Streching the limits

It’s an old adage that in rough time nothing favors you and all news reaching to you is "bad news"; I was also facing rough times since the start of this financial year after few of my key resources from application development and maintenance decided to part away. Though at ground level there was a lot of action and restructuring happening at the technology front; newer resources were getting aligned, but it didn’t bought cheer to the colleagues who had decided to part away.

I was working on an important assignment of restructuring the physical hardware infrastructure and delivery model. My core skills being into applications, development and program management with little exposure to the infrastructure, I was thrilled with the new assignment, but on the contrary the network team felt nerves, as most of the infrastructure was moving towards managed services and they can sense a threat to their job, sensing the smoke of uncertainty they decided to part away.

This was like a double whammy for me as I was already struggling with regular development, maintenance and management task on top of it the infrastructure management team started shirking. At given point of time I appeared too much occupied with multiple types of responsibilities that too without having enough resources to answer the never ending dynamic requirements and challenges of typical IT setup.

I was bit worried and alone to understand the criticality of resources or to respond to contingent situations; it was getting difficult for me to answer all requirements, there were multiple challenges at every level and to me it appeared as if I’m fighting the lone battle. At times I appeared like an enterprise in myself, an institution which has knowledge and understanding of all the happenings in the vicinity.

But one can’t think of running the organization with this proposition, building in-house capacity or getting resources on an immediate basis was difficult. I explored an idea with my former colleagues and known associates of outsourcing certain activities which were not our core business.

The advantages of outsourcing started getting reflected, we could manage two independent consultants in less than half of the cost of a dedicated resource also with a high availability of 24X7. There are recruitment errors and so were some errors in vendor selection as well, a handful assignment with the consultants didn’t worked well and they were not able to provide solutions for some of our requirements.

But those were only one of the few cases and can be ignored. But the lesson learned is that the operations should be process driven and not person driven, with the lesson I started building In-house capabilities and capacities, though it will take some time to get fine tune and responding the requirements, but sooner or later they will take over the charge of consultants. I’m also happy with the newer dimensions getting added to the existing team as they are getting opportunity to work on different assignments.

Images source: chornyruns.blogspot.com

Unlocking the Mentality

Mindset doesn’t change and yeah it’s very difficult to change. Mindsets are basic instincts, a long drawn process formed by sedimentation of layers the way we had perceived things in our past. One and all interchangeably used mindset, mentality or a perception are governed by our upbringing, the social, political and economical environment and is a part of our DNA. In most of cases upbringing of Kids in Indian society is under strict vigil of parents, grandparents and relatives, our upbringing methodology doesn’t encourage kids to be courageous, fearless and risk takers but sometimes molest their entities. In general context we perceive a very cautious approach for the kids, we warn them repeatedly to be cautious in whatever they do and from the very beginning we start transforming them to fearful and risk aversive individuals.

The same mindset and approaches we try to put in every task we pursue and in most of the causes we tend to more reserve and cautious then what’s really required. Basic instinct of insecurity and fear of oneself getting challenges, consequences and questions in future never leaves us; we always want to carry proofs of the past and security for the future.

I could see the primitive mindset in real action in one of my assignment wherein I was working on email application which hosted some hundred odd users. Typically we don’t abort things which are unused or have lost the context, even our houses are filled up with objects which are obsolete and might be never put into the use still we carry those things with us for years and preserve them with a possibility of future use. Household items are repaired many times even if the cost of repairs surpassing the cost of newer one just because we have emotional bonding to them, we feel everything close to our heart and believe all objects are elements of our identity.

I could see thousands of mails which had lost the context and value preserved in the mail boxes. Questions regarding the usability of those email which were generally reports and archived documents got a uniform answer “I may be asked for the report and status quo for that reason I want them to preserve”. Mail box size ran into Gigabytes and it appeared next to impossible for me to work with the giant mail boxes and bulky mail items.

After a hard time convincing the mail box owners agreed to get rid of those items but I could see the fear and insecurity that they were foreseeing with future requirement. Future equation which may or may not happen and may be different than what we perceive but still we wanted to prepare for future and carry the proof of our past because we fearful, threatened and uncertain.

Mindset hardly change and it’s difficult to change

Image source: adamsprackling.com

Turnkey Project

Till recent past our requirements and technical support for IT infrastructure was answered by a local service provider and partially by in house team and we as an organization were satisfied to have 99% uptime of our services, which was collectively maintained and managed by our service provider and in-house team.

After the downturn we as an organization were hit by inflationary cost of resources and services that our service provider use to render. My hunt for advanced and cost effective solution was on and with a little bit of restructuring happening at the top level certain decisions and directions got rephrased. I got a bit of liberty to implement decisions which was for the betterment of the organization and were long term.

The idea of shifting the infrastructure resurface in March this year and I started working on the scope, though I were not fully aware of the nitty-gritty of the transition and neither I detailed it in depth but was doubly sure that the project was going to be different and difficult challenge of its own kind.

My observation and consideration that the project is going to be tricky because of the fact that we been working with certain setup and applications from last 11 years and were at great ease, customizing and reconfiguring most of the things as per the needs. To plugging out things which were up and running from almost a decade and plugging it to a different location and architecture was an uphill task.

Till some point of time it was a thought only to move to a professional data centre, colloborate with some organization which can offer better service, stability and uptime. Aspirations started building stronger with each passing day and Thoughts rolled out on paper and started getting the desired base and shape; I started formulating it in a form of project and started working on it.

With each discussion and advancement in planning stage, I observed some kind of instability in the network and server administration team who were managing the existing setup. I could make out that they were feeling insecure and they themselves were going to be obsolete in the organization once the project is fully implemented.

Things generally happen the other way one thinks of, and same happened with me, some of the key members who were important for the implementation of project left. But this movement didn’t deter me as I was confident of getting the project implement no matter what comes.

Today as most of the things are aligned as per the plans, I really boast on achieving the objectives without anyone’s support, But the funniest part is that I’m alone to understand , compliment and congratulate myself, as there are very few individuals in the organization who understands the complicacies and challenges. But no worries the learning are adding values to my skill set and me happy with that.

