My Road to Harsud



Since last few years, whenever I came across any news item of the Narmada Project, it has always made me uncomfortable...

This week when I read yet another report - The Road to Harsud by Arundhati Roy - the 700 year old town in MP which will be submerged, and its people left rootless, for the "larger good"...

....I thought I might as well write this down:

It was back in 1982-83, when I was working in NPC. We had got a project to estimate the number of villages which will be submerged, and people displaced, as a part of the project feasibility report for the Narmda Dam Project. We had a very small role: visit a small area near Indore, find out the numbers, and collate them and submit the report.

Narmada Sagar Dam had seemed a distant and impersonal - almost an imaginary - reality then, and in any case, this work would get us some "consultancy" revenue. Two of us were given the task, and we visited these places. We did a "sample survey" of villages - i.e., visited a few representative areas and villages, and made guestimates for the entire population of villages in that area. What I also recall is that there were no updated official records of population available - the 1981 Census results had not yet got published - but the report with "figures and facts" had to be submitted...

... we did what seemed a reasonable exercise in making educated estimates: we talked to the Gram Pradhan, the VLWs (Villege Level Workers), the BDO (Block Development Officers), etc. - cross-checked their estimates as much as we could.

These were 10 hectic hot days of travelling on loaded buses, bullock carts, and even walking a few miles through difficult terrains.

At the end of the project, we could churn out a report, which we felt had a high accuracy level in the reported figure (even though there was no way to verify them) - and the NPC sent the Consultancy Report with the bill.

Now when I read these reports, of villages getting submerged, tens of thousands of people deprived of their land, roots, livelihood, self-identity (and sometimes even their family), I wonder at my own role - however small - in making this happen to them...

I can justify by believing that I was in my 20s then, just a few years into my job, and did not understand the context of what I was doing; I was, after all, just doing my job...
... and then realise that this is exactly what the prisoners in Nuremberg Trials, and the wardens of Abu Ghraib had said: I was just doing my job...

The Clash of Paradigms

It is fascinating, if one compares the variety of struggles taking place around the contemporary world - and find that underlying these the template is the same.

In many ways, the current conflict between the "good" vs "evil" is a struggle between two paradigms, which is not just limited to the so-called "War on Terrorism" by the country which believe in, and stand by, the "Rule of Law".

Compare also, for instance:

• The conflict between the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) vs. the P2P networks for downloading music
  
• The elitist World Economic Forum and the networked World Socil Forum
  
• The Coalition with its centralised command-and-control sturucture vs. the "Al-Queda" which is actually a network
  
• The two models of software development (The Cathedral & and Baazar) seen in Windows vs Linux
  
• MNCs vs Industrial Clusters
  
• Monetary Systems based around a Central bank vs. Complementary Currencies (e.g. Ithaca Hours, Lets, Times Dollars, etc.)
  
• Centralised Datawarehouses vs. Distributed Intelligence
  

etc. etc.

The two paradigms are the Centralised vs the Network - and interestingly one finds them confronting each other in a variety of domains simultaneously...

Media as a Business

On one of the forums, we were having this discussion about how manistream media often misleads its readers. Someone countered, that since media is a business, it will "naturally" first focus on serving its masters/shareholders...

The following is what came to my mind - thoroughly enjoyed writing this scenario:))

"...should I believe the fanciful role of media/press as an "institution" which upholds/ protects the basics of the society - or be realistic and accept that it is just another "business" which takes care of its shareholders/masters by serving the more lucrative customer segment??

While the former is what it was meant to be (a pretty archaic concept, actually), the latter - media as business - holds so much more potential to think and write about. I mean, if media is a business, it will really blossom if it really gets designated as a 'business'. The potential - and entertaining - ramifications will be immense:)... it will be great fun!!

For instance, if media is designated as a business, it will surely ensure the transparency of motives behind a news, if not the transparency of contents. So:

- since "news" will become a consumable "information" product, then like any other consumable item, it will become mandatory to describe its ingradients (like on a bottle of coke - how much sugar, caffein, etc.). So before actually watching/reading the news, we, the consumers, will know percentage-wise ingradients - facts, opinions, deceptions, sensationalism, etc. - the "news capsule" contains:0)... the media companies will be able to offer the customer (who is the king) a variety of choices, such as "low-facts/high-sensation" news or "customised-to-your-prejudices" news or "only-for-the-feeble-minded" news etc.

