visit me there :) the same goodies or oddities will be there i await you .

well if my 360 faternity thinks we all can move there .. itllbe better as i really got a very lovely fraternity out here and id love to have you all with me where evre i move to. ive been missing blogging a lot lately.. and wnna get back to it as soon as possible.

love to all

and i see the same with everyone about me. the young and the old , the simple and the not so simple, the political and the not so political .. the profs and the students.. all of them struggling hard to make decisions.. the analysts on TV say india cant make good decisions.. the USA says we cant decide on the nuclear deal and the whole of US finds it difficult to decide on obama vs clinton. lols..

this is a world of indecision that we live in. a friend just called in to say , the girl he loves says that she will say i love you to him only after her father approves it. he is baulking at her indecision ..lols..

this indecision is not rampant but a basic characteristics of humans. had it not been for this indecision much of human psychology would be a natural science rather than a social science . and had it not been for this indecision.. much of evolution would have had happened like a computer porgram. it is this indecision then that springs surprises.. lovely beautiful ones of meeting someone suddenly.. of love at first sight and the joy of having convinced your love ...and so does it cause the frustations of not having been abel to do any of these..

indecision is therefore a basic charactersitic of modern human life ..and its here to stay..

BUT

spirituality says.. if u know what lies within you, you know what lies outside and there is no contest and no indecision

I was looking for dirt cheap gifts to be given by a friend at a not so important ceremony. I was guided by people in the know as to where to look for what I needed. My friend noticed an abnormally high number of lingerie shops in the downtown market. I guess lingerie is one thing which people haven’t really upgraded with the economy and their other expenditures. After all lingerie is not shown to others and anyways thongs and pant-shows in a hip-hanging jeans or pants is not a regular sight in NOIDA despite everything. It only made me think that a good indicator of checking the levels of show vs. substance in a society is to check where the lingerie is bough from J

I then visited “the Great India Place” and the “Centrestage Mall” there. GIP (great Indian Place in common parlance) disappointed before I entered as the neon boards were malfunctioning. And I wondered how many people ever look at it? Well it is a massive; no it is a mammoth sign board with dazzling neon-lights. The mall on the inside was plush with air conditioning and more.

The mall is beautifully designed like the central market in Zurich and is more beautiful and houses more upmarket brands! GIP is a totally international level mall – from the designing, to the colours, to the crowd in many places to the parking and lounges. Yet I liked it more – because of the simple fact that many might miss. It uses the strength of India. It would have had a choice in being international or Indian in those few things but it has rightly chosen to be Indian in a few selective things. Most notably the cleaning of the manual is manual with very few gadgets in view. Given the contest for space and the population that transforms to cheap labour, it is desired that cleaning operations be manual in India, a fact that the railways is giving up due to its own pressures and pressures on it.

Another feature that I liked about GIP is that while it houses Marks &Spence, somewhere is a corner of the basement it also has a big bazaar where you can buy Sarees for INR 99 only (I guess the first time the “only” was really meant in my experiences). Yes you can buy it for your “bai” or “maid”. In housing this diversity of stores, is truly represents the spirit and diversity of India that seems apt for some place called the “Great Indian Place”. Only one thing belied it – the crowd was definitely biased being only the rich and “civilised” urbane gentry. The malls of Ahmedabad surely draw a more “inclusive” crowd.

15-04-08

Everyone wants their place in the Sun.

Everyone wants it their way.

Everyone claims the truth.

Everyone works hard for success.

How can GOD be fair when everyone wants more than another ?

LOLS

The cold water brought them back together . They turned away from the temptation of the sea. they turned back home. They walked together hand in hand .

he was talking to her through a letter. it read.

You had told me that I was mistaken and everything is the same – I cant agree more to it – the amount we talk, the things we talk, the openness we share in friendship, the way we have kept our promise to give a feedback when we have one, actually nothing has changed and time is a silent witness to the unchanging world.

You told me it’s all in my mind. – Time has proven the same – the satire in my words, the doubt in my mind, the hours of talk and sharing ourselves, the naturalness in our meeting and in drifting apart or the drifting apart itself. It’s all a figment of my imagination.

How true you were in telling me that I am confused and don’t understand myself – my love, my intentions, my wishes, my greetings and my truth for you was all a confusion and a mere illusion of my mind.

How true you were in telling me that it is the truth if we feel it – the absence of contact, the absence of conversation, the absence of understanding, the absence of any feelings of remorse, the truth of absence is absolute …and it feels so true!!!

Thanks for teaching me to be a child and rely on my instincts (devoid of logic) more than the preachings of others!

and Satya sealed the letter to Maya !

