Sunday, December 22, 2013

Temples as engines of economic, cultural and spritual growth

This blog is based of observations during a visit to Hampi, Karnataka

An observation of the two temple complexes Rama and Krishna temple show that  both these temples,  hundred of years old, have elements of two principles which  modern management has "invented"namely Anchor tenant and Free-mium.

For those who do not know these jargon : Anchor tenant is a key tenant of any reality development which is capable of attracting people so that other shops will also gain from it. The Kings of Hampi used the Gods namely Krishna and Rama as the Anchor tenant. People come to see the temple and worship from all parts. They come frequently. So this makes eminent sense.

Additionally the temple was the hub of many activities namely cultural such as festivals, celebrations, auspicious days. Some of the leading artists in dance and music were attached to the temple and performed in the temple. These performances are usually free and may have also contributed to the footfalls in the temple. In many temples, food was also served to those who wished to partake of it. This was traditionally a social security net for those who had fallen into bad or difficult times and ensured that these families did not starve.

This traffic to the temple also called footfalls was used to create markets in the roads/path leading up to the temple.  These were monetized by charging a rent from the merchants to set up shops. This was a form of freemium as these rents were effectively paid only by those buying items from these marchants. Those who simply wished to go the temple and come back had an effectively free trip. At the same time the temple was funded by the rents collected from the merchants. This is akin to Linkedin.com 's model. Many people use it for Free and a few people get more out of the website and pay for the website a premium giving rise to the term Free-mium.

The Hampi temples in my estimate were early examples of Freemium. This emphasizes the need to study all the management techniques used in our country since time immemorial lest we believe that the art and science of management originated with the establishment of Management schools in the West ; but we shall reserve that for another blog.

There are many lessons in management and economics to be learnt from the temple. The temple as a centre of art gives universal access to art ie anyone can enjoy music and dance. It's ability to attract people is a virtuous cycle. The more people come to the temple, the more people want to go to the temple. It is really the right place to enjoy sacred arts but in todays time and age we will desist from going into that. The temple offers an almost recession proof economy that dot vary too much.

There  may have been many negatives in the way temples were managed at the turn of independence. These should have corrected keeping its  strengths in tact. Instead the baby was thrown out with the bath water. The temples which have a good amount of autonomy have grown from strength to strength and have been centres of many great endeavours.

The revenue of the temple is not the measure of the temple but it is a good proxy and perhaps the only available for the volume of traffic that comes to the temple. The Tirupati temple is one such which has revenues of Rs 2000 crore per annum and has created world class facilities for handling a very large volume of pilgirms. There are no stampedes. All devotees who come to the temple are fed. There is enough accommodation to house all those who come to see the Lord. The temple town is clean, crime free and a marvel of management.

On the other hand many other such illustrious temples which fell under the management of the government are languishing. The Nataraja temple at Chidambaram is one such where neither the traffic nor the revenues are even remotely comparable to Tirupati. The annual revenues are about Rs 15 crores.

Last but not the least, well managed temples may be a stepping stone to a more spiritually advanced society.  It may be one of the easier ways of creating a fair, tolerant society without ills such as corruption, violence etc.

We need to revisit  the way, we the Hindu civilization, manage our temples.  This could provide  economic, cultural and spiritual multiplier of unimaginable amounts.


Saturday, December 21, 2013

Open source nutrition knowledge and National Nutrition Mission

I request readers to see at least the first fifteen minutes of this video, The Secrets of Sugar, before you read this blog.


This may be the future for our country if we do not spread our knowledge of nutrition existent in our Indian civilization for thousands of years. This knowledge is time tested and  arguably beats any double-dummy testing and statistical procedure that scientists can come up with to validate new foods.


We as a nation have tremendous traditional knowledge of nutrition and power of herbs to nourish, cure and heal. Many people do not even know what they know but they know a lot as this knowledge was passed on orally in the house.  This knowledge is tested across millennia and available to people all across the country at a low cost as many of them are available as raw materials or can be grown at home or in nearby farms.

Yet for a variety of factors, this traditional knowledge is dying out and is not used to the best extent possible. There is no incentive for the private sector to promote any of these products as they may not get any benefits from it and it may paradoxically cut into sales of existing products. For example it is difficult to expect any private corporation to spend Rs 50 crores to educate the public on the  uses and consumption of turmeric and make a profit through selling turmeric or related products. Even if their campaign is successful in spreading the message they may not get the sales to give them return on the advertising investment.

Since the idea is relevant and will have high impact on society and yet it is not profitable for any one to do it, it falls squarely in the domain of the government.

The government  needs to create a education campaign to improve the consumption of the right kind of foods and herbs with the knowledge of how to process and consume them. They should involve an element of fun and should not be talking down to the targeted audience. These campaigns need to be done by the top class advertising agencies ie the same guys who are trying to sell the junk food too.

The items, among many others, whose consumption could be easily improved are
  • Turmeric
  • Neem
  • Flax seeds
  • Millets
  • Amla
  • Pepper, cloves, cinnamon

Lastly we need to create an automatic dampener which slowly down the growth of junk foods. The best way to do this perhaps is to create a National nutrition education mission from a portion of the taxes collected from the sale of junk foods. This way as the sale of junk foods increase the amount of money available to spread the knowledge of nutrition will also increase.

The idea here is not to replace or remove allopathy/ modern medical healthcare. It is very valuable thing but has one drawback - it is very very expensive so much so that most people cant really afford it. For a society such as ours spending 15% or 20% of our GDP on healthcare and insurance is not really a viable option. As the proverb, an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure.

This will reduce the incidence of ill-health and disease and reduce the burden on the government and citizens from expenditure that could be easily avoided or reduced. It will also release national resources from creation of additional healthcare arising from poor diets and go a long way to create  a healthier  and happier society.

At current levels, we could easily create a Rs 100 crore fund per annum to do this. The payback on this can be in very large multiples of the same.








Monday, November 18, 2013

Transforming our PSUs to create a new engine of growth

The Public sector can be a new engine of growth for India.  A very large amount of capital is invested in India's public sector. These companies have the scale to become  global scale players if managed well but are constrained due to the way they are managed. 

The main constraints are in acquisition of best talent, interference in decision making, poor capital allocation resulting from interference of the government in the running of business and using these companies as milch cows for political ends by using them to provide subsidies for political ends. As a result of these companies earn poor rates of return on capital and are unable to grow fast, create employment and make investments and work to their full potential.  These companies are also easily hamstrung by their private sector competitors by suitably "incentivizing" the political leaders concerned. The current trajectory of management may lead to bankruptcy of many of the PSUs and create great financial stress for banks and the governments. BSNL and Air india are heading down this road rapidly and they need to be rescued quickly.

