Idea

Rebooting Education An Innovative Way Part II

In his book “Differentiate or Die”, world famous Marketer and Management consultant Jack Trout has written; “Your competition can copy your product, copy your strategy, but they can’t copy your level of commitment and passion”.

There are many who are using technology to solve the problems which are plaguing our education system. Some of them are successful; few more may succeed and may create a Billion Dollar Unicorn but how long they will stay in this business will always remain a question. Present culture of VC funding and Angel Investment may force them to cash out and either exit the business or hand over the management control to the investors. They may not be able to match the commitment and passion of Mr. Sandeep Srivastava. He runs an investor free and debt free organization for the last 14 years. He has been earning and putting it back in the organization he has created. That’s why I avoid mentioning it to be his business.

In first part of the interview, we talked about why and how he started his journey as a social entrepreneur. Link of the same is here: Rebooting Education An Innovative Way

In the second part of his interview, we will know about Sandeep’s opinion on Education System and its impact on Job Market and how can we set things right.

Review Board: Is there disconnect between our Education system and the Job Market? Though employment data may be saying something else but the real unemployment in the country is huge. Underemployment is a huge problem in our country….

Sandeep Srivastava: Underemployment is much bigger problem than unemployment……..Why won’t it be??? It goes back to the basics….There is a staircase with steps of success to go up in life….. Pre-school, Primary school, Middle school, Secondary school, Senior Secondary school, Under Grad, Grad….so on and so forth….

And what we are saying or doing….. First five-six steps are damaged, so, remove those steps and directly jump to Graduation or level above or level just below. How can this help? It is bound to make students weak.

Look, we can’t do better if the basic school deficit is not fixed. The school deficit can’t be 100%. There may be some deficit…but not of this magnitude. Today morning itself, I bought some snacks from an up-market store in Kailash Colony and the person at the cash counter asked me for “Ek kum saat sau sathh” (One less than Rupees Seven hundred sixty). This is the level of education, in Delhi, in an up-market place like this. The person was not able to speak numbers properly and that too in Hindi. That’s the situation….

Review Board: If this is the situation in a place like Delhi, then what will be the situation in other parts of the country? I was reading somewhere a few days back that India produces around 6.3 million graduates every year…..what quality of students this system might be producing?

Sandeep Srivastava: India needs to create 1 million jobs every month. Around 12 million people get added in the supply side of job market every year.

Review Board: It will be really chaotic situation; someday somewhere…..it may burst out on the streets.

Sandeep Srivastava: Hasn’t it been happening already? Have you read the newspapers of yesterday? Trains were stopped by people seeking jobs in Mumbai….Apprentices were on the railway tracks demanding jobs.

……. For me, it boils down to getting the three languages right.

…….The First language of human is art and music. You might have seen children spoiling the walls with their drawings when they first start learning something. Music is the other one………It is proven fact that music plays a big role in developing a child’s brain. 

.......The Second language is a person’s mother tongue. It is also called the natural language. In our country, we have stopped using the mother tongue and have created a conflict; because in our country, language of academics is English, which is NOT the natural language. We have not developed any other language of our own country which can be used to teach Medicine or Engineering. Even if we start now, we can’t teach these courses in any of our languages and it would take centuries to reach there.

…… The Third language is the universal language and it is called language of Mathematics. Two plus two is equal to four, is same anywhere in the world. Only how you write numerals will change, otherwise everything will remain the same. Lot of subjects become easy when you write it mathematically and there are a number of subjects which are Mathematics based. Physics is actually Mathematics. Einstein didn’t do any lab test for his formulas; he only found answers through mathematical formulas and all his greatness are outcome of mathematics only.

These three things need special attention and needs to be corrected. You will be surprised to know that there are only twenty countries in the world where their mother tongue and language of academia is different. In a country like Thailand, even medicine is taught in Thai…..they have made their language so rich. I was shocked when I heard this…..we couldn’t take any of our languages to that level. This is not the problem of developed world. This is the problem of these twenty countries where the mother tongue (first language) has not been taken to the level of the second language i.e. English. And if we are able to do these things in our mother tongue, say Hindi or Bangla or Tamil or Telugu….. It can easily be transferable in the second language, i.e., English.

For all of it to happen, we need to create a country of readers. We never read as a nation…..only 5% of the population i.e. the Brahmins read……otherwise everywhere else there was an oral tradition. Time has come for us to start reading!!

Review Board: Sir, this brings me to my next question. We need money to educate ourselves and we need jobs to earn that money back. It is like the cycle of zero sum game. Especially in our country, when a child is born parents are ready with a list of career options and all of it ends with a job. The Indian education system is creating a country of job seekers. Barring IITs, which are giving a good leverage to entrepreneurship, almost all other educational institutions in India are producing consumers for the job market and this has been continuously creating havoc like a very high unemployment rate, poor mental health of many which no one is ready to talk about and lack of inclusive growth across all economic strata of population. What steps should be taken to make this system capable enough to make our country a country of job creators and what role entrepreneurs can play in it?

Sandeep Srivastava: This is a very interesting question. We are celebrating the fact that we have a very expanding middle class. There are around 350-400 million people in the middle class; though there is huge disparity in this class itself, but we have defined it on a certain basis and reached this number. Now we are happy….This number is big…even bigger than the population of USA…..world is looking at us….beautiful…..But there is a flipside……and I call it “Curse of the middle class”. In this class, people look for and cling to security. We want our EMIs to be paid on time; we want a life where our children will keep paying their EMIs.

The Goal of education has become limited to “financial security”. It has stopped being the source of becoming human and an understanding of life; what else can be done with education. The curse of expanding middle class is that as it is expanding the points of this financial security are narrowing and converging. We are zeroing down to the most secure point where we can live a financially secure life and everyone is chasing those points only. We are bothered about adding something to it but not risking anything out of it to create something new…..one more house, one more flat to earn an extra rental income….that’s all we want.

In past fifteen years, professionals like Doctors, Engineers, CA’s etc., have made more money outside their profession. You will often hear a statement from people that “my hobby for Saturday and Sunday is to search property for investment”.

Review Board: We are busy securing money…..but that is not creating anything.

Sandeep Srivastava: That is the middle class curse…Business is all about coming out of your comfort zone, taking risk……….but middle class is risk averse. And with this expanding middle class, we have become more risk averse as a nation. Even if we want to do business, we look for Angel Investor first. We don’t want to take risk on our own money. The moment you get money from someone, pressure starts building from the day one. Obviously it will happen because when we have taken money from someone, we will be under pressure to pay him back……so rather than the idea behind the business, money becomes the priority. So, this whole expanding middle class becoming risk averse has repercussion on others.

Lower class people are watching this and they realize that if it is the goal of the middle class, then it must be the best solution for aspirations of life. And that’s why; the entire nation is looking for jobs, rather than thinking about creating one.

There is an electrician in my office who is on the retainer basis. He has been coming to me and crying that his son somehow cleared the tenth grade and now he does not want to study and also does not want to work with him. He wants to get a job. That is the situation everywhere. So, this middle class has created a risk averse education system and social environment where the financial security tops everything and that is a huge problem.

Review Board: And how will it change?

Sandeep Srivastava: If we are able to understand it then we will solve it. But, there are elements to it…..steps to it…..and Parenting is the first step. Education should focus on overall growth of the child. We need better education system which promotes innovation, which promotes change, which promotes entrepreneurship. Without giving any benefit, government is putting all the pressure, its responsibilities on entrepreneurs. It should not happen. An entrepreneur, who is barely surviving in order to create something must be supported and not pressurized to share the social responsibility of the government.

Review Board: So we have two takeaways from it: one, we have created a country of risk averse middle and lower class and second, if someone wants to create something….take a risk….then the government is piling on them the pressure of social responsibilities.

Sandeep Srivastava: I would like to put it this way……small entrepreneurs should not be treated as big corporate, at least for the purpose of sharing government’s social responsibilities….for example opening a crèche or giving a nine month’s maternity leave to a pregnant woman. Normally a woman comes back to work after a couple of months of delivery. She also does not want to be left behind in the career by staying out of the work. An entrepreneur also can’t go without a resource for nine months.

Government should first allow the entrepreneurs to reach a level where he can carry the burden of social responsibility. As an entrepreneur, I shall be given the same amount of privileges as big corporate. My degrees, my knowledge has no bearing on my capacity of raising money from the bank. It will only look at the collateral I can provide to the bank. Though people who can and have influence are able to get or manage the credit line. If there is no value of knowledge assets then what’s the point in creating that knowledge asset. By giving it no value at all, the government itself has put a question mark on the education system it has created. If all these things are happening, then how can a country of job creators be created?

Review Board: Sir, I won’t talk ask about policy decisions to improve the education system of India. That’s government’s prerogative and responsibility. But in this prevailing situation, what advice you would like to give to the students who aim to get the best education, which can give them best return of their investment in terms of time and money and keep them productive till end?

Sandeep Srivastava: Beautiful question again……..A child learns when the family learns. There is one approach since eternity where parents tell their children to read……It is “Go and study”.

How will your children go and study when you are either watching TV or talking to someone or doing something which is not related to study. A child imitates their elders. So, to educate a child, elders need to sit and learn and get educated again with them. Even if they are highly qualified, they need to do it again. First time they did so for themselves, second time they will have to do it for their children.

If as a parent they can’t do that then they won’t be able to make the life, purpose of life and goal of life clear to their children. An uneducated parent may face the challenge, but who are educated, must focus on it. As I have already told you that to get the education level of a family right, at least 3-4 generation is required. So, if someone is at the first level of this ladder, a lapse can very well be expected and can be accepted…..but not with the parents who are already well educated.

Once they start sitting with their children, they will understand them well and guide them with all the love and care. During this course, they will be able to get all the best learning’s of life to their children which will be with them till the end.

Review Board: Sir, you have already answered my last question. I want to ask this question again but from the parent’s point of view.

Sandeep Srivastava: We have already discussed that present education system and quality has degenerated to such a level that we need a completely new system. I will again reiterate that onus is on parents to seek better life for their children.

Better life doesn’t mean fighting tooth and nail for already narrowing career options and making it narrower by driving more and more people towards it. Purpose of life should not be to get to a situation were one is depressed or becomes a heart patient by focusing more and more on monetary aspect of life.

So, my request would be not to add anything more into it of that sort. Don’t reduce the human life to the level where only money matters….. Understand the very first fact that we are humans…….We have come to this world to evolve as a better human being…..not as a machine or an animal…..

This article is written by Mr. Abhay Kumar, Head-Operations & Business Development, Team Recruiters, A Delhi Based HR Consultancy company.

You may also like to read Dos and Donts of Getting Hired for the Best Job

Negotiating the “Right Cost” for the right resource is as crucial to the employer as is the “Right Salary” for the prospective employee. Employers tend to prefer those candidates who already earn a good income. While these candidates cost more to employ, their higher incoming salaries are assumed to reflect greater competence, initiative and achievement. Hence, salary negotiation is crucial for a win – win situation for both employer / employee. 

Zero down on an expectation

Never underestimate the importance of negotiating salary in an interview. It's in your interest to pursue income increases at every legitimate opportunity.

It starts before going for the interview. A crucial part of your research is the salary range for the position you are applying for, given your background and experience. Have a salary range in mind and be prepared to discuss these figures once salary negotiation has come up.

Know your bottom line

Be clear on what is your minimum salary expectation. Decide before you go in for the interview, what salary you want to earn, what you need to live on, and what you will be willing to settle for.

Never discuss salary till it is raised by the prospective employer

If you do, you could price yourself out of a job before the employer is convinced they need you. If pressed by the interviewers, tell them you're flexible and would be happy to discuss salary when you learn more about the job.

Market yourself

It’s about selling your skills and ability at the best possible rate. Emphasize why you suit the requirement. Document your skills and accomplishments, and be prepared to talk about them.

When questioned about desired salary

Avoid a specific salary and put forward a pay range instead or discuss in terms of an expected growth in percentage terms on your current drawings.

Don't forget the value of benefits and perks when negotiating a salary

Sometimes the salary offered may seem low, low enough for you to turn down the job. But the benefits and perks can add up to your basic salary. Some benefits are fixed, but others are negotiable such as stock options, bonuses, employee discounts, training, holiday time and sick leave. Quantify your current benefits for a better understanding of what is being offered.

Make the salary discussion a friendly experience

Be amicable when discussing salary. You should make the employer feel that you are on the same side and working together to find a package that would satisfy everyone's needs.

Don't say yes to an offer right away

Be enthusiastic and appreciative when you get the job offer, but ask for at least 24 hours to respond. This gives you time to get over your initial joy at being selected. If you feel the salary is insufficient, express your concern to the employer when asking for time to consider the offer. You'll find out right away whether the salary quoted is fixed or is flexible.

Declining an offer

If you decide not to accept the offer, make sure you leave on the best of terms. Treat every offer seriously and graciously. You can never tell who you may be doing business with in the future so don't burn any bridges. Decline the offer giving concrete reasons for doing so.

We are more than seven and a half billion people on this planet earth who use hundreds of different electronic devices daily. These actions result in creation of infinite permutation and combination of actions, reactions, results and probability of results. How can an individual brain with definite space cope with all of it???

By forming patterns, deciding priorities and repetition…….

The above mentioned three actions create blocks in the mind to process information in a systematic manner and make life easy, but it happens only when life is easy!! As there is an infinite possibility of unexpected challenges and outcomes; pattern and blocks most of the time creates road blocks rather than working as anything else.

This brings us to “creative thinking” …….the right brain thinking…..out of the box thinking…..but not many people know what it is and how to make it work for themselves in order to find solutions to unexpected challenges…..

Gaurav Bahl; the name brings a huge smile to my face. He can write poetry, he can sing, he can make you laugh at the drop of a hat……..No no….He is not an actor, poet or singer….. He is a Creative Leader and Founder of Quirkee, a Gurgaon based Integrated Marcom Agency, who has worked with most of the top advertising agencies of the country. Percept, Leo Burnett, Mullen Lowe Worldwide, Hammer Communications, K Factor and Bounce Design to name a few showcase the skills of the man for more than 14 years. While we were chasing our corporate dreams, he left his well paying job, took a sabbatical to detox his system and then re-joined with a very small advertising agency after sorting out his priorities in life. The money which he was making from this job was not good enough to cover even his travel expenses. But, he sorted out and went on to do what he enjoyed doing. A very strong communicator and a patient listener, who has handled team and situations and has delivered best of results because of just one thing…..He is supremely creative….he gets into the mind of his clients to know what they want and deliver exactly the same.

That’s why I chose to talk about creativity with him. Let’s read what he has to say:

Review Board: What role creative communication plays in building a brand?

Gaurav Bahl: You have asked me what role creative communication plays in building a brand. Answer to your question rests in the fact that if you look around and see at today’s brand communication scenario, every person is flooded with too much of ‘Look at me’ objects everywhere. He goes on road and finds hoardings and banners at every nook and corner, he opens the newspaper and finds advertisement on probably every page, he opens a website or his social media account and finds advertisements flowing down from every corner. A person is having too much of it…. Literally.

Review Board: To substantiate your fact, I was reading a report claiming to be based on MIT Research; we humans are creating 2.5 Quintilian bytes of data every day on internet itself. So, completely agree with what you are saying….

Gaurav Bahl: True…..now just imagine how tough it has become for Brand Managers to cut the clutter and make a way for their communication. Here comes the Creative Communication in picture to play its crucial role.

For me, simplicity of the idea and its communication is of paramount importance. That’s what most of the iconic brands have been doing and that’s what has made their communication stick with their target audience. The more you make your audience stretch the limits of their brain, the more they will avoid your brand communication.

Most of the brand communication fails because they try to tell a lot in 30 seconds. Please understand that this time period is too short to tell your entire story. So, one should tell exactly what is needed to be told effectively during that time span. The approach of ‘make them understand’ or ‘confuse them’ strategy rarely works. The main objective of any brand communication is to sell a product or service. Someone who is paying for that product or service may get fooled once but not always. Moreover, in the case of confusion, he may choose not to buy as well.

