A Horror called Reservations

I have been thinking about putting across my thoughts on reservations issue which goverment is planning to consider and keeping in mind the recent developments it has almost reached its final stage. Government is planning to implement 27 % reservation for the OBC in the govt. institutions starting from June 2007. The successor for this step from the government side could be to introduce the reservation in private sector as well. All of us have heard of what Azim Premji had to say in regard to introducing reservations in the private sector.

The protests for the quota regime has now gone into highest level wherein, we are hearing news about people dying because of fast which has been termed as FAST UNTIL DEATH. Numerous mails, forwards and smses are floating around. Petition forms on the internet, groups on various sites like yahoo and orkut have come into picture. People are doing the best to make government realise its wrong step.

Looking at all the reservation protests I can compare it with the protests done by Aamir Khan and co in Rang De Basanti. Well this is the first time I am seeing that people are deriving inspiration out of a movie. Must say Rang De Basanti came at the right time. But what is more important is to look at the level of protests which are happening and how they are affecting the youth of the country. It all started with the students of AIIMS starting, then many medical college students joined it, thereafter it started spreading like a forest fire and the protests started happening across the entire country. IIM and IIT students also joined the protests. But at some place's OBC people also came out to protest and they had a head to head with the "against quota regime" protestors.

This quota and reservations story also reminds of the "Aarakshan Virodhi Andolan" which took place in 1999 and because of which the schools, colleges were closed and the daily life was hampered badly. I remembered that time we were in Gwalior and it was difficult to come out of the house itself on many days. The schools were closed for a month or so continously. I do not know whether we will reach that stage or not but the government must remember that Mandal Commission took a big toll on it and It should not repeat this act again.

The worst part of the HRD ministry is Arjun Singh himself. He needs two people to get up from the seat. He needs two people to make him sit on the seat. He cannot have food properly and he cannot get in his car all alone. If he sits at one place it will take close to 15 minutes before he can get up. He needs callipers and support of two people to get up and walk. If such people are at the helm of such a serious affair, then I am sure our country is not going to go anywhere.

The issue of IIM fees took a toll on BJP and all their campaign of India Shining and all went into dustbin. It was a great mistake committed by Murli Manohar Joshi, then HRD minister. For the mistake of one person, entire party had to suffer the defeat in the elections. Probably Arjun Singh would repeat the feat for Congress too.

One of the statements made by Sitaram Yechury is the classic one " FIIs entry into India or their exit will not make an impact on the Stock Market. "

Well I believe he does not understand even the meaning of the term FII

My Acting Debut - GODAVARI

Last Friday Godavari, the movie in which I acted or should I say was fortunate enough to act in got released. We got the tickets on saturday and went for the second show. The hall was jampacked but due to the strong rapport sreenivas shares with shekar kammula we managed to get balcony tickets without any hassles.

Finally the movie for which we were waiting for 1000 eyes got released and we were all set for it. Our gang includes our entire project team like Sreenivas, Gowtham, Prasad Taki, Vinod, Girish and myself. The first shot in which a few of us appear is the one when the second song of the movie comes in. Its a pretty quick one but one can make out Sreenivas and myself with not much of difficulty. The next shot comes in when the last song which is the sad song is being picturized. It so happened that we got a call in office from Sekhar regarding the shoot of the song and he asked us to join over there. Fortunately I was sitting just in front of the heroine at the start of the song and hence I was the only one in that sequence to get featured in the movie.

The feeling is of elation altogether. It gives us a sense of achievement although we did not struggle hard really for it except for getting up at 6:00 am that too on a Sunday. The shooting lasted for about 4 hours on that day and then I realised probably how tough would have been shooting on the Godavari boat which the director had set up specially for the movie.

Afterall everyone does not get a chance to be part of the filmdom !!!!

Controlling the Thought Process

Have you ever wondered whether it is possible to control our thought process or not. Can we really control our mind to just think one thing at a time or our mind is so out of control now that whenever we are at home we think of office. When we are at office we think of outing with friends. When we are with friends we think of our life partner. When we are with our life partner we think about the future. So in all and all its never possible to think only a single thing at one point in time. Why it is so?

A few weeks back I had an opportunity to attend one of the orientation session of The Art of Living foundation which is one of the biggest organization in the world working towards humanity via spirituality. The person who was taking the session said that we as individuals do not know how to live in today. We either brood at the past or think about the future at every phase of life. He says its all in controlling our mind which makes us think, think and think only. As a child we think of growing to a youth, once youth we think of a career and a good life partner. As a married individual we think of good and intelligent kids. Once kids grow into youth we start thinking about their careers and their lifes. Once that is done we start thinking about the married life of our children. Then the last stage wherein we think about the grandchildren. In all this did we ever make an effort to think about ourselves at all. How are we doing, How is our body why is it that we are moving away from all kinds of material comforts, why is it that we have become weak and cannot have or do everything. All these questions can really shock us.

Our mind is a like a database wherein our thought process runs queries and keeps on analysing the data. In all this it creates relationships and they get entangled into each other so much that for a moment we forgot the main question of our life. Why do I exist here in this World? The central question which keeps on revolving in my mind now these days is this only. Why I am here. What do I do to get peace of mind and Where does the ultimate satisfaction for an individual resides. Can anyone in this world have happiness which is totally pristine and does not have any element of falsehood.

