The Phobia around AI: Myth or reality

In November 1995, Fresh out from Engineering College, in my first job at one of the large Indian MNCs, I was posted in the power projects' subsidiary when I was trained along with another colleague of mine to send an email. Yes, trained for sending an email and we two were the chosen ones. Today that skill can't be even mentioned in my resume out of embarassment.

Year 2001, the dot com boom coincided its bust with 9/11. My three quarters' incentives were owing to sale of Sun Microsystems' servers that I achieved while everybody was busy building a website and stitch together a business model around it and speculate massive valuations around it. There was a major hype around how internet was going to change everything at the pace no one could envisage. The only thing tangible, initially those billions of dollars' investment leading to the dot com boom and then bust gave to the civilization was making every office "EMAIL" ready, overnight. And thereafter forever "No" training was required to send an email.

Year 2008, Subprime crisis had disrupted the financial markets directly, and indirectly the economic prosperity in the short term. The result was technology innovation and consolidation. We saw the rise of cloud computing and hosting as a mainstream stay immediately after the crisis. Nobody thereafter needed an IT administrater, nor did people buy servers for their captive server rooms ever after.

Year 2020, Covid hit us the way no human mind could handle. Even the word disruption has an order about it but covid did not have any. With every passing day the humanity would discover one more thing that hit it that day. However,  once we survived Covid, the overnight transformation was the acceptance of "online video meetings" both for business as well as personal. Though the video meeting tools existed decades before that.

So any boom or bust eventually leads to a massive macro consolidation. It doesnt however, pave ways for humanity as it is forecasted at that point in time but definitely creates a next "stepped up" pedestal for the economy and societies to evolve further. 

Looking at a WhatsApp we must feel embarrassed if not ashamed as to how we used pigeons followed by horses and then letters and then telegrams to merely pass on a message. All of them were such collosal waste of Time, money and effort to get a message across. What has whatsapp done? leveraging on the consolidation of Email, Cloud computing and video meeting tools one one hand and simplifying, amplifying and multiplying at scale and with speed, all the tasks at back end to provide for exchange of messages instantly between the sender and receiver through a simple user interface.

AI is the ecosystem which consolidates intelligence at the back end, simplifies complexities of the ask by the user through algorithms (LLMs) and renders at speed, scale through a simple user interface of a mobile (today, may change later) at the hands of a user, anytime and anywhere.

The phobia around AI is real and imminent but it is for people who still want to mention email sending skills in thier resumes. For people who want to mention their typing speed or coding skills in their resumes. Massive conslidation is happening at breathtaking pace across domains to increase the physical infrastructure, power infrastructure, compute power, aggregate and consolidate intelligence and offer the solution at speed and scale. For people who are willing to adopt it is a real take-off for them towards greater heights.

What will happen to AI in the near future?

With the hype around AI, many issues are cropping up. Lets look at some of these issues.

1. Too Much Capital deployed, too soon: That is bad, if not scary. This puts tremendous pressure on the innovators leading to scarcity one one hand and strains other dimensions of economy with lack of capital. As a result of it many things in the myopic view of innovators would be delivered but they wont survive the test of time. Too much hype and pressure to deliver would also lead to gross wastage of resources, massive jobs losses even in areas where they are required and untenable innovations leading to a downward spiral of overall economy called  a recession. And believe me, its coming.

2. A good thing about access to too much capital is that it would eventually lead to some sustainable innovations initially, on which the next set of ecosystems will be built to make it another step up pedestal for the economy and society. We have to wait and see what will this wave give the humanity like the email, cloud computing and video meetings respectively gave in the last three cycles.

3. Safeguards for AI: This is the most important aspect that the governments have to look at. While the first casuality of technology is Geography the outer limit of regulation is geography. So how are we going to protect our people legally, have a redressal mechanism and the laws to protect would have to be frammed uniformly and globally to protect the plausibility of many demons, otherwise may be unleashed. The data privacy and data soveregnity is another major issue which would need policy and penal level safeguards.

4. Political implications: Creating false narrative would become easy and Countering those Narratives will become very critical and detrimental to nations and societies. the bigger economic powers would dictate the terms for the superimposing narratives which may not be democratic.

5. Job Losses: The job losses would be short term. Hoever, there eventually would be multiple fold jump in job opportunities in almost every aspect of economy. yes we may not have jobs for coders but we would have enough jobs for creators, original thinkers, last mile delivery of high end products and services and so on and so forth.

