sporadic blogging

Sorry for the patchy blogging. A lingering flu, cold and cough makes me difficult to sit in front of the laptop as the vision is a little askew.

Blogging will be sporadic

And we call ourselves a 'Developing Country'

In an instance of shocking apathy, a sub-inspector of Tamil Nadu police, brutally attacked by a gang in Tirunelveli district, bled to death, as his cry for help went in vain, even after two ministers with their convoy stopped by and saw his plight.

44-year old Vetrivel, who was a member of the Special Task Force that gunned down forest brigand Veerappan in 2004, lay in a pool of blood with his leg severed, and begged for help after the attack by the gang at Alwarkuruchi, shortly before the ministerial convoy was to pass by last evening, eyewitnesses said.

Health minister MRK Panneerselvam and youth and sports development minister Mohideen Khan, along with officials, including the district collector, halted their convoy on seeing the profusely bleeding police official battling for life on the road. Eyewitnesses said Vetrivel was screaming for help, but did not get assistance in time from the ministers and accompanying officials. Though later taken to a hospital, Vetrivel, who got a double promotion for being part of STF that gunned down forest brigand Veerappan, succumbed to injuries.

It is bad enough that a honoured SI should be hacked to death by goonda gangs. But, for the ministers to be apathetic and not take control of the situation is straight out of a horror story. Personally, I would like to stone the two ministers to death. How about you?

And we call ourselves a 'developing country'!!! What a shame.

Things that changed the way we live -1

Let us reflect back and look at some of the things that dramatically changed our life/lifestyle during the past decade.

The first has to be Internet. Though internet came into prominance in mid 90's, it really took off in the first decade of this century. With increase bandwidth, wireless technology and more applications, Internet is here to say. E-mails and messengers have revolutionised the way we communicate. It has changed the business environment. It transformed a seller dominant market to a buyer dominant market, with the information asymmetry shifting from the seller to the buyer. Today customers are more knowledgeable than the sellers, who cant keep track of their competing products. Decision making has become quicker in both personal life and in organizations. E mails also ensured the death of the snail mail system. E-Governance is the norm rather than the exception, and in the years to come every decision making/data will be more transparent and accessible to the public. Blogs enabled people to convey their thoughts and it provided a medium for the dormant literacy skills to come out into the open. Internet also made a vast difference to people who love social networking and removed the sexual taboos quite a bit. In short, it hastened the transformation to a knowledge society- to be continued

Non Minister for Overseas Indians

Nearly 100 cases of attacks on Indians, mostly racial, were reported in Australia in 2009 as against 17 incidents of assaults in 2008.

But, now we have a death. 21 year old Nitin Garg, who was the first Indian to be attacked in 2010, succumbed to assault injuries.

Our Government has slept through the whole of 2009, like an Ostrich putting his head in the sand dune assuming things will righten by itself.

Will this death at least wake up our nincompoop ministers? We have a minister for overseas indians!! Why do we need him if he cant mount a campaign against Australian Government? We have enough economic leverage with Australians to make them crawl? When will we, as a nation, value the life of our citizens? Where is the national honour?

Our government has turned a nelson's eye to the maltreatment meted out to poor indian overseas workers in Gulf. Even Philippines have promulgated and implemented strict immigration laws and are insisting on minimum wages and an increase in wages every two years. And they have got away with it. But, India?

Cleaning the Aegean Stables ourself

The just gone decade did not see any major concept in management coming up, which in itself is a great achievement. One is tired of many fads including Knowledge Management, Change Management, Balance Score Card, TQM etc.

The decade also saw the systemic failure of the Management theory that is practised today with the events that led to the Global Financial Crisis, and the subsequent recession/depression.

Though many attribute this to the greed of the top management in the Financial sector, or more specifically their remuneration that rewarded high risk investments producing near term returns, at the expense of long term institution building, I beg to differ. This was not the sole reason. Nor was the reason the failure of the regulators. For far too long our Financial Sector companies have got away with murder with fancy accounting and window dressing. Using the 'unrealized profit' method to boost the profit figures year after year is an old trick. This shall continue to happen till such time the 'independent' auditors continue to earn from the company itself. We have not learned our lessons from Enron and Arthur Anderson or Satyam Computers and PWC. Every company should be made to pay a % of its revenue to a common pool that shall be used to pay the fees of the Auditors, with the choice of the auditor being left to the regulator in charge of the pool. And we need a wider set of Audit firms. Now the business is cartelized by the Big 4- PWC, E&Y, Deloitte and KPMG. Steps should be taken to encourage the growth of tier 2 audit firms so that there is more competition. Also, the Audit firms should be asked to remain doing auditing and not venture out to other Financial Services activities like valuation, feasibility studies etc. There is a clear conflict of interest here which clouds the objectivity of the audit firms. Caesers wife should be above suspicion.

We need to take a serious look at how the Balance Sheet and Financial Reports are prepared in our Companies. The exisiting balance sheet is a relic of the industrial era, where the capital employed went directly to finance acquisition of assets, to fund expenses or to pay the wages. The tangibles could then be shown in the balance sheet. 70% of the capital deployed could be backed by assets in the Balance Sheet with wages constituting only 16%.

This has to change in the services sector dominant modern world. Bulk of the capital deployed goes towards recruting, training and maintaining high profile, high skilled employees. The asset creation is more intangible in nature, as intellectual assets. Today, following the traditional method of valuing the company, most of the services sector companies wont have any assets to back their investments. We need to have a provision for ascertaining the value of intellectual capital in the company which should APPRECIATE every year as agains the depreciation of the assets in a conventional company.

It is high time we, professional managers, cleaned the Aegean Stables ourself !

P.S: The above are some of the random thoughts based on the learnings from the past decade. Your thoughts are welcome.

Shathamanam........................

"SHATHAMANAM BHAVATHU SHATHAYA PURUSHA SHATENDRIA

AYUSHYEVENDRIYE PRATHIDISHTATHI"





"DHANYAM DHANAM PASHU PUTRA LABHAM

SHATASAMVATSARAM DHEERGHAMAYUHU"

Namaste - 2010!!!!

Yaa Kundendu tushaara haaradhavalaa, Yaa shubhravastraavritha

Yaa veenavara dandamanditakara, Yaa shwetha padmaasana

Yaa brahmaachyutha shankara prabhritibhir Devaisadaa Vanditha

Saa Maam Paatu Saraswatee Bhagavatee Nihshesha jaadyaapahaa