghost tells Lachchhi about his real self, but doesn't tell anyone else, minting money (effortlessly :) ) to keep his father pleased. Love develops between Lachchhi and the ghost. After about three years (during which the real Kishen has had an anxious time thinking about why his family has not contacted him), things come to a head when he suddenly returns on hearing that his wife was going to have a child. The two SRKs meet and the village panchayat, unable to identify the real Kishen, are provided help by an unlikely person in the form of a shepherd (Amitabh in a guest appearance). Eventually, the real Kishen does get identified and the ghost is trapped in a leather water-pouch, but the ghost takes his place inside Kishen's body, to the great joy of Lachchhi.

The wealthy Marwadi merchant family is shown quite well, and to some humorous effect as well. Attention has been paid to the dialogues (which are in Rajasthani, but I'm not sure how perfectly) . The dialogues are delivered by everyone surprisingly well. As for the performances, after a long time I've watched an SRK movie without getting irritated by his antics. Although he looks a bit out of place in the setting with short silk choyni-s and fluorescent dhoti-s, his effort seems to be sincere. He delivers the dialogues well, although his facial expressions leave something to be desired. Rani Mukherji, too, doesn't fit naturally into the setting, but she makes up somewhat by her acting (nothing very great, but good enough). Juhi Chawla as Rani's jethani doesn't have a big role but she looks the part (and she looks very sweet through the movie too :) ). As for Palekar's direction, I think he should have dwelt more on the main theme of Lachchhi's desire for love and the 'culture clash' :) between her and her husband. His use of puppets revives the memory of old films like 'Kathputli' and 'Chori Chori' ('jahaan main jaati huun vahiin chale aate ho'). M. M. Kreem's music is good. There seemed to be only one folk-like number though, and the rest of the tunes could have belonged in any other film. Overall, a watchable film, although not Palekar's best (by far). Interestingly, I read that Mani Kaul made a film called 'Duvidha' in the '70s based on the same novel. Wonder if that's available anywhere...

Rule of three

2005-08-06T05:06:00.000-07:00

There are several 'rules of three' in various different fields, ranging from witchcraft to business strategy (propounded by the late Sumantra Ghoshal). I have a personal 'rule of three', much more mundane than the celebrated ones, but still pretty fundamental.

It is that I am able to break up most of my likes and dislikes into three broad, distinct classes by the degree to which I like each entity in an area. For example, in music, the classes are: 'songs & music which I would like to hear any time and any number of times at once', 'music which I would like to hear once in a while and enjoy, but not very often', and 'music which I would prefer not to listen to at all'. Similar classes exist for food, books & reading, games & sports, etc. I have found that it also applies to people that I come into contact with: some I would always like to be with; some I would like to meet once in a while, but not too often; and some I would prefer never to meet at all. Again, as I said, this seems pretty ordinary and obvious, but somehow I feel there might be something fundamental here.

Wounded warriors

2005-08-05T00:38:00.000-07:00

This is what one of our professors in the third term called the students who hobbled into class, freshly injured after an intra-institute sports tournament. The sports injury rate here is exceptionally high. The football ground sees a lot of serious injuries, including fractures and ligament tears. The just-concluded basketball tournament - a part of the inter-hostel Sikandar trophy tournaments - saw at least half a dozen serious injuries, the most serious one being that of an ankle fracture and a ligament tear in the arm. I don't know what the reasons are for such a high injury rate: perhaps it's the amateurishness and lack of practice, as many players are not regulars; perhaps it's because they play really rough. But in a busy place like this, an injury can be too dear.

Mental cleansing

2005-08-04T00:43:00.000-07:00

The mark of good reading is that it should cleanse your mind, make it clean and clear, just like a good bath cleanses the body. I felt so cleansed after reading the latest issue of The Economist in a between-classes break yesterday. This may seem like an exaggeration, but the sheer variety and clarity of the articles was great. I read views on the new India-US friendship, Pakistan's madrassa-s, the yuan revaluation, Alan Greenspan's views on the US economy (in which he said that although the US housing market was overheated, it could not be called a 'bubble', maybe only 'froth'), research on 'agent metaphors' (i.e. animate description of inanimate things, in the context of the stock market), reviews of two books on the great physicist Robert Oppenheimer (this busted a few personal impressions of the man), an obituary of ex-British PM Sir Edward Heath, and the business sense of the Colombian pop star Shakira. Eight articles on vastly different topics in the space of two hours...

