Life is an experience and not just a bunch of paychecks

And every day, from school bus ride in the morning to a film in the night; we wish for possession of lot many materialistic things related to cars, bikes, gadgets and many others. If not, we are (so called) motivated by relatives and neighbors to be jealous of competing friends regarding aiming for bigger salaries, bigger cars and bigger homes. And in the way, we would tend to miss many life changing opportunities.
Risk is an eternal part of life that makes it enthralling, beautiful and memorable. Maybe, because of that in the previous times Kings used to hunt and went for wars (although ethically and morally wrong). But this important ingredient is missing from the life of a middle class family; that further lead to missing such opportunities in life. Either going for a start-up or leaving the job to work on a social cause or following passion like photography, painting or any other; the middle class mindset (risk averse) prevent us from following such.
Such opportunities (successful or failure) beyond their monetary importance are implicitly carrying the messages of innovation and inner happiness. But the paychecks rarely have such implicit meaning and only have obligations, so called secure obligations. But in life, what remains after all the events are the thrill associated with it, the adrenaline rush and the memories; which can't be purchased with the paychecks but through experience (with those opportunities). That's what life is.

MGNREGA

A lot of hue and cry going on over the tweaking of labor:material ratio from 60:40 to 51:49 as well as over the overall benefit of MGNREGA the so called ROI.
MGNREGA standing as the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act was started in 2005 is a demand driven right to work programme to rural India. It aims at ensuring 100 days of productive work to rural households during off agricultural season ensuring a minimum wage. The purpose behind the programme included ensuring a minimum wage rate to agricultural labourers by providing them a bargaining tool, preventing the off season migration from undeveloped rural areas, reducing poverty through wage based empowerment of poor, women empowerment through increased women labor force participation ratio, uplifment of oppressed classes like SC and ST and implicitly increasing literacy level among destitute's children by providing working opportunities to parents. The program is very noble in its objectives and labor:material ratio of 60:40 is in right direction towards labor intensive works to be carried.
Now 9 years after its deployment, time has come to analyze the actual benefits caused by MGNREGA and at what costs. It has been observed that number of days an average worker is provided with work is a meagre 46 days in 2013-14 with a outlay of 33000 crore of INR. Also, the quality of infrastructure built under MGNREGA are of inferior standards. A lot many reasons are there behind this debacle, starting from poor governance in job card distribution, poor coordination among departments over transfer of funds leading to delay in payment of wages, poor coordination among different social sector programmes like PMGSY, MGNREGA, NBA (Nirmal Bharat Abhiyaan transferred to Swachha Bharat Abhiyaan), poor implementation of information, education and communication of programmes among rural people, awareness among PRI over their power in conducting social audits of programme, and mal-functioning grievance redressal mechanism. Another major cause which has been said to be responsible for poor quality of infrastructure is less inclusion of material expenditure. Another ground on which MGNREGA has been criticized is the rising food inflation in India and the blame is on increased rural wages in agriculture (MGNREGA minimum wage has been increased from 67 in 2006-07 to 132 in 2013-14).
Under such reasons, there are talks of scrapping MGNREGA to improve the quality of constructional works being carried out and focus towards infrastructural built up to boost manufacturing.
At this point, we should rather revise the major objectives of MGNREGA and its role in achieving those and then look at the reasons behind its failure. And if those failure can be rooted out in a sustainable and profitable manner or to scrap the programme. MGNREGA achievement has been mixed across the states, while it has been more successful in southern states of Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu who together provided 23% of working hours under MGNREGA using smart card, social audit by panchayats, use of ICT in payment of wages and closing all loopholes and dedicated grievance redressal mechanism. While in poor states like UP, Bihar, Jharkhand, Orissa there are the major leakage in the funds. But the impact is more widespread in these backward states only reducing the migration from the tribal areas of Orissa and Madhya Pradesh with availability of works and high involvement of women (near about 45% ) which has actually been one of its major objective.
Coming to quality of construction, in the rising awareness towards environment and world moving from GDP level of growth to Gross Happiness Index and Happy Planet Index of development, there is need to carry out eco-friendly construction practices and use of natural resources. And this is what has been practiced in many of the rural blocks in rainwater harvesting, irrigation infrastructure and development projects and if it has not been done, professional teams have to be deployed at rural level to achieve this. To the point of MGNREGA causing inflation, it's contribution to inflation is very less with respect to structural causes (protein based diet and low output of pulses and livestock, poor agricultural infrastructure in terms of cold storage and warehousing, increase in MSP under rich farmer lobbying). Anyway inflation is synonymous to decreasing unemployment as per philips curve and if that inflation is coming on the empowerment of poor agricultural labourers, it must be accepted. And efforts should be rather on decreasing structural causes.
The recent govt. initiative for special focus on 2500 backward blocks through enhanced funding and deployment of Cluster based professional teams to assist the panchayats in carrying out productive work in an environmentally friendly manner is in the right direction of streamlining MGNREGA. At the same time, learning is there for poor performing states from states like AP and Tamil Nadu which has shown the way of blocking leakage through use of ICT initiatives. MGNREGA has been a great innovation towards achieving equality in rural society which need to be nurtured rather than scrapped.

