Raj-'neeyat' Vs Raj-'neeti' and the dilemma for the 'real' Aam Admi

By: Amit Bhushan Date: 9th Dec 2013

The recent electoral events in India have kicked off various debates with various political and apolitical people gazing through their kaleidoscope about the direction of politics in India. This is even as the near complete lack of debate about the basic premises of politics which are rising again over the horizon to make us realize that these bedrock must be spotted clearly and debates need to circulate about these rather than the frivolous hot topics provided by journos in commercial mass media. The reason is simple- the commercial mass media is putting its money where its mouth is i.e. the TRPs and circulation basis catchy sloganeer-ism; since this catches eye or appeal senses of its consumer. However making use of such sloganeer-ism a fulcrum of political discourse in the country including its continued deployment by old & new political parties, is under test. Although this fact is yet to sink-in and its gains weighed appropriately amongst political parties. This could be due to over reliance on commercial mass media by political class as an important bridge between the party leaders (especially the ones too busy for ground contact) and their voters. This is even as other tools like social media asserting themselves powerfully leading to changes in practices even though most of the past relics are still in place and the commercial mass media still remains powerful. Another fact is that the changes are rued upon by incumbents as not only disruptive but destructive as well. The reasons are twofold: First, the public is yet to learn to articulate and argue with leaders' about specifics. In fact there is a complete absence of this platform other than the social media. It also doesn't help that much of out idol worshipping/god fearing or god loving public is more used to think of better people or super human leaders' rather than specific policies, processes procedures and formulae which succeed or fail rather than just the individual people who succeed or fail. Rather than understanding, countering and challenging such system, the political people/leaders as well as parties have remain subservient to such a system and in the process yielded to a presumptuous media's need to create Spectacles as well as near Utopian delivery ideas which are hazy at best since there can be no planned delivery due to impracticality of such ideas. However our commercial media is completely convinced as well has convinced all budding leaders, that unless such a track is followed there can be no political future and political wins are impossibility without them. The treatment of political leaders by out media is best described by a very famous Shloka which reads: Asit Giri Samamsyat Kajjalam Sindhupatre, Surtaruvar Shakha Lekhini Patramurvi | Likhiti Yadi Gruhitva Sharada Sarvakalam, Tadyapi Tav Gunanamish Paaram Na Yaati || Even if Maa Saraswati keeps on writing forever (Anant kal) on the leaves of all the trees about you and your virtues, she can not do so, even with a help of a pen (kalam) made of all the mountains and ink (syahi) made of all sea waters of this earth. Such is your greatness! Such practices lead to irrational expectations being fanned unnecessarily without enough thought or debate in order to cultivate various groups of voter even as a policy idea may not be in fitness with the scheme of things of their leaders. However, the political parties as well as leaders turn a blind eye to this and allow the confusion to remain so that they can use

