This is a topic which I have touched up on in my earlier posts as education and its dispensation, is something I feel passionately about, as The Rise of  Branded Elitist Institutions all over the World, are the new citadels of clergy as in the middle ages. Whether these are the Ecole Grandes in France or ITB in Indonesia,  Education is increasingly more about a passport to prosperity and upward social mobility rather than learning and empowerment of the mind. The recent debate sparked off by the Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh, IITB and CMU/MIT Alumni, about the reason why the IIT’s and the IIM’s are not producing world class research and the value is only due to the exceptional caliber of the human potential.  Educational Institutions are in the end analysis nothing but elite clubs of limited access to cultural and social capital as emphasized by Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu and Harvard Don Robert Putnam.  They are about personal branding and private networks ultimately and not about knowledge accumulation and reproduction for enhancement of the cause of humanity.

The prep coaching industry for the IIT’s, IIM’s and Med School’s in Kota and Hyderabad are insane, the monetization of cultural capital is complete. Cultural Capital is translated into Symbolic Capital and Power later on in life. Preparation for IIT exams begin in the early teens, as if that the IIT exam is the pinnacle of achievement. Or the Liberal Arts equivalent of St. Stephens, St. Xaviers and Loyola is the stuff which dreams are made of.  The myth of the IIT/IIM passout has reached new heights post liberalization and has reach the zenith symbolism of a myth. The enorminty of the Chinese university entrance exam of the Gao Kao is equally maddening.

The whole dimension that a person is a failure if a person is not bright enough to make it to the elite schools like Oxbridge, Ivy League or the IIT-IIM phenomena in India is mis-informed. Success is not assured if a person, makes it to these institutions, life is a cross country race and not a 100m dash. There are things in life people do which make them great, even if they do not make to these elite schools. Human Potential is more than a Brand. The greatest of Artists, Musicians, Writers and Entrepreneurs were not Ivy-Retarded and write did not to enshrine their names in the annals of History. Let the Rat Race be confined to the Rats and not infect the Homo Sapien species.

Success is relative and the term means different things to different people of a socioeconomic edifice. We all need success stories to inspire us to fulfill our potential. The entire genre of motivational books is based on parables and human stories which inspire us. There are some extra special individuals , which we all can be if we are passionately driven enough to make a positive transformation in our day to day existence. By presenting the higher moral ground to the so called ‘Self Made Man’ , we are all abdicating our responsibility for a better life for all of us. One member of a family who does well, can transform a group of people, the power is in our hands. it is all in the mind and the flesh is weak.  It needs sacrifices, facing rebukes from near and dear ones and giving up on a lot of things, well life is treacherous and a very bad master. Life is never fair, it will always seem that the grass is greener on the other side. We always wish that things could have been different. The thing we can do is to try our hardest and to be a good trier. One does not have to possess the IQ of 150 to make a good life, it about finding what we are good at and working hard at it.

The people who are blessed with opportunities, are just having the same stuff, we are trying to attain a bit earlier. Having the right opportunities does not mean that the person has has a easy way, because he has worked to capitalize on the opportunity and not left it by the wayside. Being born in a family of wealth and stature, gets a person a head start but nothing more, if anything it makes a person even more aware of the potential the world has to offer. It does not make him a weaker person or have a fragile spine to deal with the vagaries of this sinful world than the person who is so called self made.

A Dhirubhai Ambani is a one in a billion, we are all here, because of the teacher who had patience on us when we could not understand a high school math problem, a parent who had patience even we made a bad call regarding our finances or a friend who stood by us when we were in the midst of a emotional breakdown. A million multitudes of gratitude and generosity makes the person we are ultimately, and by that understanding; I would not be arrogant enough to call myself self made.

All the popular media  glamorizing rhetoric about becoming an entrepreneur as well as creating a phenomenon single handedly and eulogizing everyone who studied at an iit or at an ivy league school. The projection in the media is about creating our own venture by participating in biz plan competitions and creating the next Google or a reliance for the next generation. As if starting and running a business is as simplistic as playing monopoly or counterstrike.  Or to be counter intuitive, is doing a regular day job so drab and un  sexy that we are decedents of Mr. Bean and his ilk? Our parents and our forefathers who tilled farms, taught in schools or did administrative jobs in companies or in government, did actually raise successful families and lived contented lives.   Running business is not about going to student conferences to speak or distributing name cards at networking events or doing fancy stuff wearing dapper suits. Its about sweating it out getting projects, executing them and optimizing resources as well as motivating people to give their best towards a common objective.

