Saturday, February 9, 2013

87th Week@XIMB

87th Week@XIMB - 3rd February to 9th February, 2013

3rd February - Not in campus.

4th February - Not in campus.

5th February - Not in campus.

6th February - I returned to the campus and attended GID lecture. I became aware of the term Green GDP for first time. The green gross domestic product (green GDP) is an index of economic growth with the environmental consequences of that growth factored in. Due to lack of training in economics, I was also unaware of the term Shadow Pricing. While discussing more about economics, I came to know about Ithaca Hours, Joan Robinson, Gender-related Development Index (GDI) and the Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM) . There was a general consensus that our society with market economy has transformed into market society in the age of neo liberalization.

7th February - There was discussion on audit process of an organization in GD class. That led our informal discussion in the class to Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India.

8th February - “When in Rome, be a Roman” is an often quoted idiom, but I never believed in the the practicality of this phrase. Moreover, it's everybody desire to be like, looked at and responded for walking on an offbeat path. This routine statement became more important in the context of state versus individual. No one can deny moral courage, of a person who stands in the face of public and governmental pressure and to do what is right rather balancing the views. It is necessary to be different and unique in its own sense. That individual walking a different line can only became a though leader and can be taken as an asset for social structure even when society is not conducive to adapt the contradictory form of truth. It is important not only for all of us to understand importance of such person. It's what it stands for when standing for something is the most difficult.

9th February - In the absence of Prof Kajri Mishra, our lecture was taken by Prof. Debi Prasad Mishra, who handles the general management strategy and policy department as a senior faculty member at IRMA. The complete lecture was around public system management. There was brief discussion on externality and Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management Act, 2003 (FRBMA). In context of Indian state, post independence state has taken responsibility to provide fair value to producers, reasonable price to consumers and employment to the work force. That was a nearly impossible for any state to attend multiple objectives of the contradictory nature. And generations have to bear the good and bad consequences of such experiment.

It is a common complain that bureaucracy is not of customer friendly nature. It's wrong because there definition of customer is quite different. Citizen who pays for services is not a customer but who is in power hierarchy is a customer for them. This was a deja-vu moment of my learning about government. There are various methods like Citizen's Charter, RTI, Social Audit and e-governance has been taken to make state more citizen friendly. Let me end this week with an old, if cynical, saying about government : “Never believe anything until it is officially denied.”

Saturday, February 2, 2013

86th Week@XIMB

86th Week@XIMB - 27th January to 2nd February, 2013

I am away from the laptop, internet and XIMB for a complete week on a trip to home. I was becoming stoic calm proof against vicissitude of academic pressure.

The power of "rural": A special on rural marketing

Saturday, January 26, 2013

85th Week@XIMB

85th Week@XIMB - 20th January to 26th January, 2013

20th January - I got a great Facebook status over sales job : In Sales -someday you are the P*mp and someday you are the Whore. I am not much of a sales or finance person but what I realized that it only matters to do our work with integrity, excellence and discipline irrespective of where one is working in future.

21st January - Small clusters of graduation friends is a creating frog in the well attitude of the entire RM community. Author himself has not dwelled much beyond 100 people but has not hard lined himself with any lobby or Legacy system.

22nd January - We have started to speak the language of B schools and consultancies like ‘products’, ‘customers’ or 'stakeholders' even in our normal talks. This education is showing its toxic side effects.

23rd January - No updates for today.

24th January - I was packing for the upcoming home trip.

25th January - Our mid term exam of CMD got postponed to March 2013.

26th January - I left for home. Farewell.

Saturday, January 19, 2013

84th Week@XIMB

84th Week@XIMB - 13th January to 19th January, 2013

There was no record written for this whole week. Procrastination and laziness has completely captured me. The jargons like - Knowledge, Networking, Soft-skills, Development, Corporate, High asymmetry of information, Dichotomy, Business and government, Market, Customers and Growth, Value creation, Stakeholders, Institutions, Relationship Management, Structures, Innovation and Entrepreneurship: rampantly used in GD & PI's were put on rest. I am leaving readers with a brilliant convocation address and will be away from all social networking websites like Blogs, Vlogs, Blogs, wikis and even micro blogging site Twitter for a week.