If you remember the Vodafone advertisement of a small boy being followed by a cute pug……what message it had???? “Wherever you go….our network follows”. What is expected from a telecom operator???...... Network……and it was saying just that…..and in cutest way!!!

If you see a failed or bad brand communication, please understand that other than the creative lead, everyone else has contributed in it and creative lead has failed to take his/her idea forward. Everyone thinks he/she is creative and takes pride in creating something and wants it to be appreciated. A hoarding, a banner, a poster or a TV ad or a radio jingle all works....... I am not saying it is completely wrong to have a creative streak. Sometimes a creative lead gets different perspective at the discussion table itself. But, all of them would agree to this one point……….All of the ideas one puts forward on the discussion table can’t go in one single communication…..and if it is made to go, then it will only create confusion.

Review Board: Creativity is one of the key pillars of success. How can one become and remain creative in communication in daily personal and professional life?

Gaurav Bahl: We have already discussed that every person in this world is flooded with too much of information in the form of news, advertisements, inputs for his own work requirements at personal and professional front and many things more. All these information further become the basis of many information and ideas in their mind, which keeps looking for an outlet. Everyone wants to talk and take his ideas to the top, but that doesn’t happen all the time with everyone. Something which happens very rarely is called either ‘luck’ in most prevalent term or ‘fluke’ in crude term.

To take any idea to the top one has to remain patient and committed towards it. Now, how will this happen if someone is always willing to talk and let everything out.

So, what works for me and I think it should work for others as well; be observant of what others are doing or talking about, be patient with other’s ideas, be receptive to other’s opinion and master the art of listening. All of it will give you lots of clues, experiences and answers to your problems and challenges. All of it will automatically help you in prioritizing your work and improve your focus on the solution of problems or challenges you would be looking for.

Apart from that, though I am not much into it, following extra-curricular activities like outdoor sports, or music or travelling etc. can help your mind to relax and avoid overdose of information processing. I listen to music, watch movies and play; some people find cooking therapeutic…..and of course, Yoga is an all time favorite of many……..Your brain consumes more energy than any other part of your body and as your body’s energy saps, mind starts slowing down, it starts jumping to conclusions because it wants to work less and it starts priming. So, it is very important to look after your brain….

Fundamentals of creativity can be summed up under the following points:
-Observe people and situations around you.
-Listen to what people around you say
-Be patient; don’t jump to conclusion and become an answering machine
-Be receptive to other’s ideas and opinions and respect them.
-Prioritize your work
-Focus on what you are looking for
-Relax your mind; do something which can help you to enjoy life and take your focus away from finding solutions and being creative all the time.

Review Board: What are the other factors one should keep in mind while creating his/her own personal brand?

Gaurav Bahl: Your personal brand can’t be built in air. There has to be some substance in it. So, for a person who has some experience in his industry, his achievements, his educational qualifications, his soft skills, his accreditations, his credentials in the eyes of his business associates like colleagues, peers, seniors, suppliers etc. will form the founding stones of his personal brand. There has to be some meat in the plate to eat, otherwise your guests will remain hungry.

Now if you bring the answers of previous two questions and merge it, then you will have the complete picture. Put all your substance together which I just mentioned. Listen to people around you, observe what they are doing, be patient and respectful to their opinion, focus on their need and then create simple and neat communication for them. You will have to see that communication has to be consistent without being overbearing. Building brand is not a one time effort, so you will have to be consistent with your communication and at the same time you will have to see the product remains same, what is being promised.

The formula is applicable to newcomers as well….in fact for everyone.

Review Board: Thanks a lot Gaurav for taking your precious time out and talking to us.

Gaurav Bahl: Pleasure is all mine.

This article is written by Mr. Abhay Kumar, Head-Operations and Business Development, Team Recruiters, A Delhi based HR Consultancy company. This article first appeared on www.teammentors.in.
 
Interview-Applying and Preparation
INTERVIEW - APPLYING & PREPARATION

A call for an Interview from an organisation can mean that you are the right candidate or certain aspects reflected in your profile suit the current requirement of the organisation. In fact, it is estimated that 80% - 90% of the candidate’s profiles are rejected at the application stage. This happens for the simple reason that the Candidates don’t screen the Jobs they are applying for. It is imperative and more so at Middle or Senior Management positions to study the Position Advertised or forwarded through a Consultant thoroughly. The Job Description, Experience parameters, Location, Qualification & skill sets required or desirous by the organisation for the position are studied and matched by one’s own profile.

Applying:

• Screen the position Advertised or forwarded by a Consultant.
• Gather all relevant information related to the Position – Designation, Reporting Structure, Job Profile, Experience, Qualification, Salary fitment range, Location, Joining Time etc.
• Study the Company website, the Product & Services, clients, performance and any other relevant information related to the organisation.
• Evaluate all information available. Apply only if the position fits your profile, Career prospects and you are serious about the change.
• DON’T APPLY: If you are not contemplating a change, the position doesn’t fit into your scheme of things or just applying for the sake of testing the market.

Corporates have interviewers who are Human Resource professionals along with the Technical professional, both of whom are trained and experienced interviewers, so expect the interview to be very structured to obtain the maximum from you. In smaller firms you are more likely to be interviewed by a Partner who may not be a trained interviewer. It can be a good idea to try to steer the conversation towards the topics you have particular strengths in, highlighting your good points.

Depending on the kind of Interviewer, the process can be categorized into broadly 4 segments.

• Where you are asked questions around your CV, both generally and technically.
• Where you will be asked to give examples of how you meet their criteria e.g., of teamwork, negotiating, leadership skills etc.
• Where you might be asked some bizarre or random questions to see if you can think on the spot and how creative/logical you are.
• Where your views will be challenged or ridiculed and you might be goaded into an argument. If this happens to you do not lose your cool, it is to test how you react under extreme pressure and to see if you can hold your own.

Preparation:

• KNOW YOUR CV. Read and reread your CV.
• One should be ready to talk and justify whatever one has mentioned on the CV, like, the job changes, choice of organisation etc.
• Have a structured CV. Prioritise & focus on things you want to talk about, areas you want to highlight, your USP’s. Present your CV in the format which focuses on your areas of strength so that you initiate discussions on your thrust area.
• Anticipate and prepare a set of questions likely to be asked. Prepare answers and REHEARSE.
• Go through the Company website thoroughly. Read Vacancy details, skill sets required, Product & Services etc.
• Be decently dressed, arrive on time, have a positive Body language & carry a set of your papers and any other document as specified by the Company.
• Be HONEST & ready to sell one-self. Don’t be afraid to ask for clarifications or any other relevant information related to the company, position or job. Thank him / her for his / her time at the end.

Some sample Questions:

• Tell us about yourself?
• Why did you choose your degree and what have you gained from it? What has been your most important achievement in life so far? Why?
• What are your strengths and weaknesses?
• Why have you applied for this job / what do you have to offer us?
• What are the current issues in this sector of work?
• What experience do you have of working in a team and what role did you play in that team?
• Describe a project you have successfully completed. How would your friends describe you?
• Describe a situation you have found difficult. How did you overcome it?
• Any questions would you like to ask us?

According to Department of Statistics and Programme Implementation, Government of India, Private Final expenditure of India on Food and non-alcoholic drinks was Rs, 18,21,510 Crore in 2014-15. If we factor in the population growth and rate of inflation, we get the estimated expenditure in 2017-18. If we add to this Rs.18,000 Crore spent on alcoholic drinks, tobacco and narcotics, which finds its origin in Agri sector, then this expenditure will be close to Rs. 20 Lakh Crore. So, it is safe to say that the total Indian market size of agricultural produce is around Rs. 20 Lakh Crore. If we add the size of agriculture input, then it will be even bigger. 

A market of this size is bound to have complexities and that too in a country as diverse and complex as India, where a large section of the population is dependent on it for employment. There are many questions regarding agriculture in India and each one can have different perspective. We also had many questions for Mr. Amit Mishra, Founder- Director of Agrius India Private Limited and Founder of Ambrocia Seeds Producer Company Limited. Mr. Mishra is an Agriculture Graduate from Jawahar Lal Nehru Krishi Vishwavidyalaya, Jabalpur and PGDM-Marketing from VAMNICOM. Prior to taking up the challenging route of entrepreneurship, he has worked with GCMMF, Perfetti Van Melle, Pepsico India-Tropicana, Commodity Futures Exchange MCX and News Distribution Company Thomson Reuters. So let’s start: 

Review Board: You are an Agriculture graduate and a M.B.A and have worked with some of India’s top companies as well as a Commodity Exchange and news Distribution Company. You started your entrepreneurial journey two years back and are pretty well settled. What difference do you find in the business process of both the sectors? What can Agricultural Input Marketing learn from FMCG Food marketing of the big players?

Amit Mishra: In my opinion, the first difference is in the product itself. If we look at the flow of taking a product to the market, it looks like         Product > Targeted consumer> Marketing & Communication> Distribution network 

….the agricultural items are distributor or channel driven product while FMCG are consumer driven products. Consumer demands the brand or the kind of product he/she wants if it is FMCG product but distributor normally takes the demand in the case of agriculture product.

Review Board: Is it so? Tell us more? 

Amit Mishra: Yes, the education level of users and involved technical details of the agricultural product make it more of a channel driven product. It is very difficult for most of the farmers to understand the product detail, so, they depend on the advice of distributors. Whereas consumers are well aware of the FMCG products they want to buy. Marketing communication of FMCG products have been done so since the very beginning. 

For FMCG products, people are the primary as well as ultimate consumers as against agriculture inputs whose primary consumers are trees and plants. FMCG products, whether food or non-food, are procured on only two premises: need and aspiration. A product has either to fulfill its consumer’s need or provide aspirational value. There is not much innovation and experimentation in these products, because they are directly consumed and there are many checks and balances which need to be adhered to. Innovations are mostly focused to help make the product natural and safe for human consumption. 

As against that, Agricultural input procurement goes through four stages…  

First types of buyers are innovators; they are always on the lookout for new technology, new variety of seeds etc. to boost their produce. They enthusiastically support and participate in any kind of technological advancements. Around 0.5% of farmers in India will fall into the category. Second types of buyers are early adopters. These buyers are at the footsteps of innovators and adopt any new technology or variety immediately after confirmation of its success. They normally adopts a new technology within 1 to 3 years. They constitute roughly 4-5% of total farmers in India. Third types of buyers are late adopters. These buyers are good 3-5 years behind the innovators and early adopters. So, to them the technology is no more a new technology as it is already there for long. They constitute 50 to 55% of total farming population of India. Fourth and the last type of buyers are laggards. These buyers look for anything which has been around for long or may be there for a good 5-10 years. Surprisingly a good 40-45% of farming population of our country falls into this category. So, you can very well imagine how difficult it is for a company producing agricultural input to directly reach out to the end consumers, i.e., buyers or design a common marketing communication for them. That’s the reason why they target distribution channels and work closely with their channel partners to not only sell their products but disseminate product information. 

Though marketing efforts may be same for both the categories, but marketing communication channels and their target groups are different. Dissemination of information of agricultural input is like medicine. You don’t start consuming a medicine just because you have seen its advertisement; you get it prescribed by a Doctor. Similarly, on the basis soil type, crop etc., Agrochemicals are suggested by Distributors, backed by information provided by Agricultural Scientists as well as by the government. If anything goes wrong, then all the effort of the last six months will go waste and so will the expected income. This however is not the case with FMCG products. You see an advertisement of a chocolate; you go and buy it from a nearby store. Since there are checks and balances in place for making the product safe for human consumption, you may not like the chocolate or find it not as you assumed it to be after seeing the advertisement. But in the case of an Agricultural Input, a farmer runs a lot of risk on his investment and his future income depends on it too. That’s why he prefers to be sure before buying it and the retailer or distributor from whom he buys, works as an expert, guide and an assurance. 

One more factor that plays an important role in his buying decision is “personal acquaintance”. Since a number of farmers fall in the category of laggards and late adopters, personal acquaintance with the retailer or distributor works as a guarantee for them.

So, all of this boils down to two things: 1) Level of education; and 2) Personal touch

….. And these two things have been mastered by FMCG companies and the Agriculture Input companies can learn from them. Though it is very difficult and time consuming, but a step a day can move mountains.

What we have started doing with our business despite the fact that our resources are limited is that we have started educating our end consumers about different aspects of farming along with the products we are selling. It is addressing both the above mentioned challenges of agricultural input business. However, we know that this is a tedious task and requires lots of resources and effort. But we as a team believe that if we focus on education and training, then the late adopters can become early adopters and laggards can become late adopters thereby increasing our sales and boosting our productivity with our research work. We are planning to adopt a village pretty soon to experiment with our idea and make farmers of that village educated and aware about every aspect of farming and its business. In my opinion if business houses along with entrepreneurs like us backed by government take up this challenge, then a decade is enough to change everything, especially in a time when smartphone penetration is very high, data price is at its cheapest in the world and both of them put together is rapidly changing the human behavior. 

Review Board: So far, we have talked about Agriculture Input category vis-à-vis FMCG products. Could you please expand this discussion to include Final Produce Segment like rice, pulses, wheat as well?

Amit Mishra: Final Produce segment also carries a different behavior pattern from FMCG products. Other than Atta (Grinded wheat) and grinded spices known as C(Chili) T(Turmeric) C (Coriander), mix grinded spices known as ATC spices, other produces have not seen much success as far as branding is concerned. I have travelled extensively in urban as well as rural areas and have seen the change in pattern of packed Atta consumption. Demand of packed Atta is growing in rural areas as well; even in normal packing. But same is not reflected in pulses or rice, because packing material only adds price and not the value. Basmati rice is considered a luxury and is not consumed daily. People are consuming more of Pusa Basmati rice rather than original basmati rice. Organic foods are also in the luxury product segment, because health benefits, as promised depends on other aspects of lifestyle like complete food habit, nutrition intake, exercise routine etc. So, paying double the price than what is to be paid for normal agriculture produce is something Indian customers have not been able to make peace with.

Brand helps you to command premium, but how much and for what? You will have to show value…And in the case of commodities, it is purely transactional value. If you are changing the shape and form of the produce, then branding seems possible as you can see in the case of packed Atta or grinded mix spices and consumers are willing to pay little bit extra……. But if you are packing the whole produce, then there is no value addition.. 

So, the message is loud and clear; as the life of Indians are rapidly moving towards urban centers and rural life is following the urban life, agriculture produce marketing needs to change; it needs to change the shape of produce. If we go for processing and bringing in innovation in that, then not only will it increase the life and value of the product, but will give more money in the pocket of the farmers.

Review Board: I always felt that the biggest challenge Indian agriculture sector is facing is integration of produce and products with the market. While consumers are paying but farmers are not getting the right price. What should be done to address this problem? 

Amit Mishra: This is a very difficult question and the answer is very unpleasant for many. On the effort part, there are many steps which have been taken by the government. Many farmer-producer companies were formed in places like Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka etc., Rytu Bazaars were opened to facilitate farmers to sell their produce directly to the consumers and their are thousands of cooperative marketing societies……Despite all of this, problems are still there and their has been no change in the last seventy years. Some of it has done well, but overall if we look at the collective magnitude of challenges, they remain the same as they were after independence. Now why it has remained same…….because individual interest has always taken precedence over collective interest. If you look at the structure of these cooperative marketing societies or farmer producer companies………….you will find that these are normally led by big farmers or local politicians, who serve their interest first and member’s interest later or may be never!! 

It seems to me that the government doesn’t look interested in addressing this issue because wherever there is a poor person, there is politics involved. If things becomes better, then what will you change? If despite so many programmes, projects and billions of dollars spent on agriculture, why post harvest losses are still huge? Why are farmers still battling for loan waiver, better seeds and better price? Along with asking for these issues to be addressed, farmers also need to ask questions to politicians that if these issues have been vital in every budget and election, then why there is no improvement? Why, even after seventy years of independence, farmers are committing suicide? Self sufficiency in crucial items like pulses and edible oils are still missing by a huge margin????

There are many such questions….. Am I disillusioned??? May be yes….may be no……but the way opportunities are getting wasted for personal and political gains, problems will take such a huge proportion that solutions will be impossible!! 

