The threat is increasing in magnitude by the day

10 months back, when the focus was on terrorism from across the borders, this blog had a post that claimed that the bigger threat to the nation is from the Maoists. I have never been afflicated by "I said so" syndrome and it is double worse when the issue has such severe repurcussions like Maoism. I really wish my prophesies turned out to be incorrect, but I am afraid it is not so.

Today's Times of India has come out with the theoretical moorings of the current Maoist movement based on the Charu Mazumdar line.

The Government appears to be totally confused as to how to tackle the Maoist. And the NGO's and Activists have mixed up the issue so nicely that any attack against the Maoist is seen as an attack against the poor tribals. This absurdity has to go. The Maoists are resorting to violence, terrorism, killing, forced tax collection, and are fighting a war against the nation. They are running a parallel government in nearly 1/3rd districts of India (see map above).  This has to be tackled strongly with the full powers at the disposal of the state, as they are not only an internal threat, but an external threat, for they have logistical support from China, Nepal, Bangladesh and of course Pakistan. This a tactical war on the country, which is bleeding us. The Government is appearing hapless which doesnt augur well for the country. Once you lose the legitimate and moral authority of the Government, the country will transcend to anarchy and chaos.

The tribals are at best supporting actors in this. They are caught between the Government and the Maoist. It is true they have genuine grievances, they have been dispossessed of land and deprived of their livelihood by industrialists encroaching their domain. But they are too simple to fight against the government using guns and bombs. I have had personal experience with tribals in Attapady. The Maoists are comprised of educated unemployed group, who have been indoctrinated. Most of them are well read and are angry at the atrocities done by the State. The tribals are simpletons. They have only obeyed others in the past and need a benefactor. The State has failed to provide support to them. They look upon Maoist either as someone who can protect them, or who they think are fighting their enemies (the industrialists) or they are providing logistical support to the Maoist out of fear. Either way, they have been won over by the Maoists.

The Government has to isolate the two. Once tribals understand that it is to their benefit to support the government, and they will have protection of their life and property from the Government, they will switch sides. This has to be done through an intense tribal development program. If that means stopping mining and industrialization in their homeland, so be it. That will send the right signal. And a special police force sensitive to the tribal needs, ably supported by a judicial system that shall dispose of cases pertaining to tribal grievances can go a long way in assuaging their feelings. And finally, they should be made part of any decision making pertaining to development in their area. It is sad but true that many tribals loose their moorings when development takes place and they get meagre compensation in return. Cut from their land and forest, they drift to the cities where they end up as the worst of the under privileged.

Simulataneously, the Government has to tackle the Maoist with all their might. State police and CRPF do not have the capability to handle counter insurgency operations or anti-guerilla warfare. Our police have become very soft over the years. Most cannot even run 100 metres in 12 seconds nor can they hit a barn door while shooting. The State needs  crack Counter Insurgency battalions, armed with modern equipments, information system, and knowledge of the terrain to win the war. If these battalions have to be created out of our army, so be it. Let them be deputed for this special job. The role of the army is to defend the nation. And we need political consensus and a single bloody mindedness to crush this threat. Finally, the activists and the NGO's who support the Maoists have to be tackled at an intellectual level. Their arguments have to be countered logically and with facts, and not through trying to shut them up. Though I dont approve of the collateral damage that resulted in hundreds of thousands of Tamilians being dispossessed, the LTTE was totally neutralized by the Srilankan army. The whole of South Asia will be a safer place because of that in the future. And guess, who gave the training and tactical support to the Srilankar army during their final assault? The Indian Army!!!

6 Questions

I have been a facilitator for finding out the root cause of the problems in Organizations. I follow the simple universal truth.

"There are only 6 questions that one human being can ask another".

Ask these questions in the right manner and you will get to the root cause.

Ways of Worship - 7

SEVANAM, the 7th form of worship is based on the fact that there is god in every living being and any help done to any living being results in serving the god indirectly. This includes serving the aged, weak, under privileged and those in need of help. Be of service to others, and realize God through that.