6. Cost of Servicing would go down drastically, initially and the adoption will reach unimaginable scales. This would however initially put pressures on the viability of the capital costs and even in near term the oerational costs incurred at delivering these services. This may also lead to a collapse of AI in the short term and they way it is envisaged as of today. But eventually, as the floor efficiencies improve coupled with rapid adoption and scale, there would be an optimum balancing that would be found out to make this sustainable. This is were governments would play major role by way of financing and also regulating and controlling.

The term AI is new but the philosophy behind AI is perpetual. its humanity's quest to evolve continuously and AI is one major step in that direction. The humanity would progress till such time that the inefficiencis in the value chain are eliminated. Also every step up innovation scales up the next step of innovation in terms of impact and scale and so AI impact would be BIGGEST so far that the humanity has seen and is here to become a mainstay.

Humane Technology: The 21st century Technology is adopting to diversity of Humans

Humans have always innovated yet in modern era any innovation that Simplified the arbitrage value, easily replicated it and there by scaled it in short time frame was termed "Technology". While the purpose of technology is to simplify, its outcome mostly is disruption. The reason is that Humans have been living inefficiently and innovation brings efficiency. A simple example of this evolution is the way "communication" has evolved over centuries when in early days, Pigeons were used to communicate that gave way to horses followed by letters and then Telegrams which got substituted by telephone and then mobile phones and now in the current phase it is called "The Social Media". One choses a tool to decide the target audience for communication, the manner and the mode of communication. In a sense, the need of communication was always there yet they were grossly inefficient and that led to the innovation over a period of time that continuously disrupted the status quo.

On the one side there is a direct impact of Technological innovation, which in above example is faster, better and secure communication efficiently. On the other hand there is an indirect impact of the same innovation which, using the above example, can be summarized as follows:

1. The entire infrastructure of Post Offices and Postmen become redundant. They have to reinvent and retrain to survive.

2. The general population is getting trained in Technology usage automatically by using Technology

While the 20th century Technology evolution was more focused towards automation within enterprises to enhance efficiency, eliminate human intervention in non-value adding repetitive tasks, the challenge however remained in proliferating the technology on one hand and making it palatable for common man to use.

Contrary to this the innovations of the 21st century are more Humane and geared up to mould itself to adopt to the general population's expectations. At the same time this evolution is eliminating the fear of technology in common population and hiding their ignorance in any domain thereby driving faster adoption and also the innovation.

So today, with a smart phone in hand the entire diverse population of the world is using technology for nearly everything that they want there by scaling up tremendously the efficiency of the entire value chain. Eg. China today does twice as many digital payments as USA does annually and India does 20 times as many as china does annually. What this means is that in the 21st Century,

1. The modernity of Societies would also be redefined as they would be disrupted absolutely by Technology. USA with over 400 years freedom and development is lagging India, just 75 years into modern development,  by 40 times in digital payments..

2. Innovation would attract Capital. India, China and Israel who have taken up the innovation race will attract capitals much more than they did and may surpass the developed economies including US, for global integration has made capital flow easier.

3. Smartphones have already replaced Laptops as Last mile devices and are going to be the device as the centerpiece of all future innovations. In the next 5-6 years, the physical currencies may cease to exist and Smartphones would drive all commerce digitally.

When all this is going to happen, the innovators of 21st century need to innovate around the smart phones, the last mile devices with humane technology that can be assimilated by each and every citizen, irrespective of education, skill, language, disability et al. And That's when we would have a society where Technology is intelligent, Humane and Humans are on Technology. Unless we reach the last citizen on the planet in a language and a manner that the citizen understands and gets assimilated with that the technology, the quest for simplifying the innovation would continue.         

   

The MODIfied Cry in Secular India

Looking at this debate of Modi and anti-Modi on a daily basis in the social media, a sense of introspection is bound to set in any receptive mind. Democracy is not about what is right but targeting what is left. Yes, I agree Modi became PM by uniting Hindus and dividing Muslims and Christians and it is bad but that is exactly what Trump has done and doing in USA. But Modi did it in the name of development and not religion. He played the card of development camouflaged with Hindutva (perceived owing to his past antecedents). Still, the only reason I am a modi bhakt is because, the guy, like PV Narasimha rao has a vision on how to change things for betterment of all. In a poor society identities matter and that is the reason why if you draw an imaginary line connecting Kanpur and Chennai, the east of that line has states with regional bosses riding on identities for these states have low per capita income owing to lack of development and GDP growth.

