Friday, May 31, 2013

'Global Zero' Possibilities

A nuclear-weapons-free world seems a dream; no harm trying...

The IAEA Director General, Yukiya Amano recently mentioned that “as a human being, as Director General of the IAEA – and not least as a citizen of the only country ever to experience the unspeakable horror of nuclear bombs – I believe with all my heart and soul that these horrific weapons must be eliminated.” What is unique in his statement is that such talk of a nuclear-weapons-free world has almost but vanished even from the lexicons of peaceniks. You see, it’s now considered childish to recommend such paradigm reversing objectives. Nuclear weapons are surely here to stay... or are they? Could there really be a possibility of a nuclear-weapons-free world? Well, as one defence commentator put it to yours truly, if India could eradicate polio, then anything is possible. Not many might remember that the Nuclear Weapons Convention (NWC) has actually aimed at the complete elimination of nuclear weapons. Those in the know would remember the global campaign called “Global Zero” which was launched in Paris in 2008 for the elimination of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). Yet, against the backdrop of the renewed nuclear race – encompassing Iran, India, Pakistan, Korea, China etcetera – it’s quite unlikely that the philosophies of the NWC or Global Zero campaigns would cut any ice with the global warlocks.

As per various estimates, there are more than 23,000 nuclear warheads active in the world, most with the old foxes (America and Russia primarily); that’s one reason that nouveau entrants into the nuclear club too have all their guns blazing. North Korea, which conducted its third nuclear test last month, stated that they are developing this, targeting the US over its hostile interference in Pyongyang. Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei, who had urged the elimination of nuclear weapons previously, has warned that “no power could stop us if we are forced to build that.” And the less said about Pakistan, the better.

While US President Obama did mention his objective “to secure the peace of the world without nuclear weapons” in his initial addresses in 2009, he ignored such a mention in his January 2013 inaugural address. Even Senator John Kerry recently admitted that “a nuclear-weapons-free world is no more than an aspiration.” Yet, one cannot deny that nuclear weapons have not been used since 1945. For instance, the United States and Soviet Union were ready to accept their embarrassing defeat in their wars in Afghanistan and Vietnam rather than use nuclear weapons for a desperate win. South Africa has rejected nuclear weapons post the Cold War.


Source : IIPM Editorial, 2013.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri
For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles
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Wednesday, May 29, 2013

Book Review: Tata Log

The company one keeps

Since 1868, when the founder and first chairman Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata established a private trading firm in Mumbai. it has not only grown and transformed into India’s premier industrial house but has also touched everyone’s life with salt to satellite television, steel to supercomputers to automobiles and what not. Not a day goes by when we are not touched by some or the other Tata product or services or news about them. The latest offering was the ascendency of Cyrus Mistry replacing Ratan Tata as chairman of Tata Group.

It is one industrial house in India that has been well chronicled beginning with RM Lala— the man who penned books such as The Creation Of Wealth: The Tatas From The 19th To 21st Century and Beyond The Last Blue Mountain: A Life Of J.R.D. Tata. Three years back, Morgen Witzel, a leading business historian authored a book Tata: The Evolution of a Corporate Brand. What differentiates Tata Log, written by Harish Bhat, managing director and CEO of Tata Global Beverages, from the previous works is that it attempts to portray how Tata companies have broken new ground and set new standards of excellence over the past two decades since the Indian economy was liberalised in 1991. Secondly by focussing on people who were involved in different projects closely and their dreams and dilemmas, crises and challenges, Bhat has captured the subaltern view of the post-liberalisation decades.

An old Tata hand, Bhat, who has been trying his hand at writing besides managing workers and business, has carefully chosen eight stories that reveal the Tata way of life. This lends a human touch to the Tata Group.

The book begins with the making of India’s first indigenously designed car, the Indica, followed by how Tata Chemicals in Mithapur is transforming the lives of a community in a far-flung, semi-arid corner of the country committed to social causes as diverse as raising the water table in a barren area to protecting the endangered whale shark. Equally interesting is the tale of Tanishq, and how Titan Industries is modernizing and transforming the huge jewellery industry in India.


The chapter on the tribulations of Tata Finance that brought out the worst and the best in the group is timely as Tata Capital is trying to emerge as a new player in the market.

Equally amazing is the story on Second Career Internship Programme, or SCIP, of the Tatas, which offers a second career to women who take a break to raise a family, and the building of the world’s fourth fastest and Asia’s fastest supercomputer-‘EKA’ by S Ramadorai and his team. These chapters peep into how Tata Group transformed itself and various communities and stakeholders around them.