Of Chariots, Horses and Reins

Ramayana beautifully depicts the qualities required of a leader. When Vibhishanan expresses his doubts as to the ability of the vanara sena to take on the mighty army of Ravanan, Rama explains to him the need for a clear vision. Then he goes on to explain the concept of leadership using the analogy of a Horse Driven Chariot. This thought process can be extended to a top manager in an organization.

Rama visualizes the four wheels of the Chariot as the four critical traits requied of a leader - Character, Ethics, Courage and Valour. Character is the most fundamental of all. It is absolutely essential that the leader should be clear of his value system and he should be able to communicate this clearly to his subordinates and other stakeholders. The communication should be through action. He should walk the talk. He should also be ethically perfect to gain the moral high ground that is so essential for earning the respect of the employees. Power earned by virtue of official position, as depicted in ones business card, is meaningless unless one earns the grudging respect of one's peers and subordinates. Courage, comprises of both physical and mental courage in the Ramayana context. But in an organizational context, this has to do with taking unpopular decisions when required. Leader is a change agent, and people abhor change. One has to have terrific strength of character and the Valour, which is the mental fortitude to stand by one's decisions so needed to achieve the vision.

Continuing the analogy, Rama explained that the horses of the Chariot stood for Strength, Energy and Passion. One should have the Strength, of staying power to beat back the competion and stay in the hunt, and should possess unlimited Energy, which should act as a tonic, not only for the manager, but also for those around him. Finally, my favourite - Passion. A leader should be passionate about his work, however small it might be. One should throw one's whole weight behind every activity, should have complete involvement and love doing it.

But a leader is incomplete without the traits represented by the reins of the horses - Forgiveness, Compassion, Consistency and Equanimity. A leader has to be consistent all the times or else it would send contradictory signals to his subordinates. Along with Equanimity, it helps to develop trust amongst them, so essential for the success of the venture. A leader should be humane. He should be empathetic, and understand what is in the mind of the subordinates before they express it. This helps him develop pathos -for unless you apply to the subordinate's emotions, the support wont be whole hearted. Here is where Forgiveness and Compassion play an important role.

Add to the above, Knowledge, Strategic competence, Intelligence, Skills, Commitment and absence of ego - you now have a wonderful set of tools to win under any trying circumstances. 

It is time that we take the leadership in developing a Managerial Style suiting the Indian mindset using the wealth of knowledge hidden in our scriptures.

(Picture sourced from the web shows Krishna giving Gitopadesam to Arjuna, just prior to the commencement of the Kurukshetra War)

Ways of Worship - 6

VANDANAM is the sixth way of worship.


It is also the simplest. It is not person, place or method dependant.

Doing Namaskaram, bowing the head in silence,folding the hands, saluting the guru, parents, elders, learned, guests all come under vandana.

The most popular method is to say 'Namaste', which is formed by two words; 'te' meaning 'you' and 'namah' which can be any one of 'to bend, bow, incline or stoop'. In effect, one is submitting to the other in all humility, be it god or more knowledgable elders. The folded hands also allows for the energy, wisdom in the other person to be channelised into you. If you have ever watched a Indian classical dance performance, you would have noticed that the dancer says namaste first holding the hand well above the head first, then in front of her forehead and finally in front of her chest. The first is a salutation to the God, the second to the Guru and the third to the Audience.

Euro (danger) Zone

The Euro, of which much was expected and which once was touted as an alternate global currency to the beleagured US Dollar, is in serious trouble. How did it go wrong so terribly for the Eurozone economy?