An operations problem

2005-08-01T06:09:00.000-07:00

Daily life for me here is becoming a live operations management problem, the key resource in scarcity being: time. Here's how:

I consider myself (as most human beings) akin to a flexible manufacturing system (FMS) machine, which is capable of doing multiple tasks (mostly one at a time, though). This is done simply by retooling myself with new jigs and fixtures appropriate for different tasks, and effecting this changeover quickly. The key raw material to be processed is information, which is to be converted into a form as close to knowledge as possible, and to be consumed immediately. One of the problems is undercapacity. The workload on this machine is overwhelming its limited capabilities, and operating for two shifts daily does not seem to be enough. Operating a third shift is impossible. This is the only station in the processing system, and it is the bottleneck.

A part of the demand is being generated by the same physical entity (my mind), which is demanding not only more quantity, but also more variety in the kind of knowledge it wants. This is resulting in large inventories - both raw materials (unread newspapers, magazines, and a book I borrowed today) and work-in-process (two books I am reading currently). Another part of the demand is being generated by the academic workload. This demand is of a more regular nature, with brief spurts near the exams and submissions :). Each day, both regular and irregular demands have to be met, and regular demand gets a priority over the other one. Production scheduling is done daily. I have adopted a mixed-model sequencing approach (like the Toyota Production System :) ), in which very small lots of a variety of products are introduced into the processing system one after the other.

But this daily firefighting approach is not optimal. A lot of stockouts are happening because of inability to meet the demand. And still, the inventories remain large. Of course, adding to the complication is the fact that the mobile plant in which this machine is housed (my body), has to be transported daily to various places for specific demands (attending classes, going for a walk, going to the mess four times a day :) ). If not meeting certain demand is not very desirable, where lies the solution?

A quiz

2005-07-30T00:41:00.000-07:00

Two of my juniors from KREC, 2005 passouts, who have joined IIML, organized a general quiz yesterday. In typical KREC style, they had lots of last-minute problems :), and we started quite late. The one point you could have against the quiz was the inconsistency in the level of questions, which introduced a strong-ish factor of luck into play. Question framing also needed a bit of working on, but considering that they had last-minute problems, it was a creditable effort. There was a smattering of good questions too, and the teams had an entertaining time. Samrat won the quiz practically single-handedly, especially sweeping the sports questions (I was with him, but contributed relatively little; in fact, I botched a simple question :( ).

Capping a disappointing week

2005-07-27T02:42:00.000-07:00

The last week - the mid-term exams week - turned out to be very disappointing. I have now done badly in all three subjects which really matter (to me, that is) the most this term, including Manufacturing System Design today. I'm not worried about the grades (I've stopped thinking about them quite some time back), but the disappointment of not doing well in the subjects you like is great. Anyway, let me remember Pt. Bhushan, the lyricist for the film 'Pujarin', whose words Saigal sang: 'jo biit chukii so biit chukii, ab usakii yaad sataaye kyon?'

'Ijaazat'

2005-07-25T02:46:00.000-07:00

After the CorVal setback, I decided to watch a film, and watched this 1986 Gulzar film with Samrat. Starring Naseeruddin Shah, Rekha and Anuradha Patel, this is a superb film. We were both quite engrossed in the flow of the story, and the typical, complex Gulzar-esque imagery in the dialogues and the songs.

The story is about Mahendra (Shah), an advertising professional, whose life is torn between Maya (Patel), whom he loves, and Sudha (Rekha), who becomes his wife and whom he comes to love. The story begins with Mahendra and Sudha meeting after 5 years of their divorce, both stranded in a waiting room of a remote railway station for a night. The film keeps switching between the current and flashback modes, as we get to learn how Mahendra's life becomes complicated with a loving wife and a bohemian, and very childish, Maya. On the same day, both leave him - Maya on a whim, and Sudha on a decision. Mahendra is shocked by the turn of events, as he had been honest with Sudha almost till the end. For the rest of the story, it would be better to watch the movie. The end is poignant.

