OBAMA IS BACK

Obama is back again, as the President of United State of America.  After the “will he win, won't he win” suspense, the Americans had given him another term, but by a slender margin, as compared to the landslide win he had at his first try. One of the bitterly fought and costliest of Presidential election of the USA, this one truly was a cliff hanger.
With the upper house of parliament (Senate) in his favour but with the house representatives against him, the rule in the next term is not going to be a smooth sail for him. Though his popularity had taken a beating lately, in his first election campaign he had given a whiff of fresh air and hope to Americans. The hope is still there (hope is always there, is it not?) but the Americans are becoming more realistic now. Those heady days of yore is gone for good for the US. Though still at top, it has to accommodate countries like China there. Accommodating a country like China at the top and staying with them is not an easy task.  
In his last avatar, he did endeavour to give wider health coverage to the citizens, particularly those at the bottom of the Pyramid. Though the economy did not go down further, it had not gone up either.  I heard in the CNN channel that 70 per cent of American feels that the country’s economy is still not doing well. The real worry for the President is going to be unemployment. He would try to institute acts like 'bring back the job', Patriotic act etc. to ensure that the jobs that America had lost in the last one and half decade in manufacturing and Services, particularly in IT; are brought back. Also he would want to enact acts that would prevent the new jobs going out. From an American perspective, he must be doing the right things, though policy wise, this will not get full acceptance from the Republicans.
Obama being a Democrat, the Indians (in India, of course), due to its democratic traditions would rejoice on his election due to factors of empathy. However, looking at history, we would realise that whenever Republicans ruled US, India benefitted more. This time also Obama leading America is not going to benefit India economically. The country needs to proactively work out strategies to align with the US. Obama & the US will always look at India to be a deterrent to China, therefore there is a possibility to be good US ally is the offing for India.
Personally I rejoice in Obama coming back. I think him becoming the President in 2008 was the right thing that happened to USA, for a country that was reeling under huge global problems at that time. He could stem the rote but could not bring back the nation to the old levels. (I do not think USA will ever come back to being undisputed numero uno nation of the world) He had factored the change and got Americans to be realistic to accept the changes happening around. That itself was a mammoth task and he had done well there. Probably in this tenure, he will try to be more assertive to bring about major changes in the country. Let us wait and watch. Whatever it is, we could expect to see a less stressed US President in Whitehouse this term.
Let us wish Barrack Hussein Obama, all the very best!

TiECON KERALA 2012 - REFLECTIONS FROM THE CHAIR : PROGRAM COMMITTEE

WHAT IT TURNED OUT TO BE:

• Largest ever gathering of entrepreneurs in Kerala
• 1000 delegates  of which 85% were entrepreneurs,  90 speakers drawn from many parts of the world
• Presence of Kerala Chief Minister, TiE Global Chairman, TiE Global Founder Chairman, TiE Global CEO
• 4 parallel knowledge sessions running simultaneously, 4 plenary sessions, one long distance videoconferencing
• 2 days of exclusive Mentoring & Venture Fund interactions
• Excellent takeaways, so much positive feedback, many grateful delegate
• TiECON KERALA 2012 rocked

EARLY STAGE DELIBERATIONS: 

At best hazy, continuously shifty, dynamically evolving, opinion going from south to North Pole, doing – undoing, actors come in, disappearing and appearing months later. Truly entrepreneurial, chaotic, ego centric, opinionated… Questions of will it ever happen? ……….
 

THE D DAY:

The delegates took us by surprise. When we had only 430 delegates registered till the eve, the spot registration exceeded  400 people, enabling us to cross 1000 registrants by the EOD. What does it show? Yes, things are changing in Kerala – hitherto a predominantly entrepreneur unfriendly state, in favour of entrepreneurship.
 

THE NETWORKING DINNER:

The Gala dinner was a huge success except the Attakalari dance performance which, to me was damp squib. I met so many people, particularly youngsters there. So many of them shared their business cards with me with a request for a meeting later. Hope to add some value to these guys in the course of time.
 

THE PERSONALITIES:

John K Paul: TiE Kerala President

• Determined, ambitious, got a buy-in from a diverse group of CMs, initial spade work done correctly with TiE Global Chairman by participating in different TiE Global Retreats.
• Loosely holding the pack, no tight leashes on anyone
• To come in where it matters (sponsorship, TiE Global connect, interface with Chief Minister & Industry deptt.  etc.)
• Works in detached mode, soft touch- never comes down heavily, ‘go ahead-let it happen’ style
• Turned out to be the most successful model of leadership of TiE Kerala for TiECON to truly explode……

NR Panicker: Charter Member

The person who made all the difference. He made it happen. Thought it out through his mind many times over.  Did travel a lot between Cochin & his place of work (Chennai) for deliberations. Got the main entrepreneurship track organized single handedly by connecting with eminent speakers and panelists and bringing them to the show that delivered high value, high quality knowledge output.

Person with eye for details, high on self-confidence, little rigid at times nevertheless an action man, completely different from other TiE:Kerala CMs
 

KC :  Executive Director

The man who held the embryo inside growing for solid one year, undergoing all the pangs of the labour and delivery. Age did not wither him and the military discipline held in him in good stead. With a frugal office, to plan and executive TIECON, was a tall order. He pulled it thru so very well, in spite of handling so many ego centers simultaneously. He should find this as his point of salvation.
.

V K Mathews: Charter Member

Did not indulge much during early deliberation. Travelling & business priorities kept him away. Single handedly took charge of the Information Technology track of 3 hours on the second day, bringing in high quality speakers and panelists and delivering excellent value for the track.  A person who finds himself different from the rest, someone who knows that he is destined to go places………
 

Ashok Rao  : Chairman TiE Global

High decibel, high visible leadership of TiE Global. Very articulate and humorous. Recommended the Chief Minister to constitute a Ministry of Entrepreneurship. Delivered special address at inaugural and valedictory functions, both going down well with the audience. A man of strong likes and dislikes.  His “Ashokism” was a hit. I liked his “Don’t push the river, let it flow’ as the best…………….
 

Kanwal Rekhi : Founder Chairman TiE Global

Must call him the grand old man of TiE. Many came and went but he gives TiE the permanent look.  Very sincere person, he wants things to happen now and is impatient with the deliberate slowness that is happening around. His story of pushing the NDA Govt. to open up the Telecom sector was an eye opener. Good person, may he live long to deliver very high value to Entrepreneurship!
 

Arjun Malhotra : Former Chair TiE Global

Knew him early, he was our Vice Chairman in HCL where I worked at the HO as Product Manager, of course, long back. Founder of 3 large IT enterprises including HCL. A person always of high spirits, he was hugely popular with youngsters. This former TiE Global Chair added tremendous value with his very open, straight remarks. He inspires!
 

Sam Pitroda: Adviser to Prime Minister of India

He got up very early in Chicago to take part in the Video conferencing session chaired by Vijayaraghavan. An advocate of entrepreneurship, his words went well with the audience and he got rapt attention for close to two hours even though he was away and available only on the screen. He made interaction with the audience, answering their questions. A person of genuine intent and an earnest empathizer of BoP!
 

Sam Santhosh: Charter Member

Sam came out as a genuine story in TiECON. He took part in two deliberations, one on the entrepreneurship track and the other at the Life science manufacturing session. For an engineer/MBA, Sam had metamorphosed well into a Life science domain entrepreneur. The newspapers covered him well. I am happy for him.
 

THE WOMEN AT THE SHOW:

Sramana Mitra:

The Bengali beauty, now purely an American who runs this 1 Million/I Million virtual company on the Net, had a paid outing at TiECON and a plenary session to cap with, right on the day 2. A sales & marketing person, she communicated well and struck a chord with the youngsters in the audience. I did not find anything new in her presentation and I am increasingly more convinced on how hype & associated glamour wins, whether meritorious or not. Her comments on TiE did not go well with the Charter members and it turned out to be a question of getting beaten by the stick we provided
 

Aruna Sunder Raj - IAS:

As the Chair of the session on Social Entrepreneurship, I was a little apprehensive on what she will deliver about “Kudumbasre” mission of Kerala Government at the session. She acquitted herself very well and delivered a very touching presentation and partook very well in the panel discussions. I am happy to see Aruna maturing herself into an excellent bureaucrat. I could see high level of self-confidence in her, compared to her earlier stint in Kerala.