When the Europen Union was formed in the 1990's, followed by monetary union, there was much inequality in the region. The Berlin wall had come down only 1989 and the integration with the erstwhile east european economy with that of the more developed west europe had not gathered sufficient momentum. While the first was essentially an agrarian economy with lower living standards and wages, the latter was starting to decline as an Industrial economy, and moving towards services economy. Formation of Euro led to Capital flow into the under developed East European countries since the manufacturers wanted to avail the cost advantage of low wages prevalent in the area. The idea was to industrialize the East Europe with the more affluent Western part consuming it, and the money remains within the economy. Smaller countries like Greece joined Euro in 2002 and suddenly found that they can raise sovereign debt at low interest rates, not due to the strength of their economy, but on the artificial strength of the other members of the Union, as the debt givers valued the risk against euro. Then Greece went on a spending spree, including the 2004 Athens Olympics, that is a financial disaster in the short term. The EU countries, especially the weaker ones, had easy money, higher leverage, poor regulation and still worse accounting. They borrowed much more than their capability with hardly any supervision from the EU parliament on controlling countrys deficit. The ideal recipe for disaster.


 

And no one factored in the competition from China. They were bigger, had a tremendous cost advantage and as a nation adopted Low Cost Strategy to grow, with remarkable success. The European manufacturing became unsustainable. The customer preference also changed - from higher quality, higher priced, longer PLC products for which Europe was famous for to lower quality, lower price, shorter PLC products, the latter being the hallmark of Chinese goods. Thus over a period of time Europe lost its industrialization momentum, agriculture had to be subsidised heavily and they ignored the services sector, other than the financial services. Purchase of Chinese goods meant there was as monetary outflow. This led to lower GDP growth as the profits could not be reinvested and the existing investments did not produce sufficient returns.

Meanwhile the various Countries that joined the monetary union, threw fiscal prudence to the winds and started spending indiscriminately, running up huge fiscal deficits. In the pre-monetary union days, they were able to either print notes or devalue their currency to meet the deficit. The fallacy of having a single currency, without a single economic policy and a single budgetary control has been exposed. The smaller countries like Greece, Spain, Portugal and even Italy were living on debt, with more debt raised to pay off the existing debt - a situation similar to India in late 1980s. This was more like the ponzi scheme - the countries thought they are immune to the financial market rules since the debt was sovereign in nature and hence the debt provider not likely to be worried. Once this bubble burst, triggered by the Global Financial Crisis, there was no place to hide.

For now, the richer countries of the Union has bailed them out. But that was not out of love for the PIGS (Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain), but more out of self interest. They cannot afford Euro to suffer a crisis of confidence. The region will have to pay a heavy price during the next 4-5 years, with slower GDP growth, lower investments and higher unemployment on the anvil.There are also strong rumours that a few big hedge funds have ganged up to create this crisis, which could be true.

The current financial crisis has more to do with investor confidence. The Government Treasury bonds were considered to be the most trust worthy and risk free investment - a reason why governments used to pay pittance as interest to the bond holders. This was followed by savings in the Banks as debt instruments like Fixed deposits. The last two years have destroyed the investors faith in Banks, and now the Euro crisis has reinforced the apprehension of many sceptics that Sovereign Debt too cannot be trusted any more.

Is there any wonder, Gold prices are soaring high?

Ways of Worship -5

ARCHANAM follows as the 5th way of worship.

Offering flowers, buds, petals, coins, akshathai in small quantities at a time to god in whichever format (idol, image) is archana. In the absence of any of the above you can do archana with 'mano pushpam'. Archana can be done individually or collectively while chanting mantras. When you buy an archana ticket in a temple, you are practically outsourcing the process to a qualified person, the priest. However, while he is doing the physical archana, you are expected to invoke the god through silent prayers to get the full benefit.

The sphinx mumbles today

This can happen only in India.

