The Busyness trap

Since childhood, we’ve been taught that it’s good to be busy like a bee. The seeds sown at the start are reaping now in our everyday life.

One of biggest reasons for keeping ourselves busy is, as human beings we always want our brain to be occupied with some work instead of being free. For ex. while standing outside a lift, we keep on pressing the button multiple times instead of waiting for the lift to come post pressing it just once.

Another reason is efforts/time spent on any activity makes us justify our work and keeps us satisfied internally through a myth that we are active and productive & the fad now shows us busy so that we create unrealistic value for ourselves in the eyes of society. However, no one ever made us cognizant about the downside of always being busy. It can lead to burnout, impacts engagement & lead to anxiety issues.

Ultimately busyness trend has become part of organizational culture & integral part of human life. Due to this being busy and being anxious are getting corelated & organizations are becoming full of anxious achievers. Individuals constantly evaluate themselves from the eyes of efforts/time they have spent on work & if one day they have spent lesser time, they label that day as a working holiday from their inner self.

To address this, as organization,

i) Need to incentivize people on output not only time spent on the work. No doubt, currently organizations do value the output but the perceived individual value is more important than output. The value gets built on the efforts or time spent on the work & at the end, appraisals are done more on perceptions than actuals.

ii) Need to audit regularly, whether employees are feeling engaged for the work they do or just working round the clock to meet the deadlines.

iii ) Avoid non value adding work or automate it

Keep few days as no meeting/calling days in a month

iv) Force people to get off the clock & take vacation and during vacations block work mails/calls

V) Leaders to model the behavior by taking break themselves. Like Mark Zuckerberg took two months paternity leave and modeled the right behavior to the team

vi) Build a structure with sufficient manpower to avoid burnouts or overburden employees.

As individuals,

i) Dissect the actual problem & understand that just spending time will not resolve the issue.

ii ) Need to practice self-compassion by knowing the fact that we are not robots that can work 24/7.

iii ) Divert yourself to a hobby or something which gives meaning. This will help in detaching from the work & make one efficient in closing the task within or before the timelines. The opportunity cost of time makes one realize that completing any task quickly is very important.

iv) Try guided meditation or any physical activity, it helps in detaching one from work.

When we are building the robots and AIs, we want them to be like humans and have emotions whereas we humans are becoming like robots and working 24/7 without any emotions. To refrain from being constantly busy is very important since occupied brain cannot innovate or ideate and keeps on repeating the routine. This way we are digging our own grave and impacting our physical and mental health in a big way !!!

Reference – HBR March-April -2023 Issue

The Power Temptations

Nearlly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power. —Abraham Lincoln

Power simply means one’s ability to change the condition or state of mind of the other person. It is derived by providing or withholding resources—such as food, money, knowledge, and affection—or administering punishments, such as physical harm, job termination.

Whatever is the way of power gain, studies show that once people assume positions of power, they’re likely to act more selfishly, impulsively, and aggressively, and they face difficulties in seeing the world from other people’s points of view. An experience of power leads to overestimating one's capabilities & makes one vulnerable to two vileness of power i. e. hubris and narcissism. A powerful person, many a times will not be able to see the emotions of others and even fails to recognise the value of networking.  Such situations can be disastrous, as how can you lead someone, whom you don't understand emotionally! 

The greatest example of power peril was witnessed when Alexander's army rebelled against him and forced him to return to Persia. Alexander and his army had been on campaign for years during that time. The men were tired and had appealed him again and again to let them go home and see their families. However, Alexander wanted to go east and add more to his empire, but this was the final straw. Alexander finally agreed to their pleads but said the army would return home by way of the Gedrosian Desert. It was there he lost a huge portion of his army due to the heat and lack of water. Many historians agree that he was vindictively punishing his army in this way for rebelling against him. One more time his hubris and narcissism led his army to suffer huge loss.

The abuse of power tarnishes the reputation of the leader and ultimately affecting the possibility to influence. Simply knowing this fact would not solve the problem, it requires deliberate efforts to get rid of the perils of power.

One of the approaches is to be mindful when you get to the powerful position & keep reminding your brain about the fact that even biggest of the leaders fell to the traps of power degeneracy, so can I. Set practises in your organization, which shows the respect not authority. Classic example being set in US military mess hall where food gets served from bottom most cadre to the topmost leaders. Such a beautiful way to give right signal!!