Image source: psasystems.com

Looking Ahead

It has been almost four months I have not faced the book I mean facebook, neither wrote anything and nor twitted. I’m feeling immense satisfaction while narrating my experiences after so many days. It’s not that nothing happened in life in between, in fact a lot of things happened @ personal, professional and national level, a lot of external factors changed during recent past which triggered me many time to write, but the responsibilities to which I was answerable dragged me to my core business line. My business is not writing, IT/ IT Enabled services, Infrastructure, application and database are the bread winner for me and my family.

Last many months kept me busy with migration of my organizations IT infrastructure from current location to a distinct location. I traversed the whole cycle of plan do check and act many a times, similarly internals, external, economical, political and financials factors traversed a whole cycle globally as well as locally.

Many things prompted me to write but I simple couldn’t afford to do, global finance equation traversed like a sine wave starting from Europe threatening Asia and propagating to US. It calmed down many a times but again reinitiated. Politically lots of things kept the world buzzing, kings were overthrown, and countries joined hands and parted as well. India kept on moving with lot of burning issues 2G, 3G, corruption and what not.

Globally, nationally, politically things are back to square one as if we have not moved a bit even, scenarios are same as they were a few months ago. But personally I learned and experienced a lot of things during the course of migration. Each day proved to be learning experience, Googled the queries, answered lot of challenges, adopted and implemented a lot of good practices whereas discarded older approaches and viewpoints.

As there were a lot of process and approaches which were person oriented, resource intensive and manual were bound to change with new infrastructure in place I encountered a lot of resilience from my colleagues. People are generally rigid and don’t want a change, but as this change was for the betterment of the organization and a bigger picture appeared profitable to the organization, individual interest was to be sacrificed.

As a learning from project management practices, any person, object or entity who has direct or indirect interest with the project becomes the stakeholder in the project. Colleagues who were habitual of certain practices and were working in a comfort zone were reluctant to change and could have adversely deviated or impacted the planned project scope, but as these resistance areas and objects were known I was able to win confidence of major stake holder who was interested in betterment of the systems and practices.

Now as most of the problem areas are solved and implementation is half way through I’m bit relaxed and look forward for a more stable, robust and better future of the organization… Aamin

Image source: www.psdgraphics.com

Evaluation of Employees

People have different abilities and capabilities in their respective job functions, and that’s the reason why the output, quality of deliverables, timeline and many other attributes varies among the individuals. Generally these attributes gets evaluated during the performance appraisal, this is the event where the abilities, competency and employees worth for the organization gets evaluated.

It’s “The Time”, time for performance review for the last year and everyone is excited over it, There are two kinds of individuals one being the group of people who were contributors and consistently added values to the organization are in an upbeat mood. They being confident that there contribution will be noticed, acknowledged and appreciated and rewards will be there in the cards.

The other group is the group of people who are also equally excited, they were just present on their respective desk for the sake of physical presence, tracking the clock for office hours, entering the office to track clock buzzing the evening bell. This group firmly believes that increment is there birth right and they should be appraised no matter how they are performing, every year they need to have a share of the increments because the term itself is performance appraisal and they think that they have delivered performance which is getting assessed.

Performance appraisal means evaluation or assessing employee contribution towards the organizational goals, how the individuals were aligned with the corporate goals and have they contributed to company’s growth directly or indirectly. Have there been any performance it should be assessed, but what about the other group of people who simply pretended to be busy doing routine job through the year and boast on the outstanding performance and contribution.

Companies who don’t have proper evaluation criteria and career plan for their employees generally end up by giving salary hikes even to the non performer, passing a wrong message to the performers. As practically company is not able to differentiate apple from oranges.

Image source: ouhuashipbuilding.com

Indispensable? Am I ..!!!

Every good employee (though good is relative term off course), who has been associated with the company for a long time does leave a void when he / she move for greener pastures. Well there is nothing wrong in an employee leaving the organization, it’s an integral part of one’s growth saga; to move on in life for growth and better prospects. Companies hire new talents for the upcoming requirements and during the process many old people leave the company, either angrily or happily or because they have no choice. Alike birth and death situation, this becomes the birth of a new employee and death of the later.

But one of such movement has literally left me and my organization in lurch.

"It was when I really started missing him, as one of the key players of my team has moved; suddenly I started feeling that a vacuum has been created and felt the necessity during the critical operations”.

It was not that the mate was super-performer, he being a good employee and was equipped with a specific domain expertise which no other employee had, he also use to get due respect and appreciation for the expertise and the type of job he use to pursue, he also jagged exponential financial growth and recognition because of the longer association with the company from last so many years.

Slowly he become indispensable in the organization and on many occasion I felt that organization is on knees against his undue requirement of financial and status growth. I could see the trouble in the future, lately I discovered that the profile he uses to handle was on different technology and there was no backup for the skill set and he was a single point failure for many things which he has created over a period of time.

I also felt that he had intentionally made himself indispensable; there were times when a team was assigned to him which he was supposed to impart the domain knowledge and equip them with the know how’s of the domain, but he failed to impart any learning value to his team members and gradually every member in his team walked away for one or the other reason.

Though company as an entity is big and far above the individuals status, but generally it’s big which gets hijacked by the miniscule. Employee forgets that it’s the individual whose fate is determined by the company and very rarely does an individual determine the fate of an institution, there is always someone who can take his place.

I’ve also learnt that at time the lack of systems & process, one person given charge of many things forces the individual to develop a feeling of being indispensable and unavoidable. There are different schools of thoughts which suggest that employee should work towards making himself indispensable, but I think that person should work to create process and systems so that once he leaves, the organization doesn’t feel the absence and the operations move smoothly. If this happens the person has really done a commendable job and delivered some values to the organization.

Everyone thinks the world cannot exist without him. But it does

Image source: savvysugar.com

Lot to achieve.

