Sunday, January 22, 2012

Ten Issues - 20

1- Food Politics: How the present National Food Security Bill will deepen Food Insecurity by Dr Vandana Shiva.

2- How To Learn the Language of Evil - Alan Wolfe's Political Evil offers lessons liberals especially need. A review By Michael Ignatieff.

3- Five Things You Should Stop Doing in 2012 by Dorie Clark who is a strategy consultant who has worked with clients including Google, Yale University, and the National Park Service. [HBR]

4- Why I Hire People Who Fail by Jeff Stibel who is Chairman and CEO of Dun & Bradstreet Credibility Corp. [HBR]

5- On Public Funding of Colleges and Towards a General Theory of Public Options : If we want to wonder why public education is becoming expensive it is in part because we aren’t supporting it as much as we were in the past.

6- Why Software Is Eating The World : Instead of constantly questioning their valuations, let's seek to understand how the new generation of technology companies are doing what they do, what the broader consequences are for businesses and the economy and what we can collectively do to expand the number of innovative new software companies created in the U.S. and around the world.

7- FDI in Retail: A new battleground at IIM Marketers blog.

8- The Decline but Not Fall of Hierarchy : What Young People Really Want : Western education imparts the idea that if we don’t have someone supervising our work, we’ll fall into a dangerous state of low productivity and collective lethargy. But examples like the rise of Google show that youth flourish in an environment with little hierarchy.

9- The global crisis has presented India with a historic opportunity to grow faster, but according to Pratap Bhanu Mehta, head of a leading independent think tank, the country is unable to capitalise on it owing to political and macro-economic mismanagement. In an interview with Santosh Tiwari, Mehta strongly criticises the Congress for ineptitude.

10 - Distant from Prosperity: The rural Indian economy, 1993-2005 - What has happened to the Indian economy over the last two decades ?

Thought of the Week : One thing life has taught me: if you are interested, you never have to look for new interests. They come to you. ... All you need to do is to be curious, receptive, eager for experience. And there's one strange thing: when you are genuinely interested in one thing, it will always lead to something else. - Eleanor Roosevelt, You Learn by Living (1960)

Saturday, January 21, 2012

Ten Issues - 19


1- Who Represents the Poor? by Pranab Bardhan - The Limits of the NGO Movement in Global Development

2- Why the Fight against Poverty Is Failing: A Contrarian View - Abraham George is the founder of The George Foundation, an NGO engaged in humanitarian work in India, and the author of India Untouched: The Forgotten Face of Rural Poverty. In this contrarian essay, he explores why the current strategies that governments and development agencies are employing to reduce poverty are not working the way they should. Among his arguments: Microcredit programs, as they are now practiced in India, do little to help the poor.

3- The great land grab: India's war on farmers - Land is a valuable asset that should be used to better humanity through farming and ecology. An article by Vandana Shiva.

4- Right to Food Campaign's opposition to replacement of PDS with cash transfers : A Google group for interaction and discussion.

5- In Free India I Was Denied Entry' : - Interview of David Barsamian who is an Armenian-American radio broadcaster, writer, and the founder and director of Alternative Radio.

6- Goodbye, Steve Jobs; Long Live Mavericks! by Nalaka Gunawardene.

7- The class warfare the rich don't understand : The Masters of the Universe evaded responsibility and defiantly demanded more sacrifice from their victims, says author.

8- Veteran historian, novelist, and activist Tariq Ali in a recent interview spoke about the challenges facing the Arab revolts, the future of US policy in the Middle East following ‘disengagement’ from Iraq, and the significance of the current movement of dissent taking over the streets and squares of cities across the world. Read on the complete interview at Viewpoint.

9- Putting Growth In Its Place: It has to be but a means to development, not an end in itself. An essay by JEAN DREZE , AMARTYA SEN

10- You can't bank on free speech : An extrajudicial banking blockade imposed on WikiLeaks has caused a 95 per cent loss in revenue for the organisation.

Saturday, January 14, 2012

The year that was....

Year started with interview at IRMA. Failure in IRMA was hard to swallow. As they say, it rains hardest on those who deserve the sun. I learnt in hard way that never make a tall claim. Tall claim have a nasty way of coming back like boomerang to haunt you.

On Leaving CSC : Talent leaves deadwood does not. It is hard to work somewhere without proper training and background. Without context and passion, the life becomes incomprehensible.

Though there are artificial problems, I want to address human problems. I was luckily selected in XIMB. I am in the phase of rebuilding mine career now. I hope to be riding the crest of the wave that hard work has created.

The most terrible poverty is the feeling of being unloved. I found someone special. The truth of the heart can only be seen in the eyes of one who is in love. There is someone in my life. I am seeking the relationship with love and trust despite differences of age, thoughts, hobby and attitude. I am plan to be surprised by the life.

A world with only atheists would be a world with with so less holidays. There is too less holidays and lot of academic pressure here at XIMB. Still, I feel that the pain of discipline is nothing like the pain of disappointment. I have chosen to take the road less travelled on and has found myself alone in the route of rural management program.

Non-conformists always has a minor support base! This is the price one has to pay for breaking or making your own rules. Mainstream only talks but avoid the right path. It is always a dissident, a rebel, somebody always ready to buck the mainstream trend. It is important not to accept a statement as true simply because it was written in a book, but rather to rely on his own mind and reasoning.

Mainstream books and cinema always try to put a clean and family value supporting image and articles. It's few dissdents who reveal the dirty picture! Only few selected movies seen in the second half of the year. Censorship to me is any hurdle or impediment in the way of free speech. I created a secret blog to update daily upheaval and learning at XIMB. Hoping for the growth of ideas of the transparency and open governance.

Unless I have set a right balance between self-confidence and self-doubt, I can't emerge as a good scholar in any field. I am trying to control addictive habits and inculcate new habits. Mission, Vision and Complex problems bring out creative leadership. Hoping for emergence of a quantum of leader in me.

Whatever said here is mostly waste. The rest is silence. That silent part of life is my heart.

The best tweet of 2012: “September 17th. Wall Street. Bring Tent, a simple plea on Twitter that started the Occupy Revolution.