26-03-2008

2007 was a discovery of talents minor successes and the old self in me that made me what I was distinguished from most around me and yet so complete in me. 2007 became “the year of the RISING”. There was not so much success in 2006 in achieving the objectives as there was in 2007 and this is expected for we build up on what we already have. And continuing this motion of life and development came in 2008. After the metamorphosis and the rising… I need more punch into the gulp that I am. So naturally 2008 became “year of the MAKING”.

The year of the making has already been three months old and so the first unsuccess is that I am late and the first success is the bricks are slowly falling in place one by one, slowly-slowly the phenomenon is being built. The MAKING is happening slowly and sure.

So aren’t you excited to see what December delivers this year?

b) ICT for development: my friend and colleague Abhishek pulled me into working with him to writing a case study and a case on how ICTs (internet and communication technologies) have been developed, adopted and integrated to promote development and empowerment of women in rural Gujarat by SEWA (Self Employed Women’s’ Association).it was a great learning experience and a great working camaraderie between me and Abhishek was revived and we got appreciation from Ms. Reema Nanavaty herself for our work. Work had never stopped!

c) Urban Poverty & Livelihoods : Me and Abhishek also got a chance to work with SAATH, an NGO working with slum dwellers in Ahmedabad in receiving their livelihoods initiative and suggesting a framework that can guide them for the years ahead. This work is still underway and it is almost but an in-depth brush with urban poverty.

d) Informal Education: I have been working sparingly and have been highly interested in issues of informal education focussed towards slum children and the children who are outside the formal education system. I am part of the extended team of Kartavya (http://www.kartavya.org) an effort of the students at Indian School of Mines University (http://www.ismdhanbad.ac.in towards volunteering and set up a system for educating slum children. We now have 5 centres in Jamshedpur, Ranchi , Durgapur, Patna and Dhanbad. As we registered as an organization this year and move into the second phase accompanied by expansion, I come in with management skills to Kartavya.

e) Why some Indian states lag behind the others: I wanted to get ahold on the macro aspects of the agri-sector and I got an opportunity to work with Prof. Vinod Ahuja on a World bank Consultancy Porject. I primarily worked with NSSO dat and the work has generated a huge and long time propsepctive work on our hands and as of now we have produced a working paper. Read and send your comments . also get introduced to where lie the hurdles for UP, Chattisgarh, Bihar, Orissa, MP, Rajasthan and Jharkhand. (http://www.iimahd.ernet.in/publications/public/FullText.jsp?wp_no=2007-12-01).

f) Students’ initiative for lesser developed states: Bihar has been forgotten as a barbarian land. With no means of salvaging. However we students at IIMA formed a small group that is promoting and supporting entrepreneurship (some may call it social entrepreneurship) through a think tank in Ahmedabad and projects on the grassroots in Bihar like Sammaan foundation of Irfan or the vegetable project of Kaushlendra and Bihar Development Trust of Dr. Ravgi Chandra. I and Abhishek coordinate the students group at Ahmedabad (which has no direct linking apart from knowledge sharing with the project on the grassroots). We plan to seed a stable group that lare on looks at other lesser developed states as well. I am already working with a group of students for starting work on Madhya Pradesh. If you’re interested flow in your emails to me.

g) Social Entrepreneurhsip: my interest in entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship only blossomed further this year and now I am in touch with some 30 entrepreneurs. A few of them are social entrepreneurs. I usually converse with them and help to shape their ideas, build business-plans and at times motivate them to keep going, give them contacts to move ahead and most of the times I am criticising and drilling holes in their plans and making them aware of the risks they they have overlooked in their enthusiasm to be an entrepreneur. I am in the process of getting more organized to develop organized domain knowledge in this field.

h) IRMA Alumni Association: I have also officiated as Secretary of the IRMA alumni association and am part of the core team that is reviving and building the alumni association. This is my institutional lab and also one way to pay back my alma mater and society at large. We hope the association will work to promote and develop very special institutions. (http://www.irmans.org and http://www.irma.ac.in) such that maximum benefit can be delivered to the nation and society at large.
i) Social experiment: last but not the least is a small and not so small social experiment that i am running with about 20-25 young professionals and students in the process of being trained as established professionals. The results and verdict will be out only at the end of 20-25 years and a book revisiting the experience and analysing the experiment will be in order !