Roopa Purushottaman:

I did not want to waste my time and page on her but though I must let you know how an organizer can get deceived by sheer good looks. During deliberations, I had my reservations about bringing her to speak but some charter members prevailed. This twenty something was suddenly catapulted to being the Special speaker at the Valedictory function and whatever she delivered put the entire audience to complete sleep and it needed all the wits of Ashok Rao, Chairman TiE Global, to bring them back to wakeful mode. She had no idea of what TiECON was and she simple didn’t care to know. Her presentation was totally unconnected; showing some crazy demographics. Earlier she had rubbed senior reporters of Manorama & Asianet channel wrongly by refusing to give interview. I was a witness to it, she was highly immature and extremely arrogant with them. She spoke with disdain to them and gave me dirty looks when I told them that bot channels are the leading Kerala Channels. With a pucca Mallu name like Purushottaman as a tag, where will she run to escape her malayalism which she is now trying to hide in her put-up accent? May be she could change call her name Roop Pram and go back to US to get treated a second grade citizen of that country, as is being experienced by so many expats there.

EATING HUMBLE PIE:

Some of the charter members who tried to push in names like Mitra, Roopa etc must be eating humble pie for having brought in agenda centric speakers despite advise from some experienced members. I do not blame them fully for what happened but I am sure, this will stay with them as a good experience. What matters for speakers are experience, content and good stories that add value to the audience but if we go by sheer look or hype, we could land up in a mess. However, I am glad that such instances had been very low at TIECON Kerala 2012 and notwithstanding these sessions, TiECON Kerala delivered huge value to the participants
 

THE PRESS and MEDIA:

The press coordinator did not come thru well in the early stages and we were feeling jittery of the poor coverage. A personalised attempt and NR Panicker and self directly with the newspaper & media persons opened them up and suddenly the coverage increased multifold. After being convinced of the importance of the event, they never needed the directions and there were big stories every day about TiECON Kerala 2012 and that built up the tempo.  The credit of surge in spot delegate registrations is totally attributed the press & media. Thank you press and media, you have truly served a just cause very well.

THE EVENT MANAGER:

It was based on the recommendation of one of the Trivandrum based Charter members of TiE that M/s. Stark became the event manager of the show. Though I had my doubts in the beginning, Stark came through wonderfully well in the management of TiECON Kerala 2012. I must put on record the efforts of M/s. Jayesh, Nirmal and Renjini of Stark for the event that delivered rich dividends at the end.

THE AUDIENCE:

From the body language of so many participants, I could see that they were genuinely delighted to attend TiECON 2012. Here was a show that was meant for entrepreneurs, covering all main successful business domains of Kerala. The content being of high quality and personalized, gave them plenty to take away. For many of them, it was a first time pleasant experience. They networked well, interacted with speakers and even had opportunity to get mentored and see VCs exclusively. I was personally approached by many delegates with the message that they had enjoyed TiECON Kerala 2012 immensely. With TiECON, TiE Kerala’s responsibility has more than doubled. I am sure the members including old and new, could be very demanding now. Good for entrepreneurship!

 

THE TALE OF TWO ARMSTRONGS!

Neil Armstrong, the first human being to land on the Moon, passed away at the age of 82 in a hospital in US on 25^th August 2012. He died a private person, away from the media coverage and his near family simply released the news to the World.

There was such an excitement when Apollo XI landed on the moon way back in 1969. As a student then, it was one of those landmark moments of one’s life. Though it was an American who landed on the Moon, to all of us, he represented humanity and we felt being part of his achievement.

The newspapers reported that upon his craft landing on the Moon, Neil Armstrong sent the radio communication to mission control at Houston Mother Earth: “Houston, Tranquillity Base here, the Eagle has landed.”

Little later, he set foot on the moon, the very first Earth being to do so, and pronounced the famous lines: “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

Though we are miles to go in reaching out to other part of the Universe and to be a larger player in controlling its stake, this one small first step will forever be remembered as a giant step for mankind.

Neil Armstrong made history and remained part of it.  In the annals of history, his position would like that of Yuri Gagarin (first man on space), Edmund Hillary (Everest) or Robert Peary (North Pole), if not bigger. So long as the world exists, his name will exist.

May his soul rest in eternal peace!

It is such a pain when we see our idols fall. I had made a similar post when Tiger Wood made his life miserable by his nasty indulgences, making him fall from grace.

What I am referring here is about the other Armstrong, Lance Armstrong. The legendary cyclist, the winner of a record 7 tour de France titles, considered to be the ultimate in human endurances - 3200 kilometres in 23 days, continuously across France that includes the hills and the lows.

The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) erased all his achievements out of the record books on Friday the 23^rd August 2012. It wiped out 14 years of Armstrong's career and barred him for life from the sport after concluding that he used banned substances - an Earth shattering pronouncement, I would say!

And Armstrong decides not to contest it. Is he accepting the crime or just disgusted to be indifferent? This, coming from a fighter called Lance Armstrong is very strange indeed. For such a legendary figure who fought to be the best, including a life terminating testicle cancer…….

For a person who gave hope to millions of cancer patients, who motivated thousands of sportspersons, this is a tremendous let down.

I hope one day he would come into the open, to come out clean. In the meantime, those achievements and victories, that is still fresh in the memory, can that be erased, simply by the stroke of a pen?

APPLE Vs. SAMSUNG

Samsung lost the mobile phone case against Apple in the US and is ordered to pay a billion Dollar as compensation. Surely Samsung can pay the money but this verdict has ramifications that transcend the Apple- Samsung war.

It is a fact that the originality of the design completely belongs to Apple. Whatever we see in Samsung, HTC and similar company devices are nothing but imitations of Apple. Samsung and others had been ably assisted by Google, the makers of Android operating system. So the verdict puts Google too on the dock.

It could also be the beginning of Apple going after many others who imitates its design and patent.  About 4 months back, we were in Hong Kong and found brisk sale of I-Phone imitations in high volumes.  Though it is not easy to catch the thief in China, there will definitely be a lull in the clandestine production of I-Phone clones.

In this knowledge economy, cases like this projects the importance of design, trademark and patents. It gives thumbs up to authentic original research that is being undertaken by firms like Apple. No wonder the Apple market capitalization has gone into all-time highest and into the record books. Post Steve Jobs, this is a fine turn of event for Apple Inc., for most of experts predicted the shares to go bearish on longer term, after the demise of its founder.

The flip side of the story is the monopolistic tendency that this development could create for Apple. It is definitely not a good development for the consumers. Apple is not very famous for democratising the prices of its products and it always charged a premium.

That necessitates the imminent need to go for original research for an alternatives design to compete with Apple I-Phones & I-Pads. Necessity being the mother of invention, I am sure Samsung, Google, HTC etc. would now be burning more midnight oil to for an alternative design. Till then it is going to be Apple Times!

The developments give lots of fillip to Microsoft. It was very worried about the growth of Android and all those tie-ups with leading companies such as Nokia has not helped its cause. Windows 8 could encash upon this opportunity. Speed is the essence here. Is Microsoft ready to plunge in headlong NOW?

I am sure we shall hear more frequently about the developments on this technology front. Stay tuned…………….

THE RELEVANCE OF “EMERGING KERALA”

It is very good to hear about the Kerala Government’s plans to launch the Emerging Kerala Program in order to attract big investments into the state. One must complement the Government for taking the initiative to bring in large investment to the State. The biggest plus of such initiatives is the visibility that it can give to the state and the impact that it would make in the mind of potential investors located all around the world about the state.  To be seen in the radar of investors, the state needs to continuously make noise. Emerging Kerala must be a program and not an event. The program must run longitudinally; at least during the tenure of the present Government.

The worry is when the changing Governments are trying to undo each other’s policies and programs at every alternative tenure. The lack of continuity and the resultant non-commitment from the part of successive Governments on matters of industrialization and investment stand out as a scar- crow.  Similar initiative from the part of the UDF Government in its last tenure (GIM), which though was announced with a big bang, whimpered away later.  That should stand in good stead as learning in the conduct of the new Emerging Kerala Program.

At the outset, it would be better if the UDF Govt. takes a clear cut view on the investment model that it wants to have in the state of Kerala. During the last LDF regime, we had seen that the focus of the policy makers was heavily tilted in favour of investing in public sector undertakings and it went about rejuvenating those semi dead and  ICU based PSUs of belonging to the state Government. Industry majors in defence sector located outside the state like HAL, BEML etc. were roped in to join up with local PSUs in setting up their manufacturing activities here. Another example is the Coach factory at Kanjikode.  Now that the UDF has come to power, does it want to continue the policy of industrialising Kerala through the PSUs or does it want private investment to come in?  No specific policy guidelines are heard from the present government in this front. Setting foot in two boats simultaneously to go forward will only leads to mishaps and definitely, will not result in progress.

However, if one has to read from the Emerging Kerala plans, one will realise that it thru this, the government will want to have large private investments to come in to Kerala. But what model is this? Is it PPP model or is it purely private play? Huge projects such as Metro Rail, High Speed Rail Infrastructure etc. is conceived as governmental or government controlled projects only.  Infrastructure is probably an area where the PPP model is being sought. Kerala completely lacks good infrastructure within. I am not speaking about the need for roads and bridges alone, I am also speaking about ports, transportation (road, rail and water), solid waste management, industrial centres, logistic parks, shopping and entertainment infrastructure etc.