The reason is simple, I have never heard of a person from Mumbai or Delhi working in  a Gorakhpur but lacs do in reverse order similar to millions of Indians working in US but not the same quantum from US working in India. So when there is poverty and lack of job opportunities people would tend to stick to identities of caste, creed, religion and localized identities. That is the reason why behenji to Didi to amma will rule for next many years till states improve in their per capita income and social economic index. In above comparison, the only exception is TN where a lot of development has happened and it has overtaken even UP to be the no. 2 state in terms of GDP contribution. It is the most urbanized state in India with 37% plus urban population.

I am pretty sure, if Modi wanted the godhra carnage would have had lesser causalities for his track record of being a good administrator and politician is not a doubt even for his critics. This is the standard line of grudge Modi-baiters have. Therefore, there is bound to be strong reactions to anything he does for the reason that he has a past he can’t probably wash his hands off. But what he can and is doing and which is visible now is changing what is happening across religious lines. It was put on record by Arnab Goswami and Pranoy Roy that BJP did get a sizeable chunk of Muslim votes in Assam.

I think the only way to loosen up this strong divide is to ensure these micro and macro identities erode from India for India as one identity. This can happen only when there is prosperity. Prosperity is possible only when there are enough jobs across spectrum and that can happen only by investments and investments can come only when there is infrastructure (physical and governance) across urban and rural landscape and that can happen only when we increase GDP. And that is exactly what he is trying to do. So in short a 2-digit GDP for a decade will wipe out sizeable and measurable disparity and therefore dilute micro identities and make India a better place.

Talking about Modi, another point I wish to make about riots and Muslims in India. Across the globe & since the beginning of time there had been and will be a clash of civilization. And in any such clash the ultimate cost and perils are always borne by the minorities. So whether it is within Muslims in Pakistan, ultimately Shias are at loss in terms of damage to them or if it is Bangladesh then Hindus lose out at the end and so if it was Kashmir, Pandits lost out and if it was ‘84 Sikh riots, Sikhs lost out and if in post-Godhra Muslims lost out. So it is always a majority that retaliates and minority loses out in the end. And the reason why such clashes happen is only for two reasons, one, identity crisis and fear of not being treated at par with majority, and clinging to identities subsuming the larger social or economic or class identities. If a Shah Rukh khan marries a Hindu there is no back lash and if Salman khan brings Ganpaati bappa home there is no fatwa but if Aamir khan questions the national identity there is a furore. The same thing any person does in Haryana country-side, it will lead to honour killing. That is because, these celebrities have risen over caste and religious identities and created their own identities as a separate social class. And the only option for all of us is to accept this norm which is prevalent across civilizations. Another point I would like to make about Indian Muslims is that it is only Indian Muslims who are democratic, they have faith in constitution, courts, there is a visible effort amongst masses to bring about change in sharia and they are not joining terror organisations in the same proportion to their population. They are us and they believe in India and think themselves like Indians unlike in all other parts of the world. It is also because as Tarek Fateh says, "Indian Muslims are Indians first also because of the Hindus and that the democracy not just in the country but in its culture and civilization".

High Valuations, Low Value

The private equity ecosystem in India is scaling up fast. Everyday you hear about investments made and new stars created within the start-up landscape. While this is a very robust sign  in India for the start-up culture to evolve, proliferate and scale up, what is scary is a kind of herd mentality being followed by both the entrepreneurs as well as the investors. 

The current rush of investors and mushrooming of start-ups is reminding me of my first job as a sales rep in a large IT company. It was Yr.2000 and the "dot com" epidemic had bit almost everyone. Sun Microsystems was the dot in the dot com and I was a sales rep selling Sun Microsystems. We had so much of orders that in the JAS quarter end, we stopped billing not because it was 10.00 PM in night on 30th September, not that we did not have orders, not that our targets were not achieved nor any absence of stocks. The reason was we were physically exhausted managing so many transactions. The dotcom was a tsunami which was triggered with innumerable and cascaded ambitious dreams leading to billions of dollars of investments in thousands  of start-ups created a very large bubble very quickly, but ultimately got bubbled out even quickly. The problem with any bubble is that the bigger it becomes, the longer is the gestation period for the corrections.

And when it collapsed, one of the industry leaders gave a very simple reason for the collapse of the the bubble. The reason was very simple, he said, " Lack of business model". We can't just buy a few servers and say this is my business model. Having IT is not a business but businesses should have effective and efficient It infrastructure to enable and scale them up. So true, and so basic! Yet, truth and basic sense is visible only retrospectively.