this to their advantage as some situation unfolds for them. However in the process, public expectations are set in an irrational manner and this starts driving irrational demands basis irrational public expectations. Taking the case of a newbie party to explain this further (There are already several agenda items which cannot be explained by leaders in established parties, however this is being highlighted so point that new comers must try to differentiate themselves and participate to change the game early on rather than follow steps of existing players. Example 1: This is easy. Take the case of reinvigoration of education. The newbie party has committed to recruiting Permanent Teachers with Grade Pay. The argument offered is that teaching position are regular jobs/operations and getting better teachers will lead to improvement of teaching in government schools and bring them at par with private schools. This actually goes against logic because the private schools who serve mass market largely do not offer grade pay or permanent jobs to their teachers. It is micro management by managers of these schools with some unscrupulous practices, which ensures that they fare better in terms of meeting expectations of their students as well as their parents. So the logic forwarded by the party is nothing but electoral appeal to a group of people i.e. teachers. Example 2: Now taking an area which has not be touched or spoken but related to a burning issue i.e. energy' which was widely used to encash votes. This is related to distribution of LPG. That there is leakage in the system is well known. Such is the rampant leakage that most of the consumers receive packs which weigh 8-15% less than the promised pack weight in the capital city. While much hue and cry was made on a specific mode of energy to mobilize fight against the fleecing Corporates' tied to ruling dispensation while the other mode of energy was left unspoken. If one analyzes the economic on this side, one will find that an LPG distributor in Delhi has to invest in Land which is 30 times of some of the other areas say Jalpaigudi. The wage rate of labour is almost two and a half times. Yet the LPG distributor operates in Delhi with the same margin as a distributor in Jalpaigudi. True that the inventory turnover that is possible to be achieve in Delhi is 6-7 times in Capital city than that of Jalpaigudi i.e. it is possible to sell a truck load of cylinders in a day compared to a week in say Jalpaigudi. However initial investment and running expenses do not yield commensurate return. However, the economics to leakages help make situation even. And when such leakages are initiated, the firesale profits do not take time to spread wings in society. Such issues are happily overlooked for the fear of opening up of pandorabox. The politics in India need to change from life in a merry-go-round to a lively debate on tough issues in which politicians of all hue and colour must participate. We have a principal opposition which claims to be first in the line of victory not basis Neeti but because of so called better Neeyat. In effect what they seem to be saying is that all policies by the present party are hunky dory excepting a few like FDI and some related to domestic security as well as foreign policy. Only that the GOP has not championed their own policies in as good a manner in which the Principal opposition can possibly do. They leadership seems sure that this is going to be their mantra for success in the coming elections. The newbie party is also falling shy of exploring policy options to tinker with the prevailing incentive system so that we have a better performing system but is looking at fighting corruption basis Lokpal' and falling shy to debate new and better options. Better Neeyat is also there mantra even in the face of soaring expectations of people. In India, the people's vote should be read more carefully to decipher if the vote is just for face change or

for system change and what appropriate incentive structure change can meet those expectations. The debate between Raj-Neeti and Raj-Neeyat is not new but age-old one. The Neeyat (or it could have been called dharma as well but neeyat is more inclusive so this is being used in article) is required to guide decision making in policy ambiguity areas. Neeti is required to be constantly upgraded to meet the people's need in accordance with policies and killing arbitrary decision making. A fine balance of both is required for governance; however confusion between the two or its personification creates confusion in people as well as amongst the leaders. In an idol worshipping nation, this seems that it can go to any length.

CHARACTERSTICS OF A KEYNOTE SPEAKER:

Keynote speakers help us to understand the daily rigors of life, work and the best ways to handle them. For giving guidance to others, they themselves should be well versed and confident in handling various scenarios and situations. So what attributes should a top key-note speaker possess in order to successfully guide his audience? Read on to find the top 5 characteristics of a key-note speaker. 1. Self - Confidence It goes without saying that the most important characteristic of a keynote speaker is self-confidence. Without it, he cannot effectively communicate with his audience. A high self-confidence will enable a keynote speaker to adapt himself to any situation and to face any kind of audience. There is no guarantee that an audience will always be receptive to his ideas. A confident speaker should be able to handle any type of audience and deal with criticisms. 2. Empathy A good keynote speaker empathizes with his audience. He is able to feel, connect and understand the requirements of his listeners. He should understand why he is on the podium and what message he has to deliver so that his audience is benefited from it. Empathizing will endear him to the audience and he will always be in demand. Which speaker would not want that? 3. Vocabulary A good keynote speaker should have a strong vocabulary in whatever language and topics he is speaking on. Be it English, German or Japanese, strong vocabulary skills will give him ways to communicate his ideas more effectively. He will not be at a loss for words at crucial moment. If during an event, he stops because of vocabulary lag, it can lead to awkwardness and embarrassing situations. The audience will lose confidence in him. 4. Ideas Fresh and motivating ideas are the key strength of a good speaker. Companies usually arrange for motivational keynote sessions in order to inspire its employees to think creatively and out of the box. Fresh ideas are vital for change, development and growth in business and motivational speakers can be an effective medium to bring that spark in thinking. Employees who improve on their company processes are an asset in any organization. 5. Awareness

An effective speaker should be well aware of the current business, information and technological trends so that he can of help companies in training their employees. Companies often want their employees to know about the latest happening and they often employ expert keynote sessions. An up-to-date speaker will always be in demand and his ideas, thoughts well received. He should be able to field doubts on any current affairs and technological advancements, which can only be achieved by constant reading and researching. Ensure that your appointed keynote speaker has the above five characteristics which will enrich your work, personal life and not make you regret your decision in scheduling his session.

