The beta tested society

India is a very old civilization. If astronomical observations in some of the vedas are to be taken, then we  have been a civilization for  a minimum 6000 years old. We have diverse climate, soils, people and problems which required different approaches to managing our society and civilizations. In complexity, India is more than a continent. Like an old monkey, we have tried every trick in the form of social organization. Our proverbs, aphorism, myths, stories, epics and even humour are testimony to it.

In the field of management, we try to learn from past practices and mistakes so that we do not repeat  the same. So people who want to become experts in management go to a Management School instead of trying everything afresh but in running societies and civilizations the same principle is not applied. Other civilizations instead of learning from us want to convert us into their untested ways. This is like running an Apple Macbook Pro not on Apple software but on a  new and exciting software written by some new funded start up in Bangalore that started yesterday.  The current tragedy is that you have tested software to run a civilization and from a vendor who is open source and willing to freely give tech support - and yet no one wants to learn and on the contrary they want to impose on us  their  untested software which is showing signs of great instability and may crash  on that vendor !

In understanding concepts like marriage, family, rights, duties, clan, caste, war etc our understanding is very elevated.  Not because  we  are smarter but we have done more mistakes than others too and moved on. Is it not true that one of our own tried out the ISIS type violence in Kalinga and lived to see the utter futility of violence without any meaningful results and gave it up completely ?

In the Hindu marriage, for example there is little place for romance in decision making. Romance may happen if you are lucky. Marriage is a institution to carry the family line forward. It is more about demographics and carrying forward genes, professions, knowledge etc than looking into someone's eye and feeling one with them which doesn't last too long. How did this knowledge come from - fiat, practices, observations ?  Could the West have learnt from us in this aspect and saved themselves so much anguish ?

Many of things we consider "not politically correct" teachings of people like Chanakya are now corroborated by social research in America. The website the Fatherless generation pretty much says the same thing that Chanakya said i.e, that houses in which  there are no men and women are leaders are likely to have severe problems and are to be avoided.

Why won't it ? Chanakya must have merely observed cause and effect of the same thing when it happened here hundreds of years ago. Is it not highly likely that at some point in time, India had run through same problems faced today by US and Chanakya had merely been a social scientist tabulating the results in pithy aphorisms ! 

Is it a coincidence that our study of health is called Ayurveda and not Aushadveda ? As citizens of this planet,  do we really need to again struggle with Aushadveda  like the US where medicine accounts for 1/5th of their GDP with no end in sight and then think of finding solutions which eliminate root causes - when this knowledge was present somewhere else a long time back ?

The objective of writing this post is to not to make the case that we are smarter than other civilisations. It is to make the case that we have tried out more things, run more betas, failed, succeeded and altered things more than others can even begin to imagine due to our long stint as a civilization.

FDA imposes strict methods on testing new molecules and drugs but rules to run a civilization are run as experiments in which neither past knowledge, experiences or precedents are taken into account ! 

In the same manner we send kids to schools and colleges  not because all that they say is right but because they have a lot of knowledge and/or wisdom to offer, other civilizations would gain a lot and reduce their sufferings if they were to observe and learn from our long  experience  instead of dismissing us as a primitive, backward or unscientific society.

Even the response to westernization is so different in India and Islamic societies. We are trying to run with Westernization and see how we can fit some of it into our civilization.  Our experience in absorbing  democracy, technology, food and working with it stands testimony. We have the strength to run the program for sometime and finally even reject large parts of it as we have done in the past with programs that did not work ! 

This is the real reason India deserves to be the Jagat Guru. We  are like the Silicon Valley of civilization. We have the openness to try a lot on on ourselves, learn and carry a lot of knowledge which is tested by time, place and numbers forward.

As individuals, the sooner we try to understand the extent of knowledge available in our country and try to make sense of it the the better for us - else even at a personal level we risk exhausting ourself making old mistakes again  and turning ourself  into more modern "case studies " for future generations !

Reform by a thousand cuts

Recently a friend called me up to ask if I though there was any real reform happening in India since the ascendancy of Shri Narendra Modi to the Chair of the Prime Minister. This friend, who is in the financial markets, said there is currently a view among many that the PM is only doing things which are  not good for the country such as giving bank accounts to poor people, freebies in the form of free insurance, loans and is not really doing anything substantial.