The whole popular culture about celebrity worship and pursue the ‘Hot’ career sector at that moment whether it is Social Media, Nanotech or Biotechnology  is  the very black hole which sucks the potential energy out of the souls which may be talented in a different field altogether AND CREATE which they really enjoy doing like music or art or even playing a sport on a professional level. Ultimately, it is about the individual enjoying what he does and so he does it well enough that the market will buy the service and make a living.  Its important that we get back down to the basics and concentrate on the things which matter to us… Being normal is indeed normal and its meaning differs from person to person and on what meaning each one of us wish to manufacture.

Teaching Kindergarten and  being a factory workshop operator is perfectly good, as they create the bedrock of civilization, they run real things unlike traders in front of a couple of screens with rolling & streaming numbers. Success has to decoupled from the essence of wealth creation, it has to be linked to happiness..thats what lives are all truly about!

There has been a turn in the dynamics of political modus operandi in India; powerful personality leadership cults are emerging which lead regional satraps and the national parties like the BJP and the Congress are struggling to project a definitive leader as the face of the party. In this era of the 24×7 media beast, a clear leader projection helps in cementing the position of the party at the battle of the ballot box. Mamata Banerjee; the single women anti communist crusader who brought down the left cooperative at writers building, ran a campaign which was presidential in nature, the entire story of change and hope weaved around the personality cult of Mamata Di.  Nitish Kumar, has emerged as the renaissance hero of modern day Bihar, changing the wild west perception of his state to that one on the highway to highness in the league of emerging states in India.  His re-election with a 2/3rd mandate was a result of his clean image and pro growth, secular credentials.

Madam J. Jayalalitha, the newly elected chief minister of tamil nadu, is also the supremo of her political outfit where the rest are in the shadows of her overwhelming persona. The ultimate Guru of Developmental politics in India is the ‘New Sardar’- Narendra Bhai Modi, who has built a fan following internationally, due to his ruthless leadership abilities and powerful oratorical skills.  Naveen Patnaik, the three term chief minister of Odisha state, runs a single man enterprise based on his clean image and pro growth policies.  There is a single strand weaving all of them, single man, grass root leaders and street warriors who built their mass base painstakingly whose heart is on local and regional issues.

The High Command culture in the Congress, is dynastic and pseudo monarchic in nature. Super popular leaders like Indira and Rajiv Gandhi as well as Soniaji and Rahulji are present, but the public perception is that they are aloof and not in touch with the ground realities on 2011 India. The top leadership of the congress is greatly talented and experienced, but none of them will be projected as the PM candidate. A YSR was a grassroots leader in Andhra Pradesh, who did a great deal of work, was unfortunately killed in an air crash. His Son quit the party, because his Father’s legacy was not given its due.

The Gen ‘Y’ needs clear signals regarding the leadership of the country. Clarity is the foundation of communication which is the basis of Leadership. The BJP has too many leaders, like too many cooks spoil the broth.

Will Rahulji be decalred as the PM candidate for 2014 or will Nitish lead the NDA? Only time will tell, for the exciting next episode of the series called ‘Life in India’

In every recession, there is a huge uproar about the quantum of performance rewards that the C-Suite take home. During the last recession, triggered by sub-prime crisis bankers were paid huge bonuses in-spite of trillions of dollars of governmental bailouts from DC to Delhi.  This has been a very sensitive issue because the corporate class argues that top quality talent deserve top dollar for their acumen, because they are mind workers and create extra ordinary value for their organizations by innovating ideas that are out of the box. As Peter Drucker said, the top official in the company should not earn more than 20 times as a multiple than the lowest paid employee in the firm. Welfare States in Scandinavia, have the lowest differential gradient between the highest and the lowest paid worker in the corporate hierarchy.  This i guess is the result of the acid base buffer provided by the government when a recession hits particularly concerning food and health care.

Recently, in the media we have come across the Galleon Insider Trading Scandal with a Hedge Fund Founder and former Kinsey Executives mired in corporate deceit, graft and fraud. The question which comes to my mind as I write this post is- What makes such bright guys with the best of Ivy League and Elite academic background fall to lows of graft and corporate white collar crime. The Tyco and the Enron Scandals also were led by Harvard Business School Alumni and the best of financial behemoths at Wall Street fell like a pack of cards in the financial tsunami of 2008. In India, we have had the UTI Scam and other corporate goof ups which have bankrupted the common retail investor on the street.