So much for the talk…here is the report card for 2007

1. Thesis: idea laid out after working on two ideas. Conceptualization complete and operationalization being worked on.
2. ICT for Development: completed but marred by a not so up to mark partner and so now under reprinting and work on the same is on. Deep association with SEWA developed. A more holistic understanding of rural issues gained vis-à-vis technology. Specifics of ICT4D worked out. A case and case study as knowledge produced.
3. Urban poverty & livelihoods: work –in –progress. Issues of livelihoods and challenges of urban poverty are slightly understood to increase the understanding of poverty per se and livelihoods itself. A mid-course report has been submitted in January.
4. Informal education: registration of Kartavya done and some professional associations made. Now fund raising and establishment of management has been started.
5. Study on lagging states: the World Bank consultancy is complete but ideas need to be taken forward and the working paper is freely downloadable. Work will be slow and painstaking but important results will ensue.
6. Students’ initiative for lesser developed states: the group has been established and four projects on ground. The funding has also started to flow, growth is being planned and Madhya Pradesh is on the anvil.
7. Social Entrepreneurship: comprehension of incubation and innovation near consolidation and some basic ideas have been crystallized. The ingredients of a platform on which a body of knowledge can be built have been collected. Some projects have been promoted on the way (Kartavya/ sammaan/ Bihar development trust)
8. IAA: revival of alumni association done. Camaraderie organized in a coherent synergy. Amendment of constitution is almost complete.
9. Social experiment: the net has been cast. Consolidation on way. 2nd generation work has started.

This is why I called 2007 the “year of the rising”.

Gurgaon happens to be the jazziest and snazziest of India’s wealth centres. My impression is radically different. Well yes because I ‘Landed’ in Gurgaon at the railway station and not from the airport in near by New Delhi. I think that is why I was not blinded by the show of wealth. Before you get any ideas, I am not a communist or vowed against a show of wealth, I am just stating the obvious. Because I started the train the other than the general direction my impression is very different!

Outside the railway station Gurgaon is like Dausa in Rajasthan, a predominantly SC-ST dominated not so urbanized small district headquarters of a district that is yet to complete three decades of existence. Yes Dausa is the heart of Gurjarland and I don’t know what Gurgaon is to jatland as I met none there. I ended up seeing only two modes of transport outside the railway station –an old world charm cycle rickshaw and a 70s retro styled shared-basis-hire auto-rickshaw.(I wondered a CEO of a company based in Gurgaon using this common mode of transport like an IAS officer might use the local in Mumbai !- common mode of transport) Both are predominantly small town and rural in existence , if you’re form the top ten cities in India. We have ‘freed’ these cities of these lower forms of transport. Greeting me just outside like a local station in Mumbai was a subzi mandi (open air vegetable market) that was unorganized, haphazard and partly oh! So unhygienic! You see! The road was nice; the undigested food from Hotel Guptaji in Palanpur couldn’t survive the bumps and escaped my bodily form in the form of burps! Well if you think differently about the place try ‘landing’ at the Gurgaon railway station at nine in the morning.

The first visions of urbanization appeared as we crossed the marketplace- a hardware store shared space with a pet-clinic! Some combo of products and bundling of services! may be they sold pets-only hardware or one for the pets too! (Apart from the masters).

A cycle rickshaw caught my attention form my comic perch at the back of an auto-rickshaw on the back sear. A lady sat on the passengers’ seat, fresh from a chic beauty parlour it seemed. Well my illusion I am sure. As a rural traveller I rarely come across a beauty-parlour frequenting lady. The fun part was the way the handtowel made a gas-mask for her to save herself from maybe the ‘despicable’ rural smells. Ironically these smells made a rural travellers like me feel at home! (No Sir and No Mam! I don’t like to live in smells – I am ‘blessed’ with an over-sensitive nose.

I landed at the bus station as directed by my friend to change modes of transport and only ended up getting thoroughly confused. There was hardly a bus but a plethora of the 70s style retro-auto-rickshaws and yet to open shop ‘thelas’ parked in a huge space. I conveniently sought directions and changed to a cycle-rickshaw that took through a landscape where the roads improved as we crossed a gate that could block the road. No this was no railway crossing! The gate was an unmanned security gate for a colony that had swanky, plush bunglaws which were ostentatious shows of amassed or earned wealth. Gurgaon was happening and I realized how the landscape would have changed over the years to make “gurgawan” into ‘gurgaon’.

The rickshaw-wallah was ‘friendly’ and he decided to play host to this show of fast forward change that has resulted in a phenomenon called Gurgaon. As the rickshaw moved meters so did his commentary. He had much to tell. How times had left him with little, how time hd killed all his options. The development around had been so rapid and he was trapped in his rickshaw and everytime he tried to upgrade with the latest version of developed Gurgaon, the rising process always stole his savings form his meagre pocket. He recounted how the pulses that used to cost a score of rupees a kilogram have now upgraded to a century of rupees for a kilogram (data not verified!). He mentioned how he was forced to dream of an auto-rickshaw that he now realized might never happen as he had lost the stream of youth with the rising height of skyscrapers.

The last revelation was not wealth but a great highway. The highway is what forms the border between today and what is past. Did someone say that the past is gone? The past doesn’t exist anymore? Well I just learned on 6^th November in the morning, a bygone era lived on (on side of the highway till the railway line) and the past lives on IF yes IF you ‘land’ at Gurgaon railway station.

-06^th November, 2007 –

In a train moving towards Bareilly where there is a bomb scare at the railway station and I wonder if I live in a real world.