People and Power - The Last Sentence so to say.

Dr Manmohan Singh is an Economist, has a greater experience as a bureaucrat than as a politician and even as a politician is elected to the upper house of Parliament. Mr. IK Gujral, the former PM of India was an acclaimed diplomat, some of the most visible ministers in the cabinet today and many of today's leading spokesmen are well acclaimed lawyers of supreme court of India and elsewhere. Mr. Shinde's qualification for the post of home minister of India is his previous job (however little)as a policeman. Some in the government are well known industrialists. A similar situation exists in opposition parties. In short, many are in politics today (small today but growing) due to their past experience and many cannot get elected on their own, infact many are in the Rajya Sabha - the indirectly elected house. If you look at the people who participants of the Indian freedom strugggle a bulk of them were students of law and political science. They were in politics because they had experience of a lifetime in some or the other form of professional occupation.

Let us come to Indian Democracy - The PM and the cabinet are part of the legislature and not the executive. All the better, because they need to represent people's views to legislate. But then, when one is in Rajya Sabha they are not directly elected - Mr. Nitish Kumar, the popular and well acclaimed mass leader and Chief Minister of Bihar is also from the upper house.

Now, look at the real popular people - The Gandhi's don't want power, they believe in sacrificing, the late Mr. Balasaheb Thakerey preferred a remote control to an office and like him the RSS leadership does not even want to contest elections. There are king makers in the states that control the central government without sitting in either houses of parliament. Mr. Ahmed Patel is not a member of either house, Mr. Deve Gowda will never want to become the Chief Minister while he awaits ashes to rise. All these people want to rule through their people. Power can have many titles and powerful titles many not satisfy all egos.  Some may call this power without responsibility and others statesmanship, altruism or sacrifice.

What ever it is - I think we have to grant every body their wish. The cabinet can be assigned to the upper house and strict qualifications can be defined for entering that house in terms of qualification and experience in public service or profession. The necessary requirement is that they have to be elected by directly elected bodies. Well, call them indirectly elected representatives.

This way the intellectuals can have the satisfaction of governing and the mass leaders the satisfaction of power. The common person will have qualified people governing (not ruling) and mass leaders and their ego tempering the government with public opinion.

The Americans do this in a good way with college professors and fat moneyed capitalists in the cabinet.

If only the Chinese get a Lower House.

Last but not the least compare this to an organization. Where do you fit people managers and project managers :). This was the last sentence that I wanted to make.

....Caravan ka khel

Ek Aur Saal beet gaya

Caravan chal ta hi gaya

Jo Uthara woh choota

Bache sab nikal gaye

Rasta sirf Caravan ki

kab bani thi pata nahin

Chahe jis taraf bhi raah mude

talash hai sirf puranee wahee

Maango jitna bhi tum

na rukegi yeh karvan

chahe jitna bhi  mutthi pakdo

Samay ki reth phisal gayi

khud apna raah banao

banao duniya mein naam

kuch bhi karo baath wahin

jo Is karvan samajh ta ho

Aasman phaad ke nikal pado

ya samay ki dhara badalhi do

Chahe durbin se duniya jhanko

aadmi rahega sirf wahin

Samay ka niyam yehin hai jisko

divya jyothi dikhati hai

Andhera deepak mein yeh aank micholi

Itna hi Karvan ka khel hai

Be Ready and Be Suitable

What is Suitable? There is one proverb that says all that is white is not milk. The iceberg is deeper below the sea than what meets the eye.

There is another that says that suitable is how you define it. One has to adjust to become suitable. We can make a perfectly logical argument hazy by bringing is perfectly reasonable sayings....but would we need a mirror to see the wound on the palms.

...again examples for life apply to it's constituents, what is relevant for the esoteric is relevant for the real too...like say IT projects.

At a philosophic level every body can do everything, after all the boundaries are defined by us but that is for the future, the current should be well defined particularly when the problem is known. What we have on hand is what we have what we do not is what will cause us pain. We need to define boundaries for the needs and assess how to bridge it?

The most important thing that one needs to do is constantly learn so that when an opportunity comes one is there to help and make oneself useful. It is what we offer to make life simpler and not what we get out of an opportunity. If there are things that needs to be learned so be it, we can cross a stream but we cannot build a boat to cross the seas a day before the travel. We cannot start arms practicing during the War - we cannot do 'Yuddha Kale Shastrabhyasa!'

An IT infrastructure is simple but critical - particularly when applied to mission critical applications like Banking - but one has to have a deep understanding of the fundamentals. A person playing with toy gun cannot lead a war let along participate in it. There could be hierarchies and escalation paths for resolving the unknown but the person who does not know the concept or feels it  is not in his or her scope of learning is irrelevant and if involved in the project a pure nuisance. All lies will eventually get caught.

The next important thing is professionalism, not in the conventional sense that is taught in management classes but just to the extent of being reliable. This is independant of the sourroundings and is a reflection of integrity. Integrity comes out in program code and can be caught in code reviews, in the quality of comments, quality of defining the scenario and if probed a litte more than normal in the articulation of a solution.

In my opinion suitability cannot be faked for long. In the short haul however all involved will struggle.

I am writing this as an observation of a situation. There are solutions and most problems can be solved but better solve it before than later.

..The Real Retail Banking..

