Is US winning the war in Iraq?

The reality could be different - answer may be "Yes"! If you think US wanted to achieve a successful division between Sunni and Shiite Muslims, US is certainly winning the war. History has seen many wars where the winner's strategy was to divide the enemy.

US successfully created a war ground in Iraq when it didn't know where to fight its enemies. Afghanistan wasn't a good war ground - enemies of US just flew out from there (or at least it appeared so). US said, we will fight them in their land so that they don't come to US. Great strategy! However, where is 'their' land? Where is the battlefield? Well, Iraq served as one.

WMD was a facade. Getting Saddam was a by-product. Oil? Well, there is always that. But most importantly, you can't fight an enemy when they are scattered all over the world. You can't fight something that you don't know. Get them in the shooting range to shoot them! Iraq was the shooting range.

What we see today in Iraq is a division and a divided enemy. It might be appearing that US is losing out on the goal of establishing democracy in middle east. What if the real goal wasn't that?

Don't get me wrong here. I don't support killing innocent people. I am just an interested observer of global affairs. I took great pain by attacks on WTC as well as attacks on Indian parliament. It hurt me when the bombs blasted both in London and in Mumbai. It also hurt me when innocent people got killed in Lebanon. I always wished if at all Mahatma Gandhi was present there.

It really gets me wondering sometime what was the objective of war in Iraq? Goal of achieving a divided enemy seems like one of the strongest goals US had right from the beginning.

Judiacial Renaissance

Wow! This is great! Matto, Imrana, Afzal - judiciary is taking back its position. It is a great reassurance to the 1BN people who, for the last 60 years obeyed every decision (except for couple of parliamentary interventions and emergency - which was widely condemend).

Our judicial system in India is grossly understaffed now. But the system has shown it can stand up for itself and rejuvinate the platform on which people can conduct business legally. Our great instiutions are capable to correct themselves. We can do this.

We need more reforms in corporate legal systems. As Mukesh Ambani once noted, we would need reforms in labor laws, employee and employer regulations, minimum wages - laws that govern private sector. There hasn't been much known to common man about these. An American citizen is much better educated on these laws and these part of their lives. It needs to be in India as well. It is a good part!

The making of a Village Entrepreneur

Our education system contributes in a big way in turning people away from entrepreneurship. Doing business is not actively encouraged as a way of life in many families either. Rather business is looked at least by some as a way of making money at the expense of another. Which is not true for a good business.

Depending on the formal education system to teach a villager on the business infrastructure is useless. We could educate the youth of the villages on how to make a living by doing business. For some it come naturally. For the others it need to be shown. Fears of lack of capital kills one too many entrepreneurs. But if one does not know the avenues of finances possible great lives get nipped at the bud. Information is power.

In America, kids run lemonade stands in summer. They take part in many other entrepreneurial activities through out their childhood. These and the iconic glory of a capitalist society paves seeds of a business mind.

The disparity is even greater in Indian Villages. So any entrepreneurship based village development program we implement in the coming Years, should have an additional investment budget item for Educating a potential entrepreneur. Results can wait. But the hopes are great!.

Exposure to Villages in India

Our villages in India need more exposure. I am confident that there are thousands of innovations going on - mainly because of the basic need - and they say necessity is the mother of invention! Just a Google search will tell us how innovative are our villages - starting from basic medicine to sophisticated psychology issues! Look at this - http://www.sristi.org/anilg/

I found this very interesting link some time back when I was searching for this topic: http://www.rediff.com/money/2006/aug/25spec.htm

Lot of these innovations and inventions tie naturally with the cycles of nature – be it related to conservation of water or related to medicine. In my view, it was unfortunate that we had it in our culture to say greed is not good! Let us accept this – little greed is good. Everything is bad when it is too much, isn’t it? So is greed.

http://www.sristi.org/cms/files/Transforming%20Indian%20villages%20through%20innovations,%2021%20Oct%2005.doc

I had earlier discussed we need capsules of capitalism in our villages to boost them. These are the avenues where there is a scope for unconventional investments. Exposure, venture capital help, education on IPR can make our villages pretty rich!

Terrorism and us continued...

Let me follow on to Girish's thoughts on terrorism.