But you have asked me for solutions….. And they are: 1) Educating farmers and innovation in food processing needs to be very urgently done. What is dragging farmers behind is their knowledge of different aspects of farming which includes food processing and marketing. 2)While there are rapid advances in technology supporting farming, but its real users are somewhat still disconnected with that. We as entrepreneurs will have to take lead and make farmers understand the use of technology and its integration in every aspect of farming business. 3) Hold the policy makers and politicians, who have spent the nation’s wealth in the name farmers and agriculture, accountable. They must answer us about the money spent and give us the productivity report. 4) Forget personal interest for some time and work for collective interest. 5) Along with seeking money, seek answers regularly from policy makers and policy implementers.  

These are the main solutions to problems in agriculture sector in India. On paper, there is nothing which has not been tried……but there is no account of what has been achieved vis-à-vis money spent on it. 

Review Board: Can technology help in solving the problem of integration of agricultural produce to its market? And what role entrepreneurs, private business houses and farmers themselves can play in it?

Amit Mishra: This question is connected to your previous question, so, a large part of it is already covered. Technology as required to assist the agriculture production and agriculture produce marketing is already available……And innovator entrepreneurs are playing their role…..But the size of complexity and the challenges are so huge and efforts required are of such gigantic magnitude that solo efforts of entrepreneurs will be lost. Government will have to stop thinking of it as a milch cow and work towards solving all the challenges once and for all. Otherwise solutions will be there, but in bits and pieces, as provided by entrepreneurs at a local level. 

Review Board: True. Neither have we done our bit nor have asked the right questions to our policy makers and policy implementers. Thanks a lot for taking your precious time out and talking to us….

Technically, ‘brand’ is a name, image, sign or symbol of any product or services, but actually it is a story of promise and commitment about quality, relevance and value told by its owner to its user. And as application of this theory is good for product or services, it is good for person as well. In the country like India, where the act of ablution and sacrifice are given paramount importance in human behavior, talking about oneself is considered highly inappropriate. Instead, people prefer others to talk about them and that also….always good.

But time has changed….and has changed drastically and exponentially. We are more than 1.3 billion people in this country, who are fighting for their share in the available limited resource. Our education system, our capability evaluation system and our intent to find the right fitment between requirement and capability demands serious attention. That’s why change in certain aspect of human behavior is also needed. Unless and until we get up, raise our hands and shout out that we have the capability to do certain kind of job, someone else with limited or no knowledge of the job on the offer will get up and claim it, doing complete injustice not only to us but the job also.

Dotcom Ascendancy …..

Though the period of late nineties to year 2000 is called the period of first dotcom bubble, because valuation of companies working in digital space were skyrocketing, but I call it the period of dotcom ascendancy. Internet changed everything after that; they way live, the way think, they way we eat, the way travel, the way we shop, the way we talk…and even the way we choose our life partners……just everything.

‘Skynet’ might have missed its target of taking over the planet and raging the war against humans by many decades and might not wage the actual war at all, but it has won the humans already without shedding a single drop of blood.

Avalanche of choices and standing at information super highway!!!

Internet has made these limited resources available through multiple channels at the doorstep of who can afford it and it has also made many things very affordable which was earlier available to exclusive group of people. It has put everyone on the superhighway of abundance of choices. Our way of seeking everything has changed…..so has changed the tool of seeking anything. Everything has come on internet now….

It is crowded place: Everyone was writing; now they have started talking….

We are uploading quintillion bytes of text, millions of photos and videos every day and millions of query every hour on internet. Earlier we used to write; now we are talking to our machine. ‘Cortana’ of Microsoft, ‘Siri’ of Apple with ‘Echo’ of ‘Amazon’ is giving tough competition to market leader ‘Google’, which is in the market with ‘Google Assistant’ along with its famous search.

But is our mind capable enough of handling all of it???

But, is our mind capable enough to process this much of information overload and multiplicity of choices? Our mind responds according to different hormonal secretions, many illusions and many fallacies created over a period of time through family and social environment, education and experience. Though it is capable of moving the mountains, but it is never willing to do so…..It doesn’t want to address any complicated scenario unless forced to.

Are our clients listening???

Then next question comes; are our buyers listening what we are saying, be it about product, services or the person? May be not….may be yes….even if they are listening, they are not understanding it…..for many reasons…..

Reasons….

We already talked about the amount of information being uploaded on the internet in the form of text, images, audio and video. It is just too much for the human mind…..moreover there are too many like one…….because the system we have built puts everyone and everything about everyone into manageable number of categories and then generalizes everyone falling into one particular category.

Storytelling is an art, which very few people know. While writing resume, creating profile on social media networks, uploading photos on Instagram or Facebook and uploading videos on YouTube and Facebook, people do tell their story, but in very scattered manner, making it look like a puzzle which no one is interested in solving.

So…..

Creating a firm but fluid story is important; with all the beautiful imageries, sound and videos. It has to be compact…..it has to be unique…it has to stand out, so that it sticks well with the target audience and that also on continuous and sustainable basis.

Finding out the the right audience and listening to what they are talking about and what they are looking for is equally important…..Otherwise even the best of story, best of beauty will hold no meaning.

Then comes the storytelling……… the introduction, the drama, the connect, the relevance, the pause, the ending…..everything has to be perfect…. ……..

And if is not perfect, then correction and re-telling needs to be done with utmost agility.

It is beneficial

Your life journey adds lots of monetary premium to your profile. If you fits in to someone’s focusing illusion and halo effect then it will create optimism and distinction bias towards you and change utility theory about you positively…… Or in other words, you will become their prime focus, they will create an optimistic bias towards you in their mind and will start seeing your more meaningful utility as compared to others.

But….professionals needs to be hired

It takes good amount of effort; everyone can’t do it of their own. They will be required to hire professionals, because it needs lots of effort in creating a story, finding the right kind of audience, listening to what they are talking, telling them the story, keeping the story engaging which remains connected to their mind and heart, recreating and re-telling the story if mood, taste, time, micro and macro environment changes.

It is always better hire a professional jockey if you are putting your horse to participate in a derby.

We are more than seven and a half billion people on this planet earth who use hundreds of different electronic devices daily. These actions result in creation of infinite permutation and combination of actions, reactions, results and probability of results. How can an individual brain with definite space cope with all of it???

By forming patterns, deciding priorities and repetition…….

The above mentioned three actions create blocks in the mind to process information in a systematic manner and make life easy, but it happens only when life is easy!! As there is an infinite possibility of unexpected challenges and outcomes; pattern and blocks most of the time creates road blocks rather than working as anything else.

This brings us to “creative thinking” …….the right brain thinking…..out of the box thinking…..but not many people know what it is and how to make it work for themselves in order to find solutions to unexpected challenges…..

Great things can’t be accomplished by those who surrender themselves to trends, fads, mundane routine and popular opinion. Great things can’t be achieved also by impulse, but series of small but patient observations and follow up actions brought together.

Cure of boredom is curiosity but curiosity has no cure and you know what; curiosity is the foundation stone of creativity. If you don’t want to know more, you won’t find more. So, get curious, get angry with status quo and create chaos to bring out the new normal. Whether you succeed or not is immaterial, because, believe you me, there is no such thing. Making your hidden self known is the important thing.

And what more….

Here, the quote of T.C.Boyle brings in his great insight which I would like to reproduce; “In order to create you have to believe in your ability to do so and that often means excluding the whole chunk of normal life, and, of course, pumping yourself up as much as possible as a way of keeping on. Sort of cheering yourself in great football stadium of life."

So, the question boils down to how can you be creative? Answer is very simple and it can’t be taught in rigid corporate environment where you have to decipher data, analyze trends and make predictions. There is no creativity in it.

There is no step by step rulebook to be creative; it comes with randomness and it comes with flying away from mundane routine. But it has to start from somewhere. I asked Gaurav Bahl, Founder of Quirkee, Quirkee
a Gurgaon based Integrated Marcom Agency, about how one can be creative in personal and professional life. Gaurav has rich experience with top advertising agencies like Percept, Leo Burnett, Mullen Lowe Worldwide, Hammer Communications, K Factor and Bounce Design to name a few.

This is what he has to say, “This world is flooded with too much of information in the form of news, advertisements, inputs for his own work requirements at personal and professional front and many things more. All these informations further become the basis of many information and ideas in their mind, which keeps looking for an outlet. Everyone wants to talk and take his ideas to the top, but that doesn’t happen all the time with everyone. Something which happens very rarely is called either ‘luck’ in most prevalent term or ‘fluke’ in crude term.

To take any idea to the top one has to remain patient and committed towards it. Now, how will this happen if someone is always willing to talk and let everything out.

So, what works for me and I think it should work for others as well; be observant of what others are doing or talking about, be patient with other’s ideas, be receptive to other’s opinion and master the art of listening. All of it will give you lots of clues, experiences and answers to your problems and challenges. All of it will automatically help you in prioritizing your work and improve your focus on the solution of problems or challenges you would be looking for.

Apart from that, though I am not much into it, following extra-curricular activities like outdoor sports, or music or travelling etc. can help your mind to relax and avoid overdose of information processing. I listen to music, watch movies and play; some people find cooking therapeutic…..and of course, Yoga is an all time favorite of many……..Your brain consumes more energy than any other part of your body and as your body’s energy saps, mind starts slowing down, it starts jumping to conclusions because it wants to work less and it starts priming. So, it is very important to look after your brain….

Fundamentals of creativity can be summed up under the following points:

• Observe people and situations around you.
• Listen to what people around you say
• Be patient; don’t jump to conclusion and become an answering machine
• Be receptive to other’s ideas and opinions and respect them.Prioritize your work
• Focus on what you are looking for
• Relax your mind; do something which can help you to enjoy life and take your focus away from finding solutions and being creative all the time. “

To sum everything up, I am bringing up the quotation of God of Martial Art Bruce Lee, which reads “Important thing for you is to be alert, to question, to find out, so that your own initiative can be awakened”.

Cost of Universal Basic Income in India

Idea of Universal Basic Income has been floating around in the world for quite sometime. It has started gaining traction in India as well because a national political party has proposed Universal Basic Income of Rs.321/- per day to every unemployed person of the country if the win Parliamentary Election 2019.

Let us delve into the details of cost and impact of this proposal on the economic health of this country. According to www.tradingeconomics.com, India's labor force participation in 2018 was 52.5%, which on the population of 1.284 Billion population, works out to be 674.1 Million or 67.41 Crore. Unemployment Percentage stood at 6.1% in 2018 which is highest in recent past and works out to be 41.12 Million. In 2018, workforce employed in agriculture sector in India stood at 42.5%, which works out to be 287.84 Million. This number can very well be put under underemployed workforce.

According to a report published in Times of India on February 5, 2018, workforce engaged in sectors other than agriculture but falls under unorganized sector stood at 111.1 Million on 11.1 Crore. Out of this number 60% are employed in it, which brings the actual number at 66.66 Million. So, roughly 354.50 Million of 35.45 Crore people can be brought into the category of underemployed.

Low skilled workers earned average Rs.10,900/- per month, though it may be lesser in rural areas. Proposed Universal Basic Income is Rs.321/- per day to unemployed people. If we work it out on annual basis, then total immediate cost will be Rs.475183 Crore or USD 67.31, which is 2.28% of India's GDP of USD 2948 Billion. But this is just one side of the picture. A big chunk of workforce who are underemployed will gradually start leaving the work and opting for proposed Universal Basic Income. This has the potential to take away Rs.4096610 Crore or approximately USD 580 Billion and it works out to be 19.86% of GDP of 2018. Let’s bring in one more perspective.

Since most of the low skilled workers are engaged either agriculture or manufacturing sector, this proposed UBI will pull down efficiency and productivity are of both the sector. Moreover, this proposed amount being not huge enough to encourage capital expenditure at family level, this will only increase consumer expenditure especially in food. Drop in supply and increase in demand will have magnifying impact on food inflation.

Challenges of Creating Employment

India’s unemployment rate was 6.1% and GDP grew at 7.3% in 2018. A simple thumb rule is, if GDP grows by 1%, it creates additional job by 0.5%. So, to cover up this job gap of 6.1%, GDP needs to grow at least by additional 12-12.5% immediately, which is not possible. India produces around 65 Lakh graduates and 15 Lakh Post Graduates every year. Moreover, it add around 1.2 Crore workforce in the market every year, which is roughly 2% of present workforce participation.

 It means, to cover this job demand growth, India’s GDP needs to grow by at least 4% from the present level. To cover the job demand growth, India’s GDP is required to grow between 11-12%. To cover the gap of additional 3% from this present gap of 6.1%, GDP needs to grow further by 1 to 1.5% for next 6-7 years. So, we can conclude that, solve the India’s job demand problem, GDP needs to grow by 13.5-14% for a period 7-8 years, after that it can settle for 11-12%, nothing less. 

If we add the underemployment problem, the situation will become quite sever and looking at micro and macroeconomic environment, this is an impossible feat for any government. Actually, the socialist economy we chose to become after independence made us a risk-averse nation and we as a nation become the country of job seekers. To consolidate our financial and social position, we kept adding degrees to individual kitty. We kept adding slabs to make our position higher and make it difficult for others to reach, but we remained committed to be servant and subservient someone or other. Entrepreneurship is the only option and the environment should be made conducive for it. “Ease of doing business” comes later; government should focus on “ease of starting business” and “ease of sustaining business for initial years”. Parents also need slow down in chasing this engineering and seven figure salary dream for their ward. They must not set the value of life in terms of money only. 

Land Reform as a solution

India’s total workforce is around 675 Million, out of it, 42.74% or 288.11 million are employed in agriculture, 23.79% or 160.37 million are employed in manufacturing sector and 33.48% or 225.69 million are engaged in service sector. Agriculture sector contributed 15.87% of GDP, which in real terms for 2018 will stand at USD 468.85 Billion. Manufacturing sector and services sector contributed 29.73% and 54.40% respectively for the same year which in real term will stand at USD 876.44 Billion and USD 1603.71 Billion. If we extrapolate these numbers, then we find out the productivity of a person employed in agriculture sector and manufacturing sector stood at USD 1623.85 and USD 5465.17 respectively against USD 7105.86 of service sector. 

We all know that more than anything else, the size of land holding and land holding pattern of the country are biggest bottleneck of increasing agriculture productivity. According to Agriculture Census, operational land holdings in India are 138.35 million hectare with an average size of 1.15 hectare. Out of total holdings, 85% belongs to small and marginal farm categories with less than 2 hectare. This size is hampering the mechanization of agriculture in big way hampering not only production but overall productivity as well creating income and social disparity, which often forces workforce to abandon field and move to urban areas in search of employment, creating even bigger problem of underemployment. Though small scale industries can help in solving the employment problem to some extent, but large industries are required for capital formation, job creations at all levels and have multiplier effect on the nation’s economy. But establishing big industry has been facing the biggest challenge of land acquisition. Since this issue is connected with small and marginal farmers, it gives huge political opportunity any political party. Singur in West Bengal is latest prime example of challenges of land acquisition in the country. More than anything else, education and transparency in dealing are two prime steps which should be taken by the government. Since size of landholding is very small per farm household and their dependency is huge on that small land, parting away with it becomes more of a emotional challenge than financial challenge. The fear of going broke completely can be aroused in the owner’s mind. Second challenge is the circle rate. Normally, lands are registered at very low value in government records than what actually it has been sold. If the circle rate is very low than “prevailing market rate”, then obviously it will create a problem because government compensation will depend on the circle rate and not on the “prevailing market rate”. In every business transaction, all the parties look for something extra, so, if there are employment opportunities or the opportunity to provide services which can be given to locals, either after training them or by without training, then it must be discussed in advance and in transparent manner with complete agreement. And all of it needs to be told to the land owner in no unclear terms and in fact it must be the part of information which should be inculcated to every Indian like it has been done in the case of polio immunization or similar drive. This will not only help manufacturing sector but agriculture sector as well. Increased production will mean increased productive participation, increased productivity, increased income in the hands of workforce and new employment opportunities.