Going through the KSIDC document on Emerging Kerala, one feels that the state had identified the core areas in Kerala which need investment.  Which are the industries for which Kerala has an ideal ecosystem? Predominantly, it is in Tertiary area of services.  In this, Tourism, IT/ITES, Banking & Finance Services (particularly NBFC), Healthcare, Construction etc. comes to the forefront. What about manufacturing? Large scale manufacturing is still a no-no for Kerala. If it is manufacturing, it has to be in SME sector that too, predominantly in the area of Food processing, Ayurveda Products, Paint, Seafood and Rubber based industries such as Footwear and related things.

For a State whose laity is focussed on white collar employment, tertiary sector gives them more hope.  Looking at the shortage of local manpower in the constructions industry for semi-skilled and unskilled labour, it is not sure how manual labour based industries in Kerala will thrive?

What are the elements that can help Emerging Kerala Program succeed?

A well-known senior businessman was recently telling from his experience that when the then Government wanted the BMW to invest in Kerala, the company did not do so because the opinion of industrialists and businessmen inside Kerala did not encourage them to set foot here. Of course, there is truth in it. If anyone wants to invest in Kerala, he would first talk to the local industry community and not to a minister or bureaucrat. This home truth is always forgotten by people in power (both the executives & the bureaucrats). If any big ticket investment has to happen in Kerala, the government must involve the local industry fraternity. One sees a change in this trend and hears that decision makers are consulting the local business fraternity and trade and commerce bodies that they belong to. It is a welcome mind-set change on the part of our leaders. Please continue to involve the local players and the trade bodies in the process of bringing in major investment into the state.

One major impediment that we need to be concerned is whether our state has enough resource bandwidth within the government to manage the large investment that come in here. When I say resource bandwidth, I would like to include the personnel in industries and related departments, their behaviour, their approach and attitude towards the investors. I also include the systems and the processes to give clearance and to monitor these investments. These resources need to be very proactive in their approach and management. I do not think that such a resource system exist in the government.  What we have here is a system based  on the messy ‘red tapism’  of both executive and bureaucracy and that will never help in matters related to huge investments that we want to welcome in the State.

While huge investments are wanted here, which may happen in PPP model, what we need to be always looking out is the genesis and existence of adequate SME organisations within the state. SME plays a major role in the economy of India either in terms of the products/services or in terms of the employment generation capacity and under all circumstances; we must preserve and grow them. These SMEs also will become the back-up in the event of recession or calamities affecting huge industrial segments.  Strong economies such as Germany  has always ensured the existence of very strong SME companies  inside its system as the buffer and taking cue from that we must  treat the SMEs in a special way and continue to encourage them in Kerala. This calls for SME friendly long term policies, rules, financing system, marketing system and training system. Kerala Government must take the lead here to become a model state to the nation in the matters of SME industries. With the special focus of Central Government in MSME, this can easily be achieved and all that Kerala leaders need is focus and willpower to get it done.

Another mind-set that we need to have is the creation and celebration of entrepreneurship with in the state. For a state that is totally depended upon remittance which is spent not for creating wealth but on the consuming the same, we need to understand that the mind-set of entrepreneurship is that of creation. Creation means production and not consumption. Whereas consumption blows the wealth, production creates the same.  Decades of thinking in extreme socialistic pattern and the impact of remittance economy had combined to make the state take very dim view of entrepreneurship. The present stake holders; be it the citizen, the executive or the bureaucracy;  all look at entrepreneurs as tax evaders,  labour exploiters and profit makers. What needs to be understood is that it is from the profit that wealth is generated that can be distributed. If that is understood by all in the state’s stake holding systems, then the encouragement and celebration of entrepreneurship will happen. And that is exactly happening in leading industrialised states such as Gujarat, Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra.  These states continue to flourish with entrepreneurship being the key ingredient of economic growth there.

So, it may clearly be understood that Emerging Kerala as a program and the first event that is planned out to happen on 12^th September 2012, may only be considered as the beginning point of our endeavours in industrialising the state, for bringing in investment to the state through the able means of building solid entrepreneurship within the state. We would then have changed our culture, a culture that encourages and celebrates wealth creation and distribution. And therein lay our hope!

THE TRUTH OF FATHERHOOD

The happenings of the last week in the life of Narayan Dutt Tiwari, former Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh & Uttarakhand, former Union Minister and former Governor of Andhra Pradesh; must have been very tumultuous. He was forced to face the truth which he dragged all his life. Ultimately the highest of the judicial system, the Supreme Court of India, needed to intervene to get him around to undergo the DNA test - the test of paternity of Rohit Shekhar. Being a much published and touted case, I do not want to get into the details of the same. Suffice to say that Rohit Sekhar and his mother Ujjwala Sharma has been trying, thru the judicial system, over the last 5 years, to get it proven that Narayan Dutt Tiwari is indeed Rohit’s father. Having proven conclusively thru the DNA test conducted by CDFPD, the reputed Central  institute at Hyderabad, Rohit Shekhar now could walk tall and wipe out the black mark of being a ‘fatherless kid’ from his life forever. Three cheers to him!

That brings me to my favorite subject – the Truth. Rohit wanted the truth to come out. Tiwari still says there is no truth in it. The court concurred with the results of the lab; the CDFPD and declared this as truth. Rohit Shekhar feels that the truth is out and  justice is delivered. Good.

How do you define truth? Is truth and justice the same? Obviously not. Justice could be based on exposing the truth. Many a times, it is not the truth that wins. Truth is circumvented, held back and something else is brought in as the truth and with that something being established as the truth, justice is delivered. This happens at majority of times in all the Indian courts. So truth is truth and justice is not truth.  They are related, though.

By the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, truth is the inner core of a thing. Scientifically speaking, truth is the DNA, that which you are, exclusively, totally different from the rest. So the DNA test is the truth test!!! Very nice to know that Science is helping to establish the truth. Jai ho Science!

Coming back to fatherhood, isn’t fatherhood all about the truth? Because it is your fatherhood that defines your own DNA. So you as the truth lay in the fatherhood of you. So your truth is truly your fatherhood.

So, Rohit Shekhar was trying to find the truth of truth! What could be more agonizing than this?…..

It all looks so funny and confusing, is it not?.........

Stephen Covey – An Obituary

Stephen Covey, famous motivational speaker and author of highly inspirational books, passed away at a hospital in Idaho Falls in US, on Monday the 16^th July 2012, the age of 79. The death was the result of complications that arose from a fall while he was cycling in April this year. 

Stephen Covey came from a family of committed evangelists. In fact his grandfather had started his own Church. Spirituality, therefore, has been the way from the very beginning of his life. An MBA from Harvard School, he was a professor at the Jon M. Huntsman School of Business at Utah State University at the time of his death. 

He will ever be remembered for the books that he had published. His most popular book was The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Other creations of him include First Things First, Principle-Centered Leadership, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Families, The 8th Habit, and The Leader In Me - How Schools and Parents Around the World Are Inspiring Greatness. Almost all the books were best sellers. He had huge fan following across the world thru his books and teaching. 

Along the way, he established the Covey Leadership Center which later merged with Franklin Quest to form FranklinCovey, a global professional services firm with specialty retailing of both training and productivity tools to individuals and organizations. The motto of FranklinCovey was to enable greatness in people and organizations everywhere, a very noble objective!


In 1996, Time Magazine had named him as one of the most influential Americans. His organization was a mix of spirituality, entrepreneurship and knowledge dissemination. He drew immense strength from religion to become one of the most influential motivational speakers in the second half of last century and the first decades of this. Many of his trainees/mentees are eternally grateful to him for helping them chart a new successful course in their life. He brought reason, solace, values and love in their life. His examples and metaphors of teaching were very empathy provoking and enabled people to walk the talk.


His living was based on Mormon traditions but with the interpretations of the Church of Latter Day Saints. Perhaps going by its traditions he sired a large family of 9 nine children that included more than half century grant children. Thus he was a patriarch of not only his student fraternity but also to a big family of his own.

Many awards, recognition and accolades came his way.  The Thomas More College Medallion for continuing service to humanity, The National Entrepreneur of the Year Lifetime Achievement Award, The Sikh's 1998 International Man of Peace Award, 2004 Golden Gavel award from Toastmasters International,^, Maharishi Award from Maharishi University of Management in Fairfield, Corporate Core Values Award from the California University of Pennsylvania are some of them.

Stephen Covey will be remembered long for his motivational lectures and inspirational books. His preaching and adherence to values had captivated millions across the globe. May his noble soul rest in eternal peace.

