Revive the art of Questioning

Here is a nice Czech anecdote,

A little girl was watching her mother prepare a fish for dinner. Her mother cut the head and tail off the fish and then placed it into a baking pan.

The little girl asked her mother why she cut the head and tail off the fish.

Her mother thought for a while and then said, "I've always done it that way - that's how babicka (Czech for grandma) did it."

Not satisfied with the answer, the little girl went to visit her grandma to find out why she cut the head and tail off the fish before baking it.

Grandma thought for a while and replied, "I don't know. My mother always did it that way."

So the little girl and the grandma went to visit great grandma to find ask if she knew the answer.

Great grandma thought for a while and said, “Because my baking pan was too small to fit in the whole fish”.

This is the case with quite a lot of things in our personal life and in our workplace. We need to challenge belief systems and assumptions, and eliminate pointless routine. For this we need to revive the art of questioning

Who will bell the cat?

As expected the Government has decided to implement the 6th Horror (Pay) Commission Report enhancing the salary of the Central Government Staff.

"The hike will add Rs 12,561 crore to the Centre’s salary bill of Rs 53,497 crore taking it to Rs 66,058 crore. Add to this Rs 18,060 crore in arrears as the hike will be effective from January 2006 and Rs 1,365 crore towards higher pension..........In return, the taxpayer cannot expect anything because there are no performance guarantees" - India Today

This is not taking into account the additional cost incurred by the States when the pay revision is obviously extended to the State Government Employees.

Now, you might ask why shouldn't the government employees get higher wages keeping pace with the times. There are many reasons why they shouldn't.

This bureaucracy has long since stopped functioning for the benefit of the people. It serves only itself and its political masters. This was a monster created by the Raj to serve their ends which we inherited and pampered.

The bureaucracy is corrupt to the boot and the reasoning that they need a pay rise to keep pace with the inflation is laughable, for as everyone knows the income they receive from bribes is many times that they receive as salary.

Contrary to sound management practices, this pay rise (nor the previous ones) is not linked to efficiency and productivity. To pay someone more without any counter obligation is ridiculous.

Nearly 50% of the Income Tax Collection will go towards paying the salaries of the Central Government Employees. That means half the blood, sweat and toil of 375 million people who are Income Tax assessee's goes towards making the life of 45 million Central Government Employees more comfortable. Quite unfair when you think that the 375 million doesn't get anything in return for this.

The inflation is at a high now. Implementation of pay commission report will further add to inflationary pressure

I can go on and on..........................

But what is the solution?

Numerous Commissions have recommended the downsizing of the bureaucracy,but the Government is afraid to take on this monster for fear of repercussions. Increasing the salary leads to more people being attracted to government service, which is the last thing we want. Hold the pay revision, make it performance linked and you will see people drifting away from Government jobs over a period of time which will lead to downsizing.

Outsource various government services in a phased manner. Let the people pay for the services (anyway they do as bribes). For example, activities like Birth and Death Registration can easily be done by the private sector. Ditto for collection of building and land taxes. Why even issuance of driving license can be outsourced. It will be definitely better than the current rotten system.

Implement e-governance in a big way. The one time investment will be less than the outlay for the pay increase of 3 years. Encourage people to use technology to get things done from the government. This shall reduce the transaction cost, speed up the processes while encouraging people to study so that they can get better jobs in the new system that shall have a better pay based on qualification and skill.

The last is drastic. Freeze recruitment into government services for a decade. This will lead to automatic downsizing when people retire and increase the workload of the current staff who will be forced to handle the work hitherto done by the retired employees.

Last but not the least, do a massive crackdown on corruption. Put the fear of god into people who take bribes. Suspend them or dismiss them. Papers may not move for a few days. Anyway it doesn't, but it will create a culture where corruption will be taboo.

But who will bell the cat?

Just Do It

For a certified sports nut, I have written only one post on sports so far. One reason is that the newspapers and websites write reams about all sports events and I don't have much to add. The objective of this blog is to give a different perspective to issues on hand and to reflect my thoughts.

There has always been a question whether sport is an art or a science. It used to be an art till the early 80's. We saw some amazing natural talent flourishing and taking the centre stage. Bobby Fischer in Chess, John McEnroe in Tennis, Diego Maradonna in Football, Ayrton Senna in Formula 1, Viswanath and the spin quartret in Cricket, Ashok Kumar in Hockey, the Brazilian football team as a whole, Michael Jordan in Basketball, Jack Nicklaus in Golf..................well the list is endless.