Is there an answer to these questions

A Torture called as SBI Card

I have been using the SBI Card for now close to 3 months. It has been a pathetic experience for me right from the beginning. Here in this article I describe my experiences with SBI first and take up BSNL next which is a little better in the aspect of providing service to the customer.

SBI Card was given to me after forced attempts by its agent. In the first place the card which was issued to me was not supposed to carry any of the Insurance premium as applicable. But to my surprise the guy who filled up the form for me ticked that column of insurance without my approval. When I shouted on him, he removed it. But the story does not end here. When I receive my card to my surprise I also get an addon card together with the Insurance premium amount also. First of all with SBI Card one has to activate it by calling one number which they call as the 24 hour helpline which is busy for the whole 24 hours in a day. Then those people do not understand for what we have called.

Afterwards the real trauma begins. The application has your date of birth wrong so you will not be able to use the phone banking. The internet banking for SBI Cards is not working for the past two months and its managed by GE which is really pathetic in the outsourcing work. The website shows this all the time. Soon the pain with the emails start. Its a really great pain to deal with the people on the email system. After atleast 6-7 times one mails the people out there understand the request. One day I suddenly get a call from Chennai regarding SBI Card Balance Transfer option and it so happens that after a few days when I decide to exercise the option, there is no person to contact to. In the SBI Card division one department is not talking with the other department at all. Gurgaon people have no clue of what the people in chennai are doing and vice versa. It took me close to a month to get my balance transfer cheque courtesy the great system implemented by GE.

Even the balance transfer cheque has its own clauses. If one does any shopping within the balance transfer period it would attract finance charges right from the very first day. This is not mentioned anywhere while the scheme is availed. The SBI Card proclaims it to be the best card available.

If this is the way SBI Card is doing the business it will be soon out of the competion. HSBC is perhaps the best credit card available in the market. The transparency in their calculation is really out of the world.

A Rendezvous with Training

In the last one year since I started working I had the opportunity or should I use the phrase a forced opportunity to attend a dozen training programs. The company I work in organized quite a few of them and other ones which I attended where out of my own pocket. Two weeks back I attended a two day workshop on COBIT 4.0. COBIT stands for Control Objectives for Information and Related Technology. It is mainly used in streamlining the IT controls within an organization and is being widely used in the industry especially in US for the Sarbanes Oxley Compliance. Well this article would definitely not get into the nitty-gritties of the COBIT but would throw some lights on the commonly seen uncommon scenes across all training programs.

Whether the participants are highly attentive and have spent a huge sum to attend the program, they shall and will yawn within the first 10-15 min of the start of the program. Coming to the classification of the participants, there are close to five types which I have come across. There may be more over which the people may have their varied opinions.
The first group “FRONT BENCHERS” represents themselves as the active, enthusiastic, intelligent and highly inquisitive group. The sole motive of this group is to
1. Raise questions every few minutes
2. Ask about the things which are going to come next in the session beforehand itself
3. Sit in the session and act as if they already know everything about the training program already and its only that they have come for some kind of time pass
4. Test the trainer’s abilities in delivering the content and
5. Ensure that they keep on discussing amongst themselves all the time

On the extreme end there is a group “DREAMWORLD” which is totally cut off from the training program itself and is in their own world altogether. This is a set of people who came to the training program because they were forced to do so. They have absolutely no interest in what is happening in the session and are busy in gossiping about the hotel, the food which was served, the HI-TEA which is going to come next and duration of every session. These people will normally sit together that too at the last seats only. Occasionally (refers to once in the entire session) one person would get up and ask a question which will not have any relevance to the topic under discussion. As Ram puts it for these people (You do not disturb me, I will not disturb you) is correctly applicable for these people.

Then we have a set of people “HARDWORKERS” who are totally new to the topic of the training and are trying hard not to doze off and learn something out of the program. They are hardworking, dedicated and question once in a while. They usually neither challenge the participants nor do they try to be too smart with the trainer. But the people in this set are really serious and once they understand the session or the training program well, they can give nightmares to the original trainers.

Afterwards, there is another set of people “QUINTESSENTIALS”. These people do not belong to any of these categories but are more oriented towards asking lot of questions which are highly relevant to the topic under discussion. These people actually take notes seriously, give presentations if required, complete the exercises given on time and religiously follow every part of the training. These people believe in getting the best out of the training. This set of people usually does not doze off and are always fresh and charged up during the entire course of the session. Usually this will be the lowest percentage set amongst the entire batch.

In the end there is this last set of people “DOCUMENTATION Group”. This is the most unique set among the above mentioned ones. These people irrespective of the session are most interested in the course material of the session, the handouts, the pamphlets, feedback forms and the courseware in the form of printouts. To be on the dot, these people are interested in what we call as the HARDCOPY part of the session. These people usually get restless if the notes are not provided or the printouts are in bad shape or the glasses kept on the table are not clean. They also are the time keepers of the session and keep on showing symbols whenever possible to ensure that schedule does not slip. All in all, this set is one who does a typical admin person’s job in a training session.