With changing time, the meaning of Independence Day has also changed and for most of the people, it's like any other holiday which one can enjoy with friends and family. As the meaning has changed so are the dimensions, People like me who have never seen the struggle and sacrifices could never understand the pulse and importance and how the status quo has been achieved.

Well I consider myself as citizen of independent nation, but question arises that have we really achieve the independence status. The decade old problems of poverty, unemployment and social diseases still rule the independent India; we are Political independent and also in terms of geographically defined territories but is that what the independence means?

What about the liberty in terms of expression of one’s view point are we independent? We all are dependent on government machinery for social benefits, security and services, we are restrained where is the independence, our day to day life getting affected by government’s actions and statements are we really independent?

Image source: guerillapoetess.blogspot.com

Past to Present

Changes are inevitable. Changes do occur with time, to which we invariably adjust and realign ourselves, our approaches, process, thinking and the way we pursue the things also changes. But at time we come across the changes which are not healthy and deviate from the core objective.

I have observed once such dramatic change which has happened within last 10-15 years; baseline for which remains intact but the other core issues getting diluted. Non core issues getting gold plated and the basic fundamentals losing the shine. I’m able to compare it as I have seen and experienced both the aspects of the issue. I’m presenting my observations about the traditional “Akhadas” and the modern health clubs “Gym culture”.

When I enrolled myself to one such “Akhada”; the learning that was imparted was to be humble, genuine and have empathy for others. “Akhadas” followed traditional Indian culture of respect, humbleness and Life long relationship between Guru (Instructor) and Chela (Student). Getting selected in “Akhadas” was not easy as there been some predefined criteria’s for selection and the selection consisted of lot of rituals, it was purely based on Guru to enroll someone under him as Chela, after all it use to be a question of life long relationship between the two.

Once getting enrolled it was Guru’s job to teach his Chela the practices of grooming and sizing the body. Before starting the workouts Chela use to take blessings from his Guru by touching his feats, then seeking divine blessings by worshiping the Hanuman Idol, and in case if Guru is not present then the Chela use to express his regards to the place where his Guru use to sit daily. The atmosphere, ambience and surroundings use to give a divine feeling, the culture itself inculcated to be obedient, loyal and to have respectful insight.

Slowly the “Akhada” culture was taken over by “fitness clubs” and “Gyms”, relationship like Guru Chela got lost and Chelas got replaced with clients. Entrepreneur started coming up with Fitness joints with a business objective and being business institutions they aimed to make profits. No moral objective/responsibility being behind the inception and delicate relationship got commercialized.

All the curtsey, traditional touch, discipline and warmth of relations got replaced by purely business formalities, neither the joints could provide the divine atmosphere or the feel of “Akhadas”.

Everything got blown away in loud music, people performing exercise in dance numbers, leaving relations, courtesy at the entrance door. The rituals are now called health programs one tries to fit his wallet into the slot of these program and ascertain his well-beings.

I can’t say that whatever has happened is for the betterment, but this is the hard core fact.

Apni marzi se kaha ke hai, kidhar ke hum hai!
Rukh havao ka jidhar ka hai, udhar ke hum hai!!

Image source: freedownloadscenter.com

The forbidden desires

Apart from the basic needs human carry lot of wants; wants are basically aspirations which can be never ending; and those who are able to achieve most of there wants are generally known as successful. One becomes successful as he is able to pursue common things uncommonly well. But once the taste of success gets associated with the individual, he start forgetting the fundamental baseline that he is pursuing common things only and nothing exceptional.

Though success is subjective term and varies from individual to individual; but one thinks he is successful when he compares his efforts and results with other counterparts or someone makes him feel that he is winner in terms of ROI as compared to others, in both the cases individual starts thinking that he is better off.

As one forgets the baseline he boasts on the success he encounters, builds up ego and loses on empathy, decorum and humanity. I pray to god that I should not behave the way I have seen many of so called successful people behaving and I should never forget the baseline.

It happened that I was standing in front of one of my wants; an “Ultra luxurious car “, probably driven by the owner himself and accompanied by a co-passenger. The gentleman who was on the driver seat was dressed well and I thought that he might be the owner of car. I was admiring the car and was in a different world altogether, suddenly the person started hooting the horn, I couldn’t understand what went wrong with this person and why is behaving non sense.

He was blabbering something, I couldn’t understand the matter, he released his seat belts and jumped out of the car, only then I could understand the matter.

He was shouting on the parking incharge as some other vehicle was backing up and he feared that it would dash his vehicle. He uttered the colorful, unreal and undesirable MC, BC type of lingo.

I was surprised to hear that from the gentleman for whom I was about to build a perception of being successful. He behaved unexpectedly like a driver, rather it was worst than a driver, even the driver wouldn’t have behaved so rudely in the same situation.

If this is what success results to; I’ll be more than happy to be an unsuccessful man rather than a nasty successful.

Wear A Smile :)

Smile is contagious; but smiley faces we rarely encounter might be over commitment to life, unfulfilled expectation and to achieve more of cosmetics has stolen the “smile factor”. Everyone is running for God knows what reasons whereas slowing down on human factor. To smile and laugh is purely human.

People generally are introverts and carry lot of reservations while greeting or sharing a smile/ to the people they are not acquainted with. In traffic jams, in elevators, in crowded places when one is negotiating to cast a way, one may find people yelling and no hint of a welcome move is celebrated..

It is not that urgency, frustration or unknown, unseen situation makes us unresponsive but generally in known and familiar situation also we refrain from putting a smile on the face. Recently I took a membership of a health club and I noticed the same phenomena happening. Club having a lot of young crowd and matured individuals, but all of them moving in particular groups and not interacting to other group members and neither knows other members. Acme of aloofness being people walking in the club, doing workouts and leaving out quietly, no body felt the presence and so the absence.

I don’t understand how people can so mechanized and reserved in a vibrant and energetic environment of a health club and how people can stay muted without a friendly expression when there is lot of energy in the surrounding. If we talk about the fairer sex, they generally don’t mingle with known-unknowns very easily and this behavior is what we anticipate, but seeing the same behavioral habits of male counterparts is shocking indeed.