Many of these constraints are seen as having fatal flaws by the stock market. As Peter Drucker put it succinctly, Profitability is the sovereign test of the enterprise. Many of these enterprises  have failed the   test soundly and are not seen as investment worthy by the stock market. 

We need to create a program to convert these companies from being Public sector companies to becoming more like the HDFC, ICICI or IDFCs. The government could hold either 26% or a golden share and create safeguards to prevent mismanagement but the companies need to have autonomy in running the company.  The divestment of these stakes could happen as the efficiency of operations improve so that the government would receive a fair compensation for the stakes. There should be complete autonomy in acquisition of talent, capital allocation and efficient management of the enterprise to earn the best possible return. These  factors should be cast in stone and  non-negotiable and irreversible. The government needs to create a clear mandate of corporate governance and commit to not changing it. The companies  should be made to sign agreements with the government to provide affirmative action to the extent it will not affect their efficiency but they should be free to implement in the manner they wished. These agreements should have a long tenure of 25-50 years and should not be changeable during the interim period.

Our national policies regarding licences and permissions in these sector should mimic the kind of policies favoured by countries such as USA, Hong Kong, Australia towards their dominant corporations. 

The cost of governmental interference and hampered operations is quite stark. For example: the market cap of HDFC Bank which was started in 1994 has a market cap of Rs 160,000 crore. While SBI which is almost 150 years old has a market cap of Rs 120,000 crores despite being almost four times as large as HDFC in assets.

We could also think of inviting private participation in these companies through limited stakes i.e, any private sector group could participate through stock ownership and board participation. There is a precedent for this in the banks started by different communities where different groups got together to manage banks such as Tamilnadu Mercantile Bank and these groups cannot hold more than certain % of the voting share as per the articles of association.


If we do this, we could think of converting our struggling PSUs into world scale businesses with great vitality. 

If we visualize these transformations, we can understand the possible improvements possible.

  • converting a BHEL into a GE
  • converting a Coal India or NMDC to Rio Tinto or a BHP
  • converting a BSNL into a Vodafone
  • converting a BPCL/HPCL or IOC into Shell or Exxon Mobil
  • converting SBI into a HSBC or even a HDFC Bank !!
  • convert SAIL into a world leader in Steel
  • convert National Fertilizers  into a Yara
  • convert IndiaPost into a Fedex ?
  • convert Air India into a Singapore Airlines
  • convert our PSU defence companies into world scale arms manufacturers


The investments have already been made into  these companies/assets. All it takes is to change the rules by which these are managed. These are much more easier to do than attract even a fraction of the investment it would take to create these companies. The profitability improvements can provide steady source of capital for investments for growth for which we are going around with begging bowls to attract FDI. Better management of these companies will add to the tax revenues of the country.

We have massive fiscal deficits.  There is no more money left for creating any more engines of growth. We may need to scale back many of the programs we already have. In such a scenario, this measure is one of the lowest hanging fruit.

There is another problem facing us. Our stock market is severely lacking depth. Once the top 40-50 companies are well priced, there are no good companies available at reasonable valuations for investors to buy into. Any further investment by Foreign Institutional Investors only increases the valuation of these companies pushing  the valuations into stratospheric levels. This also pushes away the retail investor from the stock market as s/he is not able to find steady blue-chips which would pay dividends. A slow divestment of these transformed PSUs would transform the Indian stock market and make it a very attractive place for our retail investors and world wide investors. It will also drastically reduce crony capitalism.

This is a zero cost and  zero investment  change which can provide a good impetus to our economy. 




The Importance of the AMUL Model

What is AMUL ?

AMUL is  the brand name of the Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF). It is set up to market the produce of the Dairy Co-operative Unions in the state. GCMMF sits at the apex of the pyramid of the Dairy co-operative movement.

For sake of ease, I am using the term AMUL to represent the structure represented by GCMMF/Co-operatives in this article (please see this for more details GCMMF/Co-operatives).

Why is AMUL different from a corporation ?

AMUL tries to expand the market for the farmer's produce and keep demand for milk and milk products well matched or ahead of supply of milk thereby ensuring that the farmer gets a good price for his/her produce. The objective of AMUL is to maximize the returns to the farmer not the profitability of AMUL.  This objective of AMUL arises on account of its ownership structure. GCMMF the apex marketing agency is owned and controlled by the Co-operatives.

AMUL tries to give the highest price to the milk producer and convert the raw milk into products and sell it at the lowest possible price to the consumer. AMUL, by adopting this strategy has also become a formidable player in the market selling products at very fair prices and never exploiting customers - thereby limiting the behaviour of participants in this industry and the profits that can be made in the industry.


The actions that flow from AMUL's objective are

Sale of products at reasonable prices thereby spurring consumption
Penetration pricing for many products so that at all times new markets are created for the ever increasing output of milk
Creating a steady and growing market rather than exploiting profit making opportunities which may increase profits but reduce volume growth
High return on capital for dairy farmers and assured off-take and reasonable prices putting them on a virtuous cycle of growth

If a normal corporation would be in the business of procuring milk and selling it,  its primary goal would be to minimize the cost of milk procured and maximize the sale value of the products - completely opposite of that of AMUL. This may be appear deluded (especially in light of AMUL's experience) as this tends to slowdown the variable which can help a business keep its dealings healthy - namely volume but this is the usual business logic.



In game theory terms, the dairy farmers are controlling the value chain rather than the merchant controlling the farmers. This is exactly as Sardar Vallabhai Patel had intended when he and few other leaders advised the farmers to get out of the clutches of the merchants/traders who were exploiting them and create their own co-operatives. Under the astute leadership of Tribhuvandas Patel, the dairy movement kept out all political parties from it as the farmers decided to only their identity of the farmer to the dairy meeting.

Why is the AMUL model important ?

We are suffering constantly from the problem of excess production and lack of steady remunerative price for many commodities. Even if the prices fall, its benefits never really reaches the consumer and is taken up by the manufacturer. This causes farmer distress during low prices without really adding to the demand or creating a market.

The AMUL model has changed these dynamics by creating a globally well known brand, a market and a strong sales marketing organization and distribution network. It is a proven model and has worked for over 60 years now and can be replicated. It takes zero investment and self-regulated as the weight of the society bears upon it and hence it is not easy to hijack it or sabotage it.