Well this was a brief description of the kind of people one can find in a training session. If you have any other option, do let me know. Hope you enjoy reading the stuff.

Infosys in SEC XBRL Project

Securities and Exchange Commission of United States has come out with a new way of financial statements reporting for the organization listed on the US stock exchanges. Now these days almost all websites have the facility of viewing the Annual Report in a very friendly format instead of downloading very large sized PDFs. Keeping in mind the latest trends in the XML, SEC has decided to do a pilot exercise which involves some of the best firms globally to submit their financial statements in what is called as the XBRL format.

There are close to 17 firms who have reportedly joined SEC in this exercise. It has big names like Microsoft and all together with an Indian name of Infosys. It is expected that these companies will help the agency in a big way to explore how new Internet based reporting technologies can improve the financial reporting process for investors, financial intermediaries, SEC, and the companies themselves.

This is another set of initiatives taken by the SEC Head Christopher Cox on the lines of ensuring a good corporate boards and governance. The firm who have been selected are leaders in the areas of this technology and hence will provide an ideal way to use this technology.

The pilot programme will simultaneously enable the companies to determine the benefits of using interactive data, provide feedback to SEC, and enable investors and analysts to assess new techniques for analyzing interactive data reports submitted to the agency in the eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) format.

Among the corporates that have joined the programme are 3M, Bristol-Myers Squibb Company, The Dow Chemical Company, Microsoft Corporation, Mobile Reach International, Pfizer, R.R. Donnelley & Sons, South Financial Group, United Technologies Corporation, Xerox Corporation and XM Satellite Radio Holdings.

Meanwhile something about SBRL. XBRL is a language for the electronic communication of business and financial data which is revolutionising business reporting around the world. It provides major benefits in the preparation, analysis and communication of business information. It offers cost savings, greater efficiency and improved accuracy and reliability to all those involved in supplying or using financial data.

XBRL stands for eXtensible Business Reporting Language. It is one of a family of "XML" languages which is becoming a standard means of communicating information between businesses and on the internet.

XBRL is being developed by an international non-profit consortium of approximately 450 major companies, organisations and government agencies. It is an open standard, free of licence fees. It is already being put to practical use in a number of countries and implementations of XBRL are growing rapidly around the world.

SBI Strike Ends

The week long and the first strike in the history of SBI has been called off just a few minutes ago. The bank union informed about the decision after sealing a pact with the government.

All India SBI Employees Federation Secretary PK Patnaik informed the press that the parties involved in the discussion have reached a cut off in terms of the demands.

According to Patnaik, SBI employees will now get pension equivalent to 50 per cent of their last drawn salary up to a ceiling of Rs 21,800. Beyond that pension would be given as 40 per cent of last drawn salary.

Previously, the cut-off point for 50 per cent of last drawn salary as pension was Rs 8,500 and above that pension was given as 40 per cent of last drawn salary. The staff will be back on their seats from Monday morning.

Meanwhile, Finance Minister P Chidambaram said the SBI management has informed the government that it has reached an agreement with the union representing the striking bank employees.

The talks were held in capital today and Finance Minister himself got involved him in the helms of the affair and ensured that the deadlock breaks. Appreciations for the finance minister in ensuring that the people in the country are not affected any more. After failure of talks on Saturday it was decided by the SBI Union to get together with other bank unions on Tuesday and do a massive strike.

Finance minister also said that the current payscales of the SBI employees were laid down in the year of 1992. So it is the right time to revise them.

As per the existing cut-off point, SBI employees get pension of 50 per cent of their last drawn salary up to a ceiling of Rs 8,500, which is Rs 4,250 per month. Under the new cut-off point, 50 per cent pension would paid on last drawn salary up to a ceiling of Rs 21,040, which would work out to Rs 10,520.

This is one of the land mark achievements for the Finance Minister in terms of his negotiation skills. Three state governments had withdrawn their accounts with SBI after the strike looked like never ending. Many corporate houses and the nation on a whole suffered a lot because of the strike. Definitely, if something happens for the first time in the history of 200 years of the bank, it does make an impact.

Chevron Enters India

As FDI continue to flow in Indian Markets one sector which did not see any FDI inflow was the refining sector. Finally it will.

Chevron, A US energy major is planning to pick up some stake in the 27000 crore hallmark Jamnagar Refinery to become the first FDI in India's booming refining sector. RIL Chairman Mr. Mukesh D Ambani is in US to meet the top officials of Chevron and closing in on signing a pact.

Earlier media had reported that RIL was planning to sell its 10 % stake to some of the western oil majors in a bid to expand its reach into western countries and to ensure long term supplies from these markets.

Management Challenges

This post is on some critical issues which the organizations globally majority in the IT sector are facing almost every day.

If one looks at the IT sector in India we have very high performing companies such as Infosys, TCS and Wipro who started the business from the home ground and are now the global leaders in their respective areas. On the other hand there are companies which were once considered to be the best in their class but slowly they deteriorated considerably to yield neither profitable bottom lines nor shareholder value. Infact these low performing companies were not even able to retain the best talent which hurt the productivity massively in the long term.

This article tries to answer the question as to what factors contribute to an individual's success in the organization. How an organization can make a difference in an individual and how an individual can make a difference to an organization. At the end of the day any associate as most of the IT companies call their employees as wants is the job satisfaction than any other thing in this IT industry.