A case for Growth of select sectors in India- (2011-15) (Opportunities for Youth in India)

The financial turmoil has upset growth prospects of many businesses. The corporate and even countries are constrained to look for new alternatives for growth of the economy while making efforts to protect existing businesses and jobs. Several Financial Institutions have been jolted and are in serious need of repairs & restructuring. Those that have managed to stay afloat either due to largesse of the Monetary policy or due to Government's effort have been chastised enough and a cautious about where they put their Money,' henceforth. Large Business Conglomerates across the globe are busy reassessing their plans, reorient to the emerging situation, renew emerging demand-supply scenarios & busy defining new & more robust supply chains to effectively cater to emerging situation. Effects are being seen everywhere as several people being rendered jobless even as quite a few others are transferred and witness role changes with redefined wages. The same are results of corporate adaptation towards emerging demand scenarios, restructuring of the length, breadth & depth of their product-lines and assessment of required production capacity. Governments across the world are adapting their monetary & fiscal policies to help population & organizations adjust to the emerging realities. This is even while quest for reassessment to make changes to the Regulatory Regimes and Business Policy & procedures, Institutional Support Architecture and Infrastructure Support development continues across the Globe. While the Corporate quest for stability continues; it can be said with some conviction that with such volatility in commodity prices, interest rates and currencies shall continue for the next few years. This shall have huge impact of Storage costs (due to interest rates); Haulage/Transportation/Logistics Cost (due to Bunker/Fuel oil/Gas); Processing/Production costs (due to Currency fluctuations, Interest rates, commodity prices). There is also a sea change in our understanding and perception of Risk and plans for mitigation of those Risks are quite different from what they used to be previously. Senior Managements at Corporate are now constrained to plan for various scenarios that may play out and hedge their Risks accordingly so as not to be caught unaware. They are trying to assemble an integrated/holistic view of the entire organization's activities, the various regulatory constraints each of their units operate under and the multitudes of possibilities that each of those units may possess. They are seized to identify potential opportunities there under including ways to cut costs, reduce risks or improve client servicing by adding new products or new customers. This is resulting is a lot of opportunities in Finance and Administration space of the corporate and some of this work is increasingly being

outsourced and being moved to low cost locations such as India. While presently engaged with relatively low value added work, these centers shall be required to metamorphose into high value added insight' provider in the future; failing on this count will lead to atrophy of such centers to other lower cost destinations in the increasingly demanding environment. The trend is being egged by the Labour Cost Arbitrage which is one area of stability (sans the currency fluctuation scenario, of course) and making decision on this count is seen as relatively lower Risk. Added to these trends are the scores of changes that are being spearheaded/facilitated by Government in the spheres of regulatory policy, Tax regimen, infrastructure changes & environmental concerns. These changes are reshaping the way in which business shall be conducted, ability to source/provide services to the Global corporations and engage effectively with global economic environment. Then the corporate also need to figure out the threat to security of the systems, personnel, assets and the possible impact they pose of business continuity and to carry forward Business as usual. These concerns are weighing upon their concerns to move their business processes overseas and shall continue to effect business decisions. The Global corporations had already initiated sourcing of services in areas of Human Resource process outsourcing, Client Relationship Management process outsourcing, Vendor and Dealer Management process outsourcing, Payments process outsourcing, Logistics and inventory management process outsourcing, Global Sourcing processes outsourcing, Legal process outsourcing, Medical transcription process outsourcing etc. However most of these processes were on discrete legacy systems and of relatively low complexity though requiring a large human effort. Now back-office activity of highly integrated & sophisticated systems is also being moved to lower cost destinations. Result is a clutch of high end processes are increasingly being considered to be moved to lower cost destinations. However, support for transitioning and migration of the processes shall be forthcoming only if professionals display a lot of Sensibility' and Sensitivity'. Sensibility is required to understand the context in which changes are being made and associated conditions & consequences. What is required is full appreciation of concerns of the host country (from where process is being outsourced), their service requirements, perception of Risk and Risk control/management framework. Added to this is the need for appreciation of process standardization and integration requirements of the Global corporate/headquarters which are at the core of driving these changes. Also, appreciation of impact of global changes in accounting regulations such as advent of IFRS or the impact of Sarbanes-Oxley act etc. is required in order to make process improvements and to make them more user friendly. Thus professional demand is to be able to decipher a more complete picture of the system and chaos across the corporate basis limited discussions and information disclosures, solutioning and service delivery to the satisfaction of stakeholders. Sensitivity is required to understand how various processes are stacked together to meet end customer's requirement and also on which processes/activities are being moved. How such a transition shall be carried out to be effective. What can be go/no go areas while a make-over/transformation of the process is carried out so that residual risk remains under control and how hand-off of information shall be carried out from both sides, performance requirements etc. There is need to convince outsourcers regarding ability to perform services as per requirements with Reliability; and display Responsiveness towards any concerns/issues that the client may have including ability to understand the concerns/issues fully (& thus maintain information levels equal to the levels at the host/global levels). Thus he understanding to adequately man onsite and offshore processes with proper information/knowledge transfer procedures and balancing of understanding level at all levels is required.