Salman Khan gives commencement address at MIT (2012)

Saturday, January 12, 2013

83rd Week@XIMB

83rd Week@XIMB - 6th January to 12th January, 2012

6th January - 'Theory of maximising shareholder value has done great harm to businesses' : Meet Philip Kotler, the SC Johnson & Son Distinguished Professor of International Marketing at Northwestern University’s Kellogg Graduate School of Management in Chicago, and, in the words of Management Centre Europe, “the world’s foremost expert on the strategic practice of marketing”.

7th January - I was feeling quite low and listening to this song.

Hausla Buland - Haywards 5000 Anthem Theme Song



8th January - I started preparing for AIDMI, Srijan and OLM with keeping in mind that risk of unemployment reduces slowly and at great cost.

9th January - I applied in Ujjivan Microfinance today but withdrew my application later. Yet, I attended talk of CEO, Ujjivan MFI given by Mr. Samit Ghosh. Founder & Chief Executive Officer of Ujjivan Financial Service (Ujjivan), a micro finance institution which provides financial services to over a million urban & semi-urban poor across 20 states in India. Ujjivan started operations on November 1, 2005 and is headquartered in Bangalore. Ujjivan believes in holistic approach to poverty alleviation and works closely with a sister non-profit institution, Parinaam Foundation to provide services in healthcare, education, vocational training & community development to its microfinance customers.

The whole batch was unaware that average tenure of CEO is only 1.5-2 years. The clarity in your structures, Walk the Talk, Leadership & Types of Investors always define any organization. Ujjivan MFI wants happy customers not a money lending NBFC(MFI) and it had proven by emerging virtually unharmed at the times of MFI crisis as with their risk assessment, they decided not to move in Andhra.. That validated that company is going in right direction. Mr. Ghosh told us about middle class financial inclusion in late 1980's and 1990's era. There was a gradual movement middle class - ICICI, HDFC, HSBC and CITI Bank leading the baton of the private sector. Currently available two wheeler, four wheeler and housings loan were unheard in 1985. The same process is going for bottom of pyramid customers now. BOP customers even bank account but they were not financially included till now.

10th January - The pressure is on. As they say, it rains hardest on those who deserve the sun. We were delighted to host Ved Arya for a talk today. Ved shared his experiences founding and building SRIJAN -- "Creation" in Hindi, and an acronym for Self-Reliant Initiatives through Joint Action. It was registered, as a public charitable trust in Delhi with the aim to promote strong self-reliant village organizations, partnerships and enterprises to enhance people’s access to natural resources and their capacity to manage them sustainably. I was especially impressed with Ved's holistic perspective on the value chain of self-help and joint-support and cluster development and technological innovation which come together to be of differentiating benefit to rural Indian farmers and their families.

11th January - I applied for two enterprises working in the development sector. One was SRIJAN (Self Reliant Initiatives through Joint Action) that is a not-for-profit organization. They were looking for professionals who are enthusiastic to work at grassroots for the upliftment of the rural population of India. I had good discussion with Ved Arya who considered me unsuitable for this job. This was partially due to my commitment to family and age factor. It is very strong to comment but people like C P Mohan and Ved Arya involved in core development will always fail to grab why money security is a prime motive for rural managers of neo-liberalization era.

The other enterprise was National Rural Livelihood Mission, Odisha. It was a contractual job similar on the lines of Jeevika, Bihar. More can be read about their sister organization: TRIPTI and Aajeevika. I qualified three rounds consisting of written Test(Essay on Poverty and its eradication), GD (FDI in Retail)and Personal Interview (Based on Winter Internship and Book Reading).

I had finally seized the day. Carpe diem !!!

12th January - Streak of lazy days has just began.