Traditionally when there is distress, governments announce ad hoc measures which cost a lot but accomplish very little in the long run.


Even today a large part of our population lives of agriculture. By creating organizations like AMUL, we accomplish many things in one stroke: Rural empowerment, women entrepreneurship, providing opportunities at village level to stop migration into cities, creation of income in villages which would allow Providing  Urban Amenities in Rural Areas (one of the main cause of migration to cities)

Way forward ?

AMUL was created as an accident of history but we need to learn from it and create many more AMULs as a deliberate national design. Creation of more AMULs does not require much investments. In fact, it will be most effective if it done with zero investment from the government and 100% moral support from the government. All it requires is political will and leadership to organize the farmers and create a virtuous cycle of economic growth and social empowerment can be created which rewards hard work and enterprise.

The days of governments creating money and throwing them at problems without really solving anything are coming to an end.  In such a scenario the AMUL models are worth their weight in gold.

We, as a nation, need to identify various areas where the farmers produce are not getting adequate value and create many more AMULs. 

Last but not least we need to support and reward political leadership which will adopt  these innovative engines of economic growth and not harp on the same cliched and failed models of economic development.





Wednesday, November 13, 2013

The Sanjeevani for harmonious economic growth


We have many problems plaguing our economic model of growth. Our current model depends a lot on industrial growth. The economic growth from industrialization is constrained by three factors: namely Capital available especially risk capital/ equity, land available for industrialization and employable population with skills relevant to industry. All of these three factors are in short supply: risk capital is not available easily, land for industrialization displaces people from their land and has become a contentious issue. The fraction of the people who are employable by industry as compared to those who seek a livelihood is very small.

The industry creates employees and very few entrepreneurs. This creates its own  tensions and repercussions in the long run  as employees appreciate the economic constraints much less than entrepreneurs creating a difficult industrial relations environment. Additionally industry invariably creates pollution and changes the ecology of the  area where it comes up.  Given this situation, it is clear that while industry can produce economic growth we need another engine of economic growth for many pockets of the country which are not getting developed or cannot be developed by industrialization.

I recently read this saying in Sanskrit. I have been thinking about this saying and it may have the secret to creating a new engine of growth which will strengthen our economy, our society and our environment.


A pond equals ten wells, a reservoir equals ten ponds.
A son equals ten reservoirs, and a tree equals ten sons!
दशकूपसमा वापी दशवापीसमो ह्रदः ।
दशह्रदसमः पुत्रो दशपुत्रसमो द्रुमः ॥
dasha-kūpa-samā vāpī, dasha-vāpī-samo hradaḥ |
dasha-hrada-samaḥ putro, dasha-putra-samo drumaḥ ||
Matsya-purāṇa 154:512

Why is the tree so revered ? One reason could be that it can grow and propagate itself without any effort and produce so much of value to humans and the environment. Factories don't have the intelligence to multiply on their own by simply creating a seed of the next factory. 

The economics of nature are simply fabulous. Comparing  a tree with a factory, we see that factories require substantial resources to be built and managed. They do not expand of their own accord. The next factory requires as much or even more investment. They could become obsolete quickly.  They upset the ecological equilibrium of the area where they are established. The tree is a factory that can grow pretty much by itself if it finds itself in the right place. Its products have great established use over many millennia as food, medicine, construction materials and importantly raw materials for the industrial economy (tyres, paper, construction, food, nutraceuticals to name a few). It plays a restoring a role in the environment.

This is not to say that we should forsake the economic growth through factories and machines. Let that go on and  and play its role. We should accept the limitations of industrial growth and adopt other models also  and place adequate importance to use the power of nature inherent in trees to power for economic growth.




What can be done ?

This approach seems theoretical. The immediate question is how can this be applied across the country.
We need to identify raw material products that can be created from trees and value added products that could be created from them. We then identify areas which are the best to grow these trees and create business around communities. We should let families grow the trees and collect the products and process them through co-operatives like Amul. This will require very little capital - only for collecting and processing the produce.

The planting and growing of trees should be linked to milestones in the family such as birth of children, marriage so that they are equivalent of opening a fixed deposit account or insurance policy for the family which will pay itself in time for the development of the person or family concerned. We need to rebuild the rituals for planting and maintaining these trees so that the tradition is maintained. 

There are few immediate areas where this can applied

1. Growing sandalwood in Karnataka: We have the crazy policy of effectively banning private growing of sandal wood trees. We need to instead encourage growing of trees in each household in areas where it is conducive. This can increase the production of sandalwood manifold and help increase market share of sandal wood in the perfumery business. The price of good sandal wood is at least Rs 2500 /kg. If we increase production, it may lower the price and at a much lower price there would be a very big market and income would also be spread among many more people.

2. Neem: Neem based products are growing in a big manner for humans and as insecticides. The cost of neem seeds has gone up from almost (cost of picking and transport)  to about Rs 23/kg. 

3. Amla: Amla produces many products which help in curing  many of the modern day diseases.

4. Alternatives for Forest produce: Massive deforestation has reduced the forest cover and reduced the source of raw materials for nutraceutical industry. While the world population has increase manifold since 1947, the forest cover has reduced substantially. This  tragedy is paradoxically a very good opportunity to create forestry product markets around trees such as Arjun, Ashwagandha etc. ( This is also an opportunity to reduce cost of medicare using traditional medicine such as Ayurveda but we shall reserve that discussion for another blog).


Conclusion:


This experiment has been conducted in Maharashtra and many other states by BAIF Foundation for many decades now. It is called the Wadi program. Deforested areas have been afforested with diverse trees such as mango, cashew nut among others. These produce are collected and processed by co-operatives owned by the growers and sold as value- added produce.  These have seen more as poverty alleviation schemes to bring tribals out of property and rehabilitate them.  At some level the Amul experience is one such using cattle instead of trees.

These solutions are much more than and need to be seen in a newer light of a new Engine of national economic growth with minimal sops and minimal outlays, which produces many entrepreneurs and livelihoods and work around the constraints posed by industrial economic growth. This should be a part of a new national policy for economic growth than a mere poverty alleviation exercise.

Nature is very kind. It has great power inherent in it if we only bothered to listen. This solution proposed uses the power of Biological networks, Economic networks and Social networks.  If properly thought through and implemented, it can create sustainable harmonious development of society using very low investment.