THE WORLD ECONOMIC OUTLOOK BY IMF

In the newspaper “The Hindu” today, I read an article by Mr C R L Narasimhan. He had written about the World Economic Outlook (WEO), a report that was released by International Monitory Fund (IMF) on 16^th July 2012. The heading of the article “Not a robust picture” itself is self-explanatory. As per the IMF release:

·         Though the global recovery from the last depression is continuing, it is still very weak.

·         The economic growth in the Eurozone is close to Zero

·         Germany & France posted positive growth but at very low levels

·         France will grow @ 0.5% in 2012 which will be 1 % for Germany for the year

·         Greece, Portugal and Spain registered negative growth

·         The growth is there is US but it is too low and as a result, the unemployment there has not come down at all.

·         Emerging economies such as India, Brazil & China are registering slower growth as compared to the past

·         The world economy will grow this year by 3.5%

·         US will grow by 2% this year

·         China’s growth will come down to 8% from 8.2 % which was  forecasted in April this  year

·         India’s growth will come down to  6.1% % from 6.9% predicted in April 2012 

IMF is advising emerging economies to be ready to use both economic and macro prudential policies to respond to a complex environment.  It adds that the capital flows are likely to be highly volatile, and exports to the developed economies will be very subdued. 

There isn’t much to cheer.  For us in India, it could be another bad year. When you add to it the policy paralysis that we are undergoing on account of the non-cohesiveness in UPA coalition Government, you will realize that we cannot expect anything normal in this year too. That would make it two years of drudgery in a trot.  The Monsoon deficit this year of about 30% across the country, would only add to the agony for us. 

Ladies & gentlemen tighten your belts and live on! 

The same paper also reports on news released by Tax Justice Network in The Observer recently which makes very interesting reading.  In a report prepared by James Henry, a former McKinsey Chief Economist, it is said that the elite global super rich of the world has stashed  up  black money of $ 20 Trillion  in private banks in Switzerland and Cayman Islands. This money is being looked after by banks such as Credit Suisse, UBS and the investment bank, Goldman Zachs. As per Mr Henry’s estimates,  about 92000 people (0.001% of the world population) owns $10 Trillion of the same. The guestimate is that the black money amount could be anywhere between $20 trillion and 31 trillion. 

Where did the money flow out from? As per the report, it is from the developing world. It reiterates that the capital that had flown out of the developing world since 1970 would be more than enough to pay their debts to the rest of the world. 

What does it all say? Though there are many isms that rhetorically state economy to be inclusive for everybody, in practice, it is all a big lie. The inequality only had increased in the world with the money and power resting in the hands of very few people. 

Regret that the news is not all that good. But that’s the way it is. What do you want of it?  It is up to you….. Work hard, deceive, kill and loot. In any case, nothing makes any sense….. Cheers then!

WHITHER KERALA?

As we read more and more about policemen and officers being part of the criminal system in Kerala, it is indeed frightening to see the fence eating the crop. The sense of security and safety that we the ordinary citizens feel with these people around, is giving way to that of mute fear and utter shame.

Recently CBI arrested the President of Kerala Police officers Association for trying to kill a newspaper reporter and for threatening to put to fire the house of a higher officer who was investigating the case. The fault of the reporter was that he wrote of piece of 'investigative' report in a leading newspaper on the nexus between police officers and criminals, threatening the very fabric of our social system.

When he was remanded to CBI custody for questioning, the guilty official put up such a show of resistance that they could not question him at all. When produced before the Chief Judicial Magistrate thereafter, he 'fainted' in front of the judge necessitating him to undergo medical check-up. When the doctor certified that there is nothing wrong with him he was sent to prison where he 'fainted' again compelling the authorities to send him to Medical College for further diagnosis and treatment.

What a sham show! The Central Bureau of Investigation, the judge, the doctors and the advocates; everyone knew that he is putting up a show to defy him being questioned by CBI and the entire system went his way. Goodness gracious! Where goes justice? And see how offenders escape the judicial process! I am forced to think that I am staying in a 'banana' state!

Same thing happens when politicians are brought to justice. Last year's episode of a well-known political leader 'fainting' in front of the court which pronounced him guilty and later, after being sent to jail he acted sick to move to hospital so as to live with all comforts in spite if being punished by the court, was a similar case. And 2 months later, the Chief Minister who belongs to his political 'front' came to power, pardoned him and curtailed his imprisonment, letting him go free. Once out, he is suddenly healthy enough to travel extensively and rake controversies! This brings to mind the ineffectiveness of law on people with money and power. It brings such a sour taste to mouth and one feels ashamed of living in a society infested with dreaded criminal gangs fully supported by police and politicians, making the law looks like a scare crow.

And then what do we hear in Kannur? A youth belonging to an opposing party was publically tried by the party goons for throwing stone at a cavalcade led by the district secretary of the party. After him being tried, they pronounced death sentence for him and he was killed by lynching right in front of people. And justice is delivered!

What is happening in our state? Have we gone back to the dark ages? Where are justice, law and order? Is it something decided by those with money, power and influence? Where will the common man go for getting justice? So many questions trouble me and I feel quite restless in the present state of affairs.

SAMADOORAM – A TALK SHOW WITHOUT A TRUE PURPOSE & HOW I WASTED MY TIME!

Last week I was invited by Mazhavil Manorama channel to participate in the program ‘Samadooram’ as a panellist on the subject of pension age of Kerala Government employees. It is in the aftermath of the pronouncement of pension age of government employees being raised by the Finance Minister of the state; Shri. KM Mani, in his budget speech recently that this show was being shot. The person who invited me said that I have been invited to present the view of a private employer and an IT specialist on the subject. In fact I had been invited by Monorama News TV in the past on many occasions for participating in its news programs, particularly those related to Central/State Budget pronouncements. All the while I had been treated with respect and courtesy by the channel people and thus I didn’t have any apprehension in taking part in Samadooram.

On last Monday, as promised, I reached the studio by 10.30 AM. The person received me at the entrance and took me to the new studio built specifically for Mazhavil channel and to the makeup room to have some touch up done on my face. Thereafter I was led to the reception area with a request to wait for a few minutes. The reception area was very crowded and noisy. I also saw some of the co-panellists among the crowd. Then the wait started. In between I saw a person coming in and taking the panellists who are representing the political parties away to some place. Being an impatient person by nature and always one who keeps time and promises, I found this careless and casual attitude of the channel staff very annoying. I tried to talk to the person who invited me and he replied that the shooting will start ‘just now’. After 15 minutes, I walked up to the Production executive and expressed my annoyance. He said coolly that programs like this will have its delays. It sounded as if I desperately wanted to me in the shoot and he was doing me a ‘favour’! I simply walked out of the studio to my car to go back to my office and by then the person who invited me ran up to me requesting me not to go saying that the shooting is starting. With him I came back inside the studio and waited for another 15 minutes more to see the politician panellists being led to the studio. Obviously the survival instinct of the channel people was evident that they took care of the politicians well during the delay. Later I understood that the delay was on account of the program anchor reaching the studios late.

The shooting started at 12.45 noon. By then, I had waited here for more than 135 minutes! The program as cited earlier was ‘samadooram’ - a debate show. It was shot continuously without any break. The anchor person is the well-known Sreekantan Nair who was doing a similar program in Asianet TV channel for more than a decade. Fundamentally, it is a fun centric, satire sort of a show which is purely aired to give what the Malayali wanted, ‘sensationalism’. There is no real value for the content, facts and figures. It is about how the questions are asked and how the answers are elicited. I found Sreekantan Nair to be a street smart, witty person but very quick on the uptake. His presence of mind is very sharp too. He just picks up the tickling aspect of the answer and counters it with more tickle. The show had 8 panellists on one side and audience on the other who too could participate in the debate. In fact, except me, every panellist came with his cronies who sat in the audience to support and howl at the panellist as he or she spoke.

The subject was whether it was right for the government to raise the pension age. There were panellist from Youth Congress, DYFI, Yuva Morcha, Leaders of the Government staff unions belonging to UDF & LDF, a newspaper person and a candidate who is on the rank list of Public Service Commission and me. When it started, one or two questions were asked of me and I had answered the same. I wanted to partake in more and sought permission to speak but it was always the political people who were given preference over. Combined with the cadre in the audience, they were scoring brownies against each other and people who spoke facts were truly ignored. Particularly in the second session, I was just sitting there with no role to play with the UDF-LDF shouting match going on. By then, I did realize that the anchor was interested in that only. His mandate is not to prove or disprove anyone or anything but to make it more ticklish and sensational. The objective was higher TRP. The very reason for this channel to pull out Nair from Asianet to work for it, itself was to improve the viewer ratings.

It was by 2.30 PM the program ended. I just got out as soon as it was over. For me, it was an eminently forgettable show. It is not because I did not have the answers to give or matters to speak but it was not designed for me. It was just to make the politicians fight in front of the TV with cronies supporting them from the audience. In that objective, the show had succeeded but for me, what a waste of time it was!