Humility plays a key role here & can be shown in multiple ways. For example, during the team dealing keep “I don’t know” syndrome as acceptable one. It is completely fine that if you or your subordinate does not know something. During the team meetings, guide the team that, if you don’t know something just respond to clients or internal stakeholder that you don’t know and ask for a prescribed time to get back. If the teammate is not knowing something, guide him in the right way rather than withholding the information to strengthen your powerful position.

Another way of showing humility is to make public commitments/instructions during meetings not to interrupt any colleague and listen carefully before voicing any reaction. This would establish ways to obtain honest and diverse inputs from all. The CEO of VIDA - Umaimah Mendhro (a global platform that connects designers and manufacturers) conveys her team explicitly during meetings that “If I am the only one making decisions, then we are only good as I am, and that’s not good enough”

Humble culture can be developed by visually reminding people that success is fleeting and not permanent. Showing failure stories to team like when Nokia/Kodak became stubborn over their success and refrained from innovating, they went on to the ground from clouds. 

To have measurement of humility take honest feedback from your team about how humble you are! (360-degree reviews) The honest feedback must be taken without any punishment backing officially as well as unofficially.             

Another way to negate the power degeneracy is through empathy & gratitude. This can happen when (I, Mine) gets replaced with (We,Ours). One way to do is by shuffling jobs. For example, when a senior position is filled by taking a fresh grad from the recognised B school/college, before handing over the senior post, he must travel in each division for few weeks (From ground level to mid-level) to understand their real pains.  

Story telling is the greatest tool to express gratitude and empathise. Story is such a powerful tool that it can convert the intangible into tangible. Regular & informal story telling sessions should be held within team. A real-life story heard from a colleague, can help in understanding the situation as well as the personality of the other person & sometimes helps in expressing gratitude towards the other person, which ultimately builds trust & would result in empathetic work environment.

Empathy can even be built by embedding interdependence within the system. Just like Microsoft, they have removed ratings from their performance review process and refocusing evaluation on collaboration. The same thing was done by Morgan Stanley when they felt the need of cross selling in their client base of fortune 500 companies. The President John Mack focused on collaboration and converting all the sharks (Selfish and sharp minded fishes) into the Nemos (Collaborative fishes believing in living together).  

To appreciate impact over others & develop empathy towards them, sometimes one must step out in the real world. One must move to the communities whose experience is profoundly different from own. This was habituated by the mother of Mr. Anand Mahindra in him, she made him taste the salt of the earth during his upbringing. She sent him to government run school instead of sending to private schools where elite class used to come. Initially she kept him away from family business & only when his family needed him, he joined the family business.  Based on his experience he quoted “I’ve come to conclude that perhaps the best way to exercise power, the most responsible way to wield power, is to have a very constructive discomfort with it,”    

A balanced relationship with power is rarely developed overnight; after all, its’ our emotions, not just thoughts, are in play. Whenever we exercise power, we remain vulnerable to its corrosive effects. But by developing humility and empathy with mindfulness and implementing organizational structures that ensure true power-sharing and accountability, we can avoid the twin pitfalls of power. The leaders who can do this, can lead with inclusivity, accept diverse viewpoints, and ultimately build an innovative culture.  The novelist and Nobel laureate Toni Morrison summed up the challenge and the opportunity concisely. “If you have some power,” she used to tell her students, “Then your job is to empower somebody else."

References

Harvard business review - Sept Oct 2021 edition & Sept Oct 2016 edition 

Quora reviews and reverts 

The Power Paradox - how we gain and Lose Influence by Dacher Keltner

Forbes 2009 - The price of arrogance 

The muscular Mandarin – China’s real stand in the world

During the last phase of Trump administration, they tried hard to divert the focus by way of trade war & decouple themselves from China but it looked more of a trick to hide inefficiency of their poor COVID management & ultimately to take advantage in the upcoming elections. Decoupling China is extremely difficult task, if not impossible for US. The reason being China holds 1 Trillion $ US govt bond holding and has 70% trade surplus over US as major US production is happening in China. US companies’ CEO and board members opine that, it took 13 years to get into China and decoupling from China is not a wise decision.   