Naseer is quite superb, as always. The simple ease with which he enters the skin of the character is to be seen to be believed. Rekha is also quite impressive in a very staid role, and does all the difficult scenes well. Gulzar's touch is all over the place, as he does the script, screenplay, dialogues, lyrics, and direction. The dialogues are quite witty at many places and Maya's dialogues and poetry quite complex (though it is composed of images from everyday life). The outdoor shooting was done in lush green Kudremukh (which brings back memories), and Ashok Mehta's cinematography is pleasing. The music is quite good, all songs being sung by Asha Bhosle. Full credit to R. D. Burman for setting lyrics like 'meraa kuchh saamaan', 'kataraa kataraa milatii hai' and 'khaalii haath shaam aayi hai' to good tunes. In 'Aandhi', the lyrics were extremely pertinent to the film (this deserves an entire post), and that happens with the lyrics here too. Let's call it Gulzar's integrated approach :).

Added later:
I forgot to mention the guest appearances of the Kapoor brothers. Shammi appears as Naseer's grandfather - orthodox in general, yet quite understanding of the beliefs of the younger generation. He does a great job, in my opinion. Shashi, appearing very handsome flashing his toothy grin that has remained constant since the days of 'Awaara', comes right at the end, for about the last ten minutes.

Poka-yoke

2005-07-25T02:40:00.000-07:00

This is Japanese terminology, particularly used in the manufacturing context. It stands for 'mistake-proofing', and I am in need of it. I have continued my record of making silly mistakes in exams, as I made errors with some major implications in both Investment Mgmt. two days ago and in Valuation today. It is getting to be a bit disconcerting now how I am failing to improve with time.

Mid-mid-term

2005-07-22T04:15:00.000-07:00

With 3 mid-term exams out of the way in 2 days and 2 more slated for tomorrow, things are moving at a fast pace. Today's Strategic Mgmt. exam was very enjoyable, with a 25-page case on eBay's foray into e-retailing (from online auctions) to be analysed. The case, prepared by Univ. of Alabama professors, read like a story. It was structured very well, and we got a lot of clarity on the business model and the workings of a pioneering Internet firm. The questions based on the case were also sequenced in a nice way, reflecting the kind of thinking process expected.

In contrast, the other paper - Supply Chain Mgmt. - was a classic descriptive paper, with 25- and 30-mark descriptive questions. After years and years of such exams, I am utterly bored and tired of answering questions that begin with the phrases "Describe briefly" or "Explain in detail", and end in "giving suitable examples where necessary".

Walled in

2005-07-20T07:22:00.000-07:00

My hostel is contiguous with the girls' hostels, and this year, the entire ground floor of my hostel has been allotted to the girls. Now, to separate the men from the girls, so to speak, a wooden partition has been erected in the last 2-3 days. As I was coming back from my walk today, the last nails were being hammered into the partition, joining it to its frame. I smiled to myself as I thought of the similarity of this to the scene in the film 'Anarkali' where Bina Rai is being walled in while singing her last song, 'merii qismat ke khariidaar, ab to aajaa', half-expecting a modern-day Anarkali to sing from within :). Of course, no offence meant to anyone.

Timing

2005-07-18T06:59:00.000-07:00

The bricks on the path on the way to the academic complex from the hostels have been uprooted to make a paved path similar to the one it met. The timing couldn't have been better - right in the middle of the monsoon :). It is fortunate for the work that rains are very intermittent here. Once again, this reminds me of KREC, where most buildings underwent paint jobs just before the legendary monsoon began :).

Crystal-ball gazing

2005-07-18T02:53:00.000-07:00

I just completed one assignment each in Investment Management and Corporate Valuation. They were related - we were projecting the future cash flows of an Indian IT services company and in the case of IM, were valuing the stock of the company in order to find if it was over- or under-valued with respect to economic fundamentals. This 'standard' exercise and the recent classes in CorVal have left me a bit flustered.

For most (or all) companies, the future is risky and uncertain, with the degree of risk and uncertainty varying. Valuing a company today for what it might become in the future is itself a risky job. But investment bankers and others do it day-in and day-out. The problem is: not many of these valuations match. A company is a complex entity, and then it is placed in an uncertain environment, which creates a combinatorial explosion of alternative scenarios for the future. The performance of equity researchers who value stocks is then measured by their past reports and their variance from the actual scenario (not for their normal performance appraisal perhaps, but definitely for their future credibility).

