Ten Issues - 24

1- Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Social CRM and the Social Enterprise - The reality of Social CRM is that many enterprises aren’t finding what they need with existing vendors. So they are quietly building their own CRM systems. It’s all about using technology to support and streamline relationships not control them.

2- Prof. Cornel West on the moral obligations of living in a democratic society.

3- Information Bureau For Microfinance by C.P.Mohan and Simanchal Sahu

4- Is Micro Finance leading to a Macro Mess - The AP Ordinance by Aloysius P. Fernandez

5- Rockstar of Financial Inclusion: Business Correspondent Model of India.

6- Death by Indifference: AIDS and Heroin Addiction in Russia

7- What Social Sector Needs to Learn from the Private Sector

8- Vakrangee Finserve becomes Common Banking Correspondent for Gujarat - The bid is the outcome of a "suggestion" from the Department of Financial Services which basically told public sector banks to divide India into 20 clusters, and to use a common BC to extend last mile banking services into the hinterland.

9- Givers take all: The hidden dimension of corporate culture

10- Death on mounds of a bumper crop- As corruption hijacks procurement centres in Bundelkhand, farmers prefer suicide to a debt trap. Richard Mahapatra reports from Uttar Pradesh with photographer Sayantoni Palchoudhuri

Quote of the Day:

"I don't believe in charity; I believe in solidarity. Charity is vertical, so it's humiliating. It goes from top to bottom. Solidarity is horizontal. It respects the other and learns from the other. I have a lot to learn from other people." ~ Eduardo Galeano

Development in a Trimester of rural management - 6

1- In economics, the Dutch disease is a concept that explains the apparent relationship between the increase in exploitation of natural resources and a decline in the manufacturing sector. There is an over-dependence on exports of primary products pushes up the value of its currency, leading to a downward spiral in its manufacturing productivity and competitiveness.

Same analogy in reverse notion can be put in the case of placement of rural managers. Unless the economy is worse, most of the rural managers are placed in either Banks or Sales job. With the expansion of the batch size and recession in Indian economy forced them to diversify their target organizations. Thus it has resulted in the placement of rural managers in diversified sector.

2- There is no placement week but a placement season.

3- Attendance falls drastically in this trimester. There are just different reasons before and after getting placed.

4- As per Prof Banikant : Ans. Nowadays the students are brighter but they are very oriented towards their final placements.

5- People prefer direct speaking student representatives over a diplomatic answer from the administration. People support a work by student representative who can spoke with honest realism about the need for harsh measures while latter only just endlessly just promised hope. That is why our batch respect Team Placecom. Kudos to them. Team makes successful captain, Successful captain does not make successful team. That is true for this team also.

6- I assume mine classroom as a microcosmic model of middle class India. While attending ethics and governance lectures, I easily pinpointed the real crisis in this country i.e. the intellectual and moral decline. Even we have potential to debate, articulate and analyze as an argumentative Indians, there is much gap in our perception and true nature of the values like integrity, liberty, equality & fraternity.

7- We as a whole bunch of individuals show tolerance for breaking rules, bad behaviour and corruption. Back Chats and Insider information were ugly faces of the placement season in the whole batch.

8- Networking ensures long term industry and company contacts. Placement season has again confirmed this rule.

9- I always kept in the mind that parameter of success is not the highest salary. It is very easy to give to the temptation of the money. I decided not to be part of slave auction business but to build up experience and skills through exposure. But the financial aspect like loan is important while securing dream job.

I was lazy and insincere as a student in this last trimester. The past is prologue, as they say. Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it. I don't want to carry this legacy in the new work environment.

Book -Marks for Reading

1- Why we need better economics.

2- A risky strategy, born of panic : Building ‘capitalism with Indian characteristics’ means decisions cannot ignore concerns of voters and communities.

3- Fear of a Black President :As a candidate, Barack Obama said we needed to reckon with race and with America’s original sin, slavery. But as our first black president, he has avoided mention of race almost entirely. In having to be “twice as good” and “half as black,” Obama reveals the false promise and double standard of integration.

4- Psychology of Social Networking

5- Peace, Progress, Human Rights - Nobel Lecture, December 11, 1975 by Andrei Sakharov.

6- Democracies in the World

7- Behind Robert Vadra’s fortune, a maze of questions - Property empire was built on soft loans handed out in unusual circumstances, documents show.

8- 'India Is Racist, And Happy About It': A Black American's first-hand experience of footpath India: no one even wants to change.

9- The policy analysis matrix for agricultural development

10- Three Hundred Ramayanas : The essay Delhi University deemed unfit for its students

11- For true stimulus, Fed should drop QE3 - Quantitative easing increases inequality by raising prices, says Ruchir Sharma.

12- Unhealed Wounds - The suicide of a Dalit student at India’s top medical college reveals an institution bitterly divided over caste and reservations.

13- Ron Paul's Farewell Speech to Congress.

14- The first 100 days of a new CIO: Nine steps for wiring in success - It’s critical to get a good start when stepping into the CIO role. Consider several measures when you shape your course.