I'll start with the age of cliché that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. I believe so too. I do not have any reference to the old British New Papers. But at least some monarchical press could have stamped Gandhi and Nehru at some level as mindless terrorists. We know for a fact that Bhagat Singh and Azad heard the exact same names. Fidel Castro was one for both United States and the Cuban Government.

What rights do India have to criticize US invading Iraq?. Our short term memory forgets Sri Lanka and Maldives, let alone Bangladesh where we masterminded a coup.

What is termed as terrorism is caused by fundamental level conflicts between humans. In places where jurisdiction is powerful and just, humans will turn to the system to correct a wrong doing. Unfortunately the wrongs and rights of this world are all relative. For a father with a hungry child at his home, stealing a loaf of bread may be the only solution at times. I know I am over simplifying. Bear with me on this please. The justice frame work in our current world ends at the maximum at the state level. The international court of Justice is not a powerful organization.

Many south Indian states have fierce water disputes. Not many go around blowing up each others dams. But they approach the courts. However the Kashmir referendum will never be heard in an Indian court or in a Pakistan court since the respective states will not give a damn. What will happen then?, Some people will feel the powerlessness when faced with an unjust System. Could this feeling be the root cause of turbulence usually termed terrorism?

I believe so; since mercenaries cannot have passion, and without passion one cannot tie a bomb around ones waist and blow up ones own body. Once the passion for the cause is created there will be vultures who wants to make money off that passion. May it be by selling arms to fighters in Afghan mountains or by finding a market for their only crop opium. The short sightedness of actions creates Frankenstein out of commoners. This brings us to the topic of state supported disruptive actions by factions.

The world we live in always had differences of opinion at the highest levels. If viewed at a macro level these differences may sound more childish than those by the first graders fighting over the right to sit in a particular seat. In my opinion there are no near term solution for what we now call as terrorism, Civil war and Wars. Inherent human nature craves for certain rights. Right or wrong, the perception when translated to a wide group of people the opinion, becomes more powerful than what is the right thing to do. Political interventions is a very powerful tool. I believe in democracy and I believe that democracy calls for the prevalence of the opinion of the majority. However hard it may be opinion of an informed population should be heard. Those voices matter irrespective of where they are voiced: Kashmir, West Bank or in Jakarta. Problems should be acknowledged and addressed. State should not under estimate the power of mass will, after all mass will is a democracy.

At the grassroots level a solution will be to engage the youth in activities that earns respect and money. An idle mind almost always is a workshop for the omnipresent devil. Let those vultures be at bay, empower the youth with economic independence. Entrepreneurs create jobs. Jobs keep people busy and happy. Jobs bring in money and harmony. Harmony fosters family relationships. And such a society has a lower chance of getting attacked from the inside.

Terrorism and us

The strongest challenge that we face today is terrorism. Nobody has any clue how to fight this. I don't understand who is the enemy of terrorism? Is the word terrorism itself a political jinx? Or is it the age-old fight of 'haves' and 'have-not'?

The roots are obvioulsy are not too old - may be not more than 25 years. Few say it is the by-product of cold war. Few say it is the by-product of power hungry nations. Everybody has a justification. Every to-be terrorist has frustration in life.

Mahamtma Gandhi's principles of non violent war were never more relevant. Terrorists don't need arms (who supplies arms to them anyway!) - they need to talk, express and negotiate instead of hiding behind civilians of Lebanon.

It is a complicated world and simple answers do not exist. A start of non violent war somewhere would be a new start. Mankind has seen the impossible before and I hope to see an end to terrorism too.

Rahul Mahajan episode and public conduct

Hyped up too much. It is hard to believe that there is no vested interest of few people in exploiting Rahul Mahajan's situation. But that is how the challeging it is for Rahul Mahajan. He must realize he is son of one of the powerful leaders of BJP and act accordingly. Allegations against him are formidable.

This is one clear example of how not to manage a public life. The alleged drug abuse is still under trail and hence we can't comment anything on this. However, it is important for young leaders to know how to conduct themselves when they are public life. There is no room for mistake or even alleged mistake. One can't afford allegations and go under trial by sacrificing significant amount of time with judiciary. It is important to conduct in such a way that you are respectable and nobody dares to do an allegation.