I thought about this and tried to make a list of things that have been done since he has come to the PM's post. Here is a list of which gives a flavour of the kind of things going on

1. Proposal to merge all hydroproject companies into one big company. This is the kind of decision usually a private corporate group takes. It is based on improving  economics, efficiency and reducing costs - all alien concepts to traditional management of PSUs.

2. Instructions to bureaucrats to reduce all forms to 1 page.

3. Proposal to accept citizens self attestation instead of notarized documents

4. Firing of all political appointees from board of PSUs of national strategic importance

5. Closing tax loophole in debt funds by which the ultra rich were not paying tax on their Fixed deposits and making the country lose thousands of crores.

6. Cleaning all government offices and making them organized . Incidentally this is one of the principles of Kaizen. When the Gemba (work place ) is clean, many problems become self evident.

7. Announcing policy to build toilets in all schools and giving clueless corporates a hint and a direction for their CSR programme.

8. Building relations with enemies of our enemies. Sending a clear message to China to decide if wants dhandha with India or territorial ambitions .

9. Fast tracking cases against MLAs and MPs. This changes the incentive to stand for elections completely. If you are a criminal, it would be best if you did not stand for elections in such a regime.

10. Proposal to release under trials who have already served more than half the maximum sentence possible for the crime of which are accused. This has the ability to reduce cases, decongest jails and speed up the judicial process.

11. Nuanced removal of retrospective judgement provision with  losing its teeth. Now the Junior assessing officers have to send their order to a central committee - who will study, vet the order and then issue it. This keeps flexibility to nab crooked companies while removing the powers of junior officers to ruin our nation's reputation by their vile acts/ignorance.

12. 100% FDI in Railway projects.

This is just a top of the mind list. I am sure daily readers of newspapers can write many many more.

None of these by themselves will be great but each of them are a cut on the old establishment. They are a clean break from the old style of doing things. They will have an impact. None of them can be called big-bang but each of them is a small step towards building a new India. 

No one improvement seems to be big but the total will provide massive change. This is very similar to the Japanese movement of Kai-zen - perfection in small steps.  Also most of these ideas have come from those who are working in the area and they have buy-in from those who have to implement the ideas and are not something thrust on them from the "high command". Finally each item is small so there is not much resistance to it.

This way of doing things is to keep making small and steady improvements in each and every activity as you come across them, while also working on the possibilities of the bigger things. In such a scenario there  may be no real big Bang which news anchors can discuss at length at 9 pm. These small changes and improvements  may work quietly and silently and perhaps the big bang may be heard only  during the next election results !

Till then, all we may see is change of the status quo by a thousand cuts.

Saving the cement industry from itself

The cement industry is in a peculiar situation. They are having almost 350MT of capacity. They are using only 220MT. Seen in a historic context, this is an alarming situation. Such a low capacity utilization should have led to the industry been in doldrums but somehow that has not happened.

Despite the low capacity utilization, they are adding capacity constantly - a truly unfathomable move especially by many players across the industry further adding pressure among them to keep cement prices high. In fact this low capacity utilizations, coupled with price hikes and new capacity additions itself may be proof that the industry is now working in an above board manner.

This phenomenon is causing high inflation in cement prices and waste of national capital. If one takes 85% to be a fair capacity utilization then  the industry is carrying almost 100MT extra capacity. This means about Rs 70000 cr of bank loans are being wasted.

 It is time the the government has a dialogue with the industry to make them understand that they are supposed to earn fair rate of return on assets at capacity utilizations of 80%+. Also since we have also enough capacity the RBI and Government of India should ban fresh loans  to cement industry until the capacity utilization reaches 80%.

Introducing Indian Cinemas Leading Villain ..

I was watching an interview with Mr. Arshad Warsi on TV. He said that despite Indian cinema doing the hard work it is not getting the recognition it deserves.

Indian cinema has operations of a global scale. More movies are made even in regional languages than perhaps in Hollywood. Yet Indian cinema has not become a global powerhouse. Why ? The answer to this came recently when I watched a movie of Arshad Warsi.