Two stories - one on the first-ever acquisition of an iconic global brand by an Indian company - Tetley and the other about how Tata Steel became the first Indian organisation to win Japan’s prestigious Deming Prize for quality - have been showcased by the author to illustrate Tata’s arrival on the global scene more emphatically than ever before.

As a good storyteller, Bhat has taken care to pepper each of the chapters with interesting anecdotes. For instance he quotes Xerxes Desai, the man who founded Tanishq, to reveal that the name was actually inspired by a Harlequin Great Dane owned by him. The dog was called Monishqa.


In all these eight stories Bhat tell us that the Tata Way is all about 4Ps — pioneering, purposive, principled and perfect - and builds his case to exemplify these 4Ps.

If Bhat chooses to tell us how the group transformed after Indian economy began to walk on the path of liberalisation, he ought to have included the Nira Radia episode, the telecom scam, and the withdrawal of Nano project from West Bengal. But none of these finds a mention in Tata Log.
As the title suggests, Tata Log is at best a record keeping or about ‘Log’- people. Of course it is a question whether somebody like Bhat, who is a sensitive insider, would have dared to include these episodes. Also missing is the extraordinary response of the staff of the Taj Mahal Hotel in Mumbai during 26/11 attack.


Source : IIPM Editorial, 2013.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri
For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles

Saturday, May 25, 2013

Passing the baton

Jaipur marks a watershed in Congress’ chequered history by ushering in Rahul Gandhi as a new year gift. Pramod Kumar reports from the Chintin Shivir

The glorious history of Rajasthan, given its geographical location, is replete with instances of valour and comebacks, of success stories pulled out of thin air and against all odds.

 Rahul Gandhi’s ‘coronation’ as the virtual heir apparent to India’s ruling dynasty at this week’s Chintin Shivir in Jaipur should be seen in that backdrop.

 There was pathos, tears and raw emotion, all ingredients that make up for family melodrama and have the potential to move the masses politically, as few other slogans can.

 The Rahul Gandhi that came out was the new face of the Congress: young, exuberant, ready to take on challenges and the country onto another level. More pertinently, there was the promise of new politics, slogans and faces; it was as if a beleaguered Congress party was trying to exorcise the ghosts of the UPA as 2014 draws close and who better than Rahul to navigate the treacherous road ahead?

The unofficial handing over the baton to Rahul was by no means an accidental happening, it was carefully choreographed from start to finish. The developments that unfolded had keeping the Election Commission’s Code of Conduct in mind. First Rahul was introduced at New Delhi’s Ramlila Grounds on November 4 last year to ‘acquaint’ him with party workers; on November 9, in the next round, it were members of the Congress Working Committee (CWC) who were formally introduced to Rahul. These were traditional testers to gauge the mood of the cadres - not that it was required - but in the light of Rahul’s somewhat unsuccessful 2012 with reverses in UP and Gujarat, no one in the party was willing to take any chances.

 Once the core group around Congress president Sonia Gandhi decided that the Gandhi family grip on the party apparatus had in no way declined, then it became a question of time and matter of completing formalities. As a background to the carefully orchestrated coronation, young ministers were inducted in the Union Cabinet as a first step; the Chintin Shivir then only became an occasion to formalise a political contract which everyone knew existed.

Sonia herself set the ball rolling when she emphasised that policies need to be framed keeping the aspirations and frustrations of the angry youth in mind, whose issues could no longer be ignored.

It was known in the party that there would be a Jaipur Declaration and it would be headed by Rahul. It did not quite happen that way. On the second day of the proceedings, the Jaipur Declaration came and went without causing too much of a flutter; Rahul’s induction became the biggest event for Congress in the New Year.

An actual look at proceedings will tell you that after Rahul, the buzz was around young ministers. Jyotiraditya Scindia, Milind Deora, Jitin Prasad, RPN Singh and Sachin Pilot, were all flavour of the meet. A very busy BK Hari Prasad and Mukul Wasnik showed that the Jaipur Chintin Shivir, more than anything else, signaled yet another generational shift in India’s first political family.


Source : IIPM Editorial, 2013.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri
For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles
IIPM’s Management Consulting Arm-Planman Consulting
Professor Arindam Chaudhuri – A Man For The Society….
IIPM: Indian Institute of Planning and Management
IIPM makes business education truly global
Management Guru Arindam Chaudhuri
Rajita Chaudhuri-The New Age Woman

ExecutiveMBA

Friday, May 24, 2013

Movie review :Table No 21

Heavy weather in cool climes

It isn’t love that makes the world go round for Fiji resort owner Abdul Razzaq Khan (Paresh Rawal). Fear does. He asks the male protagonist: do you believe in God? Yes, the latter replies. No, you fear God, retorts Mr. Khan. For good measure, he adds: “Dar sey hi dunia chalti hai.”