Employee retention is one of the key objectives of the HR department in the IT industry. The primary objective of the HR in any company should be to ensure that the goals of the individual and the organization are always in tandem with each other. But there is a kind of change which is happening now.

It has been observed that HR plays a key role only in the beginning that is at the time of recruitment where in the candidates interview and other formalities happen. But soon the focus gets shifted towards deploying the new resource in some project without first doing a role fitment exercise. The role fitment exercise is very essential because it keeps in mind the interest of the associate, uses his skillset to the maximum extent and overall gives him a feeling of job satisfaction. At any point in time if the above requirements are not met, the resource while at job does not feel contended and a question always gets raised in his mind saying that "Can I do something better than this".

Money is one major factor in case of any job shift. It has been figured out that close to 80 % of the people move from a low performing company to a high performing company not because of the company itself but because the latter can pay almost double the package. The resource crunch in the industry is so high that it is not possible to retain a resource and pay a higher package than the industry standards. More often one has to reach a compromise in terms of the affordability of the resource and the value which can be derived out of him. This is a critical piece of analysis which can actually alter all kinds of calculations.

To be continued.

Memorable Week

This week is one of the most memorable one's when I have completed one year since I passed out of the pedastals of my alma-mater TAPMI. Last year on 26th of March 2005, I was awarded the Post Graduate Diploma in Management at the 21st Annual Convocation held in Hotel Valley View. It was a great feeling for all of us who got convocated on that day. The feeling of elation is absolutely out of the world. The successful completion of the course which changed us entirely from top to bottom and gave a whole new dimension to our personality is a ecstatic feeling. The joy is although short lived since we have to also leave the place where we stayed, studied and toiled ourselves for 2 years to become what we call as CORPORATE citizens.

I was discussing this today morning with Vasudha since both of us take the bus in the morning from the same stop. Even she felt the same that time has passed away very fast and it will be soon when we will be completing one year of our corporate experience.

Meanwhile on saturday, I somehow stayed at home since there was no work outside neither I had a party to go. In the evening I completed the download of Oracle 9i which I was trying to do from the last 4 years ever since I wanted to install SQL in my PC. The total size of the download came to about 1.5 GB. But then I forgot that my PC is not capable enough to take the huge installation size.

The installation of Oracle 9i Enterprise Edition took close to 3.5 hours on my machine. Although I was able to use the SQL editor successfully but the system became very slow and was booting up in close to 10 min which is very high by all standards for a PC with 192 MB RAM. Anyhow I had to uninstall it at the earliest to get back my PC to speed up again. This was a huge exercise once again.

The second interesting thing I did in this weekend was the Beta Testing of Internet Explorer 7.0 Beta 2 for Win XP SP2. I downloaded the extractable exe from the Microsoft site and ran the install. Now these days Microsoft is not allowing its products to be installed on any PC. They are allowing the installs only on PC which have the logo of GENUINE WINDOWS ADVANTAGE or the original key which normally of all PCs is an invalid one. Somehow I was able to circumvent the validation procedure and installed IE 7.0.

IE 7.0 on the lines of Vista spots a very sleek look. Its pretty decent in terms of the menus and offers a large space for viewing the webpages. Again on the lines of its competitors it spots tabs which is a standard feature of Opera, Netscape and the most bitter rival of IE FireFox. Loading of IE 7.0 does not take much time as such and is definitely less than what is the time for IE 6.0. I had browsed only for a few minutes immedietely an error popped up which said IE.exe has caused an unknown error. Hence I had to uninstall IE 7.0 immedietely and come back to the current version of IE.

One more important thing which happened in this week was the comeback of Amitabh Bachchan. After close to 3 months being out of action, Amitabh was back to the sets of Kabhi Alvida na Kehna, the latest venture of Karan Johar. It was reported that he was again unwell after the shoot but there is no serious issue with respect to that. The crowd or the fan following was more happier when Big B returned on to the sets than the Man or the producers themselves. I remembered the screen presence of the star of the millenium when he made a short appearance in the filmfare awards. It was majestic.

Also on Sunday Morning, I attended a seminar on CISM by ISACA. ISACA is a global authority on IT Governance and Audit and is the central body for the development of COBIT which defines control objectives for information technology for Sarbanes Oxley compliance. It was a good break for me from the usual stuff I do at office daily. Got to know about ISACA and CISM and CISA certifications.

The coming week looks extremely hectic keeeping in mind today. Lets hope for another challenging week ahead.

Windows Vista Shipment Delays

Microsoft in its latest release with respect to the Windows Vista has said that the business availability for the product would happen by November 2006 but the broad consumer availability has been postponed to early 2007. This is a major setback to the plans of Microsoft and its associate partners in the launch of Vista. It seems that the OS would go for broad consumer beta to approximately 2 million users in second quarter of 2006.

Analysts say it’s a smart move, given the products' importance and longevity — but disappointing and harmful to PC manufacturers, Intel, and retailers expecting a Q4 lift in PC sales. However, Intel gets an unexpected bonus: the opportunity to make Viiv the digital home brand that matters in 2006.