There are a very few people in public life like that. Vajpeyee, Manmohan Singh, L K Advani, Chidambaram, Antony of Kerala to name a few who still strive to hold high moral grounds in the eyes of public. Of course there are critics, but allegation is different from criticism.

BTW, would there be a possibility of Rahul Vs Rahul?

Let us live for a cause

We live for a cause. In the movie Million Dollar Baby, Hillary Swank said "boss, if I quit Boxing, there is no reason for me to live"... one of the most intriguing statements. When one lives for a cause, everything around the person changes. The cause and the means will find you.

Indians today must live for a cause - to contribute and make our country the strongest leader world has ever seen. There has never been a better time than this. World wars made many countries gave an opportunities to be stronger, to invent new ways, to get disciplined and what not. We are having a different challenge today - a war within ourselves.

We must stand up for the cause and contribute. Reverse brain drain that is happening is a great sign. New political parties launched by students is a great sign. We are all made for a cause. We all have it within us. Just the right kind of enabling will take us there.

Chanlleges for the Social Entrepreneur

Alright, the job for a social entrepreneur is to solve problems. In my previous chat, I also identified that an entrepreneur creates wealth. Even before, we said only jobs for an entrepreneur are innovation and marketing.

We need to identify what problems do we need solve, what are the innovative ways with which we can come up with solutions and how do we market these to create wealth in the society.

One of the fundamental problems that we have is the way we utilze our natural resources. Be it Monsoon or be it Himalayas. Be it our population potential or be it our heritage. We have not enabled people to utilize these effectively to create wealth.

Water conservation could be our first and foremost problem that needs to be solved! Whatever the project is, we must approach the problem with 3 things in mind - the project must be profitable, it should be affordable to the people at the bottom of the pyramid (however, it is not free) and create jobs locally.

Let us chat more soon.

Social Entrepreneurship

I think social entrepreneurship is the need of the hour in India today. I think it is a process of enabling those who want to get on to the progress boat. It is process where the people involved will profit from the ventures and enterprises.

We need to liberate those who are at the bottom of the pyramid. We need to make everybody educated so that they are not exploited. India still has the world’s largest number of poor people in a single country. Of its nearly 1 billion inhabitants, an estimated 350-400 million are below the poverty line, 75 per cent of them in the rural areas.

Nobody says this is an easy task. This is certainly a daunting task which involves political, economical, cultural, technological strings attached.

Microfinancing is certainly a small and good start where this could begin. When you enable people with finance, there are a lot of possibilities. This in turn opens up many buying opportunities. We all know the buying potential of 300MM people in the USA.

Social entrepreneurship is in no way a charity. Well, it is work to improve the society, but while doing so, we must create wealth, number of small businesses and entrepreneurs. It is a challenge.

Let us see what are the different ideas of social entrepreneurships come out in the near future. One of the websites that I keep watching is http://www.ashoka.org/fellows/social_entrepreneur.cfm

Reservations

There is too much politics going on with the reservations. I support reservations for the needy. I don't support reservations based on cast.

To understand reservations in India, we need to understand a little history of India. The argument always runs that the so called backwards casts are so because of injustice in the old age society. Agreed. Why do we have to still continue to harvest the cast system? Isn't it an injustice still? We need to take a re-look at the reservation system.

We need to take a re-look at the reservation system. I would support a system based on economics, reservation based on income. We could increase funds for scholarships. There are hundreds of entrepreneurs who would be willing to participate. Free primary education for everybody in rural areas along with incentives like nutritious meals, financing for higher education with lower or no interest rates - these kind of planning certainly need to be in place. Dividing our society on cast is just a crime and a shame on governance.

Microfinancing or Micro-Investing?

I am sort of convinced that Microfinancing is the way to grow entrepreneurs in India. May be we will need some variations of pure Microfinancing – like how www.prosper.com is doing; people-to-people financing.

We certainly need innovative ways and means of achieving new economics for our rural areas. Liberalization of Manmohan Singh era was certainly great – it gave us tremendous exposure. I personally don’t think I would have been in this position if liberalizations had not taken place!