The corporate compensation is a hot button issue, with the political class criticizing this issue across the board. Manmohan Singh on numerous occasions, has egged on India Inc. to pay modest sums of renumeration in a nation still developing. the Obama Administration reigned  in Wall  Street honchos on the topic of compensation and golden handshakes and the sheer vacuum in corporate accountability.  I believe that top class talent is in low supply and its important to pay top dollar to retain the brains in a dog eat dog world. The Singaporean Government pays private Sector Salaries to its ministers to attract top talent in the cabinet and politics at large. But this issue is also a political issue with a section of the electorate, which feels that the ministers are paid too much. This policy i understand is a masterstroke as this halts graft to a very large extent. Greed cannot be stopped, but it can be reduced.

This is a trillion dollar question which has troubled great men through out mankind and over various spatial temporal scales. So this author does not claim to have attained nirvana at the age of 25. Happiness seems to be the basis of all the value systems worldwide, whether happiness is through giving, sacrifice or achieving material possessions.   Happiness can be momentary,  fleeting or a transient phase where we dont feel happy but we feel pleased in comparison to other days we have had in the past.  Or Happiness is simply put as a Attitude or a State of Mind which guides us the way see look at mundane things in our lives. Happiness is a sentiment which is altruistic as a satisfied, happy man would not strive for more and a contented consumer is the antithesis of the market state mechanisms where brilliant manipulative marketers create an artificial need in us and drives us to keep up with the Mr. Jones’s.

Happiness is not only a feeling, but has moved beyond the individual actor to the realm of the institution of the nation state. Economic growth is seen beyond GDP numbers and is seen in terms of human developmental indicators such as the Gross National Happiness Index in Bhutan, which measures happiness and not material growth. The death of happiness begins when we start comparing what we have with our friends and neighbors. White Collar crime is triggered by men, who have the drive to become stinking rich overnight. It has brought the downfall of many powerful men from the heights of success. The former Mc Kinsey Boss who is indicted by the Security and Exchange Commission for helping convicted Hedge Fund Boss Raj Rajratnam for insider trading, was a widely respected man in the corporate world and was a rag to riches story, the stuff dreams are made of.

In this age of consumerism, the intrinsic human weakness for  oneupmanship has been exploited  by the capitalistic hegemony for wealth accumulation and hence creates a inequality divide, which fuels strife. Terrorism in the garb of  ideology is fueled by the molotov cocktail of poverty and power. Happiness is connected to fulfillment and its a personal equation with our soul. We define our own state of happiness and a happy soul means for a happy society and a strife free society.

Science and Technology is worshiped, exalted and rarefied at the alter of progress and development. Many of these technologies are innovated and developed in the closeted labs in research institutes, corporate r&d labs sans the involvement of society and the wider stakeholders at large. This creates a technological divide, between the geeks and the followers. All throughout history, social and economic factors have shaped technology and how these technologies have become embedded in the mosaic of day to day existence The refrigerator  initially in the early twentieth century was predominantly gas based but due the influence of the electricity utility companies, technology evolved towards developing into a favorable environment for the electricity based product. Politics and the Social Architecture determines the trajectory of innovation and acceptance in the societal ecosystem.

In this era of advancing Climate Change, where the poorest billion is at the frontier to take the hit from the power of Mother Nature due to our irresponsible carbon intensive industrialization. But most of the technology being generated in labs now a days is not innovated in consultation in multi disciplinary settings but rather top down from the scientists and technologists.  Water Technologies developed can be a panacea for the 1.1 billion souls who do not have access to clean water, in order to reach the ground actors, engineers have to create teams with public health professionals and with anthropologists/developmental specialists to understand the culture and the traditional institutional frameworks for the clean water to reach the man who really needs it.

Sustainable technologies is not about creating farms of photo voltaic cells or off shore wind farms but about the impact of reaching communities off the power grid. Sustainable technologies need to be humanized in order to be real to the person it is really meant for.  Technology is a complement to Society and not the other way around. Sustainability as a concept has to incorporate the human element, environment is not a biotic, it is us who live because of it.

Sustainability is the DNA of Nature’s Survival. Technology plays an important role, it can be made more lethal in its application, for good.