But come 80's the scenario changed. Coaching took the centre stage and sports persons came out as if from an assembly line. Let us limit this post to Cricket. I recently saw Sohail Tanvir of Pakistan bowling of the wrong foot ( a la Mike Procter) and was shocked. How the deuce did this guy get through the filter. Though the one day cricket has ensured that some unconventional batsmen are encouraged, as far as bowlers were concerned they were all clones. Look at all the fast bowlers around, you will notice that you can replace one with another and no harm will be done. Same with spinners. Bowl tight, don't spin, bowl flat, don't flight is the mantra. It is also one of the reasons you are not likely to see the next spin bowling sensation in the near future. Can you imagine another Murali or well an Abdul Qadir (his was a class act. I rate him higher than Shane Warne who was never effective against sub continental teams. Warne was mentally tougher and privileged to be part of an all conquering Aussie team, but Qadir was an absolute genius. To bowl a googly well is a difficult proposition, but he had 3 different superb googlies) in the near future?
As I said, we do have unconventional batsmen. But the surfeit of coaching has killed creativity and has not allowed the latent talent to bloom. This can happen in an organization too. We try to mould our employees to be clones without recognizing their innate talents and making effort to polish them. We have regimentalized them - Wear Suit, come on time, do what we tell you, take your money and go home. I beg to differ. The company will never generate new ideas and will never attain greater heights if it allows creativity and individuality to die.

There is after all something to having a Virendra Sehwag in the team, isn't it? If anyone watched his 309* (at the end of day 3) in the Chennai Test vs South Africa today, you will know what I mean. He has turned the match in its head single handedly, kicked alive a dead test after South Africa scored a mammoth 54o in the first innings, had them running for cover as i write this and have given India an outside chance of winning the Test. It is the instinctive geniuses like Sehwag who makes the impossible possible.

Nike, the kit sponsor of Indian Cricket Team don't require a better endorsement for their slogan 'Just Do It'

Beware of the Food Crisis

In the household's across the world, people have started noticing the rising food prices. What most considered a temporary blip is assuming alarming proposition. The world is sliding steadily towards a major food crisis.

Many reasons have contributed to this global food shortage.

Any economy goes through an evolution phase of Agrarian to the value added Industrial to the value only Services economies. Various countries in the world are at different stages at any given point of time. For example, America is in the Services economy phase, China currently is an industrial economy while a country like Myanmar is still an agrarian economy. In the past there used to be a balance, with the many agrarian economy countries in the world. Globalization has speeded up the conversion of agrarian economies to industrial economies, since the wages are higher, return on investment better due to higher prices commanded by the value added products and standard of living much better in the industrial economy. There is an incentive for opting for the industrial economy. Added to this, many erstwhile industrial economies have transformed themselves to services economies. The salient feature of a services economy is that the consumption is higher. So on the one hand demand is increasing while on the other hand, supply is decreasing. A classic scenario for shortage.

Globally, the arable land under cultivation has reduced. The 1960's and 70's saw agricultural production going up due to higher levels of irrigation, better quality seeds, introduction of fertilizers and adoption of modern mechanized methods of farming. Since then not much work has gone into R&D in the agricultural field or water management. The law of diminishing marginal utility has started working. The farm sector is unable to increase their per hectare productivity drastically. With water shortages a norm than an exception, construction of dams across the world held up due to environmental issues, global warming playing havoc with the climatic conditions. lesser availability of credit for the farmers and apathy from the governments, farm sector is really struggling for survival. This leads to people moving away from farming.

But the biggest culprit is the high price of oil. Now, you may ask what has $ 100 a barrel oil got to do with food shortage. There is an increased awareness globally for actively pursuing alternatives to hydrocarbons. With the world sleeping on developing alternate fuel sources during the past three decades, there is a clamour for a quick fix. This is Bio fuels like ethanol. Arable land that were producing food has been diverted to cultivate products like maize that can be used to produce ethanol. This has led to a massive shortage of basic grains like rice and wheat.

There are no solutions in sight. Either we have to change our eating habits and move away from cereals to reduce the demand or continue to pay higher prices in the years to come. My forecast is that the food prices will rice @ 20% per year in the coming years. A scary prognosis.