Microfinancing has a charitable angle. It is targeted towards improving quality of life by lending small amounts of loans with specific parameters. Though the business of Microfinancing is profitable, the value that this creates for entrepreneurs is less.

The variations of this could be micro-investing. Why not people directly invest in venture ideas and get equity? Why not create a micro-private equity place virtually?

Enterpreneureship - Innovation and Marketing

Peter Drucker once said there are only two jobs for an entrepreneur - Marketing and Innovation. All other are execution and operational.

I think it is perfect! I didn't see any other contributions that entrepreneurs ever made! Larry Ellison is happy developing products, marketing and letting the execution parts to someone else. Bill Gates is happy being Chief Software Architect and no one knows marketing better than him. Narayana Murthy is as happy as ever being a chief mentor. Google founders are happy that their company is being run by Eric Schmidt. Hardly anyone actually even knows the name of Google founders.Biggest quality of entrepreneurs may be that they are happy in innovating and marketing; letting other people run operations.

Well, I don't have much of empirical data on this, but wherever I see, there is a strong evidence for what Mr. Drucker says. After all, it is Peter Drucker and no one has any questions about that.

Walk the talk

Dear Friend:

You are reading this either by accident, or because you have interest on India. In either case, read on. You have all the right to carry a different opinion than I have. You have all the right to criticize me to the bone. You have all the right to post your comments right below my thoughts to communicate your thoughts.

Freedom of speech is a right. Actively practiced, at least in theory, in all modern democracies. Recently I heard from a friend, who lived for three long interesting years in Singapore, that it has different definition for the freedoms. Thought and action actively controlled by the state is borderline dictatorship. If that is what is being practiced, it is a wrong practice.

Human Resources has become a nice name in the corporate world. Similar to many other small words made to convey a packaged pre-defined aura of a meaning. Leaders have a huge responsibility when it comes to managing human resources. They wield the power to direct, restrain, channelize, activate, put into action, the humans who listen to them. To quote a famous comic strip, "With great power comes great responsibility". Leaders are sometimes created. Sometimes by accident. Sometimes through hard work. Some times through bloody wars, and sometimes thorough an electoral process. In a democratic society, the leaders chosen through a fiercely contested election almost always have the Himalayan task of leading more of opposers than supporters. Winning over the opposers is of as much importance as leading those who balloted one to power. A positive and a negative combined forms zero. For each negative that is converted to a positive, the opposing forces decreases by two. So a hard question to never to be ignored for a new leader is, how to win over the opposition?.

Yes, you are absolutely right. That is not an easy task. We are not looking for easy solutions here are we?. If there were a Silver Bullet, I'd have given up my first born for the cause. But there exists none (Neither the Silver Bullet, nor my first born).

A new leader can start by realizing that, he or she has the responsibility to lead every one who is not a leader in his circle to a better state. That is the simple definition for what a leader is supposed to do. The leader needs every helping hand from his circle to achieve the common goals. Any actions that will increase the negative charge should be avoided. Every action should convert as much negative charge in the circle to positive charge. Every action must be evaluated prior and post to plan and and measure.

The Human resource is the most important tool a new Leader has. A leader always leads humans. Even with technology advancing so much we do not see any leaders running around setting the goals and objectives of a bunch of Computers, do we?. Lucky us, I must say!!. Time is the constraint many a new leaders has. There is a fixed term, and then uncertainty beyond. The results are important, and the resources to start with are few. End of the term the new leader gets his report card which lists the number of things he or she achieved, not the number of things he or she 'thought of achieving'. I say, do not worry about it. There are umpteen things in this world which you do not have control over. You are not going to be the last leader either. If the number of negative charges you converted to positive are large enough, either you or someone who thinks and acts very similar to you is going to succeed you. Leader, apart from the charisma and oratory skills has a defined set of characteristics. The styles may be different; but the objectives are not.

India needs leaders; India needs young leaders. It is time, IIM's concentrate an elective on political leadership. A coherent approach and study on successful leadership styles, coupled with the correct management techniques will go a long way in channelizing our tremendous human capital.

I grew up in an era where family planning advertisements adorned the highway sides. Now, suddenly both India and China are waking up and realizing that population is a capital. Channelized thought and action will take India a long way ahead.