If future uncertainty was the only reason for mismatched valuations, however, it could still be pardoned. The problem is: the methodology used for valuation is often suspect - illogical or biased. We had a case study in class in which we saw that a reputed investment banking firm used a strange hotch-potch of valuation techniques to value a diversified firm, and a merger decision was based on that valuation. Another survey of US and European analysts showed that most analyst recommendations were 'buy/hold', as compared to 'sell'. And I also read about the kind of fantastic measures used to value dot-coms and Internet companies. Having done some part of a valuation exercise, I must say that the temptation to manipulate figures to suit assumptions is high :).

Smorgasbord

2005-07-14T09:33:00.000-07:00

The first-year students' talents were on show at 'Parichay' today. I caught only bits and pieces of it because of classes. So I don't have anything to say about it.

But I do have something to say on the dinner we had in the mess tonight. It was a wonderful spread. The vegetarian menu included paneer curry, chana masala, kofta, ruumali roti, paneer paratha, tandoori roti, pomegranate-and-banana salad, etc. The piece de resistance was the tawa-sabji, which had tawa versions of stuffed brinjals, capsicum, bhindi, arbi, karela, etc. The non-vegetarians had chicken biryani and kebabs to feast on (these were ordered from outside). Rasmalai and ice-cream rounded out the dinner. A meal to remember...

Cycling

2005-07-12T09:03:00.000-07:00

In a change from the normal walking routine, I bicycled today, making four laps around the institute, which comes to around 12 km. I felt a bit nostalgic in taking up a bicycle again, as I remembered the days of Std. 11 & 12 when I used to bicycle close to 20 km every day. The second spell of rains has made the atmosphere quite pleasant, although it is still pretty humid. It felt nice to expend some energy in such an atmosphere.

I've noticed this strange asymmetry in me. I don't know if it holds for all people. It is this: when I am mentally fatigued, expending physical energy into a sport or exercise (but not to excess) always freshens me up and I am ready for more mental exercise. But the converse is not true. When physically fatigued, it is extremely difficult for the mind to concentrate.

'Chhoti si Baat'

2005-07-11T07:07:00.000-07:00

Having some free time today, I re-watched this '70s Basu Chatterjee film starring Amol Palekar, Ashok Kumar, Asrani and Vidya Sinha, with a friend. After being in a B-school for a slightly more than a year now, we viewed this film, and particularly Ashok Kumar's character in a new light. The following is not meant to be serious :).

Arun (Amol Palekar) is having trouble wooing Prabha (Vidya Sinha) because of his shy nature and extreme diffidence, even though Prabha is positively disposed towards him. Nagesh (Asrani), who is Prabha's colleague at office, adds to Arun's problems by making aggressive moves toward Prabha.

Viewing Arun and Nagesh as rival firms in a market where Prabha is the customer, Arun is not aware of his capabilities, while Nagesh has developed several competencies (like possessing a scooter to ferry Prabha, having expertise in chess & table-tennis, being street-smart, etc.) and is quite customer-centric. Having made bad investments in a bid to impress his customer (like buying an antique, run-down motorcycle), Arun also tries out penny consultants (astrologers, magnetists) before turning to the big consultant firm of Col. Julius Nagendranath Wilfred Singh (Ashok Kumar). Col. Singh offers diversified consulting services to a wide customer base, including politicians and filmstars worried about managing their income tax.

Col. Singh quickly diagnoses Arun's problems, in true consultant style, as 'lack of self-confidence', 'ineffective global communication' and 'paranoidical frustration' :). He takes up revamping Arun's firm as a turnkey project, and in 20 days, has equipped Arun with various skills to match and better Nagesh's. Col. Singh has thus been an external change agent and a turnaround artist. Arun is also taught intrigue in business (delaying tactics and sledging in chess & table-tennis, salvaging bad investments by artificially increasing their price, etc.) The rival firm of Nagesh tries desperately to counter this transformed firm of Arun, but to no avail. Finally, as Arun wins over his customer, Nagesh also turns to Col. Singh for similar transformation. Will Col. Singh's transformation process framework become commoditized, with so many firms wanting to use it? Material for a sequel, perhaps.

