Just Me - India

It is amazing that the some ministers in the govt. of India are introducing a legislature, to provide for Reservations in the Higher Education. Its nothing less than a fraud, being perpetrated on citizens.

What is it about, when did it come into being?

• This idea was mooted by B R Ambedkar, widely regarded as author of Indian Constitution.
• The idea was to reserve some percentage of seats in government and government enterprises for certain castes.
• It was not purely based on those who were economically underprivileged, but clearly based on castes.
• Although to be fair - the castes identified were those that were indeed economically unerprivileged.
• Over a period of time, this list kept growing, and more castes where added to the list.
• The original idea was to do away with reservations after a few years, by which time it was thought the underprivileged would have gained some ground.

What went wrong with this idea?

• It was not a well-thought through idea. Instead of guaranteeing reservations to those with poor economic background, it sought to guarantee reservations to belonging to certain castes.
• The reality is there for everyone to see. People belonging to these reserved castes continue to remain as poor as they were several decades back. A few government jobs is not good enough.
• It is a well known fact that, government insititutions in India over several decades since independence have been inefficient and even corrupt. What  benefit can reserved jobs of such institutions bring to them.
• There have beens innumerable cases, where people obtain false certificates - stating they belong to a certain reserved castes, to gain these jobs.
• Any job or a position not gained by merit, is likely to not bring merit to the job at hand. All jobs should be a give and take relationship. The employee performs, the employer pays. Guarantee of a lifetime of a job irrespective of performance will bring exactly the kind of results that government owned enterprises came up with.
• Politicians of every hue used it as a tool to gain votes. They not only continued with reservations (against the original mandate), but sought to increase the pool of people who would qualify for reservations, and even attempted to enhance the scope of reservations beyond govt. enterprises to private enterprises.

What is happening now?

• Government is trying to introduce reservations in premier higher education institutions (IITs, IIMs etc.)
• The very reason these institutions are considered meritorious is that admissions are based on merit. This very foundation is supposed to be changed!
• This is clearly happening for political gain by the party in power. It is shame that no other political party will oppose this move either, because they too dont want to lose votes from people who stand to gain from reservations.
• The reserved category of castes are viewed as vote banks by these politicians.

What is need of the hour?

• Primary Education is the need of the hour. The people from underpriviledged background do not even have access to decent schools, and clean drinking water. We need to start with basics - and this should have happened decades ago.
• Get the schools functioning. It is a well known fact that even teachers do not turn up in these schools, and very often are not paid at all or not paid well. On what basis then we expect the students to show up !!
• A large number of people remain illiterate, get that going first. Get the illiteracy rates down to zero. Basics.
• By all means give equal opportunity to all citizens. And this is acheived by providing  better schools, education, economic help, food, healthcare, drinking water to citizens. Let people strive for excellence. Thats where true happiness of achievement also lies.

Adios.

Autobiography of Founder of Sony !

If you want to know about the life and success story of the man who created Sony - this is the book. Among many other things he talks about:

• His early years in the military.
• How the work patterns in Japan differ from those in the West (USA).
  
• How intuition is often greater than data - everyone had predicted there was no market for 'Walkmans' - but Akio Morita - went ahead with their introduction in the market - and rest is history.
• Importance of excellence and quality in their products (this is real quality built into engineering - not something external)
  

Wonderful thing is he understands his business every which way you look at - the R&D, Engineering, Marketing, Sales, Management. Overall very interesting reading.

Wonder - Why people slot themselves as technocrats vs Management Guys vs something else... here is a shining example to learn from !

Yes, you guessed it - this is the autobiography of Michael Dell - or rather the story of Dell's suceess. Actually, it is more about Dell than the man himself.

One of the fundamental premises of Dell is remove the middleman - customers order directly from Dell - and Dell delivers ! Does this ring a bell ? Yes, Sam Walton - Walmart Founder - was  able to come up with low prices because he removed middlemen on the supplier side of Business, among other efficient things he did.

 Apparently, Dell is very efficient in on-demand fulfilment of Orders. Their network of Vendors/Suppliers work so efficiently with them, that they can assemble and send PCs to customers in a very short time. Dell dwels on this apsect a lot.

This is the autobiography of Sam Walton - founder of Walmart.

As you would expect it has the story of Walmart, and its stupendous growth. An interesting aspect of the book is - the way it is written. There are paragraphs (quotes) from several people associated with Walmart across the book. That sometimes distracts the reader - as there are too many of such quotes.

 One of the things Sam Walton states about 'Charity' is : Walmart or he does not believe in charity for the sake of charity. They would and are charitable where they think they should be. This is really cool - because thats the way it should be. Business Enterprises do not exist for Charity - they exist for Business. A business enterprise that drops its profits, will also not be able to pass on the benefits of its success to its customers !

But, if such a success story interests you - this book is for you. 

Authors: Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner 

This is a interesting book - very easy to read as well.

It analyzes some events, and happenings, and comes out with interesting reasoning as to why those events happened. It is largely supported by data. But, unlike a economics book, it does not really deal with numbers or economy, instead it about Why and How of the events.

And yes it is funny to read; especially because much of what is written is not conventional wisdom.