15 years have gone by since then and I see the same problem being manifested in different ways. The symptoms are different but the basic problem is the same. Majority of investments is going in the hope of a future ability to monetize one day and some day. In a sound business model you do not indefinitely defer revenue flows. A sound business model monetizes at transaction levels, anytime and all the time.

A contrary argument to this is that the investments are going into building the businesses. And that is true, you need capital to build businesses but the simple question is then, when you are still building your business, your valuations can't be in multiples of billions of dollars. At some point of time real numbers have to talk and not mere talking about numbers to enhance valuations. In this mad race, what is happening is while many serious players with sound business models are not getting the reasonable capital at reasonable valuations, few of them, who are getting funds are probably "buying revenues".

This is scary and is similar to the Akai TV phenomenon which happened in late 90s in India when serious TV players stopped investing in innovation and Akai shunted the market for a brief period with its gimmicks. It has taken 60 years for India to get to a level of vibrant ecosystem supporting start-ups and entrepreneurs and that too, thanks to an entire generation of Indians who migrated to the USA, created & innovated solid businesses with solid business models, that, the capital has come chasing us in India. My only worry is that in this mad rat race we should end up killing the ecosystem too soon. For if that happens, we would have killed a baby by excessive vaccination. 

EDUCATING THE UNEDUCATED HIGHER EDUCATION IN INDIA

It’s been Six long years of my life, not a small time,  uni-dimensionally working for the cause of improving the state of higher education in India and still struggling and continuing to struggle. An ugly thought crosses my mind today when I look back at some of the decisions I have made, when I decided resign from my plush and comfortable job to move back from Singapore, surrendering my PR and started this enterprise with a vision to create a responsive infrastructure to make every eligible Indian, gainfully employed. After six years of long journey of meeting over 1000+ colleges across 60+ cities of India and personally interacting with over 22000+ graduating students, I came to a conclusion that Indian Higher education in India is a deaf & blind Dinosaur, which is ignorant about its ignorance and soon to become extinct not without seeding the incurable epidemic of civil unrest led by zillions of paper degree holders who know nothing about what they hold nor know what they did intend. The result is that the system is creating third class paper graduates, I would call just paper degree holders which they get after paying, 6 or 8 or 4 EMIs and who, forget being employable, can’t even be under employed in any field. The worst, these degree holders by being so, are so uprooted from their past ecosystem that they are not willing to do any mundane yet enterprising jobs because of the weight of this paper degree. A graduate candidly once told me, “Sir, without this degree in BE, I could have opened a grocery shop near my village and done decent business for sustaining my life but with this degree, my parents won’t let me open a shop in my village as I am an Engineer by degree. Also no one will take me in corporate world for I know nothing about engineering and for any other job opportunities, I am over qualified. This degree has become an incurable disease to me.”

Not one, nor two nor ten but innumerable intertwined problems are plaguing the higher education system in India. This is a problem in itself, sometimes I wonder why drop outs have created wonders in this society and millions of mortals with wonderfully designed degrees are struggling to meet basic employment for sustaining themselves.

I think if we are serious about higher education then a fresh and a total fresh thinking is required and piecemeal approach would do more harm than any visible improvement. If we think higher education is not a business then a different approach is required. However, I think something which is not a business can’t sustain and attract good talent from society to grow. There needs to be an approach which is benevolent business model instead of the current not for profit model, which alone can change the future of higher education in India. While I have read many articles about the problems above, I have not come across anyone giving any definitive solution. I thought I must share something which can open eyes of think tanks or provide some strategic thought and direction so that things can change and I would not have done this in this manner but for our beloved Prime Minister who has inspired and given hopes to the entire generation.

Here are my Ten Commandments for the refreshing and rejuvenating Indian Education System:

     1.       Scrap the system of Trust-led running of Educational Institutions.

Liberalize the Education System. The trust System is damaging the cause of Higher education in India. Honestly, there is no trust left in the trust ships running higher education for there are colleges going to courts every now and then for increase in fees. There is nothing benevolent or charitable about these colleges these days with collages demanding sky rocketing fees and with educational loans getting quite pervasive and consumer friendly, let Quality begin. Let’s be little brazen in accepting that it is all about the Business of making money while producing quality graduates. After all, when the question of death, Insurance, can be a sound business play if regulated properly, why education can’t be. Let’s resolve to make higher education a vibrant Industry by liberalizing it allowing people to make money rather than the current rotten “not for money affair”.