I had taken part in many TV talk shows, news shows a, quiz programs & panel discussions in the past and had enjoyed being there. The very structure and objective of samadooram is different from the rest. It actually is a shouting match with controversial remarks that is never factual or content centric. Neither is it debated to find solutions. When I talked about IT employment, the DYFI members sitting in the audience howled at me to shout me down, saying that all the ills of the society is thanks to IT employment. (In a way he is true, for, subsequent to people getting into IT employment, its cadre strength is depleting periodically; yes, he has reasons to worry).

I must be careful in future while deciding to take part in similar programs. As a person who values time more than anything else, I felt truly annoyed by this channel guy’s casual attitude to other’s time.

UNION BUDGET 2012

The budget announced by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherji elicited very mixed response from the cross section of people, professionals and corporates.

What could have been a daring and creative proposition available in front of the Finance Minister could not get fully used by him on account of the coalition politics. When you have partners in your ministry who behave worse than the opposition parties, what could the FM do? From whatever had happened on the Union rail budget lately, one can surmise that nothing could have been done by the hapless FM to make his budget bold, creative and reform centric.

First of all, this budget pronouncement was full of correcting & strengthening the gaps and loopholes in the existing tax rules of the country and some of the moves to make the rules to be applicable retrospectively from the year 1962 etc are indeed retrograde steps. The pronouncement of Supreme Court in the Vodafone case had been playing around his mind all the while making this budget.

The basic feedback from professionals is that he gave away concessions worth INR 4000crores only to take away INR 40,000 crores thru some other routes (mainly Indirect Taxes). The Shakespearian adage of “I must be cruel to be kind” had been literally adopted by the FM in the budget for the year 2012.From the reform perspective there is nothing in the budget but for some wish lists. Thus this budget has more tokenism than actual acts. In a coalition setup like this, he can now only wish but not act. And even if he has to act, it has to be on the back and not thru legitimate measures like Budget announcements. As we all had seen in the past, come October, all these pronouncements will change course very discreetly thru a bill at Parliament without any noise that the media is making of the budget now.

Happy to see that the subsidies are not increased in this year. Hope it could be a trend setter towards less subsidy regime. Personally I am not against the poor getting benefited from welfare measures such as subsidies but when it is the rich businessmen, middlemen and corrupt politicians who are benefitting out of such acts why increase the welfare measures?

If I had taken the Economic survey released prior to the budget as an indication, I must confess that there is no correlation between the two. I am unhappy that when we had built up strong institutions for specific purposes for guiding the destiny of the nation, but when they have become useless or when they contradict each other, how do you expect the country to progress?

The expectation from the Indirect tax next year is far greater than that of the direct taxes। This is a straight indication that corporates could expect heavy hit this year. It is really not good to see economies where indirect taxation is far exceeding the direct taxes. On Income tax front the FM delivered what is expected. However by increasing the tax avoidance limit, the Government is releasing many individuals from of the tax net. Considering the realistic situation that the black money component is still very high in India, simply removing individuals from the tax net will give very limited captive payers for direct taxes. When we take a look at the actual number of IT payers out of the population of 110 crores of Indians, we would realise the anomaly very clearly. Some innovative (but not perverted) methods need to be adopted for bringing more individuals into tax net.

Poor tax collections and indifference of PSUs to disinvest had resulted in the Fiscal deficit shooting skywards to 5.9 % whereas the estimate last year was some 4.6%. The FM now is anticipating it to come down to 5.1%. There is a great deal of fudging the fiscal deficict number here. Neither the Centre nor the State, noone is serious about fiscal discipline. Lack a discipline is a serious challenge that we Indians face in every aspect of living.

I am not sure whether we are watching our country’s defence expenditure. If ever someone criticise it, he would be considered as a traitor so, everyone keeps his mouth shut about the defence budget. With no CAG audit taking place and with the perceived ‘defence discipline’ working well, we feel that every penny put in is well spent on safeguarding the Indians. Nothing is far from the truth. There is severe corruption within the armed forces. Close to two per cent of the budget expenditure is earmarked for defence. By itself, it is the largest of expenditure. Additionally many amounts meant for defence expenditure is adjusted somewhere else like Atomic Commission, Space Commission, Border Roads etc. I understand that even salary/pension amounts of defence personnel are accommodated in the civilian budgets. With all these going, there is no surprise that India had become the biggest defence product/equipment buyer of the world. In a country where poverty continues to be the major worry, where children die in thousands every day due to malnourishing, when so many people are homeless; it is a moot question why there is so much earmarked for defence expenditure? Hearing the contradictions from within the armed forces, the bureaucrats and others, one still feels that all these are really not going to protect an average Indian. Drumming up on threats from Pakistan, China and host of terrorist outfits, here is a paranoid nation spending more than it can afford to buy up equipments without realizing of equipping our science and technology establishments to help prepare the armed forces to defend the nation. It is so easy to announce increased budgets for defence purposes wherein the MPs applaud standing up, knowing fully well that there is a share of the loot waiting for them from it.

Words fail me to express the inappropriateness of this defence trap that we are falling in, year after year. Even our PM plays only lip service with words of inclusivity of the dalits and the poor in the wealth sharing and growth. Truly, is there anyone out there really feeling sorry for them or doing something for the downtrodden, the hapless, and the hopeless poor denizens of the country. Therein rests the contrast. Truth always gets covered in the rhetoric which comes out of individual greed.

God save the poor Indians!

THE ESSENCE OF BEING SHASHI TAROOR

A small article that appeared in the Sunday supplement on The Hindu today prompted me to write this post. The article was about our MP Shashi Taroor and the eternal controversy that he tweeted some years back on the ‘cattle class’. The cattle class tweet came to be the call of nemesis for him as a politician, in spite of the justifications that he has ever been delivering through print, media, articles, interviews and lectures. He does not seem to have resolved the issue with the masses and the co-politicians yet.

Excellent Career diplomat, brilliant writer, elegant practitioner of speech, Sashi Taroor was the toast of the country before he decided to return to India and enter Indian Politics. Someone who could gain his doctorate at the age of 22, Sashi Taroor ran two parallel careers; as that of a reputed writer and a UN Diplomat. His accomplishments in solving the ‘Boat People’ crises had catapulted him into international fame, so did his books, most of which had India as the topic. He was married to Tilottama, herself a writer of repute and they have twin sons, both of whom are adults now and dwell in the field of international journalism. He grew well into the position of ‘Under Secretary General’; a post that a career diplomat could grow highest in UN. Nursing ambitions of becoming the Secretary General of United Nations, when the conventional turn of Asia came to occupy it, he stood as a candidate but lost to Ban Ki Moon from South Korea who was supported by USA and the West. Before this time, his marriage with Tilottama had come to a close and he was dating a career diplomat from Canada, a junior of him in the UN.

It is at this time that he had increased his travel frequency to India and Kerala, via Dubai where he was setting up some sort of a business. I remember a reception that was given to him by the Rotary clubs of Cochin during this period. At that time, though he had lost the UN elections, he was still continuing as the Under Secretary General in the UN. In those days, he used to contribute his views in The Hindu Sunday supplement and in one of which he had reiterated that though he could continue, he would leave UN job, in case he loses the election. Having lost and still continuing in the job, during the question hour, referring to the article, I asked him as to what is he still doing in UN. His body language showed that he didn’t like the question and he went on answering the technicalities of leaving UN and assured that he would let his fans like me know about it in the due course.

It was obvious then that he had been cultivating the Indian polity, particularly the Congress party which had the Madam and the Singh at apex, to both he was well connected to. Upon advice, he made Trivandrum his center of activity in order to gain a seat for him to be the Member of Parliament. I am from Trivandrum and I know the psyche of the people there. Earlier too, they had welcomed outside people like Krishna Menon to win seat to Parliament and the list includes Kannur based Pannyan Ravindran, the CPI stalwart. Though the local leaders like Sivaprasad, MM Hassan etc. did not like this but the Congress ‘high command’ persisted to run Sashi Taroor there and he won comfortably; and as expected, became the Minister of State for External Affairs.

It is said that he was an efficient Minister. However certain very ‘personal’ matters, he seems to have over-indulged. One of which was the Kerala IPL team. His love for the game was always pronounced but to form the Kerala IPL team, he had other intentions. This came in the form a beauty called Sunanda Pushkar, who was having a successful marketing career in the UAE. He had totally fallen to her charm (the Canadian beauty that he was dating or living with had retreated by then) and wanted to possess her anyhow and rests of the fracas are well written in the Press and Media. He gained her hand but lost his minster-ship, got to be known as the tainted one on matters IPL and lost the respect of his party men and most of his country fans. Today, one is not sure whether he would get another chance to stand from Trivandum for the Loksabha. It has to be seen. Since the heavy jobs of the ministry is gone, he gets ample time to attend Loksabha, do his travels, engage in writing and attending to invitations for whole lot literary and cultural events with his sweetheart in tow.