Compulsory Education Service

Most of the Countries have a compulsory military service. It is mandatory for all adult male (why not female also, I cannot understand) to serve in the military for a minimum of two years and people who evade this are hauled up before a court of law and punished. Remember Mohammad Ali, the famous boxer, refusing to join the US Army draft protesting the Vietnam war and having to serve a jail term at the peak of his prowess. I have always felt this to be a good idea since couple of years of military service will strengthen the nationalistic feeling and will give a dose of much needed discipline to the youngsters. It will also give the nation an opportunity to fall back on trained men in case of an emergency like natural calamity.

With our military expenses already quite high, I do not think this is feasible. But the Government can definitely do an out of the box thinking and use the vast pool of educated people in India.

One of the major problem faced by India today is lack of teachers in rural areas. Teaching profession has lost its lustre. Even in urban areas and top schools, the children are being taught by men and women who have limited passion for teaching (there are exceptions of course) and are not qualified enough. Also, the teachers at the school and college level (why, even at the professional level) possess limited industrial experience. This hampers the efficiency of teaching. The dictum, that a great teacher produces good students, a good teacher creates average students and an average teacher churns out bad students, is quite true.

My recommendation is for the Government to introduce a Compulsory Educational Service for all Graduates who have completed 10 years of service in various organizations. They should be asked to work in various educational institutions across India, preferably in the rural area. The organizations which employ them can be asked to pay their salary for which tax exemptions can be given. Thus, there is no direct cost to the government, employees interests are protected and the organizations also do not lose anything. The students across the country will get the benefit of people who have the knowledge and the working experience. The working professionals will be definitely better people for the experience, will be more socially conscious and will bring them down to reality from their ivory towers.

Some Money (oops! food) for Thought

Here is something for you to think,

Only 15% of the money earmarked for poverty alleviation schemes of the Government reaches the beneficiary. The balance 85% goes towards administrative expenses, pilferage and theft

46% of the money you pay as Tax goes toward the expenses for collecting the tax. The balance 54% goes to meet the lavish spending of the Government, which anyway doesn't do anything. (Speaking of unnecessary spending, more than Rs 15 lakhs was spent recently on refurbishing the house of Priyanka Vadera (nee Gandhi). Now, can someone please tell me why the hell should the taxes we pay should be used for Priyanka Gandhi, who holds no Government or Administrative office?. She is just another common citizen like you and me. And this government made one of our finest presidents Prof.A P J Abdul Kalam live out of a Government Guest House for months on his relinquishing the office because they couldn't arrange to have his modest house in shape in time, which he is entitled to. It is better to be born a dog in the Nehru household than a human being in rest of India)

Today, a news report says that Afghans do not get the billions of dollars pledged by donor countries for reconstruction. It seems nearly 40% goes back to the donor country personnel by way of fat consultancy charges and salaries. Same is the case with most of the charity and voluntary organizations.

Keep in mind that everyone other than the intended beneficiary make hay when you either pay tax or donate to charity

Human Capital

When India attained independence, the economy was in shambles after centuries of occupation and colonization. There was a difference of opinion amongst the leading luminaries of the day as to how to develop the Indian Economy. Nehru, ever the romantic and influenced by the Western Society, argued for massive industrialization and urbanization in the hope of the Economy achieving what he called the 'wuthering heights'. Gandhiji, more pragmatic and a realist, identified that India's power lies in its people and in villages. He wanted Indian Economy to be a collection of thousands of mini self sustainable village level vibrant economies.

Nehru's opinion prevailed, mainly because Gandhiji died within a few months of India attaining independence. The tragedy of modern India was that it became a question of choosing either of the two economic development models, whereas it was quite logical to have followed a twin system of development incorporating the salient features of both.

Today, the rural economy is in shambles, the cities are splitting at the seam due to massive migration of rural population to the urban areas and sadly the human capital, that Gandhiji identified, is living in foreign countries, working with high productivity and thereby contributing the foreign nations economic growth, rather than India's.

It is not still too late. India can and should create enough opportunities that shall enable the overseas Indians to return to the home country and contribute to the economic growth of the country. These NRI's - whether they are workers or managerial cadre- have lots of skill sets, know global practices and are exposed to the best in the international markets. They will bring with them considerable value.

What triggered this thought was the sight of hordes of Indians getting down from a bus and walking to their workplace in Shuwaikh this morning while I was driving.