Off late there has been lot of brouhaha that virus has been manufactured in China & world has been trying to demonize China in all possible ways. Even if this proves to be true, penalizing China is economically difficult & it is even much more difficult to quarantine china from the rest of the world. One may like dislike or abuse China, but one cannot ignore them. 

To know why, let us understand China first. Precisely their traits, vision & strategy  

Traits of the Traitor

1. A thoughtful capitalist

China knew the importance of private consumption and hence they gave economic freedom to spend and invest, to their people.  Their private consumption surpassed US private consumption & has reached to $ 6 trillion in 2020. This penetration is just 39% of their GDP which gives a wide array for growth.

They are capitalist in nature & even the private investments from outsiders are allowed but not at the cost of losing control. If they were concerned only with economic outcomes, they would have allowed and welcomed foreign businesses investors and would be treating them as equal partners, agnostic as to who owned IP or majority stake in joint venture. Whereas they prefer to hold controlling stake and insist to transfer IP to Chinese company in JVs. They are mixture of Marxist(capitalist) and Leninist(control owing) thought process but the intensity of the later approach is of much higher in proportion, which makes them a thoughtful capitalist.     

Benefits

Capitalism without losing political control has led to controlled mindset of the population. This did not let the outside thought process get over the minds of people. Political authoritarian state has helped them in curbing the population (single child policy), poverty and pollution. India and China were standing at 350$ per capita income in 1990, from there they have reached to $10000 per capita against $2000 per capita of India in 2020.   

2. Quick changer with highest lived change index worldwide

There has been continuous change mechanism being undertaken by the govt on regular basis. If you are a 40-year person living in China, you would have witnessed tremendous changes during your lifespan. One kid policy being introduced in 1979, economic freedom of becoming entrepreneur, from controlled educational policies to freedom of education, ability own a property on family name & again changing the policy of single kid to two kids recently. These were socialist changes whereas economic changes like infrastructure development, change in investment polies & etc. are also phenomenal. On account of the continuous & rapid changing environment, China has the highest lived change index (An index which uses lifetime per capita GDP to track how much economic change a population has experienced), they are at 32X against US 2X and India 5X.

Benefits

Due to rapid changing environment, there has been change in the overall mentality of population. They prefer to have a short-term outlook like prefer short term investments over long term, ready to shift the job for small increment & etc.  Its’ like when there is rapid change in the environment, people prefer to buy ripe mangoes instead of raw fruit.

They have been able to innovate and adapt quite easily. For ex. In 2014 when open banking was allowed for Alipay and Wechatpay, there was quite rapid adoption in the entire eco system. At present, 1 billion population is equipped with Wechatpay which accounts to 84% of smart phone users of China. This number is way higher than the Apple pay users across world.

Even certain Chinese innovations are being followed by the rest of the world. For ex. Whatsapp started payment platform post copying from wechat pay, Instagram copied reel feature from Tiktok & Amazon started with prime day sell by taking learning from Alibaba’s success over their Singles day.

Vision of China

I. Eliminating the dependence on imports for critical technologies and products. At present, sectors like IT, robotics, AI, aerospace, shipping, railways, energy, material, medical equipment, medicines, agriculture and power falls in this segment. China is planning to reduce their dependence under Made in China (MIC) vision (Started in 2005) on above sectors and planning to fulfill requirement up to 70% from indigenous resources by 2025 and have been able to reach up to 40% by the end of 2020.   

II. Facilitating the domestic dominance of the firms through support by way of funding and political authority

III. Leveraging that dominance to build global competitiveness.

Strategy to achieve the vision

Purchase and investment in global firms to have competitive advantage. Since 2016, there has been increase in investment by 376% to 55 $ billion in US firms by China. On tightening the direct investment by US, China continued their journey by the way of venture capital funds (VC) in US.

They have set aside 500 billion dollars for subsidizing and funding the Chinese firms for developing the R&D

Extraction of critical information from global firms. For ex. Daikin started their production in China for making affordable ACs, they had to open themselves to China and technology knowhow was extracted by Gree electric & at present Gree holds 70% of AC market of China by taking technology knowhow of Daikin.

Strategy hit to outsiders and probable solutions

For players who are underdogs with existing low production facilities and low market penetration in China, it becomes exceedingly difficult to get established in China. Especially in those sectors which falls under MIC vision 2025. For example, all the S&P companies hold only 2% of their market share and production in China. They have not been able to grow their market share and are not able to aggressively enter China for taking low-cost production advantage. The journey ahead for them is going to be on the rough roads.  