Looking at his present position, one could clearly say that his ambitions had taken a beating. But for L’affair ‘Pushkar’, he still would have doing a recognizable job of a Minister and that would have elevated him into Cabinet position in Union Ministry, which again would have helped him to achieve his lifelong ambition of heading the UN at a possible second chance. But for the affair, he wouldn’t have anything to do with IPL and that would have kept him off the politics with shrewd guys like Sharad Pawar, Lalit Modi etc. I think he had already swallowed the humble pie and must have let go of his ambition. However, please note that this is India and here anything is possible, particularly in politics….

Without commenting on the attitude of Indians and Keralites to Sashi Taroor, this post would be truly incomplete. We have a habit of idolizing those of our ilk who are outside the country and thus Sashi Taroor (the Indian in the UN!) eminently qualified to receive the same in plenty. He is a creative genius with an excellent academic record behind him. Like all geniuses, he has his idiosyncrasies which were working along with his big ego. Frankly, after seeing the world in his position, it is not expected of him to respect the home geniuses like us. Like all those phenomenal personalities that we know, he too just could not see the view of the ordinary denizens when he was parleying with the Pushkar in the IPL. He still does not see anything wrong in what he had done and goes around justifying his stand, even now. (In this connection, I really marvel the self-pity of the old Congress Home Minister Bhuta Singh, during his time The Ram Janam Bhumi was vandalized by RSS & Shiv Sena. Having lost the election after the same, he quipped that the lord –Ram- and the log -people- saw him out). When these personalities are out of the country, the citizens think great of them but once they are back, we come to realize that these people also are human being with thoughts, feelings and aspirations. People like Sashi Taroor, with his high self-esteem always looked down at (most of) the Indians & Malayalis but kept very ambitious aspirations and still do not nurse regret about calling the cattle class.

The question is; cattle class that we are, do we deserve holy cows?

NERE CHOVVE

Last week Johnny Lukose, the Director of News at MM TV, addressed a combined meeting of three Rotary clubs, including ours at Hotel Renai. He spent about an hour narrating his experience of interviewing various personalities, most of them celebrities, on ‘nere chovve’ an exclusive one to one interview format that he leads for the channel, telecasted every Tuesday. So far he had interviewed more than 300 people in Nere Chovve and some of the experiences were interesting to hear.

One take away from the speech was about his insight into Malayali audience. He says Malayali looks for purity more than smartness in the people and to know the same, Malayali does not mind going deep into the bedroom of the person. The prying eyes of the Mallu want to know everything, before making the judgment on the person. So, to deliver what his audience wants, even Johnny Lukose covers his smartness with the purity. He keeps a very friendly approach throughout the interview. Unlike the Karan Thaper’s of the world, he does not go into confrontation with his interviewee. However very innocently, he puts his ‘kusruti choddyngal’ (smart questions) to the person and more often than not, gets the reply spontaneously without the cover of any formality. So, these smart questions, covered with the purity of innocence instantly opens up the interviewee and without any thought to protect his/her vanity, the answer comes out in the open. It is a sort of ‘caught off guard’ scene. But that is exactly what the Malayali wants and Johnny Lukose, thus feeds his appetite. No wonder, it is a successful program being looked forward to by his audience every Tuesday.

Based on his experience, he finds Kamal Hasan, the actor a very intelligent person. It was interesting to hear him speaking about one of the most beautiful Women in India, Jayaprada, the film star turned politician, confirming her total allegiance to Amar Singh, Mammootty caught off guard quipping about Mohanlal’s fans blaming him of cursing his superstar rival, actor-danseuse Shobhana, in spite of banning private questions, answering about her aspirations of having husband and children and shrewd politician KM Mani checking with him every half an hour after the interview and suggesting to cut these and that. But the essence of this post is what I am going to write now.

Mohanlal the actor, he says is a very difficult person to interview. His answers are always philosophical, never straight and always skirting around the issue without ever confirming anything. To Mohanlal Jonny asked a kusrutichodyam on the rumors about him. Lal answered that there are many including him being hospitalised on AIDS, about his imminent death of some dreaded disease etc. Not getting the answer he wanted, Johnny said that he had heard that recently Mohanlal did a celebration with some very intimate friends of commemorating his conquest of three thousand women. Very coolly and instantly Lal commented that ‘oh, that is not it, the number could be high’. At the end of the interview Johnny Lukose, having felt that telecasting the same may hurt personal and family sentiments of Lal, offered to delete the question. But Lal very nicely said, ‘Let it be on, no problem’.

Probably it is this philosophical indifference aspect of Mohanlal that makes his fans like him. But one finds it a little abhorring to think about. There has always been this talk about Mohanlal’s likes of wine and women. Once I saw an interview of him by Sreekantan Nair in Asianet, telecasted on aThiruvonam day. It was the days of the ‘cloaked’ liquor advertisement “vaikittentha paripadi” of Mohanlal. Nair asked him (do not remember the lines exactly, but it was sort of) “Innentha pariadi, ithum mattethum okke undo” (what is the program today, THIS and THAT there?). Without flinching Mohanlal asked “Mattethennu vachal?” (THAT means what?). Nair replied, “Athu Ningalku ariyarutho” (Don’t you know what it is?)…………….

On that Thiruvonam holiday, with a positive feeling, I was sitting in my sister’s house at Attingal with my sixth standard son on one side and college going daughter on the other. When Lal asked ‘mattethu’, my son, whose Malayalam is not all that great, was about to ask me “Dad what is Mattethu?” But just before that, I stood up, switched off the TV and walked out of the room.

So much so for our cultural icons……………………………….

IN WHOES HONOUR IS THE LINEN BEING WASHED IN PUBLIC?

The reading of the article; “The birth of a controversy” by Brig. (retd.) V.Mahalingam in Opena Page of The Hindu today (22nd Januaray) prompted me to write this note. I also had the pleasure of watching and hearing the Brigadier in various national English channels wherein the controversy is being debated in full vigour. All said and done, whichever side is right, quite a bit of dirty linen is now being washed in the public. This is not a good trend when it comes to matters related to our security forces. One cringed at the tweet read out by the anchor of the show that both in India and Pakistan, the Army and Government is at loggerheads with each other. Whatever be the truth of the situation, this matter need not have come in the open for which, though the Government is equally responsible, I find the Army chief to be more responsible for the present impasse.

One is not sure whether the application to the Indian Military Academy was filled by the General himself or his parents, but the fact of the matter was that the mistake was committed from his side. It is not the IMA or the Government which made the wrong entry. The present state affair is solely due this wrong entry committed from the Generals side, when he was the candidate. But we should realize, by virtue of the wrong entry, neither his admission to the Academy was denied nor any of his promotion in the Army was curtailed. Considering the pyramid structure followed in the promotions to higher ranks in the services, though it was his own mistake, the General must be singularly lucky to have reached the Pinnacle of his career, which is a dream of every entrant of any defense academy in the country.

The Brigadier refers to the lack of synergy between the Adjutant General’s branch and the Military Secretary branch on the correction of dates, both being part of the Indian Army. While application for correction of the date of birth was furnished by the General, it did not result in the correction being effective. And this definitely throws up lack of clarity in the matter. Also, it is something that happened in the past and when so many head of armies and defense ministers of the past have been preview to it, why blame the present minister of defense for the impasse? Does one see a political ambition behind the actions of the Army chief? In these days when higher ups in the bureaucracy and services aspire higher political positions, one cannot close his eyes to such a view.

Having reached the height of his vocation within the army and being there for considerable period of time, the General could have let go the controversy and retired gracefully from the services. Many of us would have valued his spirit of sacrifice and held him as the true hero. But what has he done? In the name of honour (what and whose honour?, one doesn’t understand), he goes into litigation and allowed the matter to boil over, to the consternation of every well-meaning citizens of the country. His actions had brought the army that he heads, to be compared with a very political and corrupt army of Pakistan. But really is there a comparison? Definitely not! However, just look at the state of affairs now!

It is now evident that the general is seeking tenure in the mask of honour. If he retires in May 2012, the country could get 2 more Army Chiefs after him. If his tenure is extended, those two would retire before he demits office. As mentioned, it is the dream of every officer in the Army to sit in the Chief’s chair at least for one day, in his career. It looks like there is elements of jealousy/apathy in the Generals’ actions.