Microsoft has said that VISTA needs more fine-tuning, especially on security features – a core selling point of the new OS and it said that most of its partners said that the launch should wait till 2007. Given Windows' history as buggy and unsecured, it's just plain smart to delay the release rather than ship a flawed product. However, five years and counting between operating system releases and a steadily diminishing feature list does make Microsoft look a bit foolish. Ongoing sales of Windows XP, and the fact that Microsoft's fiscal year ends in June rather than December, protect the company financially.

Most of the PC retailers and companies like Dell, HP, Intel are real losers in all this. As the consumer spending peaks around the holiday season when the initial launch of Vista was planned. It will so happen that consumers wont be able to buy Vista powered PC and this will hamper the sales considerably. It is suggested that consumers be promised to buy the PC in the holiday season with a Vista upgrade coupon attached to the purchase. But a large administrative cost could have been avoided if the release would have happened at the scheduled time.

Since the launch is delayed Intel has a big opportunity to showcase their new technology VIIV as the centerpiece of the digital home, outcasting Vista. Launch of Vista with VIIV was considered to be a dual branding strategy by the market leaders. But then Intel will have a good opportunity to leverage on an early launch and make an impressive start before Vista comes into the market.

For the unknown, VIIV is Intel's new platform designed for the enjoyment of digital entertainment—Intel® Viiv™ technology—delivers the multitasking power of a dual-core processor and enables sleek new designs that fit your lifestyle.Key components of the VIIV technology are Intel Dual Core 64 bit processor, Advanced Chipset, and Microsoft Windows Media Center Edition.

Godavari Film Shooting

This is the second time that I was part of a movie shooting. The last time I was involved in a movie shooting was when I was in my Grandma’s house in the year 1998. It was the shooting of a Telugu movie by some name I do not even remember now. The shooting took place for about 2 weeks time but finally when I watched the movie the shooting at our place was their in picture for just about 30 sec to 1 minute. That time I realized the power of editing.

Recently one of our colleagues took us to a shoot sequence of an upcoming Telugu movie GODAVARI. Shekar Kammula one of the renowned director in the Telugu film industry and also the director of the movie Anand is directing this movie. He happens to be a good friend of my colleague so this gave us an opportunity to show our acting skills also. The first shot (If I can call it a shot) was the one, which we took near the HCU bus stand with the heroine. It was a very small still involving not much effort.

The second shot, which happened on Sunday, involved quite a few associates from our organization who participated in the shoot, which involved the Hero of the movie, Sumanth. The shoot was done in a conference room and was part of a song sequence. It was a nice break for me from the daily routine of going to the office and coming back. The shooting started at 8:30 in the morning and continued till 11:00 AM wherein we were part of close to 3 or 4 shots.

Shooting a movie is not an easy job. For a moment I felt that this is the toughest job, which one can think about since there are close to 100 things, which need to be done simultaneously. If someone wants to prove that he is a leader he should involve himself into shooting. All the leadership qualities of a person can be tested very well while shooting is in progress. The voice of the Director, the sequence of camera, action and cut, the control of the scene sequence, controlling the people out there, managing money, convincing the people, making sure the actor and actress are happy with what they are doing are some of the aspects which a director needs to take care. All in all, the director of the movie exhibits the true qualities of a leader.

Impossible is Nothing

Impossible is nothing. That’s what the South African team proved when they chased 434 against the top team of the world and three times world champion’s Australia. In a record-breaking one-day chase South Africa on Sunday chased 434 to win the series against Australia by 3-2. Australia made an impossible score of 434 way ahead of the 398 made by Srilanka against Kenya in 1996 World Cup. I remembered the star in that game was Aravinda De Silva who scored an impressive 148 to send shocks to Kenyan’s. But this contest was different

This contest was between one of the best teams in ODI. South Africa and Australia. Known for their all rounder’s these two teams always had a great contest. Some of the best memories of their contests are the World Cup Semifinal in 1999 wherein Australia won inspite of a tie because of a better run-rate.

A disbelieving crowd at the Wanderers in Johannesburg witnessed the greatest one-day international of all as South Africa hit a world record 438 for 9 with one wicket and one ball to spare to beat Australia. The fans were amazed at lunch, having seen the visitors smash 434 for 4, with Ricky Ponting making 164, they would have been pinching themselves when Mark Boucher hit the winning runs off Brett Lee after Herschelle Gibbs had led the way with 175.

This match proved it that Impossible is nothing, if one has that killer instinct to do it. No team could ever think of crossing 400 mark in one-day cricket. But then Australia did it and broke the previous record of 398 by scoring 434 and set an example. It was one of the most path breaking moments for Ricky Ponting where in he made his career best score. When South Africa started they always felt that probably they cannot reach that target but I must say that winning this match was a perfect example of team spirit where everyone in the team contributed equally to the success. Whether it was the one run of Makhaya Ntini or the winning shot by Mark Boucher everything in the match was awesome. In the past couple of months we have not seen such a finish for the match. India Pakistan series also went very dry. The feeling of elation for the team was absolutely par excellence and no one can ever expect to see that kind of stuff in one-day cricket. I believe no match will stand parallel to this match. And Then South Africa scored 438 with one wicket to go in 49.5 overs and won the match and grabbed the series. They made impossible possible with a great dedication, determination, a team effort and above all a killer instinct. But do Indian really possess it is the question?