For player who have major proportion of their production facilities in China but does not depend for market, will have to look for an outside production facility to have control in long term. Else, they may get into trouble by losing success formula, as China is having local favoritism due to MIC plus data breach possibilities, and even may get inefficient, if China implements high tariff for exports. However, it is hard to get a substitute production facility to China due to low labor cost, skilled labor availability due to existing education policy & excellent infrastructure availability in the country (China’s infrastructure is even better than US at present). For example, many US firms planned to start their production in Vietnam, but they could only partially substitute China in terms of production proportion (10%). By far, India has an advantage of low labor cost but needs to work hard on skilled labor availability (revamp educational policies) and developing infrastructure facilities. If timely addressing of above issue is done in strategic manner, then India will be able to take advantage else will miss another train.     

For companies with no production but have high dependance on Chinese markets for end products, it is a challenge to survive in Chinese market. They should focus on “In China for China” strategy to have some advantage. They should employ high numbers of local people for marketing of their product or should target backward or forward integration for their MIC focused sectors. For ex. Danieli, a steel making equipment manufacturer, knew that China is eying on developing self-dependance in steel manufacturing, so they entered China market to supply steel making equipment & grew inorganically. On the other hand, Rolex watches started selling in Chinese market due to increased per capita income and luxury watch segment was not part of MIC vision sectors. However, Rolex had to collaborate with local players like wechatpay & Alipay to increase their market share and again issues of data extraction and over dependence continued while using their e-payment eco-system.

Companies with market as well as production dependence in China, will be at the highest receiving end. For example, Apple does its entire assembling of phones in China (Foxcon) and having 28% of their revenues being generated from China market. In case of decoupling from China due to vision MIC 2025, Apple will face lot of issues relating to production and may have huge market loss also. To avoid vulnerability, they are focusing on specialized product features to stay competitive in China market and on production front, they have started shifting their Ipad and Mac in Vietnams & have kept their value adding activity of iPhone in US and depending upon China for assembling of parts only. Again, wechatpay and Alipay continues to trouble them as they support local firms and being a high network accepted product/apps for mobile payments, it can have huge say in decision making while purchasing product (A phone). Nike also belongs to this quadrant, but their situation is better, as they have their production in 40 countries & their market of China is also on growing front. Their dependence over China is less in terms of their overall business and production book size.  

Way Forward for India

China has made their position quite strong during the last decade and pandemic has added to their overall strength by way of easy purchasing of firms at low valuations across the globe. They have been seriously adhering to their vision & can take any means to meet the ends. Only points where they are lacking is their social security system within country, ageing working population due to one child policy till recent past and the biggest threat to them is the world trust issue. If we (India) as a country take learning and develop an eco-system which may lead to behavior change of large population of our country just the way China did, we can eat a lot of chunk of their pie. India must take advantage of China’s shortcomings, as we have been able to build and maintain a clean image in the world since beginning. Our current & strong govt. has global acceptance and also capability to pave the way towards success but the political pollution in our country is becoming a big hurdle in the path.

Reference: Harvard business review edition May June 2021

By Nirav Ajmera (IIM Ahmedabad Alumni – 2020960003)

The quarantined life….

This 18th September, I turned 32 and the god gave me one of the most different birthday experiences of lifetime. On this day, I did not meet anyone in person, no cakes, no parties, nothing, yet it went really well. Yes, I was tested Covid positive and I was under strict home quarantine for 14 days & this phase came exactly three days before my birthday.

 

Like a common man, before COVID, I was under tremendous fear of being bogged down by it. I was very careful about my health, fitness, and hygiene as well as food habits. Yet one day, I realized that I am affected by this & it gave me extra pain considering enough care was taken by me already. 

On day one, the news of COVID was itself a daunting thing for me and my family. We were so worried and felt that the coming phase is going to be the toughest one of lifetime. The news started popping in our minds, the probable health issues, work, servant management, house management & everything needed to be managed by sitting in the house. As and when the initial days progressed, things started falling in its place & I realized the biggest fact about the brain,that is, it accepts anything or any issues quite easily. It adapts to situations the way it comes, so we don’t have to worry so much in advance about COVID, it’s just one of the situations of life; it will come and  go. Be careful to the extent you can & if it happens despite that, just relax…..  