- there will be no need to unnecessarily get constrained by factual details in generating the news (imagine the launch of a news media channel/newspaper: "Bringing To You, First Time In The World, "The Synthetic News"!!" - wow! what a breakthrough!!!)... and the regulatory authorities (e.g., FCC and Prasar Bharti, etc.) will be able to issue A/U/X kind of certificates (as they do for the movies) to news, e.g., "not recommended for secular/ activists/ republicans/democrats, etc." kind of certificate. There can also be disclaimers to news such as: "This presentation by Collin Powell to the UN Security Council is based on "intelligence" supplied by CIA/ Pentagon - any resemblence to reality is purely coincidental" etc. In fact, there can even be Statutary Warnings: "Watching this News Item is Injurious to your Pre-conceived Notions."

- more entreprepreurial and innovative media companies will be able to make and supply customised news. Depending on customer choice, like the toppings on the pizza or concoctions at Starbuck, if one wants Iraq "liberated", you get it; if you want it "invaded" that is also in the menu;)... and even WMDs can be made to be found, if that is what the customer wants!!!... Other businesses (e.g., governments, etc.) will be able to sponsor the news (or even do co-branding), e.g., the whole world can be shown to survive only on Coke or Pepsi - Similarly, NGOs will need to sponsor (if they have money) the news that 2/3 of the mankind does not have drinking water... etc. etc.
[the greatest advantage of this kind of arrangement will be that all these objections about the "integrity" of news media will become a non-issue;0)]

- Just to complete the scenario, this whole thing can be facilitated by Ministry of Truth, which will give "1984 George Orwell Awards" to the most successful channels...

...Coming to think of it, much of this is already happening, though stealthily, since unnecessary moral/ regulatory restictions are being placed on the entrepreneurial spirit of the media companies...

what we need is greater deregulation of the media industry, and let the market drive the media... "

An HR Recipe to "exploit" Human Resources??


Someone sent me an HBR article "Good Guanxi Turns Bad" which describes how the Guanxi (Chinese tradition of doing business through personal connections) can be antithetical to Western firms' aims of doing business in China.

What struck me was the recipe (of manipulation/ exploitation?), which the author offered in the article:

To quote from the article:

- "shift the emphasis of business from relationships to transactions"

- "depersonalize sales and procurement process by instituting a team-based approach"

- "reduce the chance that their connections would be used against the company"

- "capitalize on the unique loyalty-building quality of kinship-type relationship."

...and all this under the guise of "companies must bring transparency to existing relationships, prevent conflict of interests from developing, and align employees' interests with their own."

What Does Mainstream Media Sell? and to Whom?

Though somewhat dissonant, I find this a more logical way of looking at the mainstream media, and the business model it follows.

The conventional way of looking at media is that it serves a valuable social purpose in the free society. It frees the content - news, views, entertainment - to reach it to common man. One assumes also that this information, provided by media, helps the common man to make more informed decisions.

But, often we tend to forget that media - specifically, the mainstream media - is also a business. It creates, packages and sells a service to its customers, and gets paid by them for the quality of service provided.

It is this perspective which turns the conventional view of media on its head...

... most of us tend to believe - somewhat naively - that when we buy a magazine or a newspaper, or watch a TV channel, we are the customers, because we pay for it (even if nominally).

We tend to ignore that the media revenues come, not from subscriptions paid by its readers/ audience, but from advertisements paid for by businesses.

So, perhaps, a more rational way of looking at media should be like this: Media sells its subscribers/ audience/ spectators/ readers to its primary customers - the businesses, and gets paid for that service!!!

Perspective on "Making a Difference"

Yawar sent me the transcript of his speech to a group of children. It was a nice, coming from the heart speech, and one part which caught my attention was the narration of this story:

...Finally I want to close my speech by telling you another true story. This one is about a little boy and the famous writer Lauren Eisely. Lauren writes that he was on holiday by the sea side when one night there was a big storm. Very early next morning as he was walking on the beach he saw that among the debris of the storm were literally hundreds of starfish which had been thrown up on the sand the previous night.

As he walked along, Lauren saw someone in the distance doing what looked to him, like a dance. The person was bending down and standing up and moving along as he did this. As Lauren neared him, he saw that it was a little boy who was picking up starfish from the beach and was throwing them back into the sea.

Lauren was like me. A man of the world with a lot of education and life experience.

He went up to the boy and asked, “What are you doing?”

The boy said, “I’m throwing these starfish back into the sea so that they don’t die. They can’t move on the sand and if the sun comes out, they will dry out and die. So I am throwing them back so that they will live.”