The elected Prime Minister (well, not quite, as MMS is an MP by virtue of his being elected indirectly through the Rajya Sabha) has not had a Press Conference for 4 years - that's is right!! Manmohan Singh will address a press conference today and field questions (and you can be sure that most of the questions will be soft ones thrown at him by friendly journalists) after a gap of four years - that is almost one term of his tenure. And to think that we are one of the emerging economies. During the 4 years since his last press conference, there has been a Global Financial Crisis, Indian economy has hit the cross roads, there has been a debatable nuclear bill signed, major terror attack in Mumbai and elsewhere, the inflation has hit the roof, gaffes on the foreign policy front, large scale corruption of thousands of crores - and our sphinx like 'economist' Prime Minister has not bothered to handle questions from the journalists and public even once. So much for our democratic values and accountability! The same goes for his Party President and de facto Prime Minister Sonia Gandhi and the heir apparent Rahul Gandhi. Do any one of us know, or do we ask, what the political, economical philosophy of these three who virtually rule the country? - the answer is an emphatic NO.

What we have today in our country is Authority without Responsibility. And that, any management professional knows, is a sure recipe for disaster.

Ways of Worship -4

The fourth way, which perhaps the most critical, is SMARANAM.

Smaranam is recognizing the divine power that exists in the flaura and fona. Smaranam helps us in realizing we are only a tool in the hands of the divine power-just a small pawn in the larger scheme of things. We need to understand there is a God in everyone. The trick is to identify the godliness that is hidden in others. A child feels secure when walking holding the hands of his father/mother. Likewise, Smaranam helps us gain the confidence required to overcome the crisis in our life. In a way, all the other types of worship ultimately leads to Smaranam.

Hardware advantages and limitations

In part 2 of the interview, Anand talks about the advantage of Computer hardware in chess and also the limitations.


I liked this bit,


It must be good for the player to have good hardware. The problem is that it often doesn’t tell you what you want. You want it to find an improvement for White, and it may choose to find it for Black instead. If you have good hardware the chances are your work will be good and you can be more confident about the work you have. If you are taking risks then you can feel you are going to have a head start. In that sense it is good. But the computer will only tell you what the position justifies. It is also insidious – it can stop you playing your favourite lines because of some obscure problems somewhere. I would say computers are very useful – especially very powerful hardware – but if working with the computer means you stop taking risks it’s of course going to kill you. But on the other hand if it encourages you to take the right kind of risks then so much the better. Managing it is I think very tricky. It is very powerful but it may not tell you what you want.



The highlightings are mine. The above is quite true of managers who depend wholly on models of decision making.

Human Cluster

The Greatest Sportsperson India has seen, Viswanathan Anand, has acknowledged the contributions made by his 'Human Cluster' , in his title defense against Topalov. A very interesting choice of words - Human Cluster.

Despite the talk about computer and chess databases over riding human creativity in Chess, it is vivid that team work still plays the most important part in the making of a World Champion, as this interview with Anand shows.To rope in Kasparov, Kramnik and Carlsen, three cranky geniuses, in your team is a phenomenal achievement for Anand - maybe more difficult than retaining his crown.

It helps of course when you read the interview, if you can try and understand the mindset of a Chess World Champion, what goes into preparing for a World Title Defence, the intense rivalry amongst the top Chess Grandmasters and the fact that most of them are cranky with limited inter personal skills one way or other. Even if you dont, it is worth a read from a Management point of view. (picture source www.chessbase.com)

By the way, how many of us have such a 'Human Cluster' around us?

Ways of Worship - 3

The next type of worship is KEERTHANAM

Singing devotional songs, chanting mantras, telling devotional stories, giving sound advice, appreciating satkarmaas all come under the ambit of Keerthanam. One needs training to sing songs or chant mantras without Sruthi bhedam. A badly sung song or a poorly rendered mantra may not be quite sravyam to others and in fact may have the opposite effect. However, a well sung song without upasana and bhakthi is meaningless. The Keerthanam should be pleasant to hear and invoke godliness in the listener

Ways of Worship - 2

The second way of worship is DARSANAM.

We use our vision to worship in this case. The idol/image of god, aesthetically built structures, nature at its best (for god lives in every living and non living creature), good persons, auspicious things, rising sun, full moon - all can be viewed with our eyes to understand what God stands for in life. There are two types of Darsanam - the first is the obvious one using our eyes to see what is around us and the second is to 'see' using our 'Aka Kannu' (Inner eye) - We use aka kannu to see beyond the obvious to find inner meanings.