Quite a few processes being considered for outsourcing are from Financial organizations itself like Banks, FIs and Insurance companies. Some of the Credit rating companies may also be considering moving processes overseas to the extent these processes are standardized, stable and low risk allow considerable savings in manpower costs without any deviation in results. The processes being considered for moving overseas include processes like client on-boarding including maintenance of static data and associated processes like credit/insurance application processing (i.e. those processes that may be carried out effectively from low cost destination such as preparation of financial spreadsheets and financial risk ratings, collateral and margin maintenance/evaluation etc. and miscellaneous processes related to client acquisition and underwriting). Then there is always the manpower intensive transaction processes some which like Trade Finance and Services, Payment processes, Custody operations, Treasury operations etc. where deal entry, authorizations, validations may be required to be carried out at back office and outsourcing may offer considerable scope of cutting costs. The same may also be true for supply chain financing, e-invoicing processes, e-commerce arrangements etc. Claims Settlement/ Management processes, Credit rating information processing and management for Rating companies, Utilities, Card companies and retailers may be some of the other areas where outsourcing may have scope for standardization, cost-reduction and process improvement. Adequate display of maturity to handle concerns with adequate degree of Sensibility and Sensitivity; delivery of services with Reliability and Responsiveness to issues/concerns (of course taking integrity, commitment and professionalism for granted) will lead to further gains in areas which require high touch i.e. ability to grasp complex and often unstructured needs and retrieve useful information and presenting the same is a structured manner to facilitate decision making : 1. Organization Data/Information/ Knowledge Management arenas. This shall include planning and maintenance of Data structures and maintenance of information/knowledge repositories. Storage, retrieval and dissemination of information/data and associated services. 2. Research for Information from public sources including collation and presentation of such information to solve problems or to meet internal information requirements of executives. Also, carrying out experiments to validate reject hypothesis (scientific, engineering or management etc.), research new processes and technologies for their potential to improve performance or reduce cost etc. 3. Information services such as Information/New gathering from around the World for Online, print news A/V media, magazines, business news organizations etc. including dissemination of customized information/news basis relevance criteria as well as on-demand retrieval etc. Of course this will require much greater cultural understanding appreciation for aesthetic sense of the customers i.e. the manner in which the gather, collate and interpret information including the manner in which they prefer the required information to be presented. 4. Entertainment services such as Short and Full length movies, Documentaries and professional training related stuff, Animations, educational films and audios, Gaming software etc. which shall also require high degree of appreciation for Culture and Aesthetic sense of the people of host countries. The above assessment is basis understanding that the labour cost arbitrage is likely to be sustained with average Labour cost plus overhead for a developed country worker at USD 80,000 approx. while that of India/developing country worker ruling at USD 25,000. Varying estimate suggest that there is potential for migration/transitioning of anywhere between

10,000,000 to 25,000,000 (10-25 mio.) jobs in next 4-8 years. India shall require an investment of close to 75-225 Billion USD to support such transitioning of jobs for which it needs to create the right infrastructure and climate. There is also need to develop orientation, awareness, knowledge and skills to deliver performance for such jobs and sustain interest of customers to carry out such transitioning/migrations as well as attracting investors, domestic and foreign to support the process. There is also need to reach out to potential outsourcers to help them improve understanding of economics, technology, control processes including any associated issues that they may have while addressing their concerns. Also, there is need to constantly highlight the success stories in relevant forums, a process which has now taken back seat due to fear of political retribution in the developed countries.