If you have traveled by Train through India you will see a lot of uninhabited land. Hundreds of kilometers of stretches in most of the states, where the only human being you may come across will be a small line of women balancing pots of water on their head walking back to some destination you cannot see. Those are the places where our human capital needs to be distributed on. Lets us have a clear strategy to identify places to build new cities. Let us identify the local resource availability at these places. Let us pick the Industries, and crops for those places. Let us mine out all those rock lands for construction work, Let us explore our land and the sea to get to our much needed natural resources.

A booming stock market and a booming real estate market in the cities does not mean anything in the long run. What matters is what is the GDP. Gross Domestic Production. How much we manufacture in our factories and how much we reap out of our agricultural land.

A thriving economy cannot sustain growth without providing the much needed infrastructure. The growth of China is so different from the boom in India. China is decades ahead of India in that, it is now starting to show the results of a well thought out plan to utilize its human resources by providing the necessary infrastructure. But it is not a race with China that we are on. Our objective is to get Indians to a better state by channelizing the potent energy.

I hope I have made my introductory post to outline my thoughts at a macro level. I believe India needs young leaders who could strategically build infrastructure and channelize the human capital for a better India. My future posts will elaborate this outline.

Stay tuned, and Jai Hind!!

Jama Masjid blasts

It was shocking to learn about Jama Masjid blasts. It is as barbaric as Akshadharm or Ayodhya attack. It is as cruel as attack on religious places in Iraq. It is as cruel as bringing down babri masjid. There is no justification for attack on religious places. There is no explanation for terrorism. There was no other period in the history of mankind where innocent people were terrorized.

We need more assertion from every community in opposing terrorism. Every honorable citizen of India condemns these incidents of spreading terror. I want to see more assertion of muslims as a community in condmening these incidents. There are tons of great leaders in India from Muslim community. They need to condemn this as leaders of our country as well as leaders of Muslim community. There are two roles for these leaders mainly because we need good life in our country and we need good quality of religious harmony in our society. Good harmony starts at one's own religion.

I was personally very happy when Advani decided to start communicate the right message of what he stands for, when he commented on Jinnah. It could have been obviously one of the most effective stands taken in terms religious and sectarian harmony in the country. We need to shed age-old meaningless root causes and concetrate on quality of life of our citizens. We need to concentrate on development of basic amenities.

Any incidents that come in the way of development should be condemned by everybody. What we need is not bomb blasts - we need long lasting physical, spiritual, intellectual infrastructures. We need to stimulate great indian dream.

Leadership

Alright, it has been a while that I blogged. Few people told me that they read my blog; great! It inspired me to come back and write more!

As a child or even as a teenager I used to wonder why do leaders get the importance that they do get. Nitish Kumar for example, is a simple man - I could be the chief minister of Bihar as well! What is the difference? I could be a leader as well.... in fact I did - I was a student leader all along my life. The real leadership role that made me realize the leadership importance was at my Engineering College. Let us talk about it some other day.

Next leadership role I was with was at Entelligentia - I was not so good as a leader. I lacked communicating; I lacked leading the team to a successful venture. I was extremely fortunate to have 5 excellent partners - Boni, Mahesh, Jagadeesh, Raveesh and Sunu, who are also excellent leaders. I am fortunate because they accepted a sacrifice at the end of the venture.

Leaders are unique in their own way. I always want to learn what makes a person a good leader. Influence is probably one of the most characterizing qualities of a leader. Be it influence through hard work, or influence through speech, writing, demonstrated work, thoughts, charisma - what not.

Somebody once said - the power of faith and love are unbeatable. Leaders may be those who generate enormous amount faith in something and stand by it. Be it a country or an issue. Look at Advani and Ram Mandir. No leader other than Advani could so easily be associated with Ram Mandir. Leaders may be somebody who stand by their beliefs. Look at George Bush. No leader other than George Bush could be associated with war on terrorism. Look at Narayana Murthy with Indian IT industry. Look at Manamohan Singh with liberalization. Look at Mahatma Gandhi with non-violent war. Look at Budha with Nirvana. Look at Romeo with love. John Doer with Venture Capital. Everyone had one faith and they stood by it to become leaders.

Well.... my learning continues. May be somebody will standby for entrepreneurship in India and transform.