Aftermath

2005-07-09T21:02:00.000-07:00

The first spell of rains has come and gone, and has left in its wake an atmosphere that is saturated with humidity. As I look out of my balcony, the overcast and humid conditions remind me strongly of Surathkal. But thankfully, unlike Surathkal, there haven't been any power problems in my hostel (some of the others are experiencing voltage fluctuations). The mess is a super-pressure-cooker, boiling people within minutes of their occupying a seat under toiling fans not able to perform to their full capacity.

'Sarkar'

2005-07-06T07:51:00.000-07:00

I watched this latest Ram Gopal Varma film at the Waves multiplex with some friends the day before yesterday. I had read a review of the film on Rediff which had been pretty harsh, and had called it 'a dumbed down Godfather'. So I was not expecting much.

But I must say that the film is not all that bad, and the review overcriticized. It is quite impossible to create the aura of Marlon Brando with his method acting, even if Don Corleone is being enacted by Amitabh Bachchan, the ruthless intensity of Al Pacino (played by Abhishek Bachchan), and of course, Coppola's direction. However, if you just forget that this film is a kind of remake of 'The Godfather' and just view it as a Hindi film, it fares quite well.

Amitabh is Sarkar, or Subhash Naagare, a Marathi don in Mumbai. But unlike Don Vito, crime is not his business, it is his crusade against more vicious crime - a perpetual avenging mechanism. Thus, he does not take assignments to protect smugglers' consignments, etc. He has two sons - Vishnu (played brilliantly by Kay Kay), a rebellious and hotblooded character, and Shankar (Abhishek), a US-educated man who is quite proud of his father's work. As a certain assignment is rejected by Amitabh because it involves abetting smugglers, he falls into disfavour with the Dubai-based smuggler. Along with his henchmen, which include a Chandraswami lookalike and a Madrasi character Selvarmani (played hilariously by Kota Srinivasa Rao, a popular Telugu villain), he hatches a plan to trap Amitabh. They kill a popular politician called Khurana (Anupam Kher) who is anti-Naagare, and Amitabh is implicated. Vishnu has now moved over to the dark side, and Amitabh surrenders and is put in jail. Abhishek, having come to know that there will be an attack on Amitabh in the jail, approaches Selvarmani who turns out to have crossed over as well. So, Abhishek runs for his life from there (a sequence lacking thrill), and starts to transform into Sarkar himself. The rest of the tale is about his revenge on the smuggler and others, which includes killing his brother. The film ends with Amitabh living a retired existence and Abhishek being addressed as Sarkar.

As the Rediff review notes, the women in the film do not have roles to speak of. However, Supriya Pathak as Amitabh's wife does well. Amitabh, Abhishek and Kay Kay are all good, particularly the latter.

The main problem with the film is that it is like the curate's egg - good in parts. It does not sustain the tension generated in the scene where Abhishek comes in and tells his parents that he has killed his brother, in all scenes. The background music is mostly deafening and distracting. The theme music of 'The Godfather' is also copied and modified to make it bad :), and repeated in a few sequences. So, while not being very harsh to the movie, I would say that it could have been much better, particularly in character development and writing.

'Business Legends'

2005-07-04T02:06:00.000-07:00

This is a book that I partially read in the last few days. I returned it because it was overdue and I was taking too much time to complete it, given the time pressures. Written engagingly by Gita Piramal (Viking, 1998), this book profiles four of India's greatest businessmen - G. D. Birla, Walchand Hirachand, Kasturbhai Lalbhai and J. R. D. Tata. I could only read Kasturbhai's profile and a part of Birla's profile.

Most of the action in the book revolves around the period 1900-1950, when these four businessmen really came into their own and made a lasting impact on a turbulent India. The themes of the freedom movement, Indo-British trade wars and unfair British policy towards Indian businessmen recur throughout the book.

Kasturbhai Lalbhai remained a regional entrepreneur, but he laid the base for a global business, as Arvind is today. His political influence and activism, however, was much wider than his business interests and he remained the leader of Ahmedabad industry in all political and trade deliberations with the British. He had great business acumen, but was cautious in his approach. Personally, he lived a life of great thrift and regularity. Particularly fascinating is the incident of the textile trade unions strike in 1917, when a young Kasturbhai's opponent (so to speak) was Gandhiji. Difficult times like these were weathered by Kasturbhai, and although he later warmed up to Gandhiji, he continued to have differences of opinion with him. His associations with the Sarabhai family and Vallabhbhai Patel are also very interesting. Above all, he built or helped build institutions like ATIRA, IIM Ahmedabad and ICICI, using his organizational abilities. His decision-making amid difficult times like his brother-in-law's death and other family difficulties also show him to be a very firm personality.