15- Interview of Amitabh Bachchan

16 - I was gang raped three years ago, when I was 17 years old. My name and my photograph appeared with this article in 1983, in Manushi.

17- 20 Things I Should Have Known at 20.

18- The ‘Busy’ Trap - It’s not as if any of us wants to live like this; it’s something we collectively force one another to do.

19- Needed: An exit policy for bad businessmen

20- Can non-Europeans think? - What happens with thinkers who operate outside the European philosophical 'pedigree'?

21- नरेंद्र मोदी से उर्दू साप्‍ताहिक नई दुनिया के संपादक शाहिद सिद्दीकी का इंटरव्यू|

22 - NIPFP study finds large returns from Aadhaar project

Development in a Trimester of rural management - 5

I didn't come down to XIMB to oversleep. I've worked below what I am capable of. Here in 5 points what I learnt in last 3 months:

1- Generally, the clashes within lobbies of students are less real than the ones between the outsiders and system who find themselves in places where they are not a good fit. There are few people in our batch whose distinct and peculiar view make them to stand out from the rural manager's community.

2- College should be able to assist a student because they had structures in place for people seeking entrepreneurship. We lack an ecosystem to discuss social barriers for an entrepreneurial activity. Climbing corporate ladder is respectable but exploring new venture is seemed as "worst fears" come true where person is tagged as "confused".

3- In life, as one achieves success, the ability to take risks falls in almost the same proportion. Hence, it is better to throw away some securities in the search of unknown territories. I am happy to make up my mind for development field in the upcoming placement season throwing away securities of good salary.

4- Some People come across the English speaking environment right from a very early age. That may sound like a lame excuse but they are more comfortable than most in GD & Interview with their communication skill.

5- The man on the field needs to be supported and nourished that establishes trust and relate to the empowerment.

It is not only diversity but quality of experience in initial years that matters most in foundation of ours world view. I refused to just be good, because I had a dream to be great. It's a dream that every one one of us has had in our heart. The difference is, we don't put faith in, we don't persist, we don't improve, and we end up just moving to a stable and mediocre life.

Books Read in 2012

Life begins at the end of our comfort zone. Enjoy 2013. I will say goodbye to 2012 with an appeal of common honesty and decency. "Don't just read the easy stuff. You may be entertained by it, but you will never grow from it." Jim Rohn had captured essence of reading long ago with this lucid statement. We choose for ourselves the sort of literature we want.

Yet, this year was spent in going through easy books. Absence of books related to concept of business strategy and marketing may be counter of prevailing norms of reading list of a MBA student. I still want to read the forgotten matters of culture and society. Reading Economic Times has already made my vision one dimensional in nature. The reading list is getting skewed in favor of English language is not an healthy sign. Is the gradual exit of mother tongue from our reading materials a rational choice? It will be immense loss of mine command over both languages and misunderstood social acceptance that discourages free thought.

I want literature to be full of engagement, entertainment and even enlightenment. That is the joy of reading. Only few authors have tenacity to present complex issues in the most subtle manner and verbalize our angst that dissect through our souls and stirs our social conscience. Yes, I am starting to believe in Osho's Hypothesis that 'if consciousness changes, then certainly the social structure will change, because the social structure is just a projection of man's mind.' But how this consciousness can be even touched? I got this answer in a quote by Irwin Edman : It is myth, not a mandate; fable, not a logic; and symbol, rather than a reason, by which men are moved. That was profound discovery of the irrational side of human behaviour. Still can't leave rationality for the sake of emotions. It works well for survival purpose of human being. I am not a spiritual communist like Osho but find the hypothesis quite true.

Reading is not a time limited activity and text can't be seen as one dimensional lines. The meaning between words need to be understood through random and one must try repeated readings in different phases of life. There is need to add more of witness literature in reading list and also required an instrument to gauge health and progress of the reading habit.

The Kaoboys of RAW : Down Memory Lane by B. Raman - English - 7.5/10

Hoshruba: The Land And The Tilism by Musharraf Farooqi - English - 7/10

Unbearable Lightness of beingby Milan Kundera - English - 8.5/10

Games Indians Play: Why We Are the Way We Are by V Raghunathan - English - 8/10

The Prophet, The Wanderer, Sand & Foam, The Forerunner by Kahlil Gibran - English - 8.5/10

Snow by Orhan Pamuk - English - 9/10

Dreams from My Father (A Story of Race and Inheritance) by Barack Obama - English - 8/10

1000 Films to Change Your Life - Time Out Guides Ltd (Author) - The short interviews of the people involved in film-making to the opinion of various critics make this book one time readable. - English - 8/10

The Room On The Roof, Vagrants In The Valley by Ruskin Bond - English - 6.5/10

The Temple Tiger and more Man-Eaters of Kumaon by Jim Corbett - English - 7/10

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins - English - 7/10

Zen: Zest, Zip, Zap and Zing by Osho - English - 8/10

Breakout Nations by Ruchir Sharma - English - 7.5/10

Kyozan: A True Man of Zen by Osho - English - 7/10