Inflation

1. Inflation is the phenomenon of rise in prices of the goods and services over a period of time. It can be both desirable and non-desirable depending upon the quantitative limit of Inflation and is caused out of a number of reasons from demand supply gap more often, rise in prices of raw materials, disdain in the supply chain of the system, black-marketing and hoarding and many others.
2. Inflation can be measured in a variety of different ways. One way is to measure it at different levels of supply chain like at whole price level and is known as Wholesale Price Index (WPI) and at retailer level called as Consumer Price Index (CPI). Also number of goods and services included inside them can vary depending on the decision making body of the country or the state. It can be calculated differently for different sets of people depending on their consumption pattern like CPI-Industrial workers (CPI-IW) and CPI-Agricultural Labors (CPI-AL). In India they are collected and published by different organizations from Ministry of Statistics to Ministry of Labor.
3. Inflation is desirable when it is in limits and in coherence with development and growth in terms of production and demand. Different central banks across the world target a sustainable inflation rate which is normally in the range of 2-4% year on year. Such inflation rate has proven to be in line with growth in GDP and assures benefit to all the stakeholders of the system. Federal Bank of US target inflation rate of 1--2% to sustain a growth rate of 3-5% of their economy, similarly European Central Bank targets inflation rate of 2% to sustain growth rate of 3-4%. German Bundesbank (before formation of ECB) has proved its mettle in fighting inflation to keep it below 2% and this sustained high growth for german manufacturers throughout the cold war period.
4. While on the other hand inflation may proved to be undesirable when it is beyond the comfortable range of 4-6%. Such inflation rate is not sustainable and mainly caused out of abrupt hike in prices of raw materials, increased cost of production out of regulatory reasons, hoarding, black-marketing or may be because of lack of competition in the market. Such high rate of inflation is harmful  because of increase in prices of goods and thus hampering its consumption and thus hampering the demand and ultimately growth of the sector. It also erodes the faith of foreign investors into the economy of the country and lead to flight off of foreign investors. Along with high inflation, demand of the goods come down and as per Demand Supply curve; this will further pull down production leading to unemployment and less investment into the economy. In the short run, this will cause slowdown and high inflation prolonged for a long time duration will push the sector into recession.
5. In context of India, since independence inflation has been predominant out of number of factors. At some instant, inflation is there in food grains in pre green revolution era out of drought and crop failure limiting the supply of food grains; at other instant inflation is there in capital and durable items because of increase in prices of raw materials and regulatory reasons like that of vehicles because of shortage of coal and electricity inflating price of steel and then to vehicles. Inflation has thus, a wide reaching affect to multiple sectors. The worst form of inflation is due to malpractices like hoarding of goods creating artificial shortage with motives of earning high profits. Such practices are very common to India from the time of britishers and specially in the food grains as they are essential items of consumption.
6. In the current scenario, inflation is high and is hovering around 8-12% in case of CPI because of reasons including high govt. expenditure through MGNREGA and other social assistance programmes pushing more money into the market, continuous increase in MSP (minimum support price) of cereals and other food items pushing cost at the procurement level, as well as malpractices of hoarding.
7. Although all sections of society is affected by high inflation as it leads to wiping off the savings of the families and individuals. But the worst effected people are marginally poor who are continuously moving in and out of the poverty line and specially because of high inflation in case of foods and essential items. In the absence of govt. support, they have been pushed below the subsistence level
8. Govt. across the world use to take multiple steps to check high inflation. The leading fight against inflation is carried on by central banks who through target based inflation increase/decrease the interest rates to control the flow of money into the market (more money in the hands of people pushes up the demand of the goods). This they do through changing the rates at which they lend money to the banks and other regulated institutions and thus affecting cost to money. In case of India, Reserve Bank of India is leading in this fight with target inflation of 4+_2%, through repo and reverse repo rates.
9. Besides this, govt. across the world ensure the prices of the goods and commodities not to breach a certain level by controlling the import and export of those goods and commodities. Further controlling the prices of essential commodities through acts and laws like Essential Commodities Act in case of India. Laws across the world have been made to check hoarding of commodities and black-marketing of such goods.
10. In-spite of such measures high inflation is prevalent in society sometimes because of poor implementation of laws and rules, poor forecasting in case of central banks, natural calamities and poor planning at production level. The war against high inflation has to be continuously fought through existing and innovative tools with firm hands in the interest of the society and economy as a whole.