Monday, August 26, 2013

Associated XXX Companies

Many of the current problems have solutions from the past, In India in the past when there were too many fragmented unviable capacities in cement,  eight of these companies came together and created the Associated Cement Companies. This made the entire operation viable and the resultant company grew from strength to strength.

We have two industries which have many players with high debt, high operating costs and massive negative cash flows and no plan to become cash positive. They are insurance and telecom. This is not a good situation for lenders, employees, customers or shareholders or government.

Can the leaders of these companies sit together and create an Associated Insurance Company or an Associated Telecom company ?

Bandwidth we can create, Oil we cant

India is finding it difficult to create oil supplies. Oil is used mainly for transport, energy and as a building block for chemical industry. In this post, we shall look at the what we can do to reduce the oil use for transport.

India finds it difficult to create oil reserves  but we can alternative for oil namely bandwidth.  The movement of people could be reduced by the efficient use of bandwidth.

We have another problem on our hands, namely Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd which has become a chronic loss making operation. Rail capacity is very inadequate and air travel is expensive.

CISCO has a product called Telepresence which essentially slices a meeting room into two parts which could be halfway around the globe form each other. They are then connected by a 15mpbs lline. While Telepresence is expensive, it can be made cheaper by reducing the user experience. Telepresence software has become open-source in 2010.

Combining these problems and ideas  together, we could use BSNL to  strategically to reduce our oil dependence. Here are some ideas for the same.

BSNL has large buildings housing exchanges in good areas. We should give it additional Floor space index (FSI) to build more virtual meeting rooms and try and reduce both domestic air travel and international air travel. We also have additional real estate built and having no demand. Many of these funded by banks and these loans are going bad.

We should create lakhs of Video-meeting rooms on BSNL premises and at surplus real estate sites and sell at a very low price and eliminate travel which can reduced (such as business travel). This way we could save many problems in one stroke.




Defence economy : A new engine

Recently I met a veteran banker who said that sometime after the emergency the leading party of the country decided it was too painful to raise poll funding in small amounts from Indian businessmen and decided to raise it from few Arms contracts from foreign parties. He said that from that day domestic businessmen lost clout with the said political party which it had since pre-independence. Left unsaid was the fact that there was then no incentive to develop a domestic arms industry to protect our nation.
Recent press reports confirmed that the Bofors Gun order of the 1980s included a technology transfer agreement in which drawings were transferred to India. However no action was taken to learn how to produce this for over two decades. Recently when the government tried to place fresh orders for such guns, CAG raised this issue. Once adequate pressure was out in the system, the drawings came up from two decades of cold storage.


It is a sad story and a criminal negligence of the nation's interests but we as a nation dont have the time for crying now.  This situation provides an opportunity to create a new industry, competences, save forex and also create export opportunities.


It is time to rectify this mistake. 

Thursday, July 25, 2013

Priming the right Pump

When economies start slowing down and economic sentiment becomes bleak, Governments have the habit of creating spending so that there is multiplier effect and there a revival in the economy.  This has been referred to as a Economic stimulus. This was a habit developed after the lessons of the Great Depression in the 1930s. This idea is debated a lot but the simple truth seems that stimulus is a good idea or a bad idea depending on the way it is implemented.

If it implemented in a way that something of use to society is produced (as measured by demand which will pay the full price for it) and/or it increases the productive power of society leading to higher taxes, then it serves it purpose. If this is badly done, it leads to only transfer payments which are spent away by the recipient on things without multiplier effects and the Government is left with  huge debts with no additional taxes to service this debt. The last 5 years have seen the Government wasting away Rs 19 lakh crores with little to show for. (see this link) These expenditures have not had any effect on reviving the economy and has not increased the productive capacity of the country.

As we stand today, the Indian economy is extremely sluggish. We need to find ways to revive it with a well placed stimulus. The easiest way to decide which place to focus on is to find things for which there is very high latent demand.

As is wont with this blog, let us also look at the areas of our economy terribly mismanaged over the past 30-40 years for the great headroom for improvement and growth may lie there.

There are many excellent candidates namely
  1. Railways; It is perhaps the only good or services for which the demand can double if the supply doubles ! The infrastructure is very poor and there is an opportunity to build services around the footfalls created by the Railway stations: shopping, banking, postal services, hotel accommodation and  convenience stores.
  2. Urban transport - buses and metros: It is a problem plaguing society as many levels.  Lack of urban transport leads to purchase of private transport either in the form of 2 wheelers or cars. This will reduce diesel and petrol consumption and thereby reduce pressure on our currency also, p
  3. Low cost housing replacing urban slums. This is an idea which has great possibility but under the current political situation it is a non-starter, as the continued existence of slums is the lifeline on many political parties.
The last idea is a contentious idea and a difficult one to implement as it affects the economic of elections; so let us keep it aside for a later date.

Railways is perhaps the best idea for a stimulus. There is a ready market demand for its services.  The government needs to come up a plan to de-bottleneck the railways and invest in speeding up the rail network and increasing the capacity. There is a massive footfall at every railway station. Most malls would give an arm and a leg to have this kind of footfalls. Monetizing of this footfall could create massive source of funds for the expansion. Expansing the railways capacity will increase employment directly and indirectly and boost tourism all over India.  India has beaches, hills, forests and jungles, snow capped mountains and great places of spiritual tradition. Tourism can unlock the latent energies of many regions whose eco-balance may be destroyed by developing industry. Already we have blundered by increasing industry in hilly areas. This could help in reversing that policy and substituting tourism with industry in these areas.

Urban transport: Lack of reliable, high quality urban transport catering to all sections of society has created a situation where in many cities such as Pune and Bangalore almost everyone  owns his own vehicle. Owning your own vehicle is the modern equivalent of owning a horse. The costs of ownership (interest and depreciation),  fuel, insurance, repairs and maintenance are huge.  Owning even the smallest car sets one back by at least Rs 1,00,000 a year. The resultant load on the traffic system  has slowed down the traffic, increasing commute time and wasting fuel also. We could reverse this by investing in public transport. The transport infrastructure has to be of a world quality-no shortcuts or compromises. This will reduce our fuel consumption and jump start the Commercial vehicle industry, lower cost of living in cities.

Can we find the will to prime the right pumps ?

Monday, July 1, 2013

Capturing the "Entrance Exam Economy" and Firangi education economy

There is too much negativity in speech, though and action in our country today. We need to find ways to convert our negativity into a form of fuel for positive change. So the more negativity in society,  the more opportunity for change.

In this blog, we explore ways to improve the change some aspects of the education system using the negativity in it.