Economists classify "Unemployment" into three categories; frictional, cyclical and structural. 

Frictional unemployment is least of economists worry because it occurs due to incessant movement of workforce from one location to another or due to different stages of life cycle or students leaving job to pursue higher studies or woman leave the job for child birth. 

Cyclical unemployment is much more serious problem and it occurs when economy dips into recession. This kind of unemployment macro-economists world over has spent most of the time trying to solve. 

In the increasingly technological age, third type of unemployment occur and that is structural unemployment and this needs much more attention now a days. This kind of unemployment occur when there is a mismatch between available jobs in the market and workers skill. Structural unemployment often results when technological change makes someone's job obsolete. Structural unemployment also occurs when there is a mismatch between location of job openings and location of job seeking workers. 

Now, if we look at the Indian job market, we can find the mix of cyclical and structural unemployment patterns. Though if we mix economics with politics in the discussion, then we may not get the right answer and solution. 

Indian economy has been going through quite a roller coaster ride since economic liberalization in 1992-93. Economic liberalization exposed Indian to new kind of economy and that service sector economy. Everything was going on well but dot-com bust post 2000 gave a big jolt to world economy and India could not remain untouched. Though this dot-com bust was largely concentrated to USA, but when US economy sneezes whole world’s economy catch cold. 

Economy picked up steam once again but 2007-08 subprime crisis of US market again shook the financial and job market world over. Estimated cost of this crisis for this planet earth stood somewhere around USD 15 Trillion and 80 Million job.

Almost every country pumped in billions of dollars into their economy to keep it afloat and drive consumption to drive manufacturing to drive job creation. Before India could recover from the jolt of US Subprime crisis, series of corruption cases against the then incumbent government started surfacing and that led to complete policy paralysis. It, in turn hurt the investment and business scenario very badly. 

In 2014, new government took over with new hope to revive the economy. Business scenario again started looking up but two decisions in quick succession gave a big jolt to the economy running on cash. Now each side can give the opinion for and against these two decisions and both can be right.

Apart from all this, India became the hotbed of technology based economy. By the beginning of this century, we were struggling to get the proper electricity and landline phones even in big cities and by 2004-05 we had cheapest call rates and by 2016, we had the cheapest data rates. 

Before organized retail could even find its foothold, e-commerce changed the market dynamics completely. 

While half of the workforce was still lumbering in the muddy fields, India joined the league of countries adopting technology at super speed. India couldn't have left one and chosen other but challenges posed by mix of both needs to be studied, understood and solved carefully, without playing politics around it. New generation is not illiterate as their earlier generation of 70s or 80s of last century were. Social media and digital world has ensured one thing is that everything mentioned here gets recorded and indexed by one platform or other. So, there will be no escaping for anyone in coming five years time. Division on religion or caste lines won't work because technology will bring more transparency and newer generation will be more educated. So, political rhetorics won't work for long.

I am penning down my opinion purely from Personal Brand Management perspective; nothing more, nothing less. I am writing this caveat in the beginning itself because what I going to write has serious political and emotional angle, which whether I like or not, will come up in the reader’s mind beforehand reading the whole article.

Two incidents which played out in neighboring states of West Bengal and Bihar last fortnight shook the entire nation. In NRS Hospital, Kolkata, an eighty five year old person died due to some medical complicacy. His relatives brought in two truckloads of more people and brutally assaulted the doctors and hospital staff, putting few of them in ICU, battling for their lives. Doctors protested and demanded security along with bringing culprits to face law of the land. Chief Minister of West Bengal, Ms. Mamata Banerjee descended on the spot, blamed doctors for playing politics and threatened them instead for grave consequences, if they don’t withdraw their protest. How far it is true I don’t know, but some reports suggested that senior officials at ministry were about to resolve the conflict, but sudden outburst of Ms. Mamata Banerjee changed it all. It led to widespread and nationwide protest by doctors; common citizens and media all across also joined it. Situation became grave because in response of Chief Minister’s threat, doctors of West Bengal started resigning from their job. While emergency services were not hampered but other medical services were badly impacted.

Sudden outbreak of Acute Encephalitis Syndrome at Muzaffarpur, Bihar and resultant death of more than 140 children led widespread criticism of Chief Minister of Bihar, Mr. Nitish Kumar along with Health Minister of India and Bihar state. Mr. Nitish Kumar was getting hammered from all side for lack of expertise and facilities at Muzaffarpur to handle this situation. But rather than rushing to Muzaffarpur immediately, he allowed the situation to come in control and anger to subside and when he visited, he promised to make Shri Kirshna Medical College and Hospital, Muzaffarpur 1500 bed hospital bed along with 150 beds ICU. There was extreme provocation from all side for him to respond but he kept silent. He talked in the last but talked only what was needed.

Both the examples throw few interesting points on how to handle the “situation of conflict and extreme provocation”.

• Assess the situation before responding.
• While responding, don’t allow your biases and heuristics take over your brain and don’t allow your heart to get better off you.
• If you don’t have immediate solution and someone else has, then allow that someone else to take the lead and find the solution.
• Allow the situation to settle down. When things are blowing up, you may not know when it is going to end and if you respond when things are blowing up, your response may stir counter response.
• Choice of words is very much important. Engage someone more capable to write your words.
• Deliver the final solution and walk away. If you stay there for long, people will have the availability of pain fresh in their mind and more than your solution, they will focus on the pain.

Personal brand management can yield you immense benefits if you are in public life but you need to in awareness stage all the time. You will have to continuously work on it and communicate it to all the stakeholders. If you are finding it tough to handle yourself, then engage someone to handle it but do it diligently.

Eureka moment of personal branding struck me around twelve years ago standing in one of the stores of my employer at that time. A customer was aggressively rebuking one of the Customer Support Associate for something which he had no role to play. It was my second day in the organization. I tried to intervene but only thing happened was direction of his ire got diverted towards me.

Organization is an established Indian MNC with diverse business interest spread across the world, but the business operation which I was part of, had started the operations around six-seven months back. I can vouch for the fact that everyone I met during those two days and had been meeting earlier also were doing the maximum best to create the best consumer experience. But since this operation was expanding at break neck speed, many a thing which needed attention was not getting attended on priority. 

The customer probably had a grudge towards new generation of professionals who are career oriented and keep striving for financial growth. His views were preposterous but since he was the customer, I listened to his verbal aggression patiently, appreciated him for taking time out to register his protest, immediately informed the concerned Category Manager and assured him to address his challenge. Initially I disliked his words about the professionals like me but when I pondered over the event and his outpouring against us and not towards the business owner, I realized that the business owner has reputation consistently build by him and his previous generations over more than hundred years which we don’t have and that’s why this customer and many others like him are ready to put their faith in business owner and not in us. After that I started taking my personal brand a bit seriously. Though certain exigency took my time off from my endeavour towards building a solid personal brand but I kept talking about it with other professionals since then. I also started helping them in crafting their personal brand strategy. Since then I have talked to more than a thousand people and have realized that only leaders can think about creating his or her personal brand, not the managers. Managers live their personal and professional life with many self imposed mental constraints. Some of the prominent mental constraints I have come across are as follows: 

- Managers dislike questions- You are a leader when take your people along, lead from the front and relegate yourself in the background at the time of claiming the reward. Once I came across an incident where new CEO of a reputed organization gave continuous lecture to employees about integrity and scope of the meaning of integrity according to him. He forfeited the incentives of all the middle management and lower level employees to the extent of seventy five percent in the name of poor financial condition of the organization, but rewarded himself with the hundred and twenty percent incentive. This news of course got leaked in the organization led to disgruntled murmurs but since it was the time of financial crisis due to US subprime crisis and many were losing jobs across the industry and in the said organization also, so no one talked and eventually this act got buried down in no time.

They doesn’t entertain their critical evaluation from their people to make themselves more likeable and approachable. This is something which is missing in the managers. They assume that they have been hired by the management to guide his team to targeted result and that’s why they must have all the answers ready to not to let any question arise. Though they like to call it being pro-active, but they create the question beforehand for their answers.

-Managers hate criticism: - Criticism, even the honest one hurts the emotion of managers. Since they are know-all people, they don’t accept the fact that they can go wrong. They have strong confirmation bias, where they often lead their decisions to. Recently I posed a question on social media to a senior professional about something related to his area of expertise. I agree to the fact that though question was related to his area of expertise but it required to think thoroughly before giving the answer. Since that professional falls into second level of my network, I got the feedback that he was afraid to answer my question in the fear of going wrong and inviting either a counter question or a rebuttal. This is just one of the many examples. 

-Managers don’t create a feedback mechanism unless and until it is forced upon them: Due to above two reasons, managers don’t create feedback mechanism unless and until it is forced upon them. Even in the case of forced feedback mechanism, organizational culture doesn’t entertain criticism of senior professionals in the name of discipline. This leads to strengthening of behavioural status quo bias among managers.

 -Managers like controlled environment where only they can talk:- Though managers pretend to encourage discussion and opinion sharing but they don’t appreciate it in reality. They like the controlled environment where only they get the chance and authority to speak. 

In 2017, a Google employee James Damore wrote an anti-diversity memo at an internal platform, which was considered misogynistic. Somehow it got leaked in the media and employee was fired. Sundar Pichai, CEO of the company, came out with a statement in media that he don’t misogynistic opinions and comments in the organization and that’s why that employee was fired from the organization. My point is; the organization like Google, which has invested billions of dollars in neuroscience research and has infinite permutations of human behavioural data, could have countered the arguments with facts and research, instead he was fired unceremoniously. Had he been countered by the organization with research data and facts, it could have settled the debate of difference between man and woman in tech industry probably once and for all.  

Steve Balmer groomed Satya Nadella for the position of CEO of Microsoft. If you read the book “Hit Refresh” written by Satya Nadella, you will find him very critical of the organizational culture he inherited from Steve. Not only he brought in three sixty degree shift in organizational culture but reversed the business decisions of Steve. You listen to Steve Balmer and you will find nothing but praise for Satya Nadella and pride in his achievements.

-Managers don’t appreciate something which doesn’t fit into their scheme of things: For a manager, everything is a resource which he has to use to achieve his objective. If something is not serving a manager’s purpose, it won’t be appreciated even if it is highly valuable to someone else or had been highly valuable to the same manager in the past.

I was talking to my ex-boss sometime back. He told me about the organization where he worked and helped to build robust sales figure for seven years. Two successive government decisions of demonetisation and implementation of GST brought in huge shock in the market. These decisions impacted also impacted his business and initially he was cold shouldered and ultimately had to leave the organization. I asked him whether he was disappointed the way he was treated. He said that initially he was of course disappointed but accepted the fact that he is just a resource which has to return the value of salary being paid to him.  

If anyone wants to stick to above points as their core guiding principle of professional life, then they can be successful managers but not the business leader and definitely not fit for creating personal brand, because people will follow their business success not him.

Politics can’t be without economics but economics can be without politics; if we choose to practice so. Political economics focus solely on getting elected and re-elected by the political parties. Though economics is the second word of political economics but when it comes to objective, economics becomes third or distant last in the priority list.

Fidel Castro, famous ruler of Cuba (Prime Minister from 1959 to 1976 and President from 1976 to 2008) and noted communist famously said, “I became a communist by studying capitalist political economy, and when I had understanding of that problem, it actually seemed to me so absurd, so irrational, so inhuman, that I simply began to elaborate on my own formulas for production and distribution”.

What he did not tell all of us that every individual action depends on psychological functions which further depends on numerous biases and heuristics created by demographical, social-economical, educational etc. nudges and interventions applied by different forces every moment, which further fires many chemicals known neurotransmitters laying down new memories, creating new biases and heuristics or strengthening the earlier one. Hasn’t this become a heady cocktail of jargons and words, very difficult to understand? That’s what political economics is; very difficult to understand.

India as a country is as diverse as the word ‘diverse’itself can be and it is as multidimensional as‘multidimensional’the word can be. Indian economy is complete reflection of the country, giving scope to every party to claim what they want to claim and most of the time each one of them may be completely true or true to some extent or completely wrong.Since economy is what matters to everyone the most, it becomes imperative to make this cocktail light, if not nectar, for everyone to consume, I talked to Mr. Suraj Sharma, who is an authority in this field.

Mr. Suraj Sharma is Chevening Financial Services Fellow, hosted by Kings College, London and IIM-Kolkata alumni. He also holds PGDM from Centre of Management Education, VAMNICOM, Pune. Presently, he is Chief Executive Officer of Punarvasu Financial Services Pvt. Ltd and also one of its board members. I had couple of straight questions to him and he cleared the haze overstate of Indian economy. Here we go with our discussion…..

Mukul Bhartiya: What is your opinion on current economic situation of the country? Would you call it “slowdown” or “crisis” and what are the factors which led to it?

Suraj Sharma: Current economic situation has the symptoms of “slowdown”, which if ignored, can develop into “crisis”.

Now, issues constituting second part of your question are crucial, poignant and present a paradoxical picture at the same time; issues which impacted or is impacting the economy needs to be divided into two parts; short term and long term. Short term issues are the policy decisions and long term issues are collateral effect of some other major domestic and transnational events.

You will agree with me that Indian economy, despite demonetization in 2016 is still largely a cash economy.Since ages, few individual who knew or probably still know how to leverage their connections with higher echelons of decision making bodies pockets the benefits meant for all. Incumbent government took certain policy decisions to streamline and make business activity transparent. Some of the decisions can be debated for its necessity or effectiveness, but rather than getting into details of the decisions, let’s understand what happened after that. It will help us to speed up our discussion.

Let’s begin with short term issues.

On 8th November 2016, Government of India took a humongous decision of calling back all currency of Rs.500 and Rs.1000 from the market. Whether objectives set by the government were met or not can be debated separately, but it led to massive cash crunch for SME and MSME sector which we agree or not, but were largely running on cash economy. This impacted the overall economy because money from the market were getting sucked in, demand of everything except necessary food items slowed down and job were cut on massive scale.

Before economy could recover from the impact of demonetisation, Goods and Service Tax became operational from 1st July 2017. GST Act is an excellent step by government of India to boost the ease of doing business in the country and bring in more transparency in the Indirect Tax regime. It was needed not only to remove friction in business operational activity but bring more and more business transactions under tax net.

But shift from one policy structure to another of such a humongous nature needs at least few business years to settle down and is implemented when economy is growing, not when it has slowed down. Here, government introduced not one or two but three policy changes of big impact in quick succession.

During this period itself, on 10th March 2016, Upper House of the government passed Real Estate Regulation and Development Act (RERA), which became effective from 1st May 2016. By this time, out of 92 sections, 56 were notified. By 1st May 2017, all the sections were operational. Real estate sector before bringing this act was unorganized, which was not only leading to exploitation of home buyers but restricting investment in this sector preventing credible and rated developers from sourcing money from the market.

Unregulated market was allowing many developers to manipulate the home buyers by channelling fund from one project to another without completing the earlier one, working on multiple projects without availability of required fund and many things more. Since there were many such developers and many such projects, this sector proved to be one of the leading employment providers, which it actually is, along with textile industry and after agriculture sector.

After implementation of RERA Act, many real estate projects were shelved and many developers defaulted.

Demonetization had maximum impact on SME, MSME and real estate sector the most because it dealt in cash the most. Implementation of GST forced them to put their business in a structure to be system compliant. Again I would say that it was good step but it delayed the sales activity. Since this sector makes a huge contribution towards employment generation as well, not only it had clear slowdown impact on economy but growth in unemployment as well.

All these policy decisions have not only stretched the business environment straight in the country but has also brought banking sector under lot of stress, which anyways is under lot of stress due to NPAs and toxic assets under control of banking sector.

That’s why I told you in the beginning itself that issues which led to slowdown are crucial, poignant and paradoxical at the same time. While decisions taken by Government of India are on solid merit points but Indian economy has never been in such a shape to absorb body shot shocks in such a quick succession.Though these decisions were right but the timings were questionable.