Lastly I must confess about lack of social skills in the part of the retired senior officers whom I had watched on the TV channels. They simply are not willing to look at the other’s view with any empathy. Most of them, including the Brigadier had been very dogmatic in their approach. Some of them used very aggressive (is it abusive?) language on the Ministry. Having seen officers using aggressive and abusive language on the subordinates, though one is not surprised of their action, one must lament on the sense of propriety from the part of these once senior defense personnel in public communication.

I dread to imagine these retired officers leading the citizens of the country. I could then only repeat the sentence that the Brigadier had closed his article with.

God save the country!

THE CASE FOR GOD

THE CASE FOR GOD
KAREN ARMSTRONG

[KAREN ARMSTRONG - to begin with was a Roman Catholic nun. She left the same to teach English in Oxford before taking up full time writing. Today she is the author of 15 bestselling titles. The ‘Case for God’ is the most prominent among them]

In the book “The Case for God” (Vintage Books, ISBN 978-0-099-52403-8), Karen Armstrong takes us through the Original concept of God of various cultures across the Globe, its evolution into personal Gods and the thoughts of Godlessness (atheism) and the impact of Science on God concept। The author has painstakingly gone thru thousands of documents of myriad cultures of the world to get their views. As in the beginning of the book, she ends it with the fact that the concept of God as envisaged by the ancient civilizations fits the definition (or is it the lack of it?) of God much better than the later definitions of the same by the plethora of religions and their denominations that exist today. She emphasizes that God is a transcendent mystery that could never be revealed and is an all-encompassing one that lay beyond any doctrinal formulation. She also explains the way described by various religions for us mortal being to achieve the divinity that would eventually be part of the ultimate transcendent reality - SR Nair

Excerpts from the book

ORIGINAL INDO-ARYAN VIEW:
By the tenth century BCE, when some of the Aryans had settled in the Indian subcontinent, they gave a new name to the ultimate reality; Brahman. Brahman was the unseen principle that enabled all things to grow and flourish. It was a power that that was higher, deeper, and more fundamental than the Gods. Because it transcended the limitations of personality, it would be entirely inappropriate to pray to Brahman or expect it to answer your prayers. Brahman was that sacred energy that held the disparate elements of the world together and prevented it from falling apart. Brahman had an infinitely greater degree of reality than mortal creatures, whose lives were limited by ignorance, sickness, pain and death. One could never define Brahman because language refers to only the individual and Brahman was ‘the all’; it was everything that existed as well as the inner meaning of all existence.
Even though human beings could not think about the Brahman, they had intimations of it in the hymns of the Rig veda, the most important of the Aryan scriptures. The Aryans do not seem to have thought of Brahman readily in images. One of their chief symbols of the divine was sound, whose power and intangible quality seemed a particularly apt embodiment of the all-pervasive Brahman. When the priest chanted the Vedic hymns, the music filled the air and entered the consciousness of the congregation, so that they felt surrounded by and infused with divinity. These hymns, revealed to ancient seers, did not speak of doctrines that the faithful were obliged to believe, but referred to the old myths in an allusive, riddling fashion because the truth they were trying to convey could not be contained in a neatly logical presentation. Their beauty shocked the audience into a state of awe, wonder, fear and delight.
During the tenth century BCE, the Brahmin priests developed the Brahmodya competition, which would become a model of authentic religious discourse. The contestants began by making a retreat in the forest, where they performed spiritual exercises, such as fasting and breathe control, that concentrated their minds and induced a different type of consciousness. Then the contest could begin. Its goal was to find a verbal formula to define the Brahman, in the process pushing language as far as it could go, until it finally broke down and people became vividly aware of the ineffable, the other. The challenger asked an enigmatic question and his opponent had to reply in a way that was apt but equally inscrutable. The winner was the contestant who reduced his opponents to silence – and in that moment of silence, when language revealed its inadequacy, the Brahman was present; it became manifest only in the stunning realisation of the impotence of speech.

The ultimate reality was not a personalized god, therefore, but a transcendent mystery that could never be revealed.

As life became more settled, people had the leisure to develop a more interior spirituality. The Indian Aryans, always in the vanguard of religious change, pioneered this trend, achieving the ground-breaking discovery that the Brahman, being itself, was also the ground of the human psyche. The transcendent was neither external nor alien to humanity but the two were inextricable connected. This insight would become central to the religious quest in all the major traditions. In the early Upanishads, composed in the seventh century BCE, the search for this sacred self (atman) became central to Vedic spirituality. The Upanishadic sages did not ask their disciples to ‘believe’ this but put them through an initiation whereby their apprentices discovered it for themselves in a series of spiritual exercises that made them look at the world differently. This practically acquired knowledge brought with it a joyous liberation from fear and anxiety.

The Upanishadic sages were among the first to articulate another of the universal principles of religion. The truths of religion are accessible only when you are prepared to get rid of the selfishness, greed and self- preoccupation that, perhaps inevitably, are engrained in our pain. (The Greeks would call this process kenosis, ‘emptying’). Once you gave up the nervous craving to promote yourself, denigrate other, draw attention to your unique and special qualities and ensure that you were first in the pecking order, you experienced an immense peace. The Upanishads were written at a time when the Aryan communities were in the early stages of urbanization; reason had enabled them to master their environment. But the sages reminded them that there were some things – old age, sickness and death – that they could not control; some things – such as their essential self – that lay beyond their intellectual grasp. When as a result of carefully crafted spiritual exercises, people learned not only to accept but to embrace this unknowing, they found that they experienced a sense of release.

The sages began to explore the complexities of the human psyche with remarkable sophistication; they had discovered the unconscious long before Freud. But the atman, the deepest core of their personality, eluded them. Precisely because it was identical with the Brahman, it was indefinable. The atman had nothing to do with our normal psycho-mental states and bore no resemblance to anything in our ordinary experience, so it could only be spoken of in negative terms. As the seventh-century sage Yajnavalkya explained: ‘About this Self (atman) one can only say “not . ... not” (neti. . . neti). He says “You can’t see the Seer who does the seeing. You can’t hear the Hearer who does the hearing; you can’t think with the Thinker who does the thinking; and you can’t perceive the Perceiver who does the perceiving. This Self within the All (Brahman) is this atman of yours”.

Even now, if a man knows ‘I am brahman’ he becomes this whole world. Not even the gods are able to prevent it, for he becomes their very self (atman)

One of the principal technologies that enabled people to achieve this self-forgetfulness was yoga. Unlike the yoga practiced in Western gyms today, it was not an aerobic exercise but a systematic breakdown of instinctive behavior and normal thought patterns. It was mentally demanding and, initially, physically painful. The yogin had to do the opposite of what came naturally. He sat so still that he seemed more like a plant or a statue than a human being; he controlled his respiration, one of the most automatic and essential of our physical functions, until he acquired the ability to exist for long periods without breathing at all. He learned to silence the thoughts that coursed through his mind and concentrate ‘on one point’ for hours at a time. If he persevered, he found that he achieved dissolution of ordinary consciousness that extracted the ‘I’ from his thinking.

To this day, yogins find that these disciplines, which have measurable physical and neurological effects, evoke a sense of calm, harmony and equanimity that is comparable to the effect of music। There is a feeling of expansiveness and bliss, which yogins regards as entirely natural, possible for anybody who has the talent and application. As the ‘I’ disappears, the most humdrum objects reveal wholly unexpected qualities, since they are no longer viewed through the distorting filter of one’s own egotistic needs and desires. When she meditated on the teachings of her guru, a yogin did not simply accept them notionally but experienced them so vividly that her knowledge was, as the texts say, ‘direct’; bypassing the logical processes like any practically acquired skill, it has become part of her inner world.
But yoga also had an ethical dimension। A beginner was not allowed to perform a single yogic exercise until he has completed an intensive moral programme। Top of the list of this requirements was ‘ahimsa,’ - harmlessness’. A yogin must not swat a mosquito, make an irritable gesture or speak unkindly to others but should maintain constant affability to all, even the most annoying monk in the community. Until his guru was satisfied that this had become second nature, a yogin could not even sit in the yogic position. A great deal of the aggression, frustration, hostility and rage that mars our peace of mind is the result of the thwarted egotism, but when the aspiring yogin became proficient in this selfless equanimity, the texts tell us that he would experience ‘indescribable job’.

THE BUDDIST VIEWS:
The Buddha had little time for theological speculation. In fact one of his monks was a philosopher, instead of getting on with his yoga, constantly pestered the Buddha about metaphysical questions: “Was there a God? Had the world been created in time or had it always existed?” The Buddha told him that he was like a man who had been shot with a poisoned arrow and refused medical treatment until he had discovered the name of his assailant and what village he came from. He would die before he got this perfectly useless information. What difference would it make to discover that a god had created the world? Pain, hatred, grief and sorrow would still exist. These issues were fascinating, but the Buddha refused to discuss them because they were irrelevant: “My disciples, they do not lead to peace and to the direct knowledge of Nirvana”, he said.