Give a try....

Not only in present times, even our previous generation or the generations much before them; youths always would have fallen in love with someone or other in their life. And most of time, they used to have a background check of the special girl/boy and very few used to have the courage to accept the feeling in front of him/her. And many a times, most of them let the feelings fade on grounds of the boy/girl being from different religion, class or caste of the society. The basic deterrent here is the social malaise like communal-ism, caste-ism, class difference and others on the basis of which we limit our emotions. 

Now, going against the usual process which very of us used to practice also; in-spite of the human created deterrent if we go along with the divine feeling of love and accept that feeling in front of him/her. There can be series of consequences, either accepted or dejected or in a between of the two. Well, the motive here is neither to force your feeling on the other nor to be dis-heartened by the rejection; the basic motive to promote these feelings is to respect free thinking and feelings and more than that to get over the social malaise of casteism, communalism regionalism and others. 

Because in the later part of our life, when we come across the real life incidents of murder, riots and mass murder in the name of religion or inequalities in society on grounds of caste and favoritism; rather than taking sides in such conflicts we should respect that godly feeling of love. And amid all these conflicts, we should rather strengthen harmony. The evils that we used to encounter in our later life can be encountered only with feeling of love and some rosily experience with family and loved ones that we encounter in our early life and it is these experiences that keep us going in the right directions in presence of evils all around us. 

Indo-US relations: How it can shape in future?

India after independence, despite being founding fathers to Non Aligned Movement was more aligned to USSR owing to its inherent socialism in domestic development policies adopted by Indian politician. But after 1991 i.e. end of cold war, India review its foreign policy and developing closer ties with European ties and US; also taking care of its investment need in infrastructure and technological needs after New Economic Policy 1991.
In the present uni-polar world growing more towards multipolar; India relations with US is not in upswing corroborating to Khobragade issues as well as other contentious issues at WTO negotiations. But with single party govt. in India and changing world with west asia crisis, Ukraine crisis, South china sea crisis and many more, Indo-US relations will depend on different happenings at different fronts.
Nuclear Energy Front
After the signing of Henry J Hyde Indo-US Peaceful Atomic Cooperation Act which paves the way for India to buy US nuclear reactors and fuel for civilian use also including the 123 agreement on same; there is growing hope for peaceful cooperation. Although, the bone of contention can be the liability clause for US firms engaging into the same.
Trade Relations Front
India need for transfer of technology and measure to boost foreign trade and with US as major market for IT outsourcing, trade relations will move on more healthier path. India balance of trade surplus with  US has grown twice to $20 billion from 2009 to 2013. Although, at WTO and Climate change conferences and negotiations, US strongly pressing against benefits enjoyed by India and China as a developing economy rather than being into emerging economy.
Strategic Front
US being awry of China and its China containment policy with supporting Japan and Taiwan in East will go for supporting India in the west. Also with a history of restrained Indo-China relations and china policy of encircling India through string of pearls and Maritime Silk Route; India will prefer to have heavyweights by its side. In the recent past, US relation with Pakistan is in frills because of growing Islamist extremism and US drone attacks on Pakistan Afghanistan border. This further alienates India in recent future to have bilateral talks with US at much higher level.
Besides, that US still had pressing situations in Afghanistan and Iraq and premature withdrawal from america's commitments in those countries would make US to have asian ally for reconstruction. And these perfectly suits Indian viewpoint where Afghanistan stability is important from regional security and Iraq's political stability is needed to take care of India's burgeoning energy import bills.
Russia, India's closest ally but recent incidents of military helicopter sale to Pakistan and growing proximity with China after Ukraine crisis force India to raise concern with Russia at talks with US by its side.