If we expand this discussion a bit more and go ten-eleven years back, then we see that world economy suffered a body blow due to US sub-prime crisis. Though it did not impact the Indian economy much but how can it remain unharmed because it is not insulated from the world economy. Efforts were made to boost the purchasing power and economy was on revival path, but many scandals tumbling out of government’s closet led to massive anti-corruption movement in the country. This movement brought in a kind of policy paralysis, where decision makers became afraid of taking decisions.

Mukul Bhartiya: Here I would like add something; there are many estimates of total business and employment losses due to US sub-prime crisis. I have read somewhere that business losses stood around USD 15 Trillion and employment losses around 80 Million. Further, in my opinion, Supreme Court gave the body blow to whatever was left after the impact of this financial crisis and policy paralysis, by cancelling 122 licenses of 2G telecom spectrum in February 2013. Foreign investors had shown their faith in Indian economy and telecom scam was the internal matter of the country. Without providing adequate relief to the investors or even thinking about them, Supreme Court gave harshest blow to the economy.

Suraj Sharma: There is no denying fact that impact of US sub-prime crisis was huge, but I would refrain from giving specific numbers in the want of accuracy or lack of it. What you said about the impact of Supreme Court’s decision on cancellation of license of 2G telecom spectrum and coal license cancellation may be right.

Though India was not influenced much by US financial crisis, but credit easing did happen here as well during that period. Most of the power, infrastructure, steel and other big projects were financed during that period itself. And because most of these decisions got entangled in court cases, projects either failed to start or got delayed putting humongous stress on the banking sector. Most of NPAs of Rs.14 Lakh Crore which is being talked about were financed during this period only. On top of it, this IL&FS crisis has adversely affected the business sentiment. In 2018, 40% of the incremental consumer financing was done by NBFCs and not the banks. Since mutual funds used to buy NBFC papers and give them money. A good share of NBFC money was coming from mutual funds, but IL&FS scandal turned the applecart upside down.

Look, every other business sector’s health depends on the health of financial sector. Though NPA problem has been resolved to certain extent but challenges are still there, NBFC crisis arising out of IL&FS scandal, freeze on payments to the account holders due to scam in PMC Cooperative bank, low capital ratios at Yes Bank and how it went unnoticed for so long, continuous defaults by real estate and infrastructure sector etc. have put banking and financial sector as a whole under huge stress. Government needs to see that how quickly it brings the economy out of this rut.

But we are seeing growth quarter-to-quarter basis, though slowed down andthat’s why we can’t call present situation an economic crisis.

Mukul Bhartiya: What should government do to reverse the situation and increase the opportunities of employment?

Suraj Sharma: Government has taken many steps to revive the situation but if things don’t start improving in next eighteen month or so, then as I mentioned earlier, it will trigger bigger crisis.

Infrastructure/real estate/industries/power etc. projects should not be financed by commercial banks. Instead, they should be financed by long term investors through debentures .You tell me which bank accepts fixed deposits for 20-30 years and which infrastructure project becomes cash positive in 5-6 years? Even residential projects of real estate sector take more time to complete than that.

Apart from bringing in RERA for removing the frictions of real estate sector and pave the way for more legitimate funding, Government has created the necessary rules and policy structure to encourage REIG(Real Estate Investment Group) investing to clean up the real estate investment, bring more transparency and make real estate projects more viable. Recently announced Rs.25,000 Crore Priority Debt Fund to revive stalled real estate projects is a critically important decision. It will give relief to much aggrieved home buyers. All the steps taken by government will bring synergy between investors, developers and sellers and foster growth. Now, only thing is to be seen is how quickly all these steps fructify result.

Barring 4-5 banks, all nationalized banks have come out of NPA mess. To make liquidity available in the market, government is aggressive on repo and other fiscal rates.

Boldest of all the step is corporate tax to be levied on new manufacturing set up to come up after 1st October 2019, which is 15%. If you add cess and all, then it will not be more than 17% and it is lowest in the world. Government might have done so keeping US-China trade war in mind, expecting companies flying out of China may land up in India for setting up their infrastructure. I can’t comment right now about its impact on fiscal discipline.

Helping banks to clean up NPA mess, recapitalization of banks, aggressive interest rates, aggressive corporate tax, reduction in base corporate tax, creation of fund for interest subvention scheme for GST registered MSMEs, holding hands of real estate sector through RERA, REIG etc., government is doing many right things.

Though government has taken many steps in the right direction, but all of it has to bear the result very quickly. A lot of time has already lapsed and things can’t be delayed anymore. Liquidity crunch has prolonged for too long and media sentiment has been depressed for too long. Remember that negative business sentiments have domino effect on overall business scenario and one fall triggers others to fall. Liquidity crunch does not happen just because of unavailability of funds in the market, it also happens because of unavailability of intent and courage among the investors. If it continues, then SMEs and MSMEs will start defaulting and since most of government’s lending are to this sector, it will create the challenge which no one has ever imagined.

Further, government shall bear in mind that Indian economy has never been in the stage where policy decisions of such a humongous nature can’t be implemented in such a quick succession. Implementation of GST will take at least three to four business years for everyone to see which direction it will move. Business community will get adapted to its implementation and government will be able to plug the holes and explain it clearly to them. Similarly, real estate sector will take time to work on the lines of guidelines set by RERA.

Government and RBI shall see that credibility and reputation financial sector is restored and that also on priority basis. They must see that without any delay depositors’ interest is protected and they again repose their faith in country’s banking sector. Business decisions can fail but business decisions quite adverse to very common business sense shall not be acceptable. Promoters shall not be allowed to have executive position in private banks and no executive should be allowed to hold the top position for more than 10-15years or so. Government and RBI shall see that executives holding highest position in banking industry must get enough time to execute their decisions but must not get time to be synonym with the organization itself. Government shall also see that individual account holders shall have insurance cover of at least Rs.10 Lakh or even more for the deposited money with a bank; right now it is Rs.1 Lakh and it is very less. Government and RBI shall work towards rebuilding trust of depositors towards banking and financial system of the country. If it doesn’t happen, then nothing will happen.

By a rough estimate, India produces paddy, wheat and whole pulses together worth Rs.5, 34, 020 Crore, calculated at MSP for paddy and wheat and bulk price of pulses in whole form. If we take the data of public consumer expenditure for the year 2014-15 made available by Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation in public domain and extrapolate the impact of inflation every successive year, India’s private final expenditure on food and non-alcoholic drinks may stand around Rs.18.9 Lakh Crore. It gives a glimpse of scope of business opportunity it provides.

Mr. Nitin Kumar, Company Secretary by qualification and investment and start up expert by profession has worn many hats; but when this time when he told me about his new venture Bishanpur Natural Foods Pvt. Ltd., I would be lying if I say I was not surprised. Since beginning of his professional career, he has been through and through finance professional helping his clients to make money in stock and/or real estate market or investing in general merchandise, education or health start ups. But this time, he not only invested but has been successfully running the business of speciality flours, fox nuts and flax seed. After talking to him I could understand his passion of bringing healthy food which our previous generations used to eat and has disappeared from our plates with changing time. But why was I surprised; because sales of food items demand combined of physical and mental hustle than the just mental one required in financial or real estate market. But as Ann Landers had said “Opportunities are usually disguised as hard work, so most people don’t recognize them”, he chose the hard work way and entered into this business. He is CEO of Bishanpur Natual Foods Pvt. Ltd. 

I asked him straight three questions to understand why is he in this business, what he has to offer, how it will benefit his consumers and where does he see his business in short and medium term. 

Mukul Bhartiya: You are finance professional by education and experience. What led you to venture into food processing, distribution and marketing business and that also, niche products like Chana Sattu, Makhana and Flax Seed?

Nitin Kumar: When I tell you the reason behind it, you will also empathise. Though I am from Bihar but I have lived better part of my life in Delhi and Gurgaon. Who better than person like me can understand the importance of healthy food and healthy life. For us, even pure air to breathe has become a scarce thing. You might have seen the images of hazardous foam emanating from River Yamuna during Chhath this year and let me tell you that this not something new as phenomena. This has been the scene for so many years and it is also open secret that most of vegetables coming to National Capital Territory market are grown in the river base of Yamuna. 

All the trappings of modern lifestyle has taken one thing from us; our time for ourselves. We are always in the rush to reach one place or another, barely taking time to breathe. In order to reach somewhere, we have moved as far away from the nature as possible. And look what it has done to us; it has not only taken us away from nature but has taken away our physical and mental health. 

Having lived a life with these trappings around, we have realized that answer of healthy life is to slow down, look back and find what we lost in the rush of reaching somewhere. Retracing healthy footprints are always good. Our older generations lived life closer to nature. There were no mechanized machines to grind the food; so, most of the nutrients were retained in the food for our consumption. We are making a genuine effort to dig deep, research and find out the natural food for you. We are reclaiming our past with pride, we are reclaiming our health back and we reclaiming our life and the battle start with food.

At Bishanpur Natural Foods Pvt. Ltd, we follow every process to retain the natural nutrients every food has to offer by cold press milling technique. Words become command, command becomes commitment and commitment sets the direction; and our commitment is to take our food habit closer to nature.

Mukul Bhartiya: Please tell our readers about your products and how they benefit from it?

Nitin Kumar: We are in constant search of food which are healthy, wholesome and queen of plates of older and previous generations. I am keen on that. Our first product is Chana Sattu. 

Though there is no specific mention about the origin of word ‘Sattu’, but looking at the nutritional values it provides, it must have come from Sanskrit word ‘Satvik’, which means ‘pure’, ‘complete’, ‘ontological’. No other cereal or pulses is as complete and wholesome as ‘Chana’ or ‘Hoarse Gram’, because it has right amount of Protein, Dietary Fiber, good Carbohydrates, low glycemic index and absolutely no unhealthy unsaturated fat. While almost all the cereals and pulses provide between 150-350 calorie per 100 gram with cereals providing extra carbohydrate and pulses providing extra protein, ‘Chana’ provides energy exceeding 400 calorie. These nutrients build your muscles, make your bone strong, help in preventing constipation and keep your stomach healthy, regulate fluids and blood pressure of the body, fights diabetes and give you the energy to stay active whole day. There are numerous benefits of Chana Sattu.

Some of them are as follows:

• You can drink and eat it both.

• It is high on calorie with good amount of whole carbohydrate, dietary fiber and protein.

• It is gluten free.

• Carbohydrate in Sattu is soluble and ingestible carbohydrate, which is very much required for energy. It is a fallacy that low carbohydrate diet is good. If you don’t get the energy, then how will you survive? Your food should have 45-50% whole carbohydrate to keep you alive and active. 

• It keeps your stomach healthy by preventing constipation. You may be aware that constipation is the cause of many bowel related ailments including gastrointestinal diseases, which has the capacity hurting other part of bodies as well. -It reduces the risk of coronary heart disease, hypertension, diabetes and obesity. 

• Zero saturated fat in Sattu makes it an ideal food and drink.

• Protein in Sattu makes your bones hold the muscles and keep your liver healthy. It makes you look healthy and young. 

Our second product is Makhana or Fox nut. ‘Makhana’ is amalgamation of two Sanskrit words: ‘Makha’ and ‘Anna’. ‘Makha’ in Sanskrit has two meanings ‘sacrificial oblation’ and ‘active/moving/to go/move’ and ‘Anna’ means ‘food’. So, one meaning of ‘Makhana’ is a food which is offered for sacrificial oblation or which is offered to god. Another meaning of ‘Makhana’ is the food which keeps you ‘active’ and on the move, which means it keeps you energetic. Makhana is rich source of protein, calcium, dietary fiber, good carbohydrate and absolutely zero saturated, polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fat. With total 350 calorie per 100 Gm, it is good for your bones, muscles and gut and helps you fight diabetes and blood pressure.

Darbhanga, Madhubani and other parts of erstwhile Mithila Kingdom or present day Bihar produces ‘Makhana’ the most and has been consuming the most as well; now whole world has realized its importance.  

You can eat Makhana raw or after roasting or frying. You can also make different varieties of sweets and pudding from Makhana. 

Benefits of Makhana are many; few of them are as follows:

• Dietary fiber keeps your stomach free from constipation, helps to prevent coronary heart disease and reduces hypertension and chances of stroke.

• Protein helps your bones to hold muscles, makes your body fit, strong, healthy and young.

• It improves the health of your liver.

• Calcium makes your bones strong.

• It is fat free, full of whole carbohydrate, protein and dietary fiber, which makes it a super healthy food without the fear of adding fat in the body.

• Whole carbohydrate gives you energy to be active, fit and fine. 

• Right amount of sodium and potassium in Makhana helps to keep the blood pressure under control and keeps cellular function of your body up and running. 

Our third but not the last product is Flaxseed. Flaxseed is another super food, which should be part of our daily diet. It is very high on protein, carbohydrate, dietary fiber, calcium, Bitamin B-6, Iron and Magnesium. 

 ‘Chana Besan’ is the latest addition in our product portfolio.

Mukul Bhartiya: Tell us about your plans to take your products and idea behind them to wider consumer base? Please also tell us where do you see your business after five years?

Nitin Kumar: See, ours is the social enterprise. Though we can increase the production capacity by rapid mechanization, but our focus is not just providing healthy food options to our consumers but providing as many employment opportunities as possible in rural areas. When you increase the number of human hands at work then it is quite obvious that speed of work gets slowed down. 

In the first year itself, we have established our distribution network in many districts of Bihar and parts of National Capital Territory. In next five years, we will cover entire Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh and Delhi. We are aiming the turnover of Rs.50 Crore in next five years. 

If you want to take the distributorship of Bishanpur Natural Foods Pvt. Ltd., you can reach out to concerned persons at enquiry@villfood.in and + 91 7011 326 404, +91 8700 209 659.

This is the story of Tapasya, Meenakshi, Karan, Rajeev and Manish, caught in the web of complexities of life and emotions. Unfulfilled Love
Tapsaya and Meenakshi were two woman with completely different approach towards life, but their aspirations of life were same; "love".

While Tapasya could not fight her battle the way it should have been fought, Meenakshi fought her way to get whatever she wanted out of her life. Both of them couldn't take the decision on time when it needed to be and desired love which had all the markings of remaining unrequited due to being against the social norm. Both of them were ready to break the social norms, but Tapasya couldn't do so and Meenakshi did with all her strength.

In the end, Tapasya died a lonely death despite being surrounded by all her family members and Meenakshi lived a lonely life despite fighting and nearly getting what she wanted.

Love is complex. It has its own rules for everyone for every relationship. There is no template for love. One's story can't be repeated by other. Everyone has to fight his or her own battle, even for love. One has to decide what he or she wants out of this word 'love' and for what it is meant for one person and every other person of his or her life.

Manish thought he loved Meenakshi madly. But when he got engaged to her, he started missing his family members, who didn't accept Meenakshi in their family fold.

Rajeev loved Tapasya a lot, but he couldn't make Tapasya see what she meant to him. And when she realized and accepted, it was already too late and she just wanted her last wish to be fulfilled before closing her eyes.

Karan remained pragmatic in life but he had his own battles to fight.

In fact, life is complex and is has no template. Complexity and separate rules for everyone for everything is its only template.

On 31st December 2019, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman launched a massive push for infrastructure development with the commitment to invest Rs.100 Lakh Crore in different infrastructure projects in the ratio of 39:39:22, where 39% each will be invested by Central and State Governments while 22% will be invested by private parties.

Since Budget 2020 was just two months away, this huge announcement, though welcome step, made me ask one thing; of late, has budget been reduced to glorified annual event or does it still hold some relevance. Not just this singular event but at regular interval, Finance Minister herself leads from the front and interacts with media about policy and strategy interventions.

I asked Mr. Suraj Sharma, CEO, Punarvasu Financial Services Pvt. Ltd. about his expectations from upcoming budget, open discussion about regular policy and strategy interventions by Finance Ministry and prospect of India becoming a $5 Trillion economy by 2025.

Suraj Sharma: In my opinion, during second term of NDA government, annual budget looks like becoming more a celebratory affair of long practiced routine. Government, by intervening from time to time and interacting with the country through media has made annual budget more for middle class customers to see what is in store for them, like tax breaks and cost of household and daily use items going up or down. But I must say, it is doing the right thing. It helps in making two things very clear that government is ready to listen and it is always willing to take corrective steps.