The reviews of the movie and the feedback of the fans on Arshad Warsi's twitter handle made me think I am living in two different planets. The fans loved it, the theatre was in splits but the reviews said something else. The review measured how good an idli was a cup of filter coffee. The movie was reviewed as though it was from some other genre. If you review a comedy as a method film, what would one expect ?

Who is the villain of the piece here ? Payola - (see FCC website) i.e, paying journalists to get a good review of their product. Payola is not a violation anymore. It is the business model of the big stars and business houses.

Further more, there is a dharma in indulging in unfair practices too. The big houses can get a good review for themselves and let an honest review be done for other films. I found that is not possible, The big houses insist on good review for themselves and trashing other films.

So small well made movies have very low real chance of making it unless

The domestic market is rigged and hence not competitive. So innovation and creativity is being stifled. Few production houses, stars and TV and print  journalists are holding the future of lakhs of cinema industry workers to ransom.

So I say, Payola is the leading villain of the Indian Cinema industry.

Are there any solutions ? Yes. We have reached the climax scene and in this movie you  the movie-goer and movie loving Aam fan is the  hero.  If you indeed find that the hype of the leading houses and actors too much and the reviews of movies do not match with your assessments, please consciously stop using these sources of information.

Use other sources of information such as Twitter handle of the stars, hashtags of the movies, friends who have watched the movie and whose taste matches yours.

If we fix this problem, there is an opportunity to create multi-billion dollar export industry from this.

I request  the Competition Commission of India to treat this as a little birds whisper and take this matter up suo-moto.

Cleaning Pune's voter role

The problem with Pune's voter rolls (and I guess Maharashtra's too)  is that it is made in such a way that the work of checking it cannot be delegated. Every voter has to check his name before every election.

For example in a building or society of say 200 voters, the Chairman or some enthusiastic volunteer can't check the voter roll as the voters are not registered under one building. As per Election Commission guidelines they are supposed to give a section number  to each building  and a Part number to the part of the constituency to which it belongs and register the voters under that Section no. This is not done.  I have seen that they register a voter under any section or sometimes in some other parts even if you write down the section and part number of your neighbour when you register. In Aundh Pune there is a building which is a bungalow plot conveted to a flat. It has 11flats and it has 1500 voters,

Our government servants are intelligent people.  The way the list is organized is worse than a 6 year old organizing his toys. This level of mistakes suggest that his design. If the section and part no were given correctly any citizen volunteer can scan the voter list and see where additional voters are not registered, locate those voters and make efforts to register them and make a perfect voter roll.

If it is done in the current way it is very difficult to do it,

For example, If I know the EPIC number of some one living in my building I should be able to reach that building's pdf files and check the names very easily if the database was right,

So given these problems how do we go about cleaning the voter roll ?

We should force the people making the roll to create a section for every building/ society. Then we should collect the EPIC  number of all the voters in that society and the Chairman should write a letter stating that there are errors in the roll and asking the EC to add his building into a separate section and add these voters into this Section and delete them from elsewhere. Once this is done for big buildings in each area, we can go on to the next level of buildings. In this manner the voter roll can be cleaned up.

If this is done politics in Maharashtra will change very quickly and Maharashtra will be on its way to becoming just  that - a Great State !

VSNL land : UPA leaves cash on the table for incoming government

The inefficiency of the outgoing government has created some opportunities for incoming Central government. One of them is the  excess land  which was part of VSNL at the time of the divestment by the government, At the time of the de-merged the land was to be returned by Tatas to the Government and the shareholders of VSNL by de-merging it into a separate company.

It was not visualized who will pay the stamp duty at the time of the de-merger. This issue was  not resolved and this land bank was lying idle, If the government can  resolve this issue and expedite the sale of the land/holding company it will be a source of funds.

The government could get funds to the tune of Rs 3000-5000 cr ( see here and here).

Oh these kids nowadays ...

Today's children have scant respect for elders, traditions and practices. From a traditional perspective It is really bad but there is a great blessing hidden in it. They take nothing at face value. They want an explanation. If you can find the explanation and give it to them they will become the greatest defenders of the same tradition. So the question we should ask ourselves is are we going to keep cribbing about the next gen or take up this as an opportunity and find out the scientific roots/ rationale of our culture and traditions and lay a very deep foundation for the future ?