In the initial days, I was traditionally spending my days but then I got slightly innovative in my ways. Watched series on TVF named cubicles, a very nice and beautiful series on a freshie joining his first corporate job, did office work, spoke to family over video calls, and connected with team over zoom calls & what not. Everything was there but I felt something was missing & was feeling suffocated during those times. Finally I started something for myself, I simply did one thing, I switched off the phone for an hour during the day and sat in my balcony thinking about meaningful expression of my life. Finally I realized that peace was the thing what I was looking for. Realized that meditation of 10-15 minutes a day was really helpful in achieving the peace and listening to songs of Jagjit singh was something, what I really liked. During those busy days, I did not realize that I can do something what I like & I can be happy just by spending an hour only for myself. Earlier, I was under impression that, I did not have time for myself but later on, realised that I am much efficient these days & could do more than my normal days. I did what I liked, yet I was able to do my office work easily, was talking to my family daily for an hour & was much much careful about health also.

Honestly speaking, now it seems that post 3-4 days of COVID+ report, I actually started getting positive & I wish , I can continue the same even after my todays’ negative Covid report. 

Finally, today was my last day of quarantine & I will be back to routine from tomorrow. In this entire incident I realized, mental health during this time is very important and staying calm is even more important. Such calmness and patience can come only from within us.  

Spending two weeks in four walls is quite difficult but if you start enjoying yourself, it gets easier and different. I found my happiness in the cream colored four walls of my house & I am sure everyone else would too, just the wall color would be different.

Meaningful Expression !!!

Life is absolutely unpredictable, which alomost all of us have realised in past four months. There is tremendous fear in the air & everyone is neighbored around the negativity. It's easy to preach but actually very tough to stay away from it. 

This negativity can be attributed to three major reasons. One of which is the fear of being judged by the outside world, another is comparison with others & the biggest one is lack of meaningful expression in life. 

Normally, we are very much bothered about accreditation by others. For example, we want to show off our lifestyle to others & want an unsaid accreditation that our lives are worth living. Apart from that, we want to affiliate ourselves with organisations who have excellent brand names, it may be a corporate for job or an educational institution for degree. We just measure our success in terms of external validation & end up having a disease called as lifestyle disease. 

Along with to this, we also have the habit of comparing ourselves with others. The true measure of our success lies in what others have gained rather than what we have gained. Every now & then we relate ourselves with others. This happens because we have been trained this way since school days & it continues at work place also, hence this trait goes natural and ultimately becomes part of our basic nature. We fail to identify the real reason of our unhappiness, which is on account of an unsaid comparison we do with others. We blame others for this, whereas the actual problem resides in us. As rightly said by Ghalib "ताउम्र ग़ालिब ये भूल करता रहा, ताउम्र ग़ालिब ये भूल करता रहा, धूल चेहरे पर थी और मैं आइना साफ़ करता रहा"

Let's come to the third & the biggest culprit, that is lack of meaning. In life there are three basic cycles, one is organizational & second one is career cycle & in between both the cycles, we have our lifecycle. The organisation has limitation of its own, it can't give everything to individuals, what he/she may need. Hence, one can't fulfill all his/her expectations just by organizational successes.  At each stage of life, some or the other thing would give meaning to individuals. For example, a new job & some money would give satisfaction in the initial stage of life, then after few years, position or grade would give satisfaction. Post few years, there comes a monotony stage in career, now money or position would no more give dopamine shift to human brain. It simply replicates the concept of marginal utility, the more you have it, the lesser you desire it further.

During this stage of life, we as individuals are so much involved in jobs that we don't have vocabulary or topics other than our work. We become bore & start blaming our work for that. This is the stage where organizations fail in giving meaningful expression to individuals in life. Over a period of time, we start feeling that we are wasting our lives whereas don't have enough courage to do something new.

Checkmate !!!!! 