In this age of hyper globalization, fueled by the new media revolution and multi-stakeholder multi lateral institutions such as the IMF (never mind what the IMF boss has done in NY)  or the ADB and the G20 club or regional clubs such as the ASEAN or the GCC, governance is no longer insulated at the nation-state strata, Its the age of the Market-State we are in where complex and coupled financial markets create havoc in some other part of the world than the place it is originating. Food Prices at commodity exchanges cause poverty to jump and deprivation to spread. The Sub prime crisis lead to a financial tsunami creating standards of living to plummet in industrialized nations.  The industrialized world is aging, China and India will reap the demographic dividend by 2030 when, economies will be ageing in the White World, where there wont be enough tax payers in the younger generation to foot the welfare state bills. The remedy to this is migration from the parts of the world where populations are in the working age groups.

Migration is a tricky issue always as it carries cultural and emotional baggage with every person who migrates. Cupatino in California has one of the highest Asian American ethnic populations as they are the talent engine driving silicon valley and the innovation architecture that builds a Apple, Google and a Microsoft. Hindus in America are next only to Jews in terms of median income and educational levels. A Rickky Haley and a Bobby Jindal are poster kids for the community. They build temples, community centres and faith schools and take a non semitic, Abrahamic culture in the American cultural landscape.

This has been a minor integration success story in comparison to the Arab American Community in Detroit or the massive Turkish German community, where 50 years of  contributing to the community is not enough for the German Government. Same is for France with the Hijab ban and the Swiss minaret ban does not help integration matters.  Immigration is Good, but it causes social implications because it creates displacement of jobs, cultural turbulence and a dilution of identity through mixed marriages. The rise of the far right in Europe is a testament to the uneasiness, that the whites towards immigrants. Its Islamophobia at its best, North African Immigrants have built post war France, Zinedine Zidane is an illustrious french citizen of north african decent- the World Cup Football legend. These challenges cause headaches for the secular inclusive ruling parties in Europe in terms of governance. Marie Le Pen, is a top far-right challenger to Sarkozy in next years prez polls in the light of Stratz Kahn new york en devours.

Demographic changes associated with migration cause electoral ramifications, in the recently concluded Singapore polls, some political commentators have suggested the 90.000 new citizens given nationality during the 2006-11 period played a role in tilted the balance in some closely contested seats. Immigration provides economic competitiveness, because, top class talent is globally mobile and the countries which attract them will a step ahead of the curve. Microsoft has a development hub in Vancouver across the border from its global HQ in Seattle in order to just circumvent, the HIB Visa regime in the US post 9/11 security regime.

Immigration and Identity in this era of hyper, turbo charged globalization 2.0 era is volatile, but things needs to be rationalized  and put in context when policy decisions are made, and not in the light of race inspired emotional impulse decision making. Its a new era, we need to brace for it….

This is a major day in Indian electoral history, the longest running democratically elected communist government on the plant for 34 long years is walking out of Writers Building and today Alimuddin Street- the Left HQ in Kolkata is very sparsely populated with scribes. It was a personality centric presidential style poll for change,  India’s Lech Walesa – the Trinamool Congress Supremo- Mamata Banerjee has brought the Red Empire down. It is a mandate for change, a generation which has not seen anything apart from Communists in power.  Post Singur and Nandigram, the Trinamool captured half the seats in 2009 parliamentary polls and today is the culmination of that paradigm shift in Government.

Madam J Jayalalitha in Tamil Nadu has been brought to power with a coalition with DMDK and the left. This mandate is in response to the family politics and corruption scandal post the 2G Scam.  The people have voted against the status quo. But the day belongs to Mamata Banerjee, street fighter extraordinare, who challenged the mighty left and made them bite dust.

As we have just seen another PAP landslide in to parliament with its margins reduced and with the historic entry of five men from Al Juneid GRC from the opposition’s elite team beating a star players from the PAP which includes brilliant Foreign Minister Yeo and other cabinet level talent. The question is that in the pursuit for opposition voices in Parliament, which is indeed healthy for dialogue  in a democratic set-up, governance will take a back seat. In India, Indonesia, Bangladesh and other developing nations where these are so called vibrant democracies, electioneering with done at its best, but Governance; which is the software of a nation state, takes a back seat. So, its democracy sans objective. In Malaysia, due to the affirmative action policies; minorities are migrating in droves as well as the affluent indian who does not get an admit due to being an upper caste, in-spite of having the merit and talent. This is the outcome of a democracy.

In so called first world parliament’s like UK and Belgium; policy gridlocks are the name of the game.  Unholy ideological alliances are made to stay in power. Singapore is what Singapore is because of the elite talent at the top, although i agree no system is perfect and there is always a room for improvement. Health care and living costs are certainly legitimate causes which effect lives on a day to day basis.

The eye in a democracy should be on making peoples lives better, and meritocracy and clean government does help.