The Entrance Exam Economy (EEE) and the Firangi education economy (FEE) have reached  very large proportions.

A recent article in a business magazine puts the total number of aspirants preparing for the IIT  entrance exams at Kota at 1,00,000. (See this link). The total spending  by these students is estimated at Rs 1,700 crores per year. It is safe to assume that nationally the number of aspirants preparing for this exam  and the spend are multiples of this amounts. Surely, on a national basis, at least another Rs 8000 to 10,000 crores must be being spent on entrance exams to Engineering colleges. The EEE industry has clearly established the price that people are willing to pay for good education. The spending by students is estimated to be in the region of Rs 2-3 lakhs over two years of preparation at Kota.

The total number of seats at the IITs is 9,885 of which only 4,844 is in the open category.(see this link).  At a fees of Rs 90,000 per year for the open category and Rs  20,000 per reserved category students, the total annual revenue of all the IITs per year from undergraduate programs would be only about Rs 220 crores.

The number of   engineering seats available at  quality Institutions available for those who can afford to pay more but could get through the merit list at NITs or IITs  is very small  at about 50,0000 compared to the total number of engineering seats available estimated at 12,50,000 seats per annum  (see this link). The prospects for students from the higher quality institutes is perceived to  markedly different. Hence students and parents are willing to spend a lot of money getting into these courses. This is a symptomatic of every other sector of education where economic prospects are seen to be good namely management education and medical education. ,

The Firangi education economy ie the spending by students on going abroad for education. It is currently estimated at around USD 7.5 billion a year ie about Rs 45,000 crores (@60Rs/$)  (see this link).  While some portion of this will always remain, as some may prefer to go abroad independent of the costs, a large portion of this is due to difficulty in getting admission into good colleges in India. Also the loss of students to overseas institutions is not just a financial loss - it is also a loss of high quality human capital.  In many cases those who go abroad to study do tend to settle down there. While we may not have felt this loss in the 1960s and 1970s as we did not have a choice. Today we have a choice and hence cannot afford to loss our smart youth to other societies.

While the EEE and the FEE, in its current scale and scope, is definitely an undesirable activity for our country for reasons detailed in this blog  its presence provides a very good opportunity for the Government India to convert into a fuel for a positive change and solve  the following problems -

  1. lack of supply of much larger pool of  higher quality engineers and management graduates in India  
  2. high level of stress and angst that some of the brightest minds are put through by Entrance exams process
  3. subsidy model of higher education where high quality higher education institutes are dependent on government funding and hence cannot expand to meet demand are expansion means more subsidy (which a Central Government with Rs 5,00,000 crore+ fiscal deficit is very reluctant to do)
In this blog post, we will explore possibility of creating a model where Institutes which cost a lot of money to put up will be self financing thereby creating a virtuous expansion mechanism where capacity will expand to meet demand for higher quality education.

As it stands the EEE and the FEE dwarf the domestic education economy in the quality education segment.  Apart from being a burden on national resources, the EEE  is undesirable as it is teaching students skills which have low value in the real world as compared to the expenses incurred in imparting these skills.  It also destroys their soul.  While the EEE is undesirable, its presence also gives one very good opportunity - that of capturing  and diverting this wasteful spending by building higher quality institutions such as  IITs and NITs and capturing this spend as fees and reducing  the  size of EEE to a more reasonable level.

We have strangled capacity addition of the colleges with the right quality due to regulations- fee limits, curbs on admissions and reservations amongst others. As a result, too much money and effort is spent on trying to enter the existing quality colleges.

What is to be done ?

Let us discuss a solution for Engineering. Other solutions will also be similar. Since existing Institutes are political hot potatoes- it would be better to create fresh solutions.

We need to create  new New Institutes  (NI) with about 50,000 seats capacity which will admit students in this ratios:

33 % for high paying seats  who will pay two times the actual costs of an IIT education.( say Rs 5 lakhs p.a)
33%  for open quota merit students who will pay fees equivalent to the real cost of IIT education
33%  for  Quotas -OBC and SC/ST  who will the real cost of the education.

These new colleges would use the same entrance exams such as IIT-JEE and give seats based  only on rank, even to those who can afford the higher fees.

The only major constraints for this initiative will be in finding good teachers for these institutes and perhaps in finding adequate land. The Government will need to find ways to attract the best talent especially from the Indian diaspora and even among Professors of other nationalities.   We also need to find creative ways in using technology, in ways like www.coursera.org or Khan Academy (See this link),  to achieve a much larger Student Faculty ratio and tide over Faculty shortages.  This will also help the institute lower the cost of education and also tide over difficulty of getting high number of faculty in a short time.

Education institutions are  relatively very pollution free activity and so these new institutions can be put in eco-sensitive zones (instead of putting polluting industries there by giving tax exemptions as is the current policy). Industrial development has followed the setting up of good education institutions, if the right environment is created. The progress of Stanford and the parallel development of Silicon Valley is an outstanding example of this. In our country, the development of engineering industry of Belgaum is an excellent example of the role a good college in the neighborhood namely NIT - Surakal in creating entrepreneurship.

We need to create high quality townships which will  have high quality amenities so that it becomes attractive for Professors from overseas locations. The NIs should also have spaces for  development of industries along side it.

We could create a  National Education fund and provide it tax free funding similar to NHAI and REC and  allow it to raise funds for creation of new institutions. This would allow access to funds at 6% per annum and this may even allow for creation of institutions at almost zero government funding.

What will this accomplish ?

  • Since the Colleges will be self funding all they would require only temporary capital and no permanent subsidy or grant for yearly operation. This would make it easy to create and expand the colleges without annual financial support from the government.
  • Students who are willing to pay more need not go abroad to study. This will save forex and make available a much larger talent pool in India making India an attractive destination for Foreign Direct investment.
  • Students from families who can spend more may prefer to go to NI rather than spending a lot of money and slogging mindlessly for Entrance Exams with low chance of success. Once admissions become easier, students will not want to go through EEE but can use their school years to actually gather knowledge. The  spending on EEE and FEE can be converted into spending at NIs. 
  • More IIT and NIT seats, which are subsidized and hence more affordable, may go more towards more economically weaker section students
  • Creamy layer among reserved sections may also choose to go to NI  freeing up seats in IITs, NITs etc.
  • Creation of new high technology industries around these institutes over a period time- leading to better development and revenues for the Government.