I’m talking about a state that has a heritage of over socializing mix, which is landmark of vibrancy itself, right from its name to dance and music, denizen being liberal and woman liberalization and empowerment is what we witness in the state every nook and corner and seeing people living in shell doesn’t appeal to the eyes.

I love the place because if I say “Kem Cho?” to any person whom I’m facing for the very first time he invariably replies “Maja ma”, meaning that he is happy and delighted and doing well. “Kem Cho?”, I spoke to many associates in the health club to which everyone uttered the expected answer and thus we formally got introduced. But the next day most of them appeared to me as unknown-unknown, they were blunt and didn’t carry any expression of warmth, neither any hint of pervious introduction. I never found them appreciating and motivation other efforts. I don’t know what state of “maja ma” they are?

It might be a perception and may not hold true with all the known-unknown scenarios, but this being a fact that smile factor is slowly eroding from our lives and it is now a rarely found expression in the cities.

Too often we under estimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around....

Image source: deepinsidemybroomcloset.blogspot.com

Data Not reliable.

Post economic downturn, every one of us might have heard representatives from ruling government coming over the mike and expressing there view regarding the inflation and GDP growth. Expressions of these estimates were very frequent and were not governed by a single spokesperson slowly it become a routine in our life to come across through varied figures of growth and inflations through various sources. Whoever found a forum to address took an opportunity to share his estimates of inflation and GDP.

Ground reality as a citizen I encountered is totally different and opposite to what government claims. I never felt that inflation has cooled off; rather I felt that it is rising with each passing day making survival more difficult. But representatives are claiming that it has cooled off and further cooling will be seen in coming months. GDP can’t be felt on an individual level but the figures disclosed by government are discounted on the bourses, so have less faith on those numbers.

Raising doubt on these numbers might have proved to be a sin if an individual would have dared to, as one’s capability, competency and status would have proved insufficient to question government machinery. But finally someone dared;

A statement from RBI came as a big question to these figures, in its stance RBI said that they cannot make policy decisions relying on the data provided by the government as they are facing severe headwinds on multiple fronts because of the erroneous data published by the government-from advance estimates of GDP to revisions in industrial production (IIP) numbers to the preference of WPI over CPI as the measure for inflation.

Further RBI stated that if the data released by the government is inaccurate then the policy drafted by the central bank may turn out to be suboptimal, though the figures are seen with suspicion, but in the absence of any other alternative, they have to work with unreliable numbers.

In February 2010, the advance estimate for GDP growth for 2009-10 was pegged at 6.8%. Three months later, this was revised to 7.7% while in February 2011, the quick estimates pegged it at 9.1%-a change of over 40% within a year. This sort of projections fails to give analysts and policy makers the true state of the economy apart from hampering policy decisions.

Now as RBI has raised this issue probably the decision makers will address this with little bit of seriousness.

Image source: picasaweb.google.com

Chasing dreams on a Jet !!

I’m enthusiastic risk taker; I love to speculate and want to deal in everything that is traded. My love and appetite for risk has many times put me in situation where I had touched the proximity to bankruptcy, but this has not killed my desire to trade, speculate and bet on many things. Even after Having close shaves to bankruptcy many time I trade with whatever little kitty I accumulate with time. I see my future in future contracts and that’s the reason I love futures.

I have never met with windfall profits in trade rather my trades largely ended with windfall loss; it’s not an intelligent approach to speculate/trade when the results are making one poorer with each passing day, but this don’t deter me. I’m sure some day the trade approach will strike the right cord and cover all the losses incurred.

Profit and loss are part of business and might be because of this intrinsic risk-rewards businesses have profit and loss accounts, Though trading is not my business nor my profession but I desire to adopt it as my business and profession.

All who are in business understands that loss is the baseline and everyone tries to float above the baseline. As entrepreneur I know the baseline, risks and want to float above the baseline. Am I an entrepreneur? Well I don’t know.

As a trader I don’t wish to have business boundaries and as every entrepreneur wishes to have pan global presence, I wish to trade globally. Trading only in Indian bourses alone doesn’t satisfy my risk appetite; as in a day if one of the trades goes wrong there is hardly any room for further negotiation. I have encountered many such situations, though there are many hedging tools to preserve one’s interest, but the ground reality is that any of the hedging positions doesn’t gives you profit; it only safeguards your capital and prevent further loses.

It is a day-dream if I could have a private jet, I would have started my trading from Japan/ Hong Kong then moved to India placed my orders; by afternoon I would landed to Europe; traded there and by night moved to US to place my orders.

I would have preferred to take rest only on Saturdays and Sundays and during the course of my journey. By Monday, before I start my journey from Japan my accounts team would have given me the status of my profit accounts so that I fuel up my jet for the next week journey.

Though the dream has to come true, but a development which I have learnt and happening is that NSE is planning to start S&P 500 and DOW future trading, which gives me an indication that trading in US futures will be a reality now. Intricacies of that trades are yet to be understood but I also wish that all other futures also become available at Indian terminals.

I also wish that my bigger dream of having own jet become true, as that being the ultimate goal; implicit to which is that if I’m able to afford jet then I’m a billionaire… J and that’s what I, as an individual want to be…

Only Millions don’t charm me, what attracts me is millions of millions…!!!

image source: holtspot.blogspot.com

Dream or reality

People need home and for this need they need to pay penalty, with recent hike in Benchmark rates, housing loan are set to get more costly. The rate hike will definitely impact the housing sector reducing the demand of loan and eroding bottom line of builders due to reduced margin. Prospective buyers are now in dilemma as to buy now or wait for a correction in prices

With banks already increasing there lending rate the EMI’s are certainly going to step up and this will dilute the interest of many prospective buyers, but whether this will bring a correction in property prices or not, that is not very evident.

