Thinking small about Big things

I was gathering data on social entrepreneurs in India, when it stuck me how these people started. All of the entrepreneurs I am studying, from Muhammad Yunus (founder of Grameen Bank) to Ilaben Mehta (founder of SEWA); all of them started small. In fact this willingness to start small has been the hallmark of most entrepreneurs who have turned this to a strength. Take the case of Michael Dell (Founder and CEO of Dell Computers); he started by selling computers from his dorm room. His problem was he did not have infrastructure, he turned this weakness to his strength by building an entire company based on assembly and logistics of pre fabricated computer components. In this age of downward bottomlines, Dell with no infrastructure is the major gainer. How does this affect us? It does here's why...
Many of us don’t undertake small tasks, thinking this is too menial or by using the oft repeated phrase kya fayda... We don’t realize all of us have to start small but think big. It is easier said than done so what do we do... We think big and don't take the small steps necessary to realize our big goals. It's the same bug facing business school education that afflicts us all...we teach students as if they are CEOs of Fortune 500 firms, and students have to unlearn and relearn from the ground up during their first jobs .... we all want to do things top down (sample this: If I was the PM, I would do this and that... these politicians are fools..., we should have fought for freedom instead of nonviolence crap... etc etc...). Just take another look at any great person's life and you will realize they all started small, took small steps and eventually reached some stage which was again leap for most of us. I remember once my mother told me..."trifles make perfection but perfection is no trifle....

Reservations...

It’s funny that when people talked about reservations before.... they meant the trains.... but now it seems we have truly entered the 21st century as the debate on reservations has been hijacked by statistics. I question the word debate here coz debate means something that is inherently inclusive of differing viewpoints. The only debate I have seen on this issue has been in the elitist corporate media and the endless internet forums which serve as pastimes and ego-boosters for the sons of the other soil. I don’t mean to criticize people of my ilk but let us have some perspective in our rants. Here is my two cents...

1. About 200 million people form the Indian middle class and this middle class has been the primary beneficiary of reforms in the past decade. But obviously you cannot expect the trickle down effects of these reforms to reach the 900 million other people in a vast, stratified and diverse country like India. These people form the basis of the nation, they are the backbone of this country and even if some of them (just a few...) benefit from a higher quota at the expense of the some individuals from the middle class, it is an example of egalitarian justice and quite appropriate in a democratic (rule of majority) republic (rule of people).
2. Now of course there is the merit argument made by these very people who choose to send their sons and daughters to the very best institutions that money can buy. Of course this argument is fallacious at the very least.... methinks we have some thing like a selection bias in our education... If the IITs and IIMs select only the best how do we know what their contribution in training these supposedly best of the best engineers and managers; since these students would have excelled anyways in any institution. It is only when we have a large diversity in our pool that we will know how good these institutes are in reality. Even the so called do-no wrong universities like Harvard, Yale and Princeton have affirmative action and we do not seem to think low of their minority students nor has the aura of these universities diminished in the minds of our educated elites.
3. Methinks this has been the result of the self serving attitude of these middle classes, the result of ignoring the poverty on the roads, of creating magnificent sea-facing abodes in the desert of the slums not unlike the proletarians of Rome. How many educational institutes have been started by our elites? How many institutes have been started in the poorer sections? A little altruism is called for so that the elected government doesn’t have to step in to restore balance.

To those protesting, I would just repeat what Gandhi once said, "Be the change you want to see in the world". If you feel strongly about this issue write to your MLA and/or MP, collect signatures of a majority of your citizens, or better still create your own college that works on your ideals... If the government doesn’t accredit you, make your own (ISB doesn’t have govt. accreditation for some programs and they don’t care....). Just bring a little more perspective and think about 1 Billion for a change....

Long time...no see

When you dont talk with someone for a long time....you feel a trepidition intaking that first step..I feel the same way...just didnt get time to write something...but if you have ever talked with a friend after a long time.... after the initial awkward silences... an old familiarity seems to envelope you...
You know the other day I was thinking...We see so many things, read so much news infact our generation is just overloaded with information. Do we have the time to make sense of it?
Do we think about our actions and how they influence our lives, the lives of others and the whole world? It all sounds philosophical but it seems to be more relevant than any of our actions. It's a wonder that with so much information we dont teach philosophy, we leave it to each individual to figure it out for themselves....
It's a shame not many make the effort to understand meaning... and then Life moves forward but we make sense backwards.