You squirm: God! Is Paresh Rawal still in OMG mode? He isn’t. There is no Akshay Kumar here in the guise of Lord Krishna; for Table No. 21 is neither a social satire nor a profound cinematic discourse on the flip side of faith. Is it, then, a dark thriller that pulsates with life? That neither. Simply put, it is an eminently forgettable film.

On the face of it, Mr. Khan isn’t a pleasant guy to know. He employs all the dread that he can drum up and paints an unsuspecting couple, Vivaan and Siya Agasthi (Rajeev Khandelwal and Tena Desae), into a murky corner that proves too difficult for the lovey-dovey duo to squeeze out of.

For sure, Mr. Khan isn’t playing harmless games. He actually has a deadly point to prove, but we know not what he is really up to until the very tail-end of Table No. 21. Not that it matters.

In Aditya Datt’s cat and mouse thriller, the natural beauty of the salubrious island location far outstrips the less-than-dramatic energy of the fictive battle of psychological attrition that plays out as a series of tricky questions and tasks that Mr. Khan, as the host of an online game show, comes up with for the couple.   

The basic premise of Table No. 21 is intriguing enough; the performances are adequate, if not spectacular and the cinematography and editing are both of the highest order. What the film lacks is a genuinely gripping storyline.

The screenplay is overloaded with clichés right out of more conventional Bollywood melodramas – an out-of-work young man struggling to make ends meet and waiting for his big break; a doting wife as adept at romping in an itsy-bitsy bikini on a beach as at going the extra ‘immoral’ mile in keeping the home fires burning, and a deceptively courteous tormentor hell bent on messing up the twosome’s not-so-hard-earned idyllic vacation.
 
“Secrets are sexy”, Mr. Khan intones, his voice dripping menace. But he isn't the only one who has reasons to keep his cards close to his chest. Vivaan and Siya, too, have demons from the past to deal with.

The tale of sweet nothings, half-truths and betrayals that lie at the heart of Table No. 21 – the number refers to the Article of the Indian Constitution that guarantees “protection of life and personal liberty” – has a high-minded purpose.

Sadly, the methods it uses to get its point across are painfully laboured. Neither the social objective of the statement that it makes nor the dramatic intent of the mise en scène is served well enough in the bargain.


Source : IIPM Editorial, 2013.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri
For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles
IIPM’s Management Consulting Arm-Planman Consulting
Professor Arindam Chaudhuri – A Man For The Society….
IIPM: Indian Institute of Planning and Management
IIPM makes business education truly global
Management Guru Arindam Chaudhuri
Rajita Chaudhuri-The New Age Woman

ExecutiveMBA

Saturday, May 11, 2013

KIDNEY TRANSPLANTATIONS: DELAYS

Stringent laws and complicated procedures are delaying the kidney transplantation process killing more people in the process

This amendment may have succeeded in controlling the kidney racket scandal to a certain limit but it has several loopholes. Mostly, it has been severally criticized as being an unduly elongated process to get approvals for unrelated kidney donation. Due to the lengthy procedure and absence of government nominees on the authorisation committee, transplants have been stalled or delayed in several hospitals. One nephrologist from a reputed hospital said, “We appreciate the move of the government but the procedure has been moving at a snail’s pace.”

In one example, in 2011, many transplants in Maharashtra got delayed for a few months in several hospitals due to delays in release of authorisation letters. Although there is no official data on whether any deaths took place due to delayed release of approval letters, there is no doubt that this may have been the case. Kidney transplantation on an average burns the pocket of an individual by almost Rs 400,000 (if the same is done legally!); post-operative expenses come to around Rs.10,000 per month! And in case the deal is illegal, then the recipient’s family has to conjure up another Rs.200,000 to Rs.400,000.

In reality, the stringent laws that have come into force have not been able to completely curb the illegal kidney racket – but worse, in some cases, have ensured that honest and emergency cases of transplants have not been processed in time. The need of the moment is for the government to now set a more stringent time-bound condition on the Authorization Committee to clear any pending case for kidney transplantation within 24 hours of them receiving the application. If such a time duration seems too less, then the government should immediately disband the concept of an authorization committee which does not understand the criticality of life and death situations.


Source : IIPM Editorial, 2013.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri
 
For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles
 
IIPM’s Management Consulting Arm-Planman Consulting
Professor Arindam Chaudhuri – A Man For The Society….
IIPM: Indian Institute of Planning and Management
IIPM makes business education truly global
Management Guru Arindam Chaudhuri
Rajita Chaudhuri-The New Age Woman

ExecutiveMBA