Here comes the need of doing something which would make us feel valuable in our own eyes, this may be a social service, a new sport, study, reading, hobby development or freelancing. Rather than cursing our organizations or blaming our fate, it's better to introspect. This will give us new vocabulary, new people, newness & the most importantly a meaning to life. There is a concept called as portfolio career to overcome the monotony of career & to have a meaningful expression in life.The concept explained is as below

Portfolio Career 

As students, we’re familiar with the experience of juggling multiple jobs to make ends meet — babysitting, math tutoring, photography, part time summer jobs. They’re all part of that stage of young adult life where income always falls just short of expenses, and our only hope for survival is the ongoing hustle. The basic definition of “the hustle” is finding creative ways to afford living. According to urban dictionary, it requires “the courage, confidence, self-belief, and self-determination to go out there and work it out until you find the opportunities you want in life.” It involves identifying gaps, capitalizing on basic skills, and sometimes taking up the less-than-optimal tasks that only make sense because you have nothing to lose. Most young people can relate to the hustler mentality in some way, but we seldom consider how it shapes our future careers.Rather than viewing the hustle as an uncomfortable yet necessary part of growing up, what if we took these lessons learned in the art of getting by and applied them to how we approach our professional lives?

Job market trends point strongly in one direction: the future of work is uncertain, fragmented and demanding. The emergence of the portfolio career is a clear indication of this trend.

A portfolio career, by definition, is one which consists of multiple part time jobs. Sounds familiar? Instead of weekend gigs and temporary positions, however, a portfolio career could be a full time commitment which comprises a balance of freelance work, consulting, personal projects, board membership and other activities that demand expertise under flexible conditions. It’s important to note that it is not the same as multitasking. In fact, most people who’ve embraced the portfolio career do it precisely because it gives them more autonomy to direct their focus where they want. Time management and organization are thus crucial for personal accountability and success. More and more people are turning to portfolio careers, or the “gig economy,” as a long-term lifestyle choice which provides them with the autonomy to choose how they work. Some seek a better work/life balance. Some do it for the opportunity to use and develop multiple skill sets. Some do it for autonomy so that they — rather than some corporate employer — control their fate. Some do it to follow divergent passions or for personal growth. Some do it for the pace and constant change. And some do it as a second career after retiring early from full-time employment, simply seeking a new challenge and greater fulfillment. For whatever reasons, the portfolio career is on the rise and has become a more viable option through the boom of the freelance, remote work market.So what does this mean for those of us at the midlife of our careers? Here’s some advice on how we can prepare for the future of work today.

Diversify skillset. The top two skills in demand, unsurprisingly, are tech skills and soft skills. People who know how to work with data and use technology to their advantage, yet also display the emotional intelligence to work well with teams and navigate complex social systems, will always come out on top. Employers care less about your degree, and more about the tangible skills you can offer and the work experience you bring to the table. Now it is a good time to pick up online courses in programming, business, design and communication. It’s a small present investment of time and effort that can yield valuable returns later on in life.

Be comfortable with experimentation. One of the consequences of the portfolio career is higher turnover. Employees won’t settle for the same monotonous work if they can find attractive options elsewhere, so employers are being encouraged to provide opportunities for role experimentation outside of more traditional vertical trajectories. This establishes easier pathways for internal job moves that allow employees to take advantage of their changing skills and interests without having to undergo the risk of changing companies. Chances are, you will be working multiple roles within a range of industries over the next few years. Take advantage of each experience and use it to further diversify your skillset.

With this, would want to close by saying that, the role of education is to bring about confidence in a person & it should give meaning to life rather than just being a tool of external validation to stay competitive in the rat race !! 

Thanks & Regards,

Nirav Ajmera

The Indo-US decade

The world is drown in debt, due to high debt & high interest cost, world economies are going into high budgetary deficits. Spendthrift budgets, high subsidies,huge social expenses & incapable government policies are also equally responsible for such high deficits. This further leads to decline in foreign reserves & devaluation of local currency. If we broadly see, world is divided into three parts, first are the economies, where there is huge foreign reserves availability,like China,who is capable of bailing out the local firms.There is stagnancy due dumping issues, No one actually knows what is happening inside China, it is a country, where real situation is very difficult to judge. Second are the countries, having less availability of reserves, incapable of bailing out,like Brazil. They end up on high debt bond issuance & resulting in downgrading of rating by agencies. Third are the emerging markets, they either sink or sail through this phase. Majorly depending on government stability/discipline & pattern of consumption. India is one of sailing ones. Population is proving to be a boon for us, our consumption, due to such a huge population, is boosting our economy. 