Lauren says, he laughed at this statement. He then proceeded to put things in ‘perspective’ for the boy...

So Lauren said to him, “Look, do you realize that on this beach alone there are literally thousands of starfish? And then of course there are hundreds of beaches in the world, on which are thrown up millions of starfish in every storm. You are one kid, throwing one starfish into the sea! For God’s sake, what difference does it make?”

The boy looked at Lauren; he looked at the starfish in his hand, he turned and threw it far into the waves and said to Lauren, “It made a difference to that one!”

Lauren writes, “I walked away and kept walking for a long time. Then I returned to the boy who was still there, picking up and throwing the starfish into the sea. I silently picked up a starfish and threw it into the sea. And we did this together for a long time.”

I liked this one from John Pilger's article:

"When we speak of this in regard to totalitarian societies and dictatorships, we call it brainwashing: the conquest of minds. It’s a notion we almost never apply to our own societies. Let me give you an example. During the height of the cold war, a group of Soviet journalists were taken on an official tour of the United States. They watched TV; they read the newspapers; they listened to debates in Congress. To their astonishment, everything they heard was more or less the same. The news was the same. The opinions were the same, more or less. "How do you do it?" they asked their hosts. "In our country, to achieve this, we throw people in prison; we tear out their fingernails. Here, there’s none of that? What’s your secret?"

The secret is that the question is almost never raised. Or if it is raised, it’s more than likely dismissed as coming from the margins: from voices far outside the boundaries of what I would call our ‘metropolitan conversation’, whose terms of reference, and limits, are fixed by the media at one level, and by the discourse or silence of scholarship at another level. Behind both is a presiding corporate and political power. "

Thhis is a good example of how media decides the agenda of public discourse!!!

The Outcry against Outsourcing Jobs

There is much debate about the implications of outsourcing: on US economy if it continues, and on other economies (e.g., India) if it banned.

This is someting which I wrote to someone today:

"...though noone says it, but the 'hulla' is not because jobs are being outsourced, but because it is the middle-class white-collor jobs which are being outsourced.

US always outsourced blue-collor jobs (in fact, at present 10mn blue collor jobs are outsourced). There is also "insourcing" of jobs in US (6.4mn, in number), but these are also blue-collor jobs.

But in US polity, blue-collor labour is not part of public discourse (being the only democracy in the world, where there is no labour representation in political party system). The unconscious ideology that labour party will be "leftist" (therefore communist), and "ballot access" restrictions ensure that blue-collor labour (for that matter all underdogs in the US society) does not get represented in political system.

The new jobs, e.g., Walmart, which are being created are not white-color jobs (either blue collor or part-time).

The caucuses and lobbies are run by middle-class and the rich. So this actually is a revolt by the middle-class against the rich. For the first time, the middle-class started getting the treatment which the blue-collor workers were getting since long.

So, whatever The Economist or Jadish Bhagwati, or whoever, says, this issue will be a major issue in times to come - even beyond elections."....

Management Education vs. Management Literacy

One more batch of MBA graduates is passing out now. And I was thinking about the learning that I have derived - in the process of teaching - during last couple of years or so... There are of course, many personal learnings, but on a conceptual level, one which became so obvious was the difference between literacy and education.

A literate knows how to read and write, can add and substract, etc. But that's it. S/he may not necessarily know where and how to apply and leverage these skills. More importantly, s/he does not know the "meaning" of what s/he has learned - and therefore, is unable to stretch those skills to apply to other domains of living.

If one is able to do these (apply skills to other domains of living, know the context/context of what one has learned, and is able to use what one has learned to make life's decisions, etc.), only then can one be caled educated (Ok, these are my definitions, but they do help to see the difference).

In that sense, a large number of MBA graduates merely acquire "management literacy" - they know the latest terms, frameworks, formula, etc., but very, very few actually stretch themeselves to apply these to other domains (other than the quizzes and exams)... which is somewhat sad, given that most of them are bright people, and will be taking decisions which will affect others...

One way to understand this situation is to believe that once people start working, they also learn to apply these skills, understand the context, etc., and so, become educated. But I don't think that lack of work-experience is the only rationale of this state-of-affairs. It has, in my understanding, something to do with the premium value (mainly in terms of its earning potential) which is given to the MBA degree, and which attracts a large number of people who are just looking for a nice lucrative job - and not towards becoming a professsional.

Well, though I already have another blog - the alternativeperspective - I thought it may be interesting to start one more, which is of more general nature... so here we have, My Musings on life in general... and on nothing in particular