G. D. Birla, in contrast to Kasturbhai, had almost the whole of India in his business grasp. Along with the very capable members of the Birla clan, he saw undervalued businesses quickly and bought them at cheap prices to achieve rapid diversification. But he also set up greenfield ventures at a pace that made British interests envy and fear the man and resort to political machinations against him. A rebel all his life, he had a few quirks to his personality. His close association to Gandhiji and the political wheeling-dealing that accompanied his election to the Central Legislative Assembly in the 1920's is also fascinating to read.

Overall, the book scores on depth of research and presenting a holistic picture of each personality. The close association of politics with business is also a theme of the times. The photographs in the middle of the book are really great, and they give us a very clear cut idea of each personality. I particularly liked the photo of four Birla generations together in a photo (G. D., B. K., Aditya and Kumaramangalam). Also, the family trees of each of the personalities right at the beginning of each profile clarified things a lot. Overall, a wonderful book to read, if you like business history.

The news this week

2005-06-30T23:22:00.000-07:00

It's been a very busy week, which is unusual as it was only the second week of the term. But the load of assignments and classes was great. As our MSD professor said today, while handing out the second assignment: 'As one door closes, another one opens'. So another round of assignments is ready and waiting.

This is not to say that the term has been a drag. In fact, this is the most exciting time I've had since coming here. The subjects are of my own choosing, and so far, I am extremely happy with my selection. Attending classes is a far from unhappy experience. The breaks between classes also have been such as to encourage visits to the library :), so I have caught up on a lot of Harvard Business Reviews, McKinsey Quarterlys, Fortunes, and Economists.

The new batch of students has come in, and is undergoing induction. The only reason I have to grumble about this development is that the mess remains too full at most times, and waiting inordinately long for food makes me irritable :). There have been some changes in the subject structure for the new batch which might make it a bit more tough on them. Research Methodology no longer exists in the third term (an unwise move, in my opinion) and is replaced by two half-credit courses in Advanced Data Analysis and Strategic Mgmt-I. This will be one tough term for these people.

The monsoon has set in, and regular showers are now to be expected in the evening and during the night. The humidity has increased, and the insects are starting to proliferate, but the situation overall is still quite agreeable.

On class (non-)participation

2005-06-26T07:45:00.000-07:00

My "contribution" to the class, in terms of airing my views on the topic of the day, is negligible. In consultant-speak, my voiceshare (the amount of time I speak divided by the total time anybody has spoken in class) tends to zero. I am a struggling player in the voice market. Or at least, that is the impression.

So, why is this so? To some extent, it is lethargy or a lack of confidence that prevents me from speaking. It may seem strange that if this were so, how did I make it into an IIM? But I did. Maybe, what is known in statistics as a Type-II error has been committed.

But it is not weaknesses alone that have contributed to this attitude. In the end, it is a conscious decision not to speak much. It will take two things to make me speak something in class: one, the ongoing discussion is very relevant to the subject and is meaningful, and two, I have something meaningful and important to contribute. In the absence of one or both of these, I will not speak. It's a matter of principle.

Quite a lot of the discussions in class (especially, but not only, in subjects like marketing and strategy) are problematic because of being one or more of the following: irrelevant, naive, unrealistic, not concrete, argumentative, repetitive, motivated purely from a desire to get valuable CP marks. I don't contribute to these discussions, and neither do I listen to them all the time, except for amusement's sake. And I am not assertive enough to restore sense to the discussion (or perhaps I am just selfish).

But a lot of times, I really do not have anything substantial to contribute. People say, "As a manager, you must have a view". I care two hoots for this statement. It is naive and unrealistic, and also not idealistic as it might seem at first. Someone told me today, "How can you not have anything to contribute? You are one of the most knowledgeable guys in class". That's a joke. I know what I know, which is precious little.

This principle will hurt me this year, as many subjects have a substantial percentage of marks allotted to CP. But unless the quality of CP is kept in mind while awarding marks (as it is in the admired US B-schools), this becomes a totally inappropriate performance measure. It just encourages a student to gain voiceshare, even though garbage is being aired.