First Anniversary

Its exactly a year now since I started blogging. So today my blog completes one year of its existence on the world wide web. It saw close to 4200 visitors in the year which makes an average of 12 visits per day. The maximum hits were on 19th December 2005 when my blog recorded close to 49 hits which were excluding the reloads. This was the day when I had posted the article on the murder of the BPO woman.

I started blogging in the last few days of my stay at TAPMI. I was very excited about writing the things about which I felt very strongly but was lazy enough to note them down in a piece of paper. That was also the time when I shifted from the notebook or diary to the electronic medium of Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel. Blog gave me a choice to express what I feel about the things around me. I believe that has driven me to write on the blog consistently in the last one year.

As I write this post I have posted close to 108 articles on my blog some clubbed under one heading of IT and related areas. Some on Compliance issues like Sarbanes Oxley, MiFiD and Clause 49. Others on Mergers and Acquisitions and some on my feelings and thoughts about certain issues which I feel very strongly about.

Blogging has been a great experience for me. I have been criticized several time and appreciated also many times. But more than that it has given me a lot of visibility and above all a presence on the web. Once someone types in the google, "Yashasvi Arun", immedietely he lands up on my blog homepage. Bitten by the blog bug, I went ahead and created a quiz blog for my Punchliners series. It has registered close to 4200 hits within a span of 5 months.

I believe, the quality of posts and also the time variation will improve considerably as I plan my time well enough to pursue my hobby in a better way. Thanks a lot to all those who visited my blog and if my Blog was helpful in providing some info to you I would feel the best satisfaction possible.

Thoughts Emotions Feelings Sentiments

It has been quite some time since I posted some stuff on the above words in which I used to believe very little until today. There are days in our lives which are just another days. But there are days which usually make a lot of impacts on our lives and take our view points to the extremes some times and make us think. Today was one such day in my life when I felt that yes that there are emotions, feelings and sentiments even in the worst of the business scenarios also.

I always felt that if we are good everything which will happen to us in the future will be good only. But often we forget that there are forces which act opposite to what we usually do. These are invisible forces which usually operate in vacuum till the time we are in our limits. But once we try to do something out of the system, these invisible forces come out of the vacuum and attack us in all directions possible and enervate us within no time. These negative forces tend to kill the enthusiasm, the dedication and the determination to make things perfect. The path to betterment is lost and suddenly the concerned human being feels that he is doing something which is not wished by others. The worst part of all this is that these invisible forces weaken you so much or hurt you so much that you sometimes start doubting as to why did you take this burden of improving the system at all.

Well the article as it sounds is not pessimistic. Its about the reality of life when we cross the system boundaries and do something which we believe is obvious and nevertheless good for the organization. But at the end we get entangled in such a web which stretches us emotionally, mentally and pscyhologically and literally kills the passion in us.

There have been days for me which always gave me a feeling that why should I suffer always in life. I questioned my existence in the organization. I questioned my education. I questioned by behavior. Above all I questioned my pursuit of perfection and belief in High Performance probably one thing in my life which keeps going me on and on. I could not never get the answer. Perhaps I can never get also.

To be continued.

Weekend

The weekend went by was one of the memorable weekends for me wherein I had to deal with some unprecedented issues. On Saturday my computer went into trouble without me having any clue of what has happened. For quite sometime the power on button of the computer was not working and it so happened due to Windows XP we need not have to restart the computer also quite often. The latter thing actually spoiled the restart button of the machine. So it does matter to use all the parts of the computer on time.

On Saturday evening it so happened that my computer got hung up and instead of restarting it from the main power, I used the spoiled restart button and then it was the end of it. My computer got hung and it did not start for the next few hours and then it so happened that even display was not coming on the monitor, CD Drive stopped working, Hard Disk was continuously blinking with the red light. I was like dead scared as to what happened to my life companion after spending close to 6 years. Somehow my dad got hold of a hardware vendor and he came and scrutinized the system for a while and concluded that it’s a chip level problem. I was like finished. Then he said RAM has gone and he won’t be able to do anything. He suggested taking the computer to Global Technologies in Secunderabad.

We reached Global Technologies somehow. The guy immediately within no time connected the required cables to the computer and was trying to figure out the error. Then when we were about to give it to him for repair, I told him the incident, which led to this problem. I must say the guy was intelligent and accordingly as per my description he removed the reset socket from the motherboard and the computer started working. I was like delighted very moment. Immediately, I saw this opportunity and somehow escaped from there without giving the computer for servicing. I believe the knowledge of the guy in repairing the thing shows the signs of High Performance, which delighted me a lot. I got the computer back home but then to my surprise, it looked like due to the deletion of restoration data the computer lost its display drivers and Windows XP started creating lot of problems. Norton got corrupted and the visual display went for a toss. All in all the computer became very slow and the Internet speed also got reduced tremendously. I decided that its time to format the hard disk. So I took the back up of the entire data on C drive and made the computer ready for the format process on Sunday morning.

On Sunday morning, I formatted the C drive of my computer loaded Win 98 and Win XP and brought the computer into its original form. It took close to 6 hours for the process to complete. By night my computer was back into original shape and I must say this time the problems I encountered were really big.