Innovation in public service

In India, public service is theoretically in the hands of elected leaders and the task of ope-rationalizing and executing the plans are practically in the hands of bureaucrats and govt. officials. Such a massive task of executing tens and hundreds of crores of development activities are in the hands of  these people. And at the ground level, many of these bureaucrats have an average qualification or exposure to best practices and innovation in operations management or planning or the practices of collaborator in social/public projects. (leaving aside very few candidates with very good credentials entering the services these days) Although, govt. do have experts of these at highest level of policy framing and policy monitoring in forms of planning commission or various other commissions. 

At the same time, there are literally thousands of bright stars who are graduating and post graduating from best to average colleges and working in various Indian and MNC firms. And there only aim is to have fat cheque at end of month, have decent lifestyle and metro culture. Although many of them are capable of qualifying for govt. bureaucracy but rarely do they bother about that on many grounds. Corruption, political pressure, remote location, lack of will power to serve society in large, meagre probability of success in qualifying examination and above all the most diminishing factor to bright candidates is lack of innovation opportunity in such jobs. And only one who used to prepare or have motivation to enter this field is because of huge power vested to these bureaucrats, social prestige associated with that. Also most of these students are from areas where importance to power is known over innovation and money.

Well, there are restrictions in this public service job, but also there are freedom to implement projects and policies at ground zero level. And taking consideration of shoddy states of affair, there is great scope for improvement. You may not change the system, but you can surely establish a university or a hospital taking help of private firms CSR initiatives by acting as a collaborator. You may not control the corruption in system but you can definitely improve the grievance redressal mechanism by ICT initiatives. You may not change the ethics of govt. employees but you can definitely input practices of operation management in ensuring timely delivery of projects deliverable. Opportunity is immense, only thing needed is candidates who are motivated towards innovation in public distribution and public service and obviously who see his smile in the satisfied face of destitute ones.

Educated and Enlightened

Atmosphere is getting hot not just because it's April, rather more because of election. Rise of middle class against the corruption, crony capitalism or nepotism in govt. or corporate circles is going to shape the Central govt. Leaders, activists and even general enthusiasts are talking about importance of education to uproot corruption. A lot more emphasis is given on education. But is education enough to solve all the problems India is facing from ground level at Panchayat or district official level to streets of planning commission and other secretariats?

I doubt this fact? Just by educating the uneducated rarely going to make an honest society and environment to thrive. Presently, a lot many of educated individuals specially belonging from lower middle class to middle class are eyeing govt. lucrative jobs. And they are lucrative from the point of black money or unprecedented power. And why they are eyeing all these? Because of the previous generation's deeds regarding making a fortune while being at that lucrative position and their practice of boasting in public meetings. 

On one hand, these educated parents want their wards to be educated to the best level. While on other side, expecting them to be at same or higher such lucrative jobs and make another fortune for the family. 

Just education is not enough in the present scenario, enlightenment is also must. 

Just enlightenment will make you a better citizen but never a better husband or a son or a father. Because it is through education (either acquired in schools or from experience) only, one can earn and live a decent life. It's only combination of education and enlightenment that can transform a society into corruption free hamlet.

Startup opportunity in Indian Education Sector....

True words from Einstein, "The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education".

This benign fact about education is still prevalent in Indian context. Adding on to this feature of Indian education sector, there is also the lack of individuality among Indian students regarding selection of field for their prospective careers.
It is not that there is lack of understanding among all the parents; rather it's their ignorance to all the other opportunities or their in-sensitiveness to other career prospects. Those who are enlightened, or exposed to various career prospects always have the advantage.
I am discussing this opportunity from the childhood of an individual. Nowadays, almost 80% of Indian parents want their children to be into IIT or NIT or so called engineer. This is happening because of exaggerated publicity from media houses over the few 8 figure salaries that poured into these campuses. No one is caring about the interest of students, in-fact they are not supposed to develop any interests.
And the irony here is that, when these students meet failures in life, the sole culprit are them only.
For example; even though some middle class budding mind clears IIT or any other tier I college; everyone in the family is seeing 7 figure salary in them rather than the individuality of the concerned student. And even after entering into such institutes, the degree of not meeting up with expectations is much higher because of multiple factors like networking, interpersonal skills come into picture. And these students have no one from their family to guide them of these aspects.
The opportunity here in this context is the "Urgent need of Career Counselling and Innovative methods of teaching" in Indian context. This will not only make the parents realize about importance of interests but also the guidelines to these half successful candidates. 