The Buddha always refused to define Nirvana, because it could not be understood notionally and would be inexplicable to anybody who did not undertake his practical regimen of meditation and compassion. But anybody who did commit him/ herself to the Buddhist way of life could attain Nirvana, which was an entirely natural state. Sometimes, however, Buddhists would speak of Nirvana using the same kind of imagery as monotheists use of God: it was ‘ the Truth’, ‘the Other Shore’, ‘Peace’. ‘the Everlasting’, and ‘the Beyond’. Nirvana was still center that gave meaning to life, an oasis of calm, and a source of strength that you discovered in the depths of your own being. In purely mundane terms, it was ‘nothing’, because it corresponded to no reality that we could recognize in our ego-dominated existence. But those who had managed to find this sacred peace discovered that they lived an immeasurably richer life. There was no question of ‘believing’ in the existence of Nirvana or taking it ‘on faith’. The Buddha had no time for abstract doctrinal formulations divorced from action. It could not lead to enlightenment because it amounted to an abdication of personal responsibility. Faith meant trust that Nirvana existed and a determination to realize it by every practical means in one’s power.

ORIGINAL CHINESE VIEW:

The Chinese called it the Tao, the fundamental ‘Way’ of the cosmos. Because it comprised the whole of reality, the Tao had no qualities, no form; it could be experienced but never seen; it was not a god; it pre-dated Heaven and Earth, and was beyond divinity. You could not say anything about the Tao, because it transcended ordinary categories: it was more ancient than antiquity and yet it was not old; because it went far beyond any form of ‘existence’ known to humans, it was neither being nor non-being. It contained all the myriad patterns, forms and potential that made the world the way it was and guided the endless flux of change and becoming that we see all around us. It existed at a point where all the distinctions that characterize our normal modes of thought became irrelevant.

Confucius called it ren but refused to define it (later identified with ‘benevolence’) because it was incomprehensible to a person who had not yet achieved it. But the ordinary meaning of ren in Confucius’ time was ‘human being’. Ren is sometime translated into English as ‘human-heart-edness’. Holiness was not ‘supernatural’, therefore, but a carefully crafted attitude that, as later Confucian explained, refined humanity and elevated it to ‘godlike’ (shen) plane.

ORIGINAL MIDDLE EAST VIEW:

In the Middle East, the region in which the Westerns monotheisms would develop later, there was a similar notion of the ultimate. In Mesopotamia, the Akkadian word for ‘divinity’ was ilam, a radiant power that transcended any particular deity. The gods were not the source of ilam but, like everything else, could only reflect it. The chief characteristic of this ‘divinity’ was ellu (‘holiness’), a word that had connotations of ‘brightness’, ‘purity’ and ‘luminosity’. The gods were called the ‘holy ones’ because their symbolic stories, effigies and cultus evoked the radiance of ellu for their worshippers. The people of Israel called their patronal deity, the ‘holy one’ of Israel, Elohim, a Hebrew variant on ellu that summed up everything that the divine could mean for human beings. But holiness was not confined to the gods. Anything that came into contact with divinity could become holy too: a priest, a king or a temple - even the sacred utensils of the cult. In the Middle East, people would have found it far too constricting to limit ilam to a single god; instead they imagined a Divine Assembly, a council of gods of many different ranks, who worked together to sustain the cosmos and expressed the multifaceted complexity of the sacred.

Religion as defined by the great sages of India, China and the Middle East was not a notional activity but a practical one; It did not require belief in a set of doctrines but rather hard, disciplined work, without which any religious teaching remained opaque and incredible. The ultimate reality was not a Supreme Being; an idea that was quite alien to the religious sensibility of antiquity; it was an all-encompassing, wholly transcendent reality that lay beyond neat doctrinal formulations. So religious discourse should not attempt to impart clear information about the divine but should lead to an appreciation of the limits of language and understanding. The ultimate was not alien to human beings but inseparable from our humanity. It could not be accessed by rational, discursive thought but required a carefully cultivated state of mind.

In Conclusion

We can never know the ineffable characteristics of God, but can only glimpse its traces or effects in our time-bound, sense-bound world. It is clear that the meditation, yoga and rituals that work aesthetically on a congregation have, when practiced assiduously over a lifetime, will have a marked effect on the personality. There is no dramatic ‘born-again’ conversion, but a slow, incremental and imperceptible transformation. Above all, the habitual practice of compassion and the Golden Rule ‘all day and every day’ demands perpetual kenosis (emptying). The constant ‘stepping outside’ of our own preferences, convictions and prejudices is the transcendence that we seek. The effect of these practices cannot give us concrete information about God; it is certainly not a scientific ‘proof’. But something indefinable happens to people who involve themselves in these disciplines with commitment and talent.

When avatar of the otherwise incomprehensible Nirvana; this was what Nirvana looked like in human terms. They also knew that this stake was natural to human beings, and that if they put the Buddhist method into practice, they too could achieve it. Christians has a similar experience when their limitations of Christ brought them intimations of theosis (‘deification’).

The remote God of the Philosophers tends to fade from people’s minds and hearts. The domineering God of modern ‘scientific religion’ over-externalized the divine, and pushed it away from humanity, confining it, to ‘distant deeps and skies’. But pre-modern religion deliberately humanized the sacred. The Brahman was not a distant reality but was identical with the atman of every single creature.

Certain individuals became icons of this enhanced, refined humanity. We think of Socrates approaching his execution without recrimination but with open-hearted kindness, cheerfulness ad serenity. The gospels show Jesus undergoing an agonizing death and experiencing the extremity of despair while forgiving his executioners, making provision for his mother and having a kindly word for one of his fellow victims. Instead of becoming stridently virtuous, aggressively orthodox, and contemptuous of the ungodly, these paradigmatic personalities became more humane. The rabbis were revered as avatars of the Torah, because their learning and practice enabled them to become living, breathing and human embodiments of the divine imperative that sustained the world. Muslim venerates the Prophet Muhammad as the ‘Perfect Man’, whose life symbolizes the total receptivity to the divine that characterizes the archetypal, ideal human being. Just as the feats of a dancer or an athlete are impossible for an untrained body and seem superhuman to most of us, these people all developed a spiritual capacity that took them beyond the norm and revealed to their followers the untapped ‘divine’ or ‘enlightened’ potential that exists in any man or woman.

From almost the very beginning, men and women have repeatedly engaged in strenuous and committed religious activity. They evolved mythologies, rituals and ethical disciplines that brought them intimations of holiness that seemed in some indescribable way to enhance and fulfill their humanity. They were not religious simply because of their myths and doctrines were scientifically or historical sound, because they sought information about the origins of the cosmos, or merely because they wanted a better life in the hereafter. They were not pushed into faith by power-hungry priests or kings: indeed, religion often helped people to oppose tyranny and oppression of this kind.

The point of religion was to live intensely and richly here and now. Religious people are ambitious. They want life overflowing with significance. They have always desired to integrate with their daily lives the moments of rapture and insight that came to them in dreams, in their contemplation of nature, and in their intercourse with one another and with the animal world. Instead of being crushed and embittered by the sorrow of life, they sought to retain their peace and serenity in the midst of their pain. They yearned for the courage to overcome their terror of mortality; instead of being grasping and mean-spirited, they aspired to live generously, large-heartedly and justly and to inhabit every single part of their humanity. Instead of being a mere workaday cup, they wanted to transform themselves into a beautiful ritual vessel brimful of the sanctity that they were learning to see in life. They tried to honour the ineffable mystery they sensed in each human being and create societies that honoured the stranger, the alien, poor and the oppressed. Of course they often failed. But overall they found that the disciplines of religion helped them to do all this. Those who applied themselves most assiduously showed that it was possible for mortal men and women live on a higher, diving or godlike plane and thus wake up to their true selves.

One day a Brahmin priest came across the Buddha sitting in contemplation under a tree and was astonished by his serenity, stillness and self-discipline. ‘Are you a god, Sir?’ The priests asked. ‘Are you an angel. . . or a spirit?’ No, the Buddha replied. He explained that he had simply revealed a new potential in human nature. It was possible to live in this world of conflict and pain at peace and in harmony with one’s fellow creatures. There was no point in merely believing it; you would only discover its truth if you practiced his method, systematically cutting off egotism at the root. You would then live at the peak of your capacity, activate parts of the psyche that normally lie dormant, and become fully enlightened human beings. ‘Remember me,’ the Buddha told the curious priest, ‘as one who is awake.’

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Thus, Godliness is an achievable state for man, provided he goes thru the way to achieve it with discipline, commitment and talent. At the end of it, he would be fully awake and alert but with absolute equanimity. It allows man to reach the state of bliss thru awareness, selflessness and compassion where he becomes part of the whole, which is nothing but the transcendent reality – SR Nair