Another eventful thing, which happened on Sunday, was our trip to Yadagirigutta. Yadagirigutta is about 70 KM from our house and is a religious place having a temple of Lakhsmi Narsimha Swamy. We drove till their in our new ESTEEM, and I am sure Tej enjoyed the drive a lot. It was a good one while going we touched the speed of 70. While coming I drove it in the night continuously for about 75 KM and it was an amazing drive. I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was one of the pleasing moments for me, which I will cherish for life. The speed I touched was 85 and I was pretty happy about it. It took me just about an hour to complete the 70 KM stretch. Driving on Highway gives a totally different kind of pleasure and I enjoyed every moment of it.

WINNING by Jack Welch

Winning is my latest book which I completed close to two weeks back but then due to some preoccupations was not able to post my experience after reading the book. This is my, If I am not wrong, 7th Management Book, the last being India Unbound which is not very close to a Mangement book but it does have that kind of flavor.

Winning came into the market sometime in May 2005 and I wanted to read the book eagerly, right from the day when I read its review in India Today. I had spotted the book first in the LandMark Stores in Spencer’s Plaza in Chennai. But then it took close to 6 months for the book to come into my hand courtesy one of my friend. Albeit, the edition being partially pirated, the content being more important than the style or the design of the book, I was satisfied.

The book starts off with the favorite theme of every go-getter. Winning Does Matter. The essence of the book lies in the phrase stated above. Jack Welch using his past experiences tries to look into issues which are at the center of winning and which can make or break any game in life whether corporate or social. The book has come out when Jack Welch retired from GE and traveled across the world covering Asia, Africa, Europe, spoke at several places and conferences and had one to one meeting with several professionals on what it takes to WIN.

As with any management thought, the important part is to apply the thought in the real life rather than reading it through and have the pleasure. The real pleasure comes in when the Management idea gets into execution to give some real results. This time I had decided when I would read the book I will apply every idea in the text in my professional life and see whether it really works or not. Believe me it does work in 80 % of the cases.

The book is divided into 5 different parts altogether, which have a central theme that is – What Does it take to Win?. The first part introduction starts by talking about the various aspects of business and theories behind the business functions, the idea of Candor, which Jack Welch strongly advocates, and the issues like Differentiation. The second part of the book talks about the essential elements of Company. How a company should be structured and what are the issues to be kept in mind. It talks about the essentials of business like Leadership, Hiring, Change and Crisis Management. Next section talks about Competition in terms of strategy, budgeting, growth and M&A. The penultimate section in the book is titled “YOUR CAREER” which is one of the unique features of any management books I have seen till now. Generally we do not find a section dedicated specifically to the career. This section starts off by talking about what kind of job is a right job for an individual then the issues in performance appraisal to the issue of a bad boss and finally closing on one of the most important issues of 21st century – How to balance work and family life.

In the last section, Jack Welch talks about some of the questions, which cannot be part of any of the other four chapters mentioned above. Here in he covers issues like Threat of China, Diverity, Regulations like Sarbanes Oxley, Business response to AIDS, His successor Jeff Imelt and How he is doing together with the last question on whether Jack Welch will go to hell or heaven.

One of the topics, which Jack Welch forces the most and deals in extensively, is the issue of CANDOR. Candor is something, which we all will never wish to practice in our live's because we fear it immensely. But I did practice it in my professional life in a situation wherein I felt that the things are not going right and yes it did work it.

All in all, WINNING is a great read and is a must for every individual who looks at good career as a journey and not as a destination.

Narain Karthikeyan vs. Sania Mirza

This post is dedicated to one issue which I believe should be discussed in many forums in concern to its importance. Yesterday I was looking at Times of India where I read that Sania Mirza has been signed by Deutsche Bank as the Brand Ambassador for promoting its retail banking product since Deutsche Bank was operating in India only in the Corporate Banking space. Daily if one watches the television you can spot number of ads featuring Sania Mirza but is there a single ad which features Narain Karthikeyan. Leave alone ads. Think about other recognition.

Sania Mirza recently got the Padmashree.If we look at the statistics Rahul Dravid even after being in the Indian Cricket Team for more than 7-8 Years got the Padmashree only in the year 2004. We all know what has been the contibution of Rahul Dravid to the Indian Cricket and what he is to the Indian Cricket team.

Now look at one sport which is not very popular in India. Formula 1. This sport considered to be the hobby of only the elite class and was till a few years back not even seen widely on television is now a raging sport amongst the youth of the country. Infact Chandra Babu Naidu ex chiefminister of AP had a proposal to come out with the Formula 1 Track in Hyderabad. Our only image in Formula 1 amongst 1 billion people considering the past and the present records is Narain Karthikeyan. Till date he is the only driver from our subcontinent to break into the elite league of Formula 1 considered to be one of the costliest sport in the world. But no one not even media bothered to cover it in a very proper manner. The way hype has been created about Sania I believe not even 10 % of the hype was created for Narain. We all know how important is media for the growth of anything in this world. If media publishes wrong information about any company or some kind of news than the company's stock price will go for a toss. Similar is the case with the sports person also. Any news however small if hyped considerably can really make a person god within few hours thanks to the ever increasing influence of media in our life.