Why you need a break....

It's 8'o clock in the morning, and with annoying alarm an average working class unmarried youth wake up in a hurry. In order to be on time, he hurriedly get ready in half an hour and rushed to office. Somehow he managed to pre-scheduled morning meeting to discuss on targets  etc. After working his ass off for like 12 to 14 hours, he used to retiring back with no energy nor any aspiration for any other recreational or creative activities. This is the usual story of 90% of best talents of India passing out of IITs or IIMs or IISc etc. There isn't any time for them to even think about self or society or mankind. The best minds of this nation is getting ravaged in the glittering MNCs culture and glamour of money and positions and family and peer pressure too. It's because of these practices and cultures, there are very few writers or thinkers or innovators in Modern India.
Amid st all such, what I personally feel is the need to take a break at periodic intervals of career. These breaks will not only provide time to self realization but also the vision towards long term career prospects. When you have a complete day with no predefined tasks or appointments, and you have all the time to fulfill all your hobbies, your desires and realize your potentials. The true self of yours can only be realized when you are self-introspecting, when you are living the life in the way you want to.
These small breaks not only act as the true mentor of yours life but also help in framing a healthy society. Because when people are doing something of their interest, the results are always outstanding. On the lighter side, this further improves the productivity of society or business.
Well, I don't have much examples related to success of this thought; but going by the facts of self-introspection and sayings of some of the best minds of 20th and 21st century like Steve Jobs or Mahatma Gandhi or Nelson Mandela or Mother Teresa or several other entrepreneurs, this thought does have a weight-age.
Also, going by Indian context where 80% of students don't know by the age of 25 about their dream. And where childhood dreams are made upon the foundation of family's aspirations or glamorous thoughts of some seniors. In between all such environment, having a break and spending it on self is worth being happy for life.

"Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom" - Aristotle

Why it's best time to take risk and go for startups?

This blog has been written taking account of Indian and world youth below the age of 30.

We are taught from our childhood, to score marks, get good grades; and eventually we will land up with decent to lavish lifestyle. We would have then plenty of money to fulfill all our needs and desires; unfortunately, which were not been available in our childhood. And we would have a beautiful wife and a plush home, eight figure salary or powerful government bureaucrat; of which we would boast upon. Till school (leaving some exceptions) we are taught to imitate rather than explore, expedite or try newer things.

Moving further we come to college, away from the chains of family restrictions on physical stimulus as well as neurological stimulus. In college, our thinking horizon broadens, we are more rebellious, we are more innovative and we are more risk takers. But coming to final year of college, and again under the pressure of family, friends and socially established criteria; a student's intelligence is judged from his/her job or salary package. Every student seems running towards that dream of monthly eight figure salary and decent ego boosting job. And once a childhood innovator is lost in the social stigmas and showoff.

At this stage, most of Indians and youths of other nations are. They are in their mid or late twenties with almost no to very little responsibilities and yet they are suffering from one of the deadliest addiction of A MONTHLY SALARY drug. We work for 12 hours a day and at the month end, waiting for the hefty cheque or salary to take home and enjoy. In fact, we used to fall in love with these kind of lifestyle where we are away from any roller-coasters of life and a risk free income.

But this is something, against which everyone need to realize. This is the perfect time for us to take risk and steepen our learning curve to exponential. Entrepreneurship is something, every adult in his twenties should aspire about. It doesn't assure you a showoff and assured income but on basis of probability it makes you a millionaire and a truckload of experience and exposure. It might be that you have to pay some loan/EMI or liability but these can never be the discouraging factor for going on with start ups as these liabilities can easily be met.
But as per Steve Jobs, "Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great word. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you will know when you find it. And like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle."

In India, the main problem is job-employee mismatch; where people are working for survival and proving others that they are more talented judging on lines of money and materialism. Amid st such environment, it's the best time for adults in 20's to break these chains of social stigmas, take risks, live free, learn from failures and improve the lifestyle of a common man through innovation.