This has been there from the time we remember in a formal organized way but it is only now that the retail customers are getting empowered. There are two reasons for this I think a) Technology - Among others giving them some power can push them out of the branch and save real estate and manpower costs b) There is competition - particularly banks breaking country barriers to acquire reliable customers.

However for some reason retail banking customers are treated as simplistic non sophisticated users who are not trusted with features. The UI in retail Internet banking is restrictive if not condescending. Even if there are some tools it is in the mode of creating additional revenue stream or to get insight into their data and not to provide independant insight into finances. While a bank would be careful enough to prevent corruption of their data there is an opportunity for the banks to provide user fields that can be in control of the retail customers only the data store can be on the servers. This data should be maintainable and downloadable in some standard formats.

The benefits can be quite startling. A bank statement can be reviewed online and the download criteria can be defined. This is better then downloading the data and uploading this to another application to segregate.

Similar infrastructure can be provided by the banks to associate classifications (not just the comments ) at the source of a transaction that can provide classification on the nature of transactions. This can be directly fed to the tax calculation data among others.

By just providing flexibility in the way a statement can be downloaded and providing options for transaction classification a considerable customer delight can be achieved for a tech savvy customer. Options to integrate the different accounts, providing cash forecast methods are additional bonus.

Think about the amount of small scale applications that can be built by third parties by empowering these transactions.

Yeh Bhi Sahi Woh Bhi Sahi

sab kuch apna hi hai, kuch bhi to paraya nahin
sab paraya duniya mein, apna to kuch bhi nahin

yeh desh to apnahi hai, duniya mein to sambandhi sabhi
yeh deh bhi apna nahin, jaana hi hai choD yahi

kamana hai khoobi se aur jina bharpoora sabhi
vyrag se jeena hai sabko ,fhal ki apeksha kada nahin

pyar main doob jana humko, pyar pooja bhagwan ki
moh me na pado he balak, ye bhandan se chooTo abhi

sab choD kar sanyasi bano, daas bano shri charaNon ki
karm is lok ka nibhana hai, palayan to karna nahin

dhyan karo bhagawan ki, chaDado jeevan bhakti mein
mukti sirf uski hai jo, chup chap swamy ki seva mein

Jnyan ki asha mein jeeyo, jnyan hi anth andhere ki
janam janam ki talash hai, is jnyan ki pyas bujhegi kabhi

Diya deep se andhera bhage, Divya jyoti se jagat Ughe

Jalti diya ka kaam hi aisa, khud rakh bane phir jeevan khile.

...Its a Dog's life after all :)

When I said I had travelled 20 countries somebody had said yours is a dog's life. It was interesting to be down under last week - another street to roam and another culture to see.

Meeting people of different cultures is a privilege in my opinion. There are so many variations in cultures and what is considered acceptable. Each culture has something unique that they would want to show off almost in variance at what is generally accepted.

It is also true that true Globalization has set in. We can book hotels every where, my friends can find watering holes wherever they go, meeting etiquette are getting standardized, in most places living and getting back is not an issue if they have access to technology. Technology seems to be come a great leveller and the Business houses that are forming the vehicle that routes them to far away places.

Sydney is  a beautiful place and Australians open and frank. I met an interesting Australian who had tried out many worlds the dark and the bright, East and West. It is always nice for an Indian to hear good things about the Indian heritage and culture particularly from a foreigner. A question that always bothered me was why is it that - despite the thousands of years of civilization - an Indian lifestyle is more difficult than a typical western like culture.

Our rituals are elaborate, our cooking is elaborate, our dressing (traditional) is elaborate, our prayers are elaborate, our festivals are elaborate, our travel to office is elaborate and so many others. For a civilization that wears simplicity as a virtue (have you seen Mahatma Gandhi's loin clothes) this is a major irony. These Western like cultures are in fact more direct and many a times up to the point - almost like there are no strings attached (don't get me wrong - I did not mean that). Even a dog is privileged in the western like cultures almost a substitute to kids. There are no rituals and a dog can get to the sofa and sit on it, I know of a pet dog in India that has to follow rituals.

The answer may lie in some Karma. Whether one has the legs of dogs or not, all have to face the consequence of Karma - it is a dog's life after all - that of a street dog or a kid like pet.

The other Anna....the grassroot democracy

KR Puram railway bridge traffic bottleneck on the way towards ITPL in Bangalore has seen some surprising improvements in the last month. What used to take 15 minutes for a 1km stretch can now be crossed in less than 5 minutes in peak traffic. This is the best I have seen at this stretch in the last 12 years (from the time before the bridge was constructed).

I heard the local MLA of KR Puram met the Railway General Manager with about 1000 of his supporters to convince the GM of the need to release some Railway land to ease traffic. Naturally, I don't support such a show of unnecessary strength to convince a bureaucrat in the service of the country but I don't have many other instances when a local politician uses his muscle power for public good.

Now MLA Anna if you contest against the other Anna you will have my one vote for achieving this goal.

I read an article in Deccan Herald that the local police are aware of the problem at the mouth of the bridge near the temple and the issue related to the traffic on the way into the city from ITPL via K.R. Puram. I would like to add that traffic can be smoothened if the pedestrians are provided a better crossing path, more secure and less hinder some to the traffic.

If you do that and get the papers to write about it. With Gowda and Yeddy fighting, you may get the Gaddi too. Who knows?