Relief

2005-06-24T09:42:00.000-07:00

After being baked for several scorching days in a searing heat wave, rain is providing relief here. I don't know if these showers are monsoon showers or pre-monsoon ones, but they have been quite regular for the last three nights. The humidity has shot up and that is keeping up the heat, but it is more benign compared to the hot winds (luu) that ruled the days earlier.

Booked

2005-06-22T02:01:00.000-07:00

Although I just claimed that I am not feeling up to it, I will now manifest symptoms of being infected with the book meme virus (having been twice bitten), although I will not propagate it further. This is not a bad exercise in introspection, so here goes...

Number of books at home: My very rough guess would be 800 +- 200, i.e. anywhere from 600-1000. I have not counted a few hundred comics and magazines in this. A lot of these books were bought by my father or grandfather.

Last book I bought: Though I don't remember exactly, I think it is Dostoyevsky's 'Crime and Punishment'

Last book I read: Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness'

Five books that mean a lot to me:
It is incredibly difficult for me to pick so few. Indeed as many sportsmen say, 'the best is yet to come'. But here's a selection:

'Surely you're Joking, Mr. Feynman!' - a very light, enjoyable look into the life of one of the greatest personalities who ever lived - Richard Feynman.

'The Story of Philosophy' by Will Durant - which gives a superbly coherent synopsis of the history of Western philosophy, from Socrates and Plato to John Dewey. This is an absolute must-read for anyone remotely interested in philosophy.

The Sherlock Holmes series by Arthur Conan Doyle - detectives have come and detectives have gone, but none has quite matched Holmes - his personality, varied abilities, quirks and the people surrounding him, are all legendary. Conan Doyle's writing skills and plot variety are superb.

The Correspondence of Sardar Patel, 1945-1950 - around a dozen hefty volumes of correspondence of one of India's greatest leaders, bought by my grandfather. It not only gives one an inside look at the great man's character and style of working, but also the issues of that historic time for India. Obviously, some of the biggest names of the time figure prominently in these volumes.

The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda - although I have only started reading these, I am very sure that a patient reading will be greatly inspiring and uplifting. The power that flows from the confident words of this great man is incredible, and I can only wonder how his presence must have been.

On B-school orientations

2005-06-18T00:53:00.000-07:00

The MSD professor told us this interesting apocryphal story today - a take on the orientations that B-schools are known for:

In the town of Cambridge, Massachusetts, known most for its two top-class institutions - Harvard and MIT - a person goes to a superstore and takes a shopping cart. A sign in the store says: "Not more than 20 items in a cart". But this man stuffs his cart and reaches the counter. The lady at the counter sees him and asks: "Are you from Harvard or MIT?" Amazed, the person asks: "It's Harvard, but how did you know?" Pointing at the sign, the lady replies: "Either you cannot read, which means you must be from MIT; or you cannot count, which means you must be from Harvard!" :)

The 'ka kha ga' of manufacturing

2005-06-18T00:48:00.000-07:00

The professor who teaches us Manufacturing System Design told us of his invention a couple of days back. He said that when he studied engineering, they used a textbook by a Japanese author (Hitomi), who described Manufacturing with three K's. These K's were Japanese words,
which Hitomi himself translated into English as three D's - 'dirty, dangerous, and difficult'. The professor said that he tried a lot to translate this into an alliterative Hindi phrase, but the best he could come up with was the 'ka kha ga' of Manufacturing - 'kathin, khatarnaak, gandaa'. Trivial but interesting...

Back in hell

2005-06-14T08:39:00.000-07:00

Hot winds and a blazing sun greeted me as I stepped out on the stairs from the plane which got me back for another three-quarters of an year to Lucknow today. The day temperature is 42 degrees C and it is scorching. Everything feels hot to the touch, including the bed and wooden furniture. Cold water from the cooler filled in a bottle turns warm and then undrinkably hot in the span of half an hour. The 'hell' nickname is appropriate, at least in terms of the climate. Later, in the winter months, 'hell' will freeze over. There is a need to get the 'hell' out of here (pun intended).

End of summers

2005-06-02T20:21:00.000-07:00

My summer internship ends today and I will leave Chennai tomorrow. The experience, as far as work is concerned, has been good, and as far as the city is concerned, has been mixed. All the same, it will certainly not be unpleasant to leave this place.