Conclusion

Our country is poor and rich at the same time. There are people who are willing to pay for quality. By not recognizing this diversity as a strength, we have kept fees at higher education institutes low even for those who could easily afford more. This low fee structure has made these institutes dependent on the Central Government for funds and incapable of expanding to meet demand.

We have thus created a  man made shortage in higher quality education and have created a EEE and FEE industry. The revenue models of the IITs, NITs, IIMs are constrained by one-size fits all approach. It  is not advisable to change the models of these institutes at this point of time, as it will become a political hot potato.

To solve these problems, we need to create New Institutes which would have high quality and cater to the classes who can pay full cost and more for high quality education.







Thursday, June 27, 2013

Lok Sabha Elections 2014: Increase in voter turnout and other factors

          Increase in voter turn out:
Let us first look at the poll numbers of previous Lok Sabha Elections namely 2009 and 2004. The data is as below.

2009 electors 71.7 crore. Voted 41.7 cr  Congress : 11.90 cr, BJP : 7.80 cr. 
2004 electors 67.1 crore  Voted 38.9 cr  Congress : 10.34 cr, BJP : 8.63 cr

The 2014 Scenario 

Given past trends it is safe to assume that electors increase at 1% p .a  to say 75 crores. Given increasing voter turnout in all elections in the past two years and the nature of the high profile election battle ahead, a voter turnout of 70% seems the most likely outcome. If the economic situation deteriorates further and there are social tensions then the voter turnout could be even higher  - perhaps even 75% ! Let us consider both cases.
Case 1 : Voter turnout  at say 70%  means 52.5 crore will cast their vote.  Additional voters over 209 will be about 11 crore voters

Case 2 Voter turnout at  75%  means that 56.25 crores  will caste their vote. Additional voters over 209 will be about 14.75 crore voters
Whom  are these additional voters of 11-14,75 crore  going to vote  for  ?

         Important factors  likely to play a big role  in Elections 2014: 
1. Muslim bloc vote may matter less and less : Muslim vote is a maxed out credit card ie it cannot be increased any further. Its size and importance can only shrink as a % of the votebase.  A large portion of Muslims usually vote. Muslims until now have tended to vote  as a bloc but this is also changing. There are Muslim parties coming up who want to represent themselves. There is a greater fight for the Muslim vote with parties who claim to be more Secular than each other. They may not ally with Congress due to mistreatment of allies ex: Samajwadi Dal, Trinamool Congress, DMK etc.  Also as witnessed in the 2013 Gujarat state elections some muslims are now voting for governance - some surveys put 30%+ of the Muslim vote for BJP in this election. This may negate the effect of the Muslim bloc vote too !

2. Increasing value of Non-muslim vote: Muslim vote is 20% of electorate. In 2009 election 60% voted. So if large portion of muslims voted say 90%, then 30% of vote was muslim.  This also aithmetically means that only 42 of 80 non-muslims voted giving a voter turnout of only 52.5% for non-muslims. There has been substantial increase in voting in all elections in last 2-3 years namely West Bengal,  Tamilnadu, Gujarat, etc. This is likely in Lok Sabha elections of 2014 also. So the increase is likely to be in non-muslim vote, non-caste based voters and pro-governance voters (given the nature of our politics the others are already voting anyway) and  hitherto apathetic voter now wanting to participate in the electoral process.
3. Relations of Congress with allies is at an all time low: For the Congress, going with allies has its own problems- lack of credibility and image issues, going alone has its own problems - numbers wont add up at all  and secular vote will get divided. The 2009  election  saw the best electoral  leverage for alliances for Congress. In 2014 allying with allies like NCP or DMK can be be very costly for Congress.   
What will all this mean for the Lok Sabha Elections 2014 ? Will the old formulas of working out vote bank politics work as effectively as it has done in the past ?

Sunday, June 23, 2013

Corruption : Tat vam asi

Over the past few years, there has been an uproar over rising corruption levels in India. It is undoubtedly an evil that is crippling our society. However in its current state, there is also a divine blessing hidden in it.

If any of our leaders could see it and use it wisely,  a lot can be done using the same "evil" and it will turn into a very constructive force for change. Let me elaborate.

As a result of corruption at various levels, citizens pay a high price either through bribes or wasted time and resources for accomplishing any work related to or in concert with a government department or agency. These costs are now routinely factored into daily life- for example the costing of a vada pao on a roadside platform now includes the cost of hafta for the beat cop.

As corruption has increased, these costs have also increased so much so that everyone knows they are paying a hefty price for everything and is accustomed to doing so.  Many times this fee is 10 times or an even higher  multiple of the official fee. Since the citizens are used to paying high prices, the government needs to  officially introduce high prices services for quick service at the same price as it is done unofficially by creating a tatkaal option for as many government services as possible. Simultaneously the government should offer same services at a lower price albeit at a slower speed also so that poorer citizens also are served properly and benefit from the system. The poorer citizens still benefit as the abuses from "discretionary powers" and inefficiency from poor workflow management are eliminated thereby vastly improving service delivery.

Before doing this, the government should implement technology platforms for these services so that all these services will be speeded up, the abuse of powers curbed by creating a clear  workflow  that can be tracked online in real-time  and monitored. The productivity of the government employees will also go up and more private organizations could be inducted into service delivery thus saving the government from taking on permanently tenured employees.  In this way, the government would only need to hire higher senior level officers and could offer much better compensation to attract a better quality staff into government at senior levels  Over time, this will also eliminate one of the problems of the government namely too many overpaid low level employees who never want to leave their jobs and underpaid senior level employees with skills who tend to leave their jobs for greener pastures.

The higher revenues gathered from the official tatkaal services will pay back all investments made into the technology platform very quickly and will also help government offer much better services to poorer citizens at a lower cost.

The Passport Seva Kendra which recently celebrated the issuance of the 1 crore passport is an example. One key success factor is that these technology enabled service delivery reduces the "discretionary powers" of most of the Government officers and thereby speeds up delivery.  It also substantially reduces cost of delivery as there are very few tenured government officers, very few peons/clarks hired for this process. Due to outsourcing of the project, bulk of the services purchased for delivery of the services are actually sourced by TCS the vendor for passport seva kendra thereby eliminating corruption in managing the facility, recruitment, overheads etc.

Once the technology investments are made, there should be a gradual reduction of the price of these services so that they are in line with the real costs. This way the evil of corruption can be milked for all it worth to build a good system.

The following services could be easily added to tatkaal.
1. Building plan permissions
2. Property registrations


One of the great strengths of our society has been the ability to recognize the divinity in everything around us. The mahavakya Tat vam asi illustrates this aspect of our society.