Ways of Worship - 1

There are 8 ways in which you can worship the God, as per Sanathana Dharma Sasthram. We shall look at the first today.

SRAVANAM : This is the form of worship using the sense of hearing. Listen to good things, keerthanas that praise the god, mantrams that are being chanted , prayers and hear stories from our scriptures that extol the values of virtuous living. When we hear good things, our mood is lifted, mind gets uncluttered and peace descends on us, which is when we find god.

Testing of an advertising idea!

About a decade and a half back when I was running the NIIT franchise, I was always on the look out for new avenues for advertising. That was the time when the blouses became smaller and smaller with most of the back side left open (We even had blouses with windows in the back) I used to wonder aloud what an ideal place it is for an advertiser to advertise his logo. "Imagine the sheer number of women wearing sarees (those days Churidars, jeans/top were not in vogue as it is today) and the advertisement sure not to miss catching the eye of the eager male population" - that was the gist of my argument. I always regretted that I never got a chance to test whether my idea was workable or not.

Now, thanks to Mandira Bedi, that worry is over, and I am glad to note I was not wrong.

Her tattoo has got the attention of none other than the Akal Takht, the supreme body of Sikhs as this report will show. Of course this is not a commercial advertisesment, as the tattoo symbolises Ek Onkar (God is One), but still it validates my idea :)

Ideas drive the organization

Contrary to what many think Organizations are not created by infrastructure or other tangible assets, nor by processes or policies. They are just means to achieve an end.

Organizations are made great by ideas that emanate out of its leader and creative employees. They thrive because of the visionaries, R&D geniuses, those who think out of the box and those who can look beyond the imminent to crystal ball gaze into the future. Infrastructure, processes and policies just facilitate the execution of the ideas.

There would have been no Apple without Steve Jobs. Tata's would not have become the most respected company in India without the vision of JRD Tata. Akio Morita's contribution to Sony is well documented.

Unfortunately, we dont teach the importance of this in our Management Curriculum, which focuses more on systems, procedures and processes. Importance of vision is given a cursory mention and nothing is taught on the need to think differently. This is akin to to our cricket coaching academies churning out thousands of mediocre cricketers who are clones, techically correct, but lacking in flair and creativity that separates a Sehwag or Tendulkar from a Badrinath or Cheteswar Pujara. In fact it is condemnable that this has become a way of life in every aspect of life - the recognition given to mediocrity and status quo. Our schools are the breeding ground for promoting mediocrity - a visionary maverick student is punished for not toeing the schools regimental line of thinking. Once you start working, you are considered a misfit if you are not a conformist. No one wants a maverick or a rebel in his department. Over a period, the creativity and original thinking is dulled and we have lost another asset forever.

Ideas change the world and the organization. Think big, think wild and keep on thinking. Dare to dream, for dreams do come true

A nice link on Greece

Greece economic crisis and its impact on Eurozone countries are in the news of late. A nice write up on exactly how this happened can be read at 'Atlas revisited'

off blog

Pre occupied with a few important issues. Shall be back blogging regularly in a couple of days

From Savings or Future Earnings?

The fundamental difference between our parent's generation and our generation lies in how we finance our purchase of assets.


Our parents funded the purchase from earnings already made. I remember my father closing all his bank Fixed deposits and then taking a loan from his Provident Fund (which was in fact his savings) to finance our first car - a princely sum of Rs 17,000 in 1972. He constructed his house also from his post retirement settlement. All the consumer durables were bought whenever he got his annual bonus. In short, he was living within his means and buying assets for the future generation from what he had set apart for them.