Finance Minister’s announcement of Rs.100 Lakh Crore National Infrastructure Pipeline for next five years is a welcome step towards ushering country to $5 Trillion economy. Even if government misses the timeline by a year or two but $5 Trillion economy is not an unachievable dream.

I would be keen to see from where this money to fund these projects will be generated and where are the private partners to work on these projects. I am saying so because almost all the companies working in big government infrastructure projects are already heavily debt laden.

Mukul Bhartiya: I was listening to Ms. Geeta Gopinath, Chief Economist, IMF at Indian Economic Conclave 2019. She was worried that India’s private consumption is down, investment has slowed down and whatever growth we are seeing in last couple of quarters is due to the government’s spending. Core inflation is at 3.5%, which along with weak import is also a sign of weak private demand. That’s why, IMF will revise India’s GDP growth forecast drastically negative in their report to published third week of January 2020.

Suraj Sharma: I have a little different opinion than experts on the topic of sluggish growth in private consumption. Indians by and large were never of extravagant nature. So, I have my doubts firmly placed about decline in core consumption items.

Let’s talk about the most talked about item in the slowdown discussion; cars. If auto industry is facing the challenge of slowdown, then how come KIA and MG Motors are ramping up the production? Indian companies needs to be little bit more accepting towards their inefficiencies and the point that every time they can’t run to government to bail them out. Why should government, at public’s expenses, bail out the corporates for their inefficiency. Let me give you one example without naming the company. The amount of time a leading steel manufacture of India takes in producing a quantity of steel, china takes less than one third of that time and it is reflecting in the total steel production of both the countries as well.

Indian consumers are willing to pay but for the quality. Old companies can’t rely on old ways to win new customers. They will have to deliver the quality. They can’t keep cribbing about slowdown in demand.

What I am more bothered about is the infrastructural capacity to handle frictions in life journey of the business and their tracking mechanism.

Let’s take two example; NPA of one liquor to aviation conglomerate and another one is cut in corporate tax. Despite the first case hanging in air for so long, we are not aware when will this case be done and dusted. This is not single case to bother about; there are many. So, these cases need to be resolved and closed on priority.

The next example I mentioned is of corporate rate tax cut. When you cut the tax, there are obvious two outcomes: i) Growth in the business ii) De-growth in tax collection. Tax cut only make sense when tax collection due to growth in business and subsequent tax collection offset the de-growth in tax collection due to tax cut. But this data is not available. Government must have the capacity to measure every metric it sets out to take economy towards growth and $ 5 Trillion GDP by 2024.

You can also read Mr. Suraj Sharma about his slowdown on Indian Economy Is Indian Economy Under Slowdown or Crisis

The way I see random people, who probably may fail to spell word ‘economics’, throwing the words like slowdown in GDP, economic crisis etc. I remember the quote by famous statistician, risk and probability expert and author of Fooled by Randomness, The Black Swan, The Skin in The Game and many more Mr. Nassim Nicholas Taleb.  

He says, “It has been more profitable for us to bind together in the wrong direction than be alone in the right one. Those who have followed the assertive idiot rather than introspective wise person have passed us some of their genes. This is apparent from a social pathology: psychopaths rally followers”. 

A friend of mine suggested to read the business journey of an Indian business giant involved in consumer electronics to DTH to petroleum and energy business. To my surprise, this company acquired 15 companies in 20 years time and changed the structure of organization 30 times without showing sustainability and positive cash flow without manipulating the operations in any of the business. It financed the business by borrowing funds from commercial banks and invested in the business of energy and natural resources which are highly capital intensive and requires investment for decades. For their consumer electronics items, if news from leading newspapers is to be believed, then it suggests that credit tap for distribution channel partners never dried up. When this business house filed bankruptcy, shamelessly its owners blamed the demonetization. A clear cut case of crony capitalism cried victim when asked to straighten up. And this is not the isolated case.  

I talked to Mr. Sumit Agarwal, Equity and Derivative Strategy expert and Founder of Cap Matra Wealth Consultants Pvt. Ltd. New Delhi, who, for last fifteen years has been having his finger on the pulse of Stock Exchanges in general and Indian stock and commodity exchanges in particular. 

Though my focus was to know his demand from Finance Minister in this upcoming budget, but I stretched the scope a bit tried to have his opinion on what is going right or wrong with the economy and what are his expectations from the budget. 

Sumit Agarwal: Let us retrace few of the many steps taken by present government in the recent past.

Government has been raging battle to bring in transparency to clear this NPA mess created mostly between 2008-13. Now at least it is clear that which bank is carrying how much toxic and non-performing asset in their balance sheet and efforts are being made at feverish speed to clean that up. Close to Rs.90,000 Crore NPA was cleaned between 2018-19. Though it is still standing at around Rs.8 Lakh Crore, but government’s effort is visible on ground. Even small borrowers are being asked to pay up their long due loans. I can’t tell you the formula of payment being recovered from them, but I assume that they are being asked to pay up the actual loan plus some cost, but they are being asked to pay. 

Second action which is commendable is streamlining NBFC finance. It was faulty from the beginning itself. NBFCs used to raise finance from commercial banks and mutual funds using short term loans or selling short term commercial papers for a period of six months and then giving home and car loans to consumers for period ranging between five to twenty years was not making commercial or legal sense, it required continuous refill of money and it made absolutely no business or legal sense. Since it was bringing in growth in retail consumption of consumer durables and other sectors, everyone was riding along. But this bubble had to burst and it did burst with IL&FS. Now NBFCs are finding it tough to raise money and it is reflecting in consumer market behaviour. 

Along with RERA, another decision which is proving be great in “Insolvency and Bankruptcy Act”, which is forcing crony capitalists pay up. As far as RERA is concerned, it is definitely a much needed step by the government. We can’t forget implementation of GST here which was again need of the hour to bring uniformity in taxation and increase the ease of doing business.  

Though above mention steps have slowed down the economy due to implementation woes, but you will agree with me that you can’t live with cancer for too long and when it is operated, it will slow down your speed drastically till you fully recover.

So, coming back to second part of your question about what should be done to bring economy back on the high growth trajectory, which is required to make India a $ 5 Trillion economy by 2025, I think government needs to take many steps but I will list out my preferences here. 

First and foremost, government must do everything what it takes to increase private investment in SME and MSME sector. This sector is under tremendous stress. It was unorganized, mostly driven by cash economy; GST and demonetization proved too much for it. Where the line of good or bad gets blurred is the fact that SME and MSME sector drives India’s growth story and provides maximum employment. So, while GST and demonetisation were much needed step, they brought in the separate set of challenges. India’s import from China is somewhere around $ 60 Billion and most of them replace items being manufactured by these SMEs and MSMEs. For a country like India and the nature of economy it has, it can’t continue to have this huge import bill and nature of import from any country. 

Not only that, government must take the responsibility of technology and marketing communication of products manufactured by this sector. Not many of them can pick up the art of communicating features and benefits of their products. Government needs to do it in domestic as well as international market. Government must go out and tell everyone that why products manufactured by our own SMEs needs to be purchased. We all know how Chinese business operates. We need to pump up our business if not protect them.

Next step which government needs to take is ensuring smooth coordination between the center and states. I am very well aware that India is federation of states and state has autonomy in certain aspects of their existence and may have interest different than the nation, but government will have to ensure that.  

You know that market few years back was unstructured, but with the entry of big technology and online retail companies, price discovery of each and every item has become much easier than it ever was. With smart phones in every hand, it is reaching in every nook and corner. Technology is making the market structured and with this, market is losing the incentive unstructured, unorganized market offers, because consumers are at ill to know what could be the actual or standard price. So, if lack of coordination between center and state government will only complicate the matter for the business. While consumers will know at what price they should buy the product, friction between state and central government will increase the cost for manufactures, making entry of foreign players easy and thus circumventing the growth or even existential prospects of domestic companies. Individual small players can’t keep running and coordinating between state and central government. 

GST, despite all its benefits has become a big challenge for micro and small business units. What we have seen is this government is very poor at communication of acts passed in the parliament and schemes launched in the budget or otherwise. There are enough people who are supposed to help these micro and small business units to understand and help with taxations indulge them more into scaremongering. What I expect from the government is continuous training and information dissemination till this entire GST thing is streamlined and drilled down in every possible and prospective businessperson’s mind. Tax filing should be made as simple as possible. 

Stock market is the indicator of economy; health of economy reflects here. From January 2018, Small Cap Index is down 40% and Mid Cap index is down 22% and clearly indicates that Indian economy is under slowdown. My expectation from the government is increase the slab of no income tax from Rs.2.5 Lakh to at least Rs.5 Lakh. It will put more money in the hand of consumers and help boosting the consumption. 

Second point is government should rethink its position on Long Term Capital Gain Tax and Dividend Tax. Dividend tax is clear cut case of double taxation, though may be unintended but is negative element of tax legislation. Long term capital gain tax is holding back individuals from staying invested in capital assets like real asset or holding stocks for longer period. This way, government is stopping companies from raising long term fund and if companies find raising long term capital unattractive or difficult or costly, then how will they fund their capital expenditure. 

Last but not the least, I want government to check what it is the outcome of its expenditure on agriculture. I know agriculture is tricky subject to touch but at least there should be some calculation on how much is being spent on agriculture, starting from the input to irrigation to output to infrastructure building to food processing and what is the productivity of this spending. I don’t think government can in anyway reduce spending on agriculture, but it can definitely know the outcome of spending. Further, I would also request government to make all possible effort to stop the leakages in different welfare schemes and subsidies doled out to the people of this country. 

You may also like to read Mr Sanjay Kumar Thakur Chief Data Officer Saudi Investment Bank of his expectation from Union Budget

There is always one internal narrative, which is always there with us. But it is tough identifying it despite feeling being one even after experiencing diversity of sensory experiences and our all goals, memories, emotions, actions, beliefs, and present awareness seems to cohere to form a single individual. Despite enormous number of distinct events punctuating our life, we feel continuity of identity through time-moment to moment, decade to decade.

I feel because at times, our commitment to withstand and grow strong beyond those enormous events, we face many anomalies which doesn't fit our 'big picture' belief system and our mind tries to smooth those anomalies and discrepancies in order to preserve the coherence of the self and stability of behavior. As our commitment and dedication to fight the anomalies and discrepancies keeps faltering, the smoothing and normalizing process keeps increasing, creating multiple distinct identities in our mind.

Our priority should be to face these anomalies and solve the problems and don't allow new identities to take shape in our mind. Not only it helps us to stay strong as a self, it gives us a strong internal narrative, which ultimately reflects in our social behavior.

Our emotions, like pride, arrogance, vanity, ambition, love, fear, mercy, jealousy, anger, hubris, humility, pity, self-pity etc. doesn't exist in social vacuum. All our emotions make sense only in relation to other people. It makes perfect evolutionary sense to feel grudges, gratitude, or bonhomie towards other people based on our shared interpersonal histories. We take into account that attribute the faculty of choice, or free will, to fellow social beings and apply our rich palette of social emotions to their actions on that basis. But we are so deeply hardwired for imputing things such as motive, intent, and culpability to the actions of others that we often overextend our social emotions to non-human, non-social objects or situations.

That's how it becomes very difficult but extremely important to create a coherent internal narrative. There are much more than enough things to distort it and damage us permanently. Building coherence in any activity, any narrative takes time. According to researcher Ms. Phillipa Lally, Psychology Researcher of University College, London, a public research university, a habit takes 66 days to set in and become automatic. According to her study, a new habit can be formed between 18 to 256 days, depending upon the interest, commitment and practice of the individual. So, for your reader to get habituated of you, it will take some time. That’s why self-awareness, commitment, dedication and consistency are very important.

In the time of conflict and fear due covid19 pandemic many people are on edge. They are seeing no light at the end of the tunnel. In this situation, it is well understood that mind goes to travel many places, often unpleasant one. But, that's not how life is to be lived in this difficult situation. Hormones related to stress, cortisol and adrenaline clogs the neural network and slows down the thinking process. Our behavior during conflict, fear and pain is quite obvious, though it is not desirable. 

There are steps to come out of it and they are: 

1) Acceptance: First and foremost action needed is to accept that present situation is not normal and not good. Our mind has many biases and heuristics, optimism and confirmation bias are two of them. If we don't accept the present situation and try to believe something else, then our mind will make us believe so and keep us forcing to confirm our created reality. 

You will ask that why does our mind create a new reality?

Our mind always has a ‘big picture’ of our life. Information arriving through our senses keeps getting merged into our pre- existing memories to confirm and sometime update our belief system about ourselves and the world. In the case of anomalous information which doesn’t fit our big picture, it tries to smooth the discrepancies and anomalies to preserve the coherence of self, our internal narrative and the ‘big picture’. Sometime it outrightly denies the situation, sometime rationalizes, sometime confabulates, sometime intellectualizes, so on and so forth but it does its best to protect the coherence of self and internal narrative. 

2) Live in present: The moment we create a new reality, mind becomes optimistic and starts confirming to this new reality. It automatically shifts the starting point of our journey. If starting point of our journey is not right, then how come end will be right? 

So, being aware of the present and staying in it is extremely important.

3) Mindfulness: There is more than enough written and spoken about mindfulness, so, I won’t go on to elaborate what it is and how it should be done. What I understand for my benefit is that mindfulness is keeping only those information in my mind which is necessary to move forward for my betterment. 

Our mind receives more than two hundred thousand times of information per second which it can process. You can very well imagine what would be its situation in just one day if it doesn’t filter most of the information out it receives. Our mind’s primary job is to protect the body it lives in and everything revolves around this core principle.

While a part of mind keeps doing its work to stop information overload, there has to be conscious effort to push away the information which are stopping the positive growth.

4) Remain alert: It is definite that post Covid19 world will not be the same. Every upheaval shakes up the old world order and creates new. While there are many defined steps which helps us to succeed in life, but one thing which often gets ignored and has rightfully elaborated by Malcolm Gladwell in his bestseller “Outliers” that grabbing the opportunity when it comes up goes a long way in determining the success of a person. So, if you don’t accept the reality, you are not living in present and have not pushed away the information which blocking your growth, how can you remain alert and if you are not alert, then how will you grab the opportunity when it comes knocking your door.

5) Make above four points a automatic habit: Every moment, billions of neurons in our mind connects with each other tens of thousand times, which can be excitatory or inhibitory and on or off, making permutation of all these numbers of possible brain states exceed number of elementary particles in the known universe. So, things are not simple as it seems. 

That’s why, we need to keep repeating the first four points and turn it into an automatic habit; then only, our growth and success will be remain sustainable and consistent.

Often it takes some calamity to awaken us, makes us live in present and see all the mistakes we have committed. When it has been suffered, first thing to be remembered is how much has escaped and how to move forward with that in the new direction.  

COVID19 is overwhelming for all. World is under lockdown; either stated or federal mandated. Everyone is joining hands to fight this challenge together in whichever way they can. But at the same time, everyone is also curious to know how post COVID19 world will be. 

So, I requested Mr. Sanjiva Jha to guide me and my readers about it. 

Mr. Sanjiva Jha is Founder-CEO of BroadArk Technologies Pvt. Ltd. His company owns the brand Y&NOW and works in the field of Education and Skilling. But this is just a small part of his illustrious career of around 28 years at leadership positions with LabourNet Services India Pvt. Ltd., Tata Teleservices Ltd. Reliance Retail Ltd., Boots Healthcare, Cargill India Ltd. etc. He has Masters degree in Management from IRMA and Bachelor degree in Chemical Engineering from BIT, Sindri. He has led cross functional teams during growth, massive organizational restructuring post US subprime crisis and merger & acquisitions. So, who could be better than him to guide us and see this current situation in right perspective? Here we have his views

 The Covid Impact: 

 

What has been the most striking impact or consequence of the Covid pandemic?

I believe some of the most striking consequences of this pandemic have been the game-changing impact on our social behaviour and patterns of economic activity. And yes, the economic impact will be rather severe and could be crippling for the economy if not addressed immediately but at the same time this will also present some opportunities! Speed, agility, and innovation are required from governments, businesses, and society in crafting responses to cope with this evolving new normal. 