Can we recognize the "Tat vam asi"  prevalent in corruption in every aspect of our society and build government services delivery using that ?

If w  could do it, we would  turn our worst curse into our greatest blessing.






Wednesday, June 19, 2013

What do you expect from the next Prime Minister of India ? Part 1

A recent post on Facebook asked this question.

I wondered what can a practical person do which will lead to results within 3-5 years. Here is a list of all the low handing fruit issues which  could be implemented easily. Many have already been implemented at state level by some governments and hence there is no excuse to not bring about these changes.

1. 24X 7 power in at least 70% of the nation

The issues with electricity shortage are currently four-fold namely
a. shortage of coal and gas  leading to shortfall in generation especially considering that considerable investment has already gone into power generation and these assets are lying idle.
b. losses due to poor distribution a distribution networks are geared to deliver power for one light bulb but is actually used to run televisions, washing machines and all other housing.
c. due to electricity theft and
d. wastage/mis-use of power delivered due to agricultural connections.

All of them have solutions which have been tested and can be easily executed. This would empower a large part of India to find solutions to their economic problems and would be the better economic stimulus for the country than sops such as subsidized food, rural employment guarantee.

This would also immediately stop migration to bigger cities.

2. Fix the leakage in Public sector undertakings (PSUs): This requires no great effort. All it takes is to appoint competent and honest managers. If they are in short supply, give more than one duty to the honest ones and keep the dishonest ones without any work.  It is cheaper to pay dishonest ones their salary than have then damage the finances of the country.

The main targets should be to turn around Air India, BSNL and Postal Department. These can save at least Rs 25,000-30,000 crores per annum of assistance being made to these companies currently.

3.  Substantial increase railways capacity substantially and modernization of Railways

Today if there is one good/service which sells at a black market premium - it is railway tickets. Clearly there is demand for much more passenger services.  This should be taken up immediately. Investment in railways will boost the economy as there will be greater movement of people and it will lead to economic growth.

Simultaneously the railways should be modernized to improve speeds and reduce accident risks. The railways has enormous land banks. Railways have very high footfalls next only to temples. This should  be used constructively to make multi-use real estate  which will boost cash flow for the railways and also make railways stations hubs of activity for people.

4. Remove discretion given to Revenue Department Officers

Recently our retired Supreme Court Chief Justice Kapadia observed that in many cases the law is vague and includes law equivalent of saying that one "should drive with care". He said there is no clear definition of what amount to driving with care. He said this allows great latitude to revenue officers to interpret the way they want. This allows for mi-use of laws for personal benefit.

Clear laws are required which unequivocally state the law and its clear interpretation in a definitive manner. This will let officers implement law rather than spend time interpreting it. This will also prevent unscrupulous assesses from bending the law to their advantage by corrupting Revenue Department officers.

5. Transport and energy use reform

We do not have the oil that we are consuming.  The powers that have the oil are states hostile to a non-violent Hindu  majority state that we are. If we want to continue to consume oil in the current fashion we should have a massive change in our geo-political strategy and become like the USA. This is very unlikely. I doubt if our society will give license to our leaders to invade other countries, assassinate their leaders etc  merely to secure more and more oil for our consumption

Hence the only option left is to substantially reduce the Energy consumption  to GDP ratio. We need to create disincentives for  private vehicle ownership and increase use of public transport.

 6. Reduction of fiscal deficit

a. We are having many problems like over-use of fertilizers and large subsidies for fertilizers. No one is gaining from these problems. These need holistic solutions such as using bio-waste of cities converted to bio-manure. This will solve the cities problems of waste disposal as well as the farmers problems of fertilizers.

b. Use of Private-Public partnerships for providing Government services

We need  to cap the employment in the government.  We need to use technology for our country's administration - it is not enough if do great work for the whole world while but dont solve our own problems. We need to create large scale roll out of private-public partnerships. We already have many examples: Example: Infosys in income tax returns processing, TCS in passport seva kendras. We need to find more areas where delivery of government services is sub-standard and bring under this kind of arrangements.  We need to try experiments and also take already successful innovation across the country in areas such as government schools, bus transportation among others.


All of these are actually easy to do but if they are implemented our country will look very different. Is this asking for too much ?



Tuesday, May 7, 2013

The convergence of the ridiculous and the sublime

Sometimes we witness something which at first glance appears quite ridiculous. The nationalization of Indian banks by Mrs Indira Gandhi was one such act. There was no real need to do it except some political  reasons for the same (more on this here and here too). No doubt, this was unnecessary and could have been easily accomplished by regulating the banks well. But this perhaps suited the the very short term political objectives of a cornered politician namely Mrs Gandhi.

However history has given this a new twist.  For reasons beyond the ken of the originators of the idea of bank nationalization, it has turned out to be a sublime idea. Through the nationalized banks, the Indian government controlled flow of credit, consumed much of the credit itself  and choked the Indian economy.  So much so that in the early 1990s, the Credit Reserve Ratio (CRR) and the SLR (Statutory liquidity ratio) was a combined 53% (up from 27% at the time of independence and 32% at the time of bank nationalization.(Chronology of CRR / SLR changes Source: RBI website)

This was patently ridiculous at the normal level of analysis but it accomplished many things which Mrs Indira Gandhi never could have visualized. India entered the credit based growth game too late and hence the credit fueled bubble that  has propelling the world economy since the collapse of Breton Woods did not affect the level of credit and loans in India. The low home loans to Nominal GDP ratios is instructive in this regard. Even today it is only  8 % of India. This is very low in comparison to Western countries and developed Asian Countries like Singapore (54%), Korea (36%) or other European countries such as Germany (47%) or UK (85%) or the US at 77%.

This has definitely saved us from the  mad consumption fulled economic rise and the implosion that is happening/will happen in these countries  following the collapse of credit availability  If you wake up too late and run a race where people are running very fast for a long time ( albeit in the wrong direction), you will be the last in the race. The upshot of this  means when the reality of credit filled booms and busts sinks in we would have run the least distance in the wrong direction and be in the best position as we are in now in 2013!

This is the sublime effect of bank nationalization.

We maybe witnessing another ridiculous/sublime convergence today. The Food Security bill which is being pushed through now could  have such effects. It is being pushed through at this time because of political compulsions rather than national compulsions. There are a hundred other ways to ensure that all people have food but none of those will make the Opposition look in bad light and the ruling Government look in good light. Thus the nation will have its Food Security bill.