Our generation buys everything, whether it be house, car, consumer durables, gold, on loans or using credit cards with a promise to make the payment in the future through EMI's. In effect, we are buying against 'future earnings'. This is fine as long as future earnings are assured. But in the volatile open market economy, where job security and earnings are at a premium, this is fraught with risk. Any disruption in earnings lead to non payment of debts, leading to considerable stress and loss of assets. There is a strong possibility of people getting into a debt trap. Also, many of our generation purchase assets beyond our capability to earn on the hope of funding the deficit through additional income. This leads to a situation where people resort to unethical practices like taking bribes to meet their financial obligations or alternatively stretch themselves in the workplace to have some additional income. The former is despicable while the latter is acceptable as long as one maintains a modicum of work life balance, the absence of which can lead to a broken family.


I am not sure whether our governments, which thrive on fiscal deficit and indiscriminate spending beyond its means, are a reflection of the people of our times or whether people mirror the government's financial policies. They would do well to follow what is happending in Greece and what is likely to happen in Portugal, Spain, Italy and England in the next few months. India is also spending much beyond its means and we are approaching a 1991 scenario when the fiscal deficit was unmanageable. The only difference between 1991 and 2010 is the healthy state of Foreign Exchange Reserves. The sky rocketing inflation, soaring deficit, falling asset prices, indiscriminate social sector spending, unethical benefits for the industry and high interest rates, and a government totally clueless is a recipe for disaster.

He would have been 80.......................

They were an odd couple;

The hard working father and the lazy son

The ambitious father and the laid back son

The process adherent father and the maverick rebel son

The politically conservative father and the left liberal son

The quiet father and the talkative son

The left brained father and the right brained son

The risk abhorring father and the son who went out in search of risks

The orderly father and the chaotic son

The father for whom money was the end in itself and the son for whom money was a means to achieve an end

The father who depended on the past and the son who was ahead of his times in thought and deed

The pragmatic father and the dreamer son

The employment oriented father and the entrepreneurial son


but they had many things in common,

a love for music

a passion for books

a craze for sports

a hobby in crosswords

quick temper ready to boil over

willingness to voice their opinions fearlessly

critical outlook towards life

Each was the alter ego of the other. They laughed and cried together, they travelled tens of thousands of kilometers together, they spent hours sitting across each other talking many things, they took pride in each others achievements and had immense faith in the other, they stood by each other in times of crisis.

Their life was hyphenated.

Then the hyphen was erased six years back. The father passed away, leaving a huge vaccum. The son never really recovered, but he plodded on relentlessly. He took a vow to adopt the good things from his father's character that was so lacking in him and to his surprise found out that he was a much better person for it.

Today, 6th May 2010, that father - my father - would have been 80

How I wish he was with me to celebrate this day!

Connecting the dots to create a pattern

Seeing 'Kolam' everyday morning was a part of my life as a young Tamil Brahmin Boy. My mother would get up early in the morning, clean the front yard and create wonderful kolams using 'rice powder' (and later 'kolam powder') every single day. The designs varied for she had a repertoire in her quiver. Ideally rice powder should be used for Kolam, the rice powder ends up as food for the industrious ants, thereby the lady doing her good deed for the day first thing in the morning. Drawing the kolam also gives tremendous finger dextirity to the womenfolk.

Though very short in stature, and quite fat, she used to bend down with ease, hold the vessel containing kolam mavu/powder in one hand and start first putting the dots, which were the guidelines for drawing the kolam. The geometrical precision and the calculations were amazing. This was an art passed down from the elder ladies to the younger ones generation after generation. Drawing a kolam was the ideal combination of both left and right brained activities. The calculation, number of dots to be put, the planning was all highly logical/sequential and hence left brained while the end result of wonderful patterns was the ultimate right brained activity.

I saw another aspect of Kolam when I worked in Tamil Nadu from 1989 for a decade. During the month of 'Maargazhi" (December 15 to January 15), women used to get up early in the morning, shivering with cold, and lays out wonderful colourful maargazhi kolams (they fill the traditional kolams with colour powders).- see above.If you happen to be in an agraharam, you an see colourful kolams after kolams in front of the rows of houses till the end, displaying the creative genius of the ladies of the house.