The reason of property prices not cooling down is because with the developers cost incurred in terms of labor, raw material and borrowing have gone up and they can’t reduce the cost below certain point. Cost of funds for developers is already very high, ranging up to 16%, depending on the credibility of the borrower, and banks have not been willing to lend to the real estate sector in the recent past. Apart from all these factors in mid term the property prices will go up.

There might be some correction in metro cities and that too for high end residential and commercial units, but in non-metro cities correction seems to be not in horizon, as the prices are still affordable and there is always a buying interest and the current credit policy will not discourage the first time buyers. Only Buyers with investment perspective will hold on there purchases but the real buyer will not deter the jacked up EMI’s.

This is also high time for housing finance companies to segment the home buyers i.e. buyers for affordable housing and buyers for luxurious housing and frame the policies accordingly. For an upper segment buyer the loan contribution is merely 20% of the entire cost whereas for the affordable housing segment the contribution ranges between 80-100% and with every rise in financing rates the buyer of affordable housing feels the heat.

I’m sure that the decision maker will understand the dynamics of the home finance and will create diffentiation among the class of buyers. I also feel that Home finance institution should absorb the increase cost of finance and should not download it to the customer as the housing loan being one of the most secured loans and with India seen on growth trajectory there seems to be no reasons for doing this right away.

Image source: 123rf.com

Enough is enough…!!

Plea to the decision makers, allow us to lead a stable and smooth life, don’t give us financial jitters every when and then…!!! Adopt some measures which are really giving results and drop the myopic way of looking the things.

Yes they did it again… They applied the same conventional old formula of matching inflation with interest rates, RBI firing on all cylinders. Since last few months we have seen increase in the benchmark rates every when and then with an objective to tame the inflation. Even after an increase of the benchmark rates ten times in series inflation is far above the comfort level. I’m sure that there might be other ways also to tackle inflation, which probably they are not exploring or didn’t want to explore.

Prices of commodities are on fire; if the commodities prices are to be brought under control then supply has to increased, is it a very difficult equation to understand for the decision makers. We have leaders for issue related to black money and corruption but no leaders for this issue…

I wish and pray that someone takes a lead in drawing a national level attention to this issue. Cost of living has really gone multifold and it going very difficult for common man to make his ends meet. On top of it, if one has financial obligations like housing loan etc. then the situation even worsens. With rising interest rate the obligations and tenure of obligation increases and on the other side the inflation dents the money value of rupee.

How one can adjust to the extra money required to honor the liabilities and support the livings. Rising interest rate will not only leave borrowers bleeding but also will dilute the economical growth in a longer run, defaults are bound to shoot up. A borrower carries some internal projections for the financial liabilities, but with rising interest rates the projections are going haywire

It’s a mere inefficiency of the government to tackle the issue because of which life of common man is getting ruined. Why a common man needs to pay for inefficiency of the government? Plea to the decision makers, help us in leading a better life…!!! Is someone addressing…!!!

Image source: getacoder.com

IIP: Industial Inconsistent Production

Perception shifts happens and suddenly we start asking how, when and what did it happened, Till date we were boasting that our economy is growing and we were poised to be the fastest growing economy globally. But the latest IIP Numbers indicates that we were inconsistent and missing the targets.

Today we discover that the green picture of economy was a myth and we are not only stagnant at many ends but also de- accelerating on many fronts.

Be it IIP Number, inflation, fuel cost or benchmark rate hikes; all collectively are giving tough time to Indian economy indicators as a result the indices are closing on an negative note from last three weeks. Today Market was anxiously waiting for the IIP numbers to be announced and post announcement it simply headed south. Major indexes went down and the sentiment being very week.

Sentiments are also weak as, In coming weeks Market pandits expect a .5% hike in lending rates during the next round of economy review meeting of central bank, but as the IIP numbers are below the expectation the rate hike may be limited to .25%.

Efforts and measures of government machinery to curb inflation didn’t generated any positive results and inflation is still a bull on fire; even after a series of rate hike, Growth is getting hampered in an entirety because of series of rate hike. Market is still under the fear of rise in price of petro products, meeting for which is yet pending.

To please the voter government is set to increase the minimum support price for agricultural commodities which will make the products dearer, ultimately adding to food inflation. India’s food inflation may accelerate post October when new crops, affected by higher farming costs and rising oil prices, arrive in the market, there seems to be less relief as on one hand government tries to protect the customer and on other hand it handhold the farmers interest.

Globally there is still a lot of unrest in terms of growth indicators, oil, political and economical stability adding more pressure to Indian indexes.

Time ahead seems to be tougher with interest rate hike in cards, dearer fuel and agricultural commodities and below average returns in equity market.

Image source: www.ptmortgage.com

Tainted niche

Indians have a great affection and fascination towards gold jewelry, and this zeal has been cashed in by Indian corporate. I’m narrating one of my bitter experiences with one of such big brand “Tanishq” which is backed up by TATA sons.

Much obvious that TATA as a brand has touched our life in many ways, and the association of the word TATA is to an extent that we use the word TATA in our formal gesture instead of saying “good bye” or “see you”, interestingly there is no word in English dictionary as TATA which can be synonymically used in place of “good bye” or “see you”. This word found place in our lives as most of truck that we have seen since childhood have TATA written on the boot J

Well having trust in brand name and there products are obvious thing and learning that Tanishq as a brand is endorsed by TATA fundamental I developed faith on it.
Every Indian family have happy occasions to purchase gold so did I, I made few purchases from Tanishq, but my experiences till date are not encouraging me to recommend this brand to anyone.

In the entirety of purchase, use of products, experience and workmanship I’m not at all satisfied with the brand in a wider sense. Though TATA has maintained the quality of base product i.e. gold and also the employees in terms of the behavioral aspect and decorum but failed to come up with products which are good in durability, experience and friendly to consumer pockets.

I tried to find a justification on making charges of different products but the executive were shying away with an excuse of design pattern. Hardly do the they know that all the designs are made on high efficient machines and one can say that there is hardly any waste in cutting and molding the design.