On the other hand, US has started performing. Increase in interest rates & reduction in unemployment, giving a positive sign of growth. It has started performing after sub prime crisis, prevalent since 2008. They are also giving tough time to Saudi, Middle East & Russia due to oil price war. These economies are majorly running on crude oil sell. Saudi & Middle East have chopped off their own feet, in oil price war, they have hit fiscal deficit to 15% of GDP, whereas Russia is stagnant on growth path due to reduced oil exporting income. In turn, oil war is helping India in improving deficit & growth numbers. A study says, reduction in oil price by 10% can lead to GDP growth from 0.1-0.5%, India is taking full advantage of this. 

Broadly saying this is going to be an Indo-US decade, where India will be growing like never before due to own consumption, very active & thoughtful governance whereas US has started   bouncing back after a decade & recovering after a bad economic patch. 

It's time to get set & go,let's unite together to be the part of this growth trajectory & help our government to the utmost possible extent. 

Regards, 

Nirav Ajmera

Indian Politics

Hi, 

After such a long time, I ll be blogging again. Moreover the topic is also different this time. It's gone be the most "IN" thing in our country today.

We as a country have been facing severe crisis of a good leader since a decade. We had a PM who was not elected from any constituency on his own, being brought from the other senate & had been ruling our country since a decade now. He being an economic technocrat knew how to make an economy work but he had no clue running an economy in a book is much different than running a live economy. Especially in a country like India where every state is different & 543 constituency has their own set of mentality & education level. India is a place where original politics must take place if one wants to succeed as a leader. A leader has to be decisive, politically correct, strong & should understand the importance of being local in each part of the country.

We are a country where there is severe income disparity & bringing down such disparity is very difficult & hence it's very difficult to satisfy each class of our society by a political party in a span of five years. Because the needs of top 20% & bottom 20% are totally conflicting. The only way to deal with it is by "Asset Creation". If you feed a poor by using a scheme like MNREGA, you would feed him for a day. Moreover by just paying a wage by no work is going to put him under the slavery of alcohol,smoking & drugs. Because the person on the receiving end is not going to have any idea as to how to utilise the money & would end up consuming alcohol by the money of the scheme. Instead of directly funding, we have to generate assets. Because creating an asset like school, college, Hospitals etc would generate some employment in building those assets. This would enhance the education level in the society & people will have the understanding that where the money should be utilised. More & more employment will be generated by running these schools & Hospitals on a routine basis. Creating assets by building a good infrastructure would lead to rapid transportation growth & we would be ending up saving on transportation expenses & in turn we would be able to fight rapid growing food & other inflations.

Moreover,at the end, we will have assets in our country. Instead of spending money on poor schemes & funding on daily expenses, asset creation is a much better option. It's a capital expenditure which is very helpful in long term. Moreover closing such funding scheme will help in reducing the fiscal deficits, because we all are aware that the 70% of the money from these schemes are getting deposited in the Swiss bank account & hardly 30% reaches to the actual public.

In addition to this , presently in our country we are also having hypocritic policies, on one hand we are providing subsidies & on the other hand we are levying severe taxes. So what's the point in giving the subsidy ???... The classic example of this is Diesel. Every thing should be market driven.

Moreover, we are really lacking in dealing with external factors, we are lacking in understanding the regional level positions where people are ready to kill each other for just a 50 Rs note. Our leaders have the habit of seeing the country from the glasses of Metros or big cities. But India is not a city driven economy, it's a rural driven economy. The inclusive development is the need of the hour. 

We need a leader who is able to create assets, able to understand each part of our country & above all he is not just a puppet & has the power to take decisions.

People are fed up of false commitments, dirty religion politics, corruptions & scams. We as a country need governance, we should set an example that politicians are our mere service people & employees. We will keep those who work & we will fire those who fail in giving results. The selection should be purly on governance & development. In the coming all the elections the parties should be forced to keep only governance as a part of their election manifesto not building any temple or mosque or a church. Favoritism to any single caste, creed or level of society must not be allowed & any person/party doing this must not be allowed to sit in the Loksabha. 

I wish we have selected a good leader this time, results are set to be out in 3 days & Exit Polls are catching the fire each day. 

With this note I would close & wish that we have a great 5 years ahead & wish that we as youth be able to change the face of our politics.

Regards, 

Nirav Ajmera, 

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