This decision is ridiculous because it assures food to farmers, whose precise job it is to provide food to others in society. Arguably, this violates the basic social compacts in society.  This will drive out many marginal farmers from farming and could reduce incentives of many farmers to produce food, as food is to be given to them at such low rates. We could see substantially higher food prices as a result. Once food prices go up usually there is incentive for marginal farmers to produce food but under this system, if food is made available to them at ridiculous prices along side assured income from employment guarantee schemes - they may just decide it is not worth sweating it out in the sun.  Already most of the farming families have partly diversified out of farming. This will expedite it a full diversification out of farming for those who own small and  marginal farms. Thus increasing food prices may not lead to increasing food production but will lead to increasing consumption as the food is sold at heavily subsidized prices.

Thus it is likely to be a ridiculous outcome but there are likely to be many unintended outcomes. Increasing food prices will shift a lot of the economic power from the cities to the villages. This could reduce migration, improve opportunities at the village, modernize the village as the increasing affordability will quickly lead to urban facilities being available at rural areas. This is already happening in many states but it will happen faster and in all states including states like Bihar where this transformation is in its infancy. There is no magic bullet like prosperity to solve many problems. No doubt it will cause new problems but these problems of plenty are likely to be  a welcome situation than a large part of the country languishing helplessly with very little choice. If this prosperity arrives, the farmer will be an empowered decision maker and his political choices may be pro-development rather than poor thereby destroying the pro-poor political model of the political agents who bring about this prosperity.

It could reverse the catastrophic loss of income earning power of land brought about by Mr. Jawaharlal Nehru's Green revolution wherein the production went up with increasing cost of production thereby reducing the profits/surpluses of farmers drastically.  The Green revolution ensured the country gained everything and the farmer nothing.

It could make India a net buyer of food when the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) of Europe and the US Food policies may be on their last legs. It could alter the relative price of food with respect to services, energy and manufactured goods and  practically everything else. This could make India's economic and social position very strong as a very large number of people are dependent on farming or are living in areas where farming is the main economic activity.  This could also cause a shake out in the cities as it may be very costly to live in the cities. Land prices may become more affordable in the cities.

Who knows it may be the magic bullet on our march to superpower-hood. This could be the sublime aspect of the Food security bill.

Should we welcome it or not ?







Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Lot of bad news is good news - Narada speak

We are always open to listening to good news and avoid bad news. This is perhaps because we like to have pleasant immediate consequences and are not really bothered about consequences of consequences (c-of-c) or the sconsequences of consequences of consequences (c-of-c-of-c)

Sometimes bad news  especially when it is big,  has some wonderful c-of-c or c-of-c-of-c especially when they push any phenomenon to a tipping point which creates real change in society.

For example, the news about the editing of documents by the Law minister is definitely bad news for the country but it has ended up exposing the working of the CBI comprehensively and, perhaps, may pave the way for CBI to become a truly independent body.

Today, I heard another piece of  very bad news.  There are now month/s long coaching classes that are being held to help students "crack" the aptitude tests of companies like Infosys, Persistent etc. At one level, this is bad news but at another level this is good news as the companies are going to be flooded with successful candidates who know how to "crack the exam" but do not have the real skills for which this test was a proxy measure. This is going to create a tipping point for the companies, who are going to be sorely disappointed by their  picks and be forced to come up with a better way to measure students' abilities.

I once read a story in Narada Purana in which a sage asks Sage Narada why he goes on instigating people with an evil bent of mind. Narada's answer was simple "It is only when the cup of evil if filled to the brim that the wicked attract punishment."

I have learnt from personal experience that to look at the good news embedded in bad news requires a training of the mind - to suspend the usual way of looking at immediate consequences and look to downstream consequences. In this state, a lot of bad news begins to look really good and not enough  of it doesn't look good because it causes no change in the system. Paradoxical !

I confess, I too tend to keep falling back into the immediate evaluation state but it takes continuous effort to change the way we look at things.

In these times where there is no shortage of "bad news", I welcome you to try and look at reality in this way to see where  there may be positive change and where the new opportunities  may lie.

Why this blog ? About me.

Why this blog ?

The  modern Western way of making a society fulfill its goals and becoming happy was to increase the amount of economic activity as measured by a figure called the Gross Domestic Product. This is not working - these societies are neither happy nor are they able to increase their GDP ( without resorting to accounting sleight of hand).

Their modes of living also leave much to be desired. Children and elders have a very difficult time. The institution of family is weakened substantially by the social trends since World War 2. The natural resources for  India and China to emulate the West and  be "happy"  are simply not existent on this planet.

We should undoubtedly take what is useful from them but  we cannot follow their model blindly. The world does not have enough resources for countries with out population to aspire for such goals. The environmental and societal damage, we have caused  trying to emulate the West is already becoming very difficult to bear. While, as a society, we have endured much difficulties in the past millenium, I sincerely doubt if our current one has the patience and endurance to go another 50 years in this direction and put up with the difficulties it will entail. It requires a fortitude and a belief in karma and rebirth which is rapidly becoming alien to a society which wants to live in the now.

We need our own model of living - which will blend the best of the East with the best of the West. At the same time there is no point in getting bogged down in negativity.

Undoubtedly, there is too much negativity in speech, though and action in our country today. We need to find ways to convert our negativity into a form of fuel for positive change. So the more negativity in society,  the more fuel we can find for change.

Many times I  have been discussing many ideas  connected with this topic with people.  One of them, Tarun Malaviya , has been telling me for many years to write a blog to release these ideas into the blogosphere so that  these ideas may spread and if found useful ones by others may find its rightful owners and come to life. Today I met another person Amit Paranjpe who managed to convinced to blog within 5 minutes.

So with many thanks to Tarun and Amit, I begin my blog.

The topics I like to blog are related to Virtue/Truth/Honour, Success, Pleasure and Liberation (Dharma, Artha, Kama and Moksha respectively) - the four aims of life in the Hindu traditional thought. I guess pretty much most topics are covered.

The geographic layout of cities have changed. Your neighbours may have  very little  common with you except a wall !  I am hoping that this blog will help me to reach out to more people and develop these ideas.


About me

I am an alumnus of IIT Madras and IIM Ahmedabad. I have been a professional working in field of finance and investment for two decades.  I was born and brought up in Chennai and now reside in Pune.

I have various interests in topics such as Indian music, Ayurveda,  Astrology, Design, Business, Investing etc.