Move Higher education under the preview of Central Govt. While primary education may remain as a state subject, Higher education must not since students anyway migrate to the colleges as per their preference and also graduates become national assets.

        2.       Set-up a unified regulatory body for Higher Education akin to TRAI, IRDA, NHAI etc.

As an extension of above, set up just ONE regulatory body to regulate all aspects of Higher Education in India can call it anything say, NHERAI. Allow FDI into the system limited to may be 26% to begin with. Let anybody acquire the existing private Universities and colleges to begin with. Hold on with Govt institutes for the first five years. Create a Telecom/Insurance kind of Fee structure uniformity across India.

         3.     Create and Build a National Repository of All students in Country with the database 

        showcasing every student’s profile and Allow the Companies to access this database for                   campus Hiring Drives on an ongoing basis.

One of the most disturbing trends in the educational landscape is the fact that a geographical bimodality exists which means remote colleges have disproportionate issues of fair access to resources in all respects. 60 years after independence, it is a shame that nobody in the educational system knows exactly how many colleges and students are active in the system at any point of time on a real time basis. Let this repository be created with the objective of every graduate getting equal opportunity for jobs based on the qualifications and skills acquired. Let there be a uniform rating system for students based on skills acquired.

Create a platform using which online and remote screening and hiring can be done by companies on an ongoing basis. Allow companies to provide orientation to recruited /pre-recruited candidates to prepare about the company even before they are screened /join them while they are still in college. Also the regulatory body can monetise this access by way of a fee for the access to this platform and companies would be more than happy to pay for the same.

        4.       Allow Mergers and Acquisitions amongst Colleges.

One thing which is in excess in India are no. of colleges. Allow colleges to merge or acquire or get acquired by corporate world or foreign Universities. Get these companies to deposit a corpus as guarantee akin to IRDA. Bring in professionals to run the college. Allow companies to decide of courses to be offered with approval from the regulator.

       5.       Moratorium on setting up of new Premier Institutions like IITs/NITs/AIMS etc for next 5 years.

      

\     The way new IITs and AIMS’ are announced by every new govt., very soon we would have more IITs than the total no. of faculties put together. Put a blanket ban on new govt. institutions for next five years till we consolidate what we have and make them more vibrant.

     6.       Set-up Just ONE Central University awarding Degrees on Skills and Every Institute to mandatorily offer at least 10 different Skilling courses in Line with NSDC.

NSDC is a great initiative but to make it work on a large scale, set up just one university for skilling and make it mandatory for all these colleges to offer at least 10 such courses suiting local conditions. Use the college infrastructure to setup additional facilities for hands on skilling on this. Make it mandatory for every graduate to pick up at least two skills apart from the traditional university course the subject is enrolled into.

Allow companies to offer skilling courses online to anyone on the platform who wishes to get involved.

       7.       Allow Corporate World to take over Colleges and investments in improving the colleges to be considered as CSR.

     

      Allow all the investments done by corporate in acquiring the institutes and building additional infrastructure and Research and Development facilities as CSR for the first 3-5 years.

      Provide Tax incentives to these Corporate entities on creation of IP.

       8.       Let Market decide the Salaries of Faculty.

      Let Market decide the salaries of faculty and not the sixth or seventh pay commission. In a company when my boss decides my compensation how can govt. interfere in what a private college offers as salary to its faculty.

      9.       Incentivise corporate world to depute executives to go back to Institutions as faculty under CSR besides, allowing Foreigners to join as Faculty in Colleges.

     Incentivise all the companies to depute their executives to join as faculty for 2-3 years as sabbatical under CSR. Besides, allow anyone from anywhere to come and compete and be the best faculty in the best institution.

       10.   Rank Institutes only on one Bench Mark, OUT COME and not OUTPUT.

     Today the guidelines for setting up institute are so rigid that it stifles even the institutes with great vision and good intentions. Measure the institutes only through outcomes and not output. The simple matrices for OUT COME could be on campus placements, Research papers published, Patents filed, PHDs completed etc.

     Optimism emanates from peak of pessimism if the passion, compassion doesn’t still run out of fuel. While 

     starting the note on a negative way, I still remain positive about once the land of knowledge conceived and 

   created by our sages can regain its past glories if some of the above sweeping initiatives are taken in a planned, phased yet urgent manner.