Let’s look at where India stands in all this pandemonium caused by this pandemic.

One of the biggest casualties of the lockdown and the ensuing social distancing has been the informal sector - the daily wage earners, the migrant labourers, the gig workers and the contract workers. We saw some rather grim images of stranded migrant labourers in light of the lockdown. It was distressing to see migrant workers walking hundreds of kilometres to go back to their native place. We have witnessed a huge volume of reverse migration - workers rushing back to reach their homes from the Metros and mini metros. The government and other public agencies have been quick to act and organize relief measures and helplines to direct the flow of these people. Has it been enough, perhaps not, a lot more needs to be done as these sections do not have the wherewithal to withstand the prolonged period of lockdown and then there is the question of how do we get them back to work post the easing down of the lockdown situation? No easy answers here but surely a lot more needs to be done in terms of just providing basic relief and survival kits. We have seen a stimulus of around 0.85% of the GDP being announced by the government; this may need to be bumped up significantly. Sample this we have Germany which has pumped in around 8%, Malaysia at 16% of the GDP,(these are far smaller countries with a population of 83mn and 32 mn resp) agreed these are economies at a different phase not comparable to India but we do need to reach out to this section with more, the prolonged lockdown till May 3rd will only add to the woes..

The rising uncertainties in contractual labour will also impact the MSMEs. Exports, which account for a large chunk of MSME earnings, are expected to fall as the US and Europe are reeling from the impact of the coronavirus. 

Another impacted sector would be the non-essential items due to a steep reduction in the consumption. These include consumer durables like TVs, ACs, transport, communication services, Lux goods, Beauty salons. This is certainly the quarter these companies would like to forget... With increasing job losses and pay cuts across industries, non-essential spending will be hit further, and big businesses will be affected eventually. One of the worst hit sectors amongst the non-essential is the apparel sector which employs a sizable number of contract labourers. Not difficult to fathom, the lockdown has necessitated temporary closures of factories and lay-offs of low-wage earners. We could see a possible opportunity here, as the sector reeling under reduction in yarn exports and restriction on raw material imports will give a fillip to the local sourcing opportunities for garment manufacturers, which may prevent prices from going up once the markets open.

The other big industry which will continue to face the downturn and probably face extinction in the short run unless they innovate and move onto other business streams - logistics or the last mile delivery for instance, Travel and Tourism. The sector is reeling from large-scale cancellations and a complete pause on domestic operations. Both outbound travel and inbound travel to India are expected to be at an all-time low this year. The losses are estimated in the range of Rs.90-100 bn. 

Essentials will continue to be in demand and get serviced and fulfilled with the government taking an increasingly active role in ensuring uninterrupted supplies of ‘essentials’. Essentials include food, clothing, soaps detergents, soaps, detergents, housing, gas and electricity. A word of caution, any prolonged disruption of the supply chain might lead to shortages and thus inflation in the medium term. Ecommerce, retail and internet businesses would be less affected because most of their offerings fall under “essential items”.

So, what is the plausible way forward? Who are the winners and who are the losers in a limited sense here?  

Clearly a massive round of stimulus would be required to ensure the marginalised sections sustain the lockdown and we build resilience in the economy. According to the Economic Survey of 2018–19, almost 93 percent of the country’s total workforce—an estimated 437 million people—is informal. This includes agricultural, construction, manufacturing, sanitation, and domestic workers. This sector contributes to nearly half of the country’s GDP. A tough balancing act considering the fiscal deficit is already under pressure and not in the best of health so to say. 

Who are the winners - Pharma, ecommerce, retail, fmcg, IT ITES, Healthcare, logistics

Who are the losers - Travel and Tourism, Inland Transport, Restaurants and Eateries, Consumer Durables, Banking and Finance

India has been amongst the first few countries to take up the Covid fightback plan early on, though the curve is yet to be flattened but shows signs of containment, with a well-planned comprehensive measure starting with testing, tracking, tracing, containment and enforcing social distancing it is expected that we will be able to build the necessary resilience, next two weeks would be critical. 

You can reach to Mr. Sanjiva Jha at LinkedIn Address

This article was written by Mr. Sanjiva Jha on Linkedin. Link of the article is here: Reigniting the economy

Mr. Sanjiva Jha is Founder-CEO of BroadArk Technologies Pvt. Ltd. His company owns the brand Y&NOW and works in the field of Education and Skilling. But this is just a small part of his illustrious career of around 28 years at leadership positions with LabourNet Services India Pvt. Ltd., Tata Teleservices Ltd. Reliance Retail Ltd., Boots Healthcare, Cargill India Ltd. etc. He has Masters degree in Management from IRMA and Bachelor degree in Chemical Engineering from BIT, Sindri. He has led cross functional teams during growth, massive organizational restructuring post US subprime crisis and merger & acquisitions. 

Reigniting the economy 

We are witnessing massive changes in the workplace today due to the digitization wave to newer and different skill sets required to address the increasingly demanding Industry requirements. As we see, relevant skill sets isthe need of the hour and in this world of Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity (VUCA). 

Which are some of the sectors likely to need large numbers of skilled personnel to keep pace with the transformational change ? 

A recent McKinsey report on future of work estimates that almost 50% of work that one does can be automated and that in 60% of the cases almost one-third of the jobs can be automated with technologies existing today! While the impact on various sectors in different countries could differ depending on the labour sector wages, demographics etc. but the automation and digitization is all pervasive and by extension the impact on the skills required to respond to the labour market needs. 

It is estimated that 8-9% of 2030 labour will be in new types of occupations that have not existed before. Clearly there is a need to invest in relevant skills needed to transition to the new roles.  

India has a workforce of nearly 450 mn strong with nearly half a million people joining the workforce annually, it is the second-fastest digitizing economy after Indonesia, what are the likely areas of impact that we expect? How do we future proof ourselves against those changes? A quick peek at some of the key Industries. 

One of the sectors undergoing transformational change is the Information Technology & Information Technology Enabled Services.This industry is clearly seeing changes at both ends - reskilling as well as upskilling to match the growing requirements. We are witnessing requirements in the areas of Block Chain technology, Artificial Intelligence, Cybersecurity specialists, Robotics, CRM specialists to name a few. Many roles will be created in the AI space as it touches our lives through multiple products and services. 

Healthcare has become one of India’s largest sectors - both in terms of revenue and employment. Healthcare comprises hospitals, medical devices, clinical trials, outsourcing, telemedicine, medical tourism, health insurance and medical equipment. It will employ 7.5 mn people from a current level of less than 4 mn. A high priority sector for the Nation, the skill sets required to manage this growth are significant considering the massive expansion and the cutting edge technology on which the industry works.  

Retail is another sector where we are seeing robust growth rates, higher consumer expenditure and unprecedented technological interventions on the move. This along with Ed-tech remains one of the few sectors which has been hiring when the reports last came in! The Indian retail industry has emerged as one of the most dynamic and fast-paced industries. It accounts for over 10 per cent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and around 8 per cent of the employment. The market size is pegged at US$ 950 billion in 2018 at CAGR of 13 per cent. The online retail segment is growing at a fast clip of 31%. This sector thrives on online platforms, cloud-based solutions, GPS, AI driven algorithms to unravel why you and I buy what we buy! We are talking about large numbers of workforce and newer relevant skill sets here to sustain the sector growth.. 

On a concluding note - To prevent a worst-case scenario which is, Tech change accompanied by talent shortages, mass unemployment and growing inequality: Reskilling and Upskilling of today’s workforce will be critical. We cannot wait for the current school going generation to learn the requisite skills as they graduate, the current work force will have to be reskilled and upskilled. The writing is clearly on the wall, we need to adapt to the new skills at the same time reskilling and upskilling of the current workforce will need to move on a war footing…

This ongoing crisis of Covid19 is already taking many jobs beyond the possibility; part of it due to the crisis and part of it due to the unknown fear of financial and economic uncertainty. A business leader or an HR-Head is also a human being and will succumb to his/her memories and heuristics. So, some very talented candidates will also lose the job during this period, as it happened during 2008 US Subprime crisis.

But this time is not the time to sit and curse this challenge but this is the time to focus on your personal brand. As some talented people may lose job during this pandemic covid19 due to the fear of uncertainty, they will be picked up again much sooner than they can expect when economy picks up steam once again. They are just needed to stay focused on building their personal brand and communicating it to the target audience.

Many neuroscience researches says that human brain receives more than 11 million bit data but can process not more than 50 bit per second and that's why, many decisions are made even before blinking the eye. Robert Cialdiani, the bestselling author of “Influence” and “Pre-suation” has rightly said that we "pay" attention of something which is important to us because we trade it off with attention on something else which we don’t find important.

The first process of brand decision involves forming the representations of choice alternatives- that is, brand identification. This entails processing of incoming information, so that different options for choice are identified. At the same time, your customer needs to integrate the information on internal states (candidate requirement to fill the position) with external states (job description and requirements).

Humans are predominantly visual creatures and most of the information we receive is visual. Even if receive the information through other senses, we try to visualize the image of the product. Milosavljevic, Koch and Rangel in their research paper in 2011 had indicated that consumers can identify two different food brands and make their mind about which they prefer in as little as 313 milliseconds or roughly one third of a second. I am not saying that you are a food brand, but what’s wrong in becoming so desirable. Just think over it.

Recent studies in neuroscience indicate the four fundamentals of attention: 1) saliency filters or bottom up features 2) Top-down control 3) competitive visual selection; and 4) Working memory. First one is saliency filters or bottom up features, which means what you have in you to offer. Bottom up or saliency filters automatically select most important information from all the available information. So, if your elevator pitch, salient features of your personal brand is not fitting in with the memory and heuristics of your recruiter, then you will definitely not be picked up despite all your talent when they are in rush. Your cognitive load can’t hold too much of information at one time and so of your recruiter’s. Economy will start picking up the steam sooner than later. Human mind can’t stay in pain for too long; it will fight back to gain control over the situation. And when it will start picking up the steam, your recruiters will be in hurry to fill the position and then your bottom up information should be ready for them to pick you up among the crowd.

How can you do that:

1) Make of list of what you stand for

2) Make a list of your destinations

3) Connect the dots of what you stand for and what where are your destinations

4) Take help of your colleagues who can critically advise you

5) If possible, talk to your boss from either current or previous organizations and discus what you have prepared

6) Create a back story and start communicating it along with your check list on the regular basis with your target audience using social media, messaging apps, direct call and one to one meetings.

7) Another option will be to take help of manpower consultants and have been doing the work of profile creation and personal branding, because they have been working in the thick and thin of recruitment work.

One time final request; don’t waste your time on cursing the pandemic; it is what it is. When it will retreat, it will leave behind a fertile land, on which you can grow the tree of your successful life.

COVID19 has reset the world order and new world order is booting. Since the new world order is booting, old world order is stuck in the throat of everyone; from the governments to businesses to common people.

Though I, like everyone know that every aspect of human life, businesses and governance is affected by this pandemic, I was curious to know how exactly it is impacting supply of essential items in India, which remain opened throughout this lockdown as it should have been. I talked to couple of my friends who have been leading the team selling essentials for their organizations and I am presenting their challenges as they are. They had some “Time to Survive (inventory in hand to cover the sudden eventuality)” but “Time to Recover (get into smooth operation mode with every function of supply chain working properly and optimally)” is still a long shot, despite some of the challenges I think might have been solved.

Here are the challenges they are facing in supplying staples and other essential items:

1)Logistics and Load factor: For smaller organizations or areas where order loads are small, Full Container Load (FCL) are not possible, transporters normally club the orders and deliver at destinations. Though Less than Container Load (LCL) is comparatively costly and less safe, Hundredweight freight method solves the purpose. During this period, as many small businesses remained closed, for small orders, LCL remained an impossible task and so, transporters increased the freight charges to cover the cost and incentive.

2)Credit: Credit helps in creating more liquidity, surplus fund, more customer engagement and increased risk taking appetite. But in this extremely challenging time, everyone’s risk appetite has decreased and wants to protect his/her fund liquidity. This has resulted in disappearance of credit from the market.

3)Stocks: Even for essentials, arranging stock has become challenge due to many factors and it has led to prices of many items increasing a lot. So, prices have become unrealistic as of now and whoever has the stock, charges more for it.

4)Timing Restrictions: Since timing restrictions are there in APMC market yard in metros like Mumbai, picking up and loading the stock itself takes time and in turn, supply is getting crippled. Problem gets even more complicated due to different timing restrictions for retail counters in different areas.

5)Labour challenges: Due to lockdown, there is huge shortfall in supply of labourers. To meet the demand of market, traders are trying to achieve the same throughput from workforce available, which is an impossible feat and can’t sustain for long. For migrant labourers, day and night work is resulting into heavy fatigue which can’t be repaired by money and they just want to leave for their hometown. This problem will only increase once interstate movement of labourers starts freely. A leading online grocer had to cancel around 20000 orders between Rs.30-35 Crore. There is no dearth of orders but there is scarcity of manpower to service those orders.

6)Lack of clarity about government notifications and nature of products at ground zero: Administrative staff i.e police and local administration at ground zero don’t have complete knowledge of food supply chain and so everyone is reading the same rule differently. Since no one wants to get caught at wrong foot during this pandemic, this challenge makes matter more complicated.

You are invited to add more challenges which are hampering the smooth operation of supply chain of essential items and what should be done in future if similar challenges arise? Automation, credibility based inter-trader credit system, AI based robotics, auto-driven transportation vehicles, delivery using drones are part of solution or they will complicate the employment problem of the country?

You will find following blogs on Covid19 useful:

1) Sanjiva Jha Founder CEO BroadArk Technologies on Reigniting the economy

2) Sanjiva Jha Founder CEO BroadArk Technologies on Covid19 Impact

Though spiritualism had initiated in my quest of knowing the brain and how it functions, one of the initial scientific exposure about it came from the book “The Brain” by David Eagleman. I never ever felt while reading this book that it is written by a scientist, a neuroscientist because narration is so lucid and words are so simple that it looks like bed time story. It paved way for me to buy more books, pick courses on neuroscience online and dig deep to understand what I want to understand better.

Buying a book is very easy but going beyond the first few pages is very difficult. It tells you that whether you will be able to finish reading the book or not. But this book is so simple worded and lucid that not only it kept me interested in the book but it ignited y interest in the very topic itself and it is growing year after year. This kind of impact it had on me.

Some of examples are here: 

While explaining “AM IN THE SUM OF MY MEMORIES?”, he writes, “Our brains and bodies change so much during our life that – like a clock’s hour hand – it’s difficult to detect the changes. Every four months your red blood cells are entirely replaced, for instance, and your skin cells are replaced every few weeks. Within about seven years every atom in your body will be replaced by other atoms. Physically, you are constantly a new you. Fortunately, there may be one constant that links all these different versions of your self together: memory. Perhaps memory can serve as the thread that makes you who you are. It sits on the core of your identity, providing a single, continuous sense of self.”

Further, explaining this very thought, he writes, “Rather than memory being an accurate video recording on a moment in your life, it is fragile brain state from your bygone time that must be resurrected for you to remember”.

In the chapter “The Storyteller”, He writes, “Your brain serves up a narrative- and each of us believes whatever narrative it tells. Whatever you’re falling for a visual illusion, or believing the dream you happened to be trapped in, or experiencing letters in colour, or accepting a delusion as true during an episode of schizophrenia, we each accept our realities however our brain accepts them.

Despite the feeling that we’re directly experiencing the world out there, our reality is ultimately built in the dark, in a foreign language of electrochemical signals. The activity churning across vast neural networks gets turned into your story of this, your private experience of the world: the feeling of this book in your hands, the light in the room, the smell of roses, the sound of others speaking.

Even more strangely, it’s likely that every brain tells a slightly different narrative. For every situation with the multiple witnesses, different brains are having different private experiences. With seven billion human brains wandering the planet (and trillions of animal brain), there’s no single version of reality. Each brain carries its own truth.

So, what is reality? It’s like a television show that only you can see, and you can’t turn it off. The good news is that it happens to be broadcasting the most interesting show you could ask for: edited, personalized and presented just for you.”