Does the fete of Narain Karthikeyan any less than the fete accomplished by Sania Mirza or is it that people do not want to recognize some sports as Cricket gets a lot more priority over any other sport in the country. Very recently Narain Karthikeyan was also signed up by William the team of stalwarts like Montoya and Ralf once upon a time as a reserve driver. This is not a small feat.

I think its high time the media recognizes the importance of every sport and does not brush away any sport which does not spot glamour in it. We also need to remember that with formula 1 we have one of the biggest corporate house's TATA's name associated.

SENSEX Touches 10000

India's stock market benchmark Sensex on Monday pierced through the magical 10,000 points level for the first time on aggressive buying by funds.

The market barometer was at 10,002.83 points, higher by 260.25 points. Similarly, wide-based National Stock Exchange index Nifty spurted by 66.55 points to set a record high of 3007.15.

The Sensex finally settled with a huge gain of 2.4% (238 points) at a record high of 9,980.

The Nifty surged by 60 points to close at 3,000.

The Bombay Stock Exchange's 30-sensitive index (Sensex) which set an intra-day high at 9993.92 points on February 1, remained sluggish thereafter and touched a low of 9,713 points before completing the last lag of its journey to the historic 10K level today.

The major support to the Sensex came from Reliance Industries, Infosys, ICICI Bank, ACC, Bajaj Auto, Housing Development Finance Corporation and Larsen and Toubro.
Any change in the share prices of Reliance Industries, Infosys Tech and ICICI Bank changes the market scenario as the trio enjoy over 30 per cent weightage on the index.

Major GainersICICI Bank rallied 6.4% to Rs 607. HDFC moved up 2.5% to Rs 1,338, and HDFC Bank added 1.7% to Rs 745. SBI was up nearly 1% at Rs 865.Ranbaxy soared over 6% to Rs 414 following the company's announcement that it has formed a JV with a South African firm to tap the African market. Dr.Reddy's and Cipla moved up 2.6% each to Rs 1,190 and Rs 496, respectively.Reliance gained 3.4% to Rs 720. ONGC ended with a gain of 2.5% at Rs 1,191. ITC surged 2.7% to Rs 157, and HLL advanced over 2% to Rs 194.TCS rallied 3% to Rs 1,680. Infosys gained over 2% at Rs 2,845 and Satyam added 1.8% to Rs 739. Wipro, however, ended a tad lower at Rs 514.The BSE Bankex zoomed over 3% (162 points) to 5164. The BSE Healthcare Index also moved up over 3% (113 points) to 3478. The BSE FMCG, Oil & Gas indices closed with gains of over 2% each today. The BSE Teck index gained 1.5% (35 points) to 2,442.
Advances were ahead of declines - out of 2,570 scrips traded, 1,443 moved up, 1,071 declined and 56 were unchanged today.While 302 scrips hit their respective upper limits, 177 hit the lower circuits today.

Recession

Ever heard of this word now in the boom economy where literally each and ever sector of the economy is doing very well and the global economy seems to be very vibrant. But everything does not seem to be going well for the US retailers who fear store closures as the retail business faces problems.

In one of the articles on CNN, I came across the plight of US retailer’s inspite of retail being one of the fastest growing industries globally. WALMART world’s biggest retailer is also world’s biggest company in terms of revenues and features above giants like Exxon Mobil with net sales of 346 Billion Dollars in the past fiscal year.

As per the research done by the Davidowitz & Associates recently, there are three factors that can be attributed to the downfall of retail stores in US. These are:

• Growth in Online Shopping
• High Energy Costs
• Overcapacity.

Some of the well-known names, which are planning to bring closures of some of their stores, are Zale Corp, OfficeMax, Toy R Us, Musicland Holding Corp. and a few others.

• Zale Corp., which is set to turn off the lights at more than 30 of its high-end Bailey Banks & Biddle stores.
• Office supplies seller OfficeMax announced it would close 110 of its 950 U.S. outlets this year as part of its ongoing restructuring efforts.
• Department store chain Mervyn's plans to close a third of its stores in 2006.
• Toy seller Toys R Us is closing 75 of its namesake stores, most of them by springtime, and converting 12 others to Babies R Us locations.
• Music retailer Musicland Holding Corp., which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy this month, is considering a "significant number of closings of unprofitable stores" under the Sam Goody and Suncoast names

Some of the factors quoted by the research firm were concerning to the too much overstoring of the retail stores hence it has become a victim of its overcapacity itself. The report also says that there is about nineteen and half square foot of retail space for every shopper in the country. This calls for a debate on the ever-expanding mode of retail stores in US inspite of projections saying that consumer spending will come down in the future. There is actually another component of energy costs, which is actually coming over the head of every retail store.

It is so happening that only big retail stores like Walmart and Home Depot are able to sustain these costs and able to face the competition well. The other factor is the online stores. Online stores recorded sales worth $ 142.3 billion according to ComScore Networks, market research firm. Online stores like Amazon.com, Ebay have largely taken away a big market share of Brick and Mortars store.

Research experts suggest the only solution to this problem is the true convergence of the Online retailing with Brick and Mortar stores. Now just try comparing this problem with the story on Big Bazaar.