'Heart of Darkness'

2005-05-27T03:21:00.000-07:00

I have wanted to read this classic by Joseph Conrad (Penguin, 1994) for some time, and did so this week. First published in 1902, it is more of an extended short story than a novel. It has been pretty influential through the 20th century, including being the inspiration for Coppola's 'Apocalypse Now'.

A seaman called Marlow recounts to his friends on board a ship on the Thames his stay in the
Dark Continent - Africa - when colonisation by Europe had not yet become formal, and was at
the trading (and exploitation) stage. Marlow first moves to a Central Station of his Company, several hundred miles inland in Africa's dense forest, and then, along with the central station manager and several others, sails upstream on a big river right into the heart of darkness - the deepest of African forests. They are in search of a station manager called Kurtz (Marlon Brando's character in the film, name retained), who is their most productive manager, sending the largest quantity of ivory from his post. Moreover, Kurtz is known for his moralizing and his speeches, hearing of which, Marlow is pretty impressed with him.

But it is on approaching and meeting a badly ailing Kurtz that Marlow realizes that Kurtz is actually a tyrannous and cruel man who has set himself up as a God among the local people. Even though on his deathbed, Kurtz is extremely unwilling to go to the central station with his colleagues for treatment, so much does power attract him. Finally, he dies en route to the central station on the wooden vessel, and is buried there. But for his fiancee in Europe and all other people, he becomes a martyr, a noble hero who died in the cause of bringing light to the dark continent. Only Marlow realizes the true nature of Kurtz.

Although only a hundred-odd pages long, one must read each sentence closely and gauge the meaning that Conrad wishes to give to it. If one gives a thought to what Conrad describes, the whole thing is chilling - both the treatment of the native Africans by the whites, and the utter power that nature held in Africa over a stifled, ailing man.

Mealy-mouthed

2005-05-27T02:46:00.000-07:00

Every night we friends at YMCA debate on where to have dinner. Chennai's traditional restaurants offer rice-based meals served on banana leaves (of which there seems to be an unlimited supply available), as can well be expected. These can be difficult for a non-South Indian to have every day. Fortunately, I don't have a problem with rice, and of course, there are many other options available in Royapettah. I actually like the rice meals a lot, since there's a lot of variety.

These meals-serving places are mostly called 'Bhavan's - Raj Bhavan, Sri Krishna Bhavan, Vasantha Bhavan, and the most famous, Saravana Bhavan, etc. - similarly to Bangalore's 'Sagar's. However, unlike those Bangalore joints, there is no consistency in the quality and the basic offering across restaurants.

One place here offers full meals and mini-meals. The full meals consist of unlimited rice (a significant attraction to most people here), and a host of preparations to have that rice with - sambar, rasam, vegetables, tarakoLam, curds, buttermilk, etc. (all of them unlimited). The fried papad (appaLam) is also important. The mini-meals consist of limited rice, but has 4 different types of rice dishes - plain rice, curd rice, sambar rice, and masala rice. Soup is offered in a little steel glass, and is plainly artificial. Another category of restaurants is the Chettinadu variety, but not all of them are authentic. Also, one may not be able to make out much difference between Chettinadu and non-Chettinadu food in vegetarian meals.

At one restaurant, a friend ordered chhole-bhature, as he saw people having it. But the waiter did not understand. So he told him it's also known as chana-bhatura. Still, no response. Then, the waiter took initiative and called an emergency meeting of all waiters to find out what my friend was saying. They discussed in rapid Tamil, but were clueless at the end. Finally, my friend went to the manager and asked him. He said chhole-bhature was known here as sola-puri (corruption of chhole-puri). Sola-puri sounds like a Maharashtrian dish :).

Snakes and ladders

2005-05-19T20:42:00.000-07:00

The third term result has seen a big slide in grades for me, leading to a drop in the cumulative GPA as well. It's a good thing that I wasn't expecting much, otherwise I would have ended up like Bharat Bhushan, lip-synching with Rafi's magnificent voice to Sahir's lyrics and N. Dutta's tune (film: Chandrakanta):

maine chaand aur sitaaron kii tamannaa kii thii

mujhako raaton kii siyaahii ke sivaa kuchh na milaa

(Aspir'd tho' I had for the moon and the stars,

The blackness of the night is all I got)