These are just few snippets of the amazing book. It is a must read for everyone who wants to know about truth, or who believe their truth is the real truth and other’s truth are lie, or who wants to know why someone behaves the way he/she behaves or the people like me who are simply curious to know about the most mysterious thing in the world; human brain. 

You can buy the book from Amazon following this link The Brain

In the second part of winter of 1999, I went o buy a watch in one of the shops of South Extension in New Delhi. For a medium range budget, there were limited brand choices, probably only two (HMT and Titan), if I remember correctly. Decision to buy the watch was already made, budget was set, and brand choices were also not many to confuse me, so my top down control of decision making was all set. Only thing needed was the bottom up saliency filter of products to match my representation of expectations and gain my attention and assure me of matching my predicted value.

I entered the shop and my dorsal visual pathway started scanning the watches available on display and sending the messages to dorsolateral prefrontal cortex via primary visual cortex VI. My entire decision making and purchase process completed in less than five minutes. My decision making completely conformed to the research of Milosavljevic, Koch and Rangel (2011) which showed that consumers makes a purchase decision as quickly as within 313 milliseconds.

Shopkeeper told me that I am his first client to compete a purchase so quickly, otherwise other customers, especially woman sucks even last drop of blood from his brain while choosing and buying a watch. Not only that, even after taking so much time at the shop, on many occasions, they again return next day to replace the product. We had a laugh at this behavior. 

As my MBA completed and work experience started, especially in food retail and my interaction with my end customers increased manifold, I realized that my laugh back then was not only in bad taste but idiotic as well.

Woman makes most of the buying decision of any household and these decisions have to fit on four wheels of decision making cart:

1)Who uses

2)Who chooses

3)Who pays

4)Who benefits

If there is any imbalance in any of the wheal, the satisfaction level derived out of the purchase decision decreases drastically and creates bad shopping experience. It reminds me one of the buying decisions my mother made in my childhood. I was probably eight-nine years old then, youngest among three sons. My mother used to buy identical dresses for three of us. One day she had an idea that we three will look good in traditional white ‘payjama-kurta’ and she bought one set each for us. My mother was my favorite person, so I put that dress on sportingly. Middle one wore it grudgingly but the eldest one, who was in his early teen, threw the fit and decided not to wear it at all. Even few slaps on the face couldn’t convince him. 

Coming back to my decision to buy a watch and complete the buying process so quickly, If I lay my decision to buy the watch on this cart, then I find that I was the user, I was the chooser, I paid for it out of savings of my pocket money (it gave me the feeling of earning it) and I benefited from the features of watch. So, the satisfaction out of that decision was at peak. But I know there must have been gap in the level of satisfaction if I had to buy a watch for my sister because she may or may not have liked my decision with the same intensity as of mine. 

So, how to make a woman buy what you want her to buy? 

Decision making process of male and female brain is different. Both arrive at same result through different routes. Male brain, primarily driven by Testosterone, Vasopressin and Mullerian Inhibiting Substance is up for faster visuomotor scanning, faster physical reflexes, more risky behavior, aggressively defending the turf and restricting any woman like behavior. Female brain, primarily driven by Oxytocin, Estrogen and Prolactin is up for empathy, care, rapport, trust, bond etc. While male brain treats every issue as problem and jumps directly to find the solution, female brain starts evaluating the pros and cons of every action along with finding the solution. While male brain readily accepts the collateral outcome of its actions, female brain finds it difficult.  

Hundreds of hours observing customers walking in the stores and making buying decisions during my retail journey, I have figured out following points to be kept in mind before selling anything to female shoppers:

1)Establish rapport first and win trust: Opening pleasantries and a sincere effort to establish rapport and win trust works very well with female shoppers. . They like to put their trust in salesperson to give them honest opinion and step back. Any attempt to hard sell anything to them backfires. I remember one incident during my more. Retail days, when I was handling pulses category at national level. Before that, I was Category Manager of Staples for Mumbai zone. I was visiting stores in Mumbai to check pulses stock, pricing and promotion display and take customer feedback. In one of the store, I was talking to the store manager in the back office. Suddenly I heard a lady customer shouting at one of our CSA. I along with store manager rushed to scene. Upon asking, I was informed that the lady was sold a bag of rice which she found not of good quality. I immediately reached the ‘problem-solution mode’ and asked the lady about how she is cooking the rice because the bag she had purchased was of new crop. My question infuriated the lady even more and she blasted me with loud shout back, “I am cooking food for more years than your age, so don’t teach me how to cook”. I realized my mistake. I didn’t empathize with her by asking her about the problem, I didn’t ask her about the loss of faith and trust which she had bestowed on the CSA before making her purchase decision and I didn’t ask her about how she felt let down by making this decision which proved to be wrong. I calmed her down and assured her that I am with her in this process by making her believe that it not she but I along with my team are at fault. I took all the corrective actions then and there itself after aligning all the stakeholders, but this incident proved to be insightful to understand a customer.

2)Understand shopper’s world and objective behind purchase: While male shoppers come to the store with ‘their’ opinion in definite terms and they are mostly very clear about it, female shopper’s definition of ‘their’ is normally very broad. They try to make their decisions win-win for everyone assumed to be involved. So, after opening pleasantries and establishing the rapport, a little anchoring is required to understand the objective behind purchase and the people to be affected by their decision. 

3)Show alacrity in giving choices and eliminating least favored choices: Since a female shopper’s single decision leaves impact on many stakeholders, they need to be provided with choice. More implicit the objective of their purchase, more choices they would need and more time it will take. Though normally they wouldn’t like to be explicit in their demand and objective, but a quick zero down by the sales person is very necessary. If rapport is established, any change in behavior or opinion can quickly be analyzed and addressed. Though there may demand of more choices from them, neither their brain nor salesperson’s brain can handle this much amount of data. So, quick display of choices and even more quick elimination of least favorable choices become very crucial for successful closure of sales.

4)Appreciate their process of purchase: A little appreciation from the salesperson goes a long way in closing the sales successfully. Appreciation makes female shoppers believe that you are involved in their selection process and appreciate the effort they are making. This step evokes trust and faith in them towards you.  

I remember one incident, though not as a sales person. I went with my cousin sister to buy her a dress for a special occasion. She was to wear this dress to meet her to-be husband. We went to famous mall in NOIDA. As we enter the first shop, we saw a beautiful dress hanging in very front of the shop. She asked me whether it will look good on her. In a plain definite tone, I told her that dress is beautiful and will look good on her. She looked at me and said, “let’s try other stuff”. From one store to another, one dress to another, we spent more than four hours in that mall and nearby market. Tired and angry I sat on a bench in the mall and told her to select whichever dress she likes and once she makes her mind, call me to make the payment. In the end she chose the same dress which we had seen as first thing in the mall. After reaching home, I asked her if she had to buy this dress only, then why she made me walk for four hours. She replied, “you told me that dress is beautiful and it will look good on me but you didn’t tell me that it will look good on me for the very purpose I wanted to buy it. You were not with me there.” While my mind was focused on dress and whether it will look good on her not, I was not with her on the very purpose she was buying this dress for. I was not appreciative of the situation she was in.

5)Recognize and appreciate the decision: Recognition and appreciation of the decision they have made goes a long way winning their trust and making them your valued repeat customer. This is a very complex subject I attempted to write. 

Above mentioned points gave me success in category as generic as staples and I hope it can help others as well. There may be more points and I will appreciate the feedback.

Last month’s Tanishq ad for their “Ekatvam” range of products was much talked, due to the topic it chose to show and message it conveyed. As soon as the digital advertisement was released, #boycotttanishq started trending on social media sites. It immediately drew the line of confrontation among two groups; one group were claiming to be of Hindus and other group were claiming to be of seculars and liberals. The concept of an expecting Hindu girl married in a Muslim household being nervously surprised for their in-laws celebrating “God Bharai” ritual for her didn’t go down well with a section of Hindus and they vowed to boycott Tansihq’s products. Not only that, they even started voicing their displeasure on social media. When they started voicing their displeasure on social media, another section of people jumped in the defence of Tanishq.

But this is all about responses it got; let me examine the communication decision taken by the Brand and Marketing Manager of Tanishq. Was this a brand communication or a statement of corporate or product team’s ideology?

Let us understand what it presumably showed:
-Love beyond the boundaries of religion.
-Acceptance of each other’s culture.
-Different customs and importance of jewelry in it.

And what was construed by a section of people:

-It pressed the raw nerve of inter-religious marriage where girl is necessarily a Hindu. This is a very hot social and political topic and evokes a very strong response. For many, this is a historical, political and narrational wrong perpetrated against one community.
-Some criticized the nervous surprise at girl’s face, which they took it as otherwise non-acceptance of her customs by her husband’s family.

Marketing and brand communication can’t overlook the prevalent social fault lines and it also can’t overlook the sentiments of major target customer group, because it may affect the sales. Very next day, share prices of Tanishq dropped by around 2.5% which confirmed the sentiments of that group which was angry over this advertisement.

Now let us analyse few more facts mentioned below, which are important to establish that whether it was a well planned communication to increase the sales or an ideological statement either coming from the corporate team or brand team:

-The theme of advertisement is a very controversial topic which evokes even stronger response. I will not get into the details.
-The community who were angry, i.e., Hindus have the custom of buying gold ornaments during different festivals like “Akshay Tritiya” and “Dhanteras”. They even buy gold when enter the new house. And of course, marriage is a huge thing. Women folks in villages save money to buy jewelry whether they have daughters or son, because at the time of marriage, they have to give it to the daughter or daughter-in-law. So, for them, not only it is their personal choice but social and religious ritual as well.
-Jewelry is not just a woman thing among Hindus, men also wear them.
-Muslim community doesn’t have the social or religious ritual to buy ornaments; it is completely their personal choice.
-Men from Muslim community are forbidden by their religious edicts from wearing gold jewelry.
-Population ratio of Hindus to Muslims in India is 8:1.5, so without Hindus form the main market segment.

So, when odds were so firmly placed against this brand and marketing communication, then it was definitely a statement of ideology by the team at brand or corporate level then a communication designed to boost the sales. May be the team was experimenting with an idea of brand identity they want to create or maybe they had designed it for Pakistan and not India.

Note: I tried looking for the advertisement on Official Youtube channel of Tanishq Jewelry but it wasn’t available there.

First time I read any book on behavioural economics was “Thinking Fast and Slow” by Nobel award winning Psychologist Daniel Kanheman around six years back and I got blown over by it. Having spent better part of my life in food retail, understanding human behaviour through historical data collected through weekly or monthly sales was quite a task, because the element of biases, heuristics, noise etc. are something I had just assumptions but no authoritarial backing. Many a times, standing on the floor of the store, I could sense the consumer behaviour but could not call it a behavioural pattern of financial decision making due to not being exposed to psychology part of human decision making. Nature of the job was to achieve the sales numbers, so academic aspect of conclusions coming from data never became a topic of discussion among peers and colleagues.

As my curiosity increased in this subject, I pursued many online courses available across different platforms and read many books on it along with neuroeconomics, neuromarketing and neuro-consumer Science. In this pursuit, I recently found a book “Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioural Economics”, written by Richard H. Thaler and published in 2015. Mr. Thaler is known as father of Behavioural Economics and won Nobel Prize for Economics in 2017.

This books describes his journey of exploring, experimenting, understanding, consolidating and presenting the role of different human behaviour behind economic decision making more famously known as “biases and heuristics”, the names given by famous Daniel Kanheman and Amos Tversky.

Written in eight blocks (Beginnings, Mental Accounting, Self-Control, Interlude, Working with Danny, Engaging with the Economics Profession, Finance, Welcome to Chicago, Helping Out) divided in thirty three chapters, this book is a revealation of a completely new dynamics of human financial decision making and revelation to read for anyone who is even not conversant with the idea of either psychology or economics.

From Endowment Effect to The List to Value Theory to The Gauntlet to Bargains and Rip-Offs to Sunk Cost to Buckets and Budgets to The Willpower to The Planner and The Doer to Misbehaving in the Real World to What Seems Fair to Fairness games to end with Save Money Tomorrow, Going Public and Nudging in U.K, this book is the journey of Behavioural Economics with the father of very concept himself.

I simply love the concept of “Endowment Effect”. We overvalue what we have regardless to what is its market value. If we are asked to pay surcharge to facilitate credit card transaction cost, we frown over that, but if that surcharge is included in the product cost, we don’t mind because that’s not obvious to us. While two are one and the same thing, but not getting discount is just a lost opportunity cost for the consumers while paying extra for credit card transaction looks like direct cost. This is not only true for the economic decisions but for ideological view points as well. People value their opinion more over others and they go out in public just to confirm their opinion. “Endowment Effect” coupled with “confirmation bias” becomes “myside bias”, the reason behind big ideological divides.

Mental accounting is another topic which I find fascinating. Recently I bought a laptop for Rs.39.450/- for multitasking of a little lesser known brand. I got a Rs.1500/- instant discount due the tie-up between my credit card issuing bank and seller. Few days later, another Rs.1250/- cash back was credited to my wallet. Along with the features, company offered two years service warranty as against of one year given by other known brands and I got one year Microsoft 365 subscription free as well. I had done good two weeks research before buying the laptop and had seen umpteen videos and read thousands of reviews of different brands before making this decision. Laptop of known brands with similar features and warranty were at more than Rs.65,000/-. So when I made this decision, got this product, set up my device and Microsoft account, I found it very smooth in operation. It proved to be great bargain for me. After that whomsoever I told about the purchase, I not only explained the discount and cash back, but also the cost of one year Microsoft 365 Subscription, cost of 1 TB storage on cloud, and cost of one extra years’ warranty. Before that, I was against the idea of having cloud storage space, because I not only found it costly but leaving the responsibility of my data on someone else. Hard Drive Storage meant complete control over my data to me. But after getting it along with Few days back, I had almost made the decision to buy a laptop for Rs.61,000/- with the same features but somehow I ended up not buying it. So, my satisfaction level from making the purchase decision which I made is like absolute bargain.

This book is full of real life experiments and examples and is a must read for everyone who wants to know the science behind financial decision making.

You can buy the book following this link Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioural Economics

“The Cave” is spiritual journey of super successful internet entrepreneur Alok Kejriwal. Starting with selling and exporting socks, which was his family business, he started his digital journey with www.contest2win.com and now runs www.games2win.com and www.koimoi.com. He sold China arm of his another successful venture www.mobiles2win.com to Walt Disney. His two companies www.contest2win.com and www.mobile2win.com pioneered the digital gaming and digital promotions in India. His first book “Why I stopped Wearing My Socks” is bestseller and won him C.K.Prahlad Best Business Book award.

Along with being a super successful entrepreneur, he is devotee of “The Great Mahavatar Babaji” and “Art of Living” teacher as well. He is trained “Sudarshan Kriya” expert. 

“ The Cave” is about his spiritual journey, from the foundation of spiritualism being laid in him in early childhood to his devotion to Mahavatar Babaji.

 Every chapter of this book (Eighteen chapters) is a revelation in itself and it is a guide to understand and make best use of divine guidance or subtle cues institution throws in front of us. This is not a religious or spiritual book, this is a life guide and emotional wellness book.

While reading the book, I was reminded my own journey of spiritualism which made me understand that science doesn’t mean laughing at what we don’t know, but accepting the fact that our collective knowledge is still a droplet in the ocean and we shall strive to know what we don’t know. When I was badly stuck in so far the worst challenge of my life, I found the successes I achieved at different points were completely dependent on someone else’s mercy and were defying the “Law of Small Number”. I was just playing my small role in something very big happening in my life. I am witness to many such events in my life which goes beyond the word ‘fluke’ or a ‘coincidence’ and establishes the presence of bigger power. 

This book is replete with many such examples of the life Alok Kejriwal. Each chapter is followed by “Connecting the dots” and “Exercise”, which will help you to use the subtle cues of life and make best use of it to achieve success in life.

I strongly recommend to buy this book. You can buy this book following this link The Cave- An Internet Entrepreneur’s Spiritual Journey