With celebrity endorsing there brands I have observed there making charges jacking up exorbitantly, the store doesn’t shy out in demanding 500 rupees per gram of making charges, now imagine if you buy a product of 10 grams you need to shell out 5000 rupees as making charge which are highly unrealistic tuning to 20-25% of the cost of gold.

I argued with the sales person on justification of the charges but in vain, For simplest of the design they were charging anywhere between 350 to 400 rupees per gram, I would have been better off if I would have chosen a local jeweler who would have given me same 22 carat jewelry at a much cheaper making charges.

Though, the local jeweler doesn’t endorse his product with a certificate of authenticity, but his face value and my relations with him would have been more authentic then a formal certificate. To me Tanishq as a brand really didn’t appealed much and I’m one of the unhappy customers of the products and relations and with a hope that they improve in future

Image source: corrosionlogic.com

Emotional Atyachar

“Fidelity” is the basic requirement of any relationships and discovering infidelity of any counterpart is truly painful experience, it is equally painful to explore one partner is suspecting his/her move. With technological advancements the dimension of spying the sequences has changed; books magazine and websites which are catering to or meant for specific gender (male or female) are flooded with the suggestion, queries and tips to detect the slippage.

One may think what difference does it really makes if something has to slip it will….. Networking sites has revolutionized the way we connect, share and make friends, they being the best way to reach out to family and friends. As there are merits of networking sites so are the demerits especially if you are married individual having suspecting partner and top of that you haven’t disclosed your marital status on the sites…J. I have seen Proxy profiles floating on the sites trying to lure there own counterparts and detect the slippage.

But when one is in love, the gesture shows an impression of it …...and those who are closely associated with the individual, detects the sordid fact…. Most of the cases known to me; the suspecting partner closely watches the partner moves, keeping a close watch on internet activities, behavioral changes and phone logs. How awkward the situation might be when one knows that his/her partner is suspecting and monitoring the moves, internet is flooded with the tips to catch the partner red handed and suggesting the key indicators which indicates slippages.

Television channel cashing on the emotional bonding and exploiting the relations to a newer dimension attracting people to check fidelity of their partners on a national television.

My stand on this is that Its an emotional atyachar to be on any side.

Image source: ilovemydarling.wordpress.com

Nuances of Super Performers

Super performer is a subjective term and varies from manager to manager, and organization have there own ways of defining super performer. Every manager wishes to have super performers in his team, but the over time the so called super performers may actually ruin the team; the team which includes performers and average performers.

A super performer often proves the rest of the team as under performer or inefficient intentionally or unintentionally where as he enjoys the “blue eyed boy” status. Managers start comparing the performance of the individuals against the super performer as they want other to take inspiration from the super performer. Super performer cashes on the managers attitude and start ill-treating the team members and develop an unimpressive response for the rest of the team.

Actually the super performer becomes a matter or envy for the rest of the team instead of taking it as an inspiration; because we being human; we have the feeling of love, hatred, jealously and we don’t like to be compared with anyone else. Manager comparing individuals with super performers breaks the spirits of the team and they start feeling that they are not getting proper attention and response from there managers.

Super performer carries certain additions, i.e. desire of appreciation, being into limelight and innovation. They constantly look for jobs, roles and opportunities which can bring them into limelight and many times they invade other team members territory depriving them with there job and to extend of losing the job. Organizations on the other hand can’t have innovation on daily basis and come up with jobs which satisfy the desires of super performer; routine jobs which are not having any appreciation are routed to the team by the super performers and thus depriving them from doing any innovative and productive work and thus resulting in conflicts of interest and workload.

There is an equal threat to the organization from super performers and under performer or performer as well. But super performer shines because there are average/good/ bad performers exist in the organization.

Super competence and incompetence both can be dangerous to the organization, but more irreversible damage is caused by super performers as compared to average performers.

Challenge called life

I like speaking to people on all the topics and happenings around, an electrician happened to visit my house for some repairs and I was talking to him regarding his family and daily affairs. He told me that he is a gold smith by profession and used to stay in Middle East along with his family and kids pursued there studies there only till the time he was there.

He further added that life is not as smooth as it appears; he left the country, empty handed because of the business losses, though the person was defeated in financial battle but never sounded as a looser, he seems to be charged up, high with positive outlook and a zeal to do things better and bigger.

He later introduced me to his son who studied in East and was working as a computer operator at a local business establishment, His skill set and work profile was something similar which were required in some of my known organization, so I asked him to meet the respective HR the next morning. During the course of interview discussion he appeared very composed and relevant to the requirement and henceforth was offered a job by that organization.

This news appeared as music to my ears; he getting selected and offered a better salary then what he was earning. But the ordeal was about to begin for this poor chap, he being not from well to do family use to come to the office by bicycle, as neither he nor his family have sufficient money to afford a private transport for him and spending on public transport proved to be a wastage of time and money.

Riding a bicycle appeared to be very uncommon. Everybody else were either driving a vehicle or using public transport, His Colleagues started making fun of this poor chap, ignoring his presence and avoided even taking to him; probably they might be having a substandard outlook for his status quo.

He use to dress reasonably well, not unlike his counterpart who use to dress in latest couture, flaunting modern gadgets, mobile phones and vehicles.But to me they appeared hollow;

Hollow individuals having hollow values and hollow ethics!!

Individuals having no respect for the person as human being, dishonor for the poor and needy stature.

Probably every one of his colleague was born with a silver spoon and have never experienced a challenge called life; on the contrary this poor chap had sailed through rough weather and the struggle made him realize the bitter truth of life. Struggle has made him a tough nut to crack and with each passing day he is growing tougher and accepting new challenges of life.

I’m doubly sure that, if any of his colleague steps up in his shoe could not survived with this level of hardships. This guy even works for a part-time steward job in evening hours to earn extra bucks; all this he does is for the betterment of himself and his family and I don’t see any harm in doing that, but his colleagues are just beyond imagination, they tease him for this job.
I was annoyed when I learnt nuisance of his colleagues and felt pity for mental Dexterity of his colleagues who were not behaving in common sense.