'Makkolam' (Kolam drawn using watery rice dough) is an integral part of any of the tamil brahmin functions, be it marriage, upanayanam, karthigai, ashtami rohini etc. - see above picture. Kalyana kolam requires tremendous co ordination, stamina and skill. 4-5 ladies will draw makkolam covering a significant part of the marriage hall - at times even 10 metres 10 metres. They plan as a team, divide the work into modules and integrate them in the end- akin to what a software development team does.

With families moving out of rural area to settle down in apartments in the cities and abroad, the art of drawing kolam is dying slowly amongst the upper middle class tamil families like mine. I doubt whether anyone in the family of my generation can undertake a makkolam for a marriage. This is being outsourced to professional mami's these days, who make a living out of this. Good for them. But the togetherness and teamwork I used to see when my mother and aunts drew kalyana kolam, late in the night prior to the wedding day, gossipping family matters even while doing the onerous 2 hour back breaking job, is conspicuous by its absence. Like many things which were integral to our culture, this too is dying slowly.

Why did I suddenly think of Kolams today? My mind was trying to find out an analogy for the work I do - Consultancy, which is all about putting the dots and then connecting them to create a wonderful pattern. A bit similar to Kolam, isn't it?

Without malice

With malice towards none.



Why did Sashi Tharoor choose Sunanda Pushkar, an NRI?
Because he was Minister of State for 'External AFFAIRS'



What will be BCCI do to IPL 4?
They will deMODIfy it



What is common to both Abhishek Bachan and the European Air Traffic controller?
Both don't know what to do with ASH

The lag effect

One of my students did a study on 'Impact of Global Financial Crisis on the Income, Expenditure and Consumption of Indian Families in Kuwait' during the third quarter of 2009, albeit when the Global Financial Crisis was just off its peak.

Contrary to popular perception, the study revealed that Indian families in Kuwait were not affected adversely at all during the Financial Crisis. In fact 90% of the families were either better off or not affected at all. The sampling was done in late September/early October 2009. The study was honestly and scientifically done, and hence there is no reason to question the validity of the study. Last week, one of my friends pointed out a RBI report which said that the remittances from NRI's did not diminish during the Financial crisis, thereby vindicating our findings somewhat.

With global economy showing signs of revival, one would have expected employment opportunities to look up in the first half of 2010. But surprisingly, the job market in Kuwait is very dull. This could be due to the lag effect of the recession.

The companies during 2009 had surplus from earlier years which enabled them to manage their cash flow. Added to this, they took time to freeze their strategy to counter the recession. This resulted in status quo being maintained through 2009. Though the economy is on the upswing, these strategies are bearing fruit only now, leading to job cuts, salary freeze and temporary ban on recruitments. With companies having a bad 2009, cash flow in 2010 has been bad, further aggrevating the situation.

But with job market trailing the economic situation by 6 months, we can expect the situation to improve by late 2010 or early 2011. So hang on till then! - Cartoon sourced through Google Images

Mull over this

Something to mull over!!

$ 90 Billion or Rs 450,000 crore of unaccounted money has flowed to India through the tax havens of Mauritius, Cayman Islands to subscribe to the Participatory Notes issued by Government of India. Of course the ownership details of these sources are unknown. Government has not asked any questions and dont seem to want to know too. Is there any wonder there is high inflation in the country. Inflation is a direct consequence of too much money chasing too few goods. Government controls inflation through managing the money in circulation. When there is so much unaccounted money-read black money- in the system, it leads to high inflation, which we are witnessing now.

Also, it is a known fact that almost a Trillion Dollars or 4,500,000 Crores Rupees is lying in various tax havens and swiss banks. These are again ill gotten wealth of Indians. Again the Government is silent and inactive.

When India screams that it is getting huge amount of FDI or FII, it is actually this black money that is being legitimized.

What a price to pay for our GDP growth, which anyway do not benefit 60% of the people.