I wish him a very good luck from bottom of my heart.

image source: sevenperfumes.wordpress.com

Borrower or a Scapegoat?

Though I’m not an economist, neither do I understand the intricacies of economics but certainly believe that somewhere Government machinery is not able to connect the missing links and not playing there cards well.

It’s nothing, except sheer failure of system that the inflation is getting out of control. Though the inflation figures declared by the government doesn’t depict the real time situation; a consumer can give better insight as to what level the cost of living has increased in the recent past.

Like an Embarrassed cat scratching the pillar central bank beating the bush of Repo rate and reverse repo rate. Every time there is a spurt in inflation the only measure central bank finds; is to conveniently increase the benchmark rates thus pushing the borrowers in huffy puffy. I’m sure that except tempering the benchmark rates there might be other ways and means to control the inflation which the governing body should explore.

It has been nine such occasions when the central bank has increased the benchmark rates and on most of such occasions the financial institutions has passed on the hike to there customers. India being a developing country; boast on high number of young professionals, entrepreneurs and consumers, and as the population is young, the consumers is having more number of debts as compared to cash. With each such rise the debt liability of the customer increases whereas the return on deposits remains practically same after deducting the taxes on interest component.

I’ve came across many such cases wherein persons talking home loan at the start of financial year 2008, today have the same debt liability even after paying the EMI for three full years. Thanks to the increasing lending rate, borrowers are becoming scapegoat and paying the cost of economic growth and inefficiencies of government machinery to tackle inflation.

Image source: moodle.formalta.com

Gold Bubble But made of steel

Monday 25^th April-2011 Silver was trading @ its all time high (75000/kg approx), and so was gold, speculations and sentiments were high in anticipation of the future course of Bull Run or a steep correction. Analysts gave a note of pause and caution as they foresee a correction happening which they were anticipating to happen since the rally started.

Silver has given returns like never before in the past one year or so, the price use to be around 23000/ kg almost a year and half ago and since then it has almost tripled. With this sudden rally people believe that it is a bubble and will burst one or the other day; I also see it as a bubble but bubble of steel J which means it is not going to burst.

The reason of sudden spurt in the prices of gold and silver is not only because of the consumer demand of the precious metals having gone up, but there are other factors that are fuelling the demand. Crude is constantly trading at a price tag of above 100$, globally inflation is a cause of concern and precious metals are viewed as a hedge against inflation.

It’s not that the gold and silver are rising in prices, but the fact is that the US dollar is slowly losing its place as the world's reserve currency. If the dollar were to be dumped as the world's reserve currency, severe inflation would result, since the purchasing power of the dollar and dollar denominated assets will diminish rapidly.

History has stories to tell that hard assets, especially gold, silver, and land retain the monetary values in times of severe inflation, hyperinflation, civil unrest, and war, and that’s why people buy gold and silver for this exact reason.

Gold and silver or for that matter any precious metal is not to be treated as stock and equities, rather they are to be treated as insurance; when the currencies are loosing shine.
We need to think; if this would have been a bubble then why the central banks around the world would be buying so much of it.

Image source: www.imageafter.com

Silver smiles with a Golden tooth

Gold and silver prices are breaching there historical records, largely being fuelled by global unrest, inflation and economic volatility. Gold Prices are shying a bit as compared to silver price which is literally on fire. With each passing day, silver is breaching its historic highs and rising by an average 1000 INR on a daily basis.

I happened to visit a jeweler shop last Monday as I was looking for a semi precious stone, out of curiosity I inquiring about the silver and gold prices and was in a state of shock to leant 64250/kg and 21850/ 10 gram respectively. I knew that silver is going to over shine gold in years to come, but will happen so early was never anticipating.

Today 7 days later (Monday 25^th April-2011) purest form of Silver is hovering around 73800 and gold around 22450. Silver has appreciated by 10% whereas gold hardly by 4%. All that will shine is silver

Though I’m not a trader in the precious metal arena but I believe that there are enough sentimental, global and economical factors to give support to the gold and silver prices, and if you ask me will the prices ease up? I will say “BIG NO”.

With the marriage season setting in and “Akshay Tritiya” on 6^th may-2011 there are enough reasons for gold and silver to scale up, Hindus believe Akshay tritiya as the most auspicious occasion to buy gold/ silver and usually start purchasing for marriage and other social functions.

Apart from the demand arising due to marriage season, indications of good monsoon will also add fuel to the demand, again pushing the price higher. Till the monsoon gets over there are no factors which can dilute the demand and so the price.

Of course There is some gap between the end of monsoon and next festival season during which the prices can have a set back only if inflation comes under control. But despite of all our measures we are not able to tame the inflation; these precious metals are considered as the best hedge against inflation and therefore prices will not come down till the point inflation is beyond our control.

Once Diwali season sets in no factor can downcast the prices and rising demand will further fuel the prices, looking at the overall scenario I think silver will touch 1 lac /Kg and gold to 25000/10 gm by the year end.

So if you are investor and having interest to buy; buy it now, before the rally reaches to the point of reversal.

Image source : preciousmetalshop.com

Love is Blind

You will find many organizations working for welfare and rehabilitation of mute species “animals I’m taking about” but hardly have I seen any organization helping human beings in disguise due to those mute species. My apology they are not mute species, basically they speak, and they might be speaking about a hell lot of things.

Though they can’t express their experiences in human language and neither can human understand their language but studies and observations done by Animal lovers, scientists who interact with animals reveled that they too have emotions and they have their own ways of expressing their emotions through there speech and actions.

They have capacity for pain, fear love and hatred and emotions doll out in form of voice, cry and fight. They might be laughing even…J I don’t know as I haven’t seen neither understood them as to how they laugh… J but the factors and expression of their emotion is really annoying.

I boast on animal loving individuals of my society, the residents are really very genuine and very loving and caring for all mute species, but the one species that attracts the most affectionate is dog. I don’t know for what reason but my housing society is flooded with street dogs; why not people taking utmost care of pregnancies of the species and offshoots during their breeding period, might be someone have suggested them to do so.

Every residential block is hijacked by a group of dogs, as people love them deeply they feed them with milk, biscuits and all those foodies that a dog can eat. They arrange everything for the dogs; right from warm cloths to cold water for chilling out..!!! Dogs are happy I believe… do they laugh…??? I still don’t know, but they have become greedy as a result of which there are frequent fights for the right of resident and territory.

During the day time they enjoy all the foodies and are dozing most of the time; in the nights they are on strict vigil, they shout and cry a lot for god knows reasons; disturbing the sleeps of residents. But as love is blind, resident don’t let ears to that. They patrol their territory and visit every floor on the block; in the morning when they feel that everyone is about to wake up they wind up there patrolling and before leaving the job they never forget to do the dirt in the corridors; might be some ecstatic feeling compelling them to do so.

Really a menace… Dog menace… lot of dirt, attack on kids and elderly people… but who cares after all "Love is Blind"

I frequently think “who lets the dog out?”
Image source: http://www.dzynsunlimited.com/

Rich banks poor borrower

High interest rate regime is giving sleepless nights to the borrower; Loans getting expensive day by day be it home, auto, personal or corporate loan. The cost of capital has increased enormously and within past 12-15 months the rates has been adjusted at least 5 times by the cash-credit monitoring body.

Well the moment loans gets costlier the deposit rates also increases benefiting the depositors specially peoples who are depended on income of interest. But my apprehension is with the way interest income is treated under tax bracket. Tax on the interest is treated as per the depositors’ tax slabs and in turn the depositor gets merely 2-3% higher returns as compared to saving bank accounts.

A person, who is not employed in any of the government machinery, is practically making his living by his own efforts, as per my opinion he should be totally exempted from income tax, because the government system is not facilitating him in earning his livelihood, and all the infrastructure and service which one uses being a citizen, are getting taxed directly or indirectly. Whatever little one saves becomes the scapegoat of income tax and he is left with practically petty returns. If I’m asked to reform “Taxes on Interest” I would certainly give a waiver/exemption on deposits which are equal to annual income of the depositor as generally people have more liabilities in terms of loans and expenses as compared to deposits they have parked with the banks.

Rising interest rate somewhat balances of inflows and outflows of interest component but still there persists a gap between the amount parked as FDR’s and the loan outstanding, on top of it one is liable for the income tax on interest earned from the Deposits which further dents the balancing.

Financial institutes offering long term loan have practically discontinued fixed interest loan as they are not very sure about the cost of capital in the longer run and that’s the reason the only option the borrower is left is “Floating rate interest” which means that rate will be driven by cash-credit equation. Borrower taking a long term commitment is always in a double whammy; one side his cost of borrowing shoots up with rising interest rate and on the other side the deposit rates doesn’t adjusts to the increased deposit rates.

I’m not sure that whether the financial institutes provides floating rate deposits or not, but in normal case if one needs to avail the increased rates he needs to discontinue with the earlier deposit and initiate a newer one, But here the financial institutes play foul, they charge depositors with an penalty for this switchover . The monetary value of penalty reduces the effective ROI of the deposits and generally depositors hesitate for switchovers.

The decision makers of cash- credit policy should work towards abridging the gap and evolve a win-win situation for the depositors and financial institute. Is someone paying ear to this..!!!? Hope that it is getting heard by the decision makers…!!!

Image source: loancentral.com

Memoirs of my Revolution

For most of us College days are memories for life especially for the hostelers who spend years with the same roommate, sharing all momentary stages, moments of happiness sorrows, joy and worries with each other like any other family members. Most of them remember and cherish each and every day throughout the life, but for me it was a little different experience and a big challenge to survive all odds.

I got admission to a college which was not in my home town and so I got enrolled to the college hostel, I was getting out from the comfort of home and was preparing for a big struggle for every other thing. Well the building was not bad, but the environment was not very conducive, no need to mention we didn’t share a good rapport with our immediate seniors. Ragging though was not an issue for me at that point; no complains about that but there were many things “unwritten laws “which we were bound to abide and to some extent were not acceptable to me.

Juniors were supposed to get ready before 6.00 am as after that; senior would be using the washrooms and toilets and they didn’t wanted any fuss in between. My goodness 6.00 a.m. in the morning..!!! is this a time to take a bath? I couldn’t digest it.

Seniors wanted a privilege in the dinning even, they would be the first to have breakfast, lunch and dinners and once they are done we could continue with our course. I don’t think that the meal course was worth this discrimination, I never relish that Food, chapattis used to be over baked, vegetable curry use to be in form of soups; couldn’t understand till my last day whether it was a main course or starter… i.e. to be ate along with chapatti or were to be taken as a soup J

One code of conduct stated that no one should sleep before 12.00 midnight, my goodness a person who is awake before 6.00am, exhausted the entire day in the college, didn’t had a proper meal how can he be agile till 12.00, On top of it we were supposed to be in full formal dress till we go to bed, L….. Fastening all the buttons of shirts, even the collar button…. I hate fastening the collar button for the matter of fact I never even fasten the button below that, neither I like to dress in formals.

That’s not all done with the problem, after ragging seniors generally give treats… a universal face…. with us also the decorum was followed. We use to get 2 cream biscuits, Oh my God…. two biscuits only, that too with cream… L

For juniors Smoking, drinking and consumption of tobacco in any form was strictly prohibited in hostel, now imagine a person having all above good habits getting deprived of his needs and on top of that facing perpetual fuss over the code of conduct… how could one survive?.

Difficult it was to survive with all these restrictions in place, and so I moved ahead, moved to a place where I can wake up and sleep as per my wish, I could have meals according to my taste and answer my genuine and cosmic needs.

Though some of the senior members were very genuine, loving and caring but the set of code of conducts made life miserable. Rest of my batch match continued the hostel life whereas I chose my path of independence,

Image source: modinagar.co.cc