      By Gaurav Shukla

Happiness has no Unit of Measurement

For quite some time this question has been troubling me as to what is the ultimate purpose of universe and in that universe what is the purpose of life and within it the biggest question intriguing me was what is the objective of life. It took quite a while to articulate this question itself for till about a decade back for me life had multiple objectives in different situations, places and for different people. What could not be articulated was one common denominations or one unique explanation which fitted all of us in this universal ecosystem across nations, civilizations and people. With this burden increasing every day with the increasing challenges of everyday life, there was an underlying pressure to find an answer to this question which could be questioned by anyone and could still stand the test of time, for anyone, all of us and at all times. Carrying this baggage and a bag full of clothes, once I landed up at a childhood friend’s place in Gurgaon. This friend of mine had no jealously about anything, one who could cry at others sorrows but laugh at his miseries, always. I always thought that I have had much higher education than him and have travelled to many more places than him and met many more successful guys than him and read many more books than him still while I search for the answer, he lives happily always. This raised additional question in me as to what keeps him Happy, “Always”. Anyways, parking that thought for a while, we met, hugged, laughed, drank, sang Kishore Kumar songs and then cried together that night.

Still the question persisted in mind till I guess, when an alarm woke me up and I got up to go to the washroom. As I got up to open the washroom there was a big poster of John Lennon on the door which read, “ When I was 5 years old, my mom always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down “HAPPY”. They told me I did not understand the assignment and I told them they did not understand life”   I became thoughtless and my mind with absolute peace with myself as I started reading again. Yes, my mind said this was the magical moment when I got the answer to my first question about life’s objective. “Yes!”, my heart, mind and soul said in unison, that I have got the answer and this answer is true for anyone, anywhere and anytime. When I asked my friend as to why such an injustice to such a great though by putting it on the door of the loo, he quipped, “that’s the first place I visit when I wake up and that’s where I start my day and I want to remind myself the key to life before I open my diary for the day.”

On my way back I kept thinking as to how can someone be happy all the time and at all the places irrespective of the situations. Gradually but steadily, some of my earlier thoughts started taking structure in my mind and a hint came, “Karma”, yes by doing Karma I can be happy but how do I figure out the direction of Karma as good or Bad? For bad karmas will end into disaster, forget any trace of happiness. And the answer came “Follow Dharma”. Yes, I thought I am getting there. Dharma means not doing anything to anybody, anytime what one would not want anybody to do it to self, anytime, anywhere.

Having got three key words, Happiness, Karma & Dharma, I started thinking of connecting them. They needed to be connected and having discovered these three words it was easy to connect them. I got the answer, “The objective of life is to be Happy and that happens only when one performs one’s Karma as per the Dharma.” This clarity brought in another surge of questions on the multiple dimensions all these three words can manifest individually and then the infinite combinations amongst them when connected.

I thought, let’s start with unifying or defining Karma in a way that it remains relevant for anyone, anytime and anywhere. Having discovered the true meaning of Dharma, I knew if I could decode Karma and Happiness I would get to the questions of universal purpose and objectives of life. Now the word “Karma” is simply is very complex. On any given day anyone performs innumerable karmas based on one’s situation and stage in life. This variation varies infinitely with each additional individual and then how do I get to the uniform definition of Karma. I decided to park this thought for it started going beyond my mind could comprehend.

One day while reading a book, I was reminded of a fruit vendor in Chembur, Mumbai, who would take a lot of pride in what he did. Every time he saw me walking up to him he knew exactly how much I would normally buy and what would be the mix and what denomination currency note I normally would give him. And by the time, I would reach him my parcel would be ready with the exact change to be returned to me. I asked him one day, How & why does he do this and he replied that he needed to be the best in what he would do for his customers for that was his duty. I thought that was exemplification of true professionalism which is quite rare even in the corporate world. I liked it and I got another answer to the question on how can someone command respect. By being professional and respecting the profession of someone without comparison or prejudice. Another day the same fellow told me that he was very happy with life even though he sits on the footpath and sells fruits. And the secret behind it was that he has never thought or done anything ill to anybody till date in his life. “Wow” that is Dharma. The two thoughts connected immediately. And beyond that, God’s there, he said,  to take care of him in bad times and he never forgot thanking god in good times.

Connecting both thoughts, I thought of redefining and categorizing Karma once again and I do not quite remember how I got there but finally came out with a hypothesis that is working for me till date. I realized that for anybody, anytime and anywhere, there can be just three karmas to perform, Professional Karma, Personal Karma and Spiritual Karma. And if someone followed all these three karmas in accordance with Dharma, it will bring perpetual Happiness. I realized that failure never disappoints people, it is the lack of Karma that does.

Having reached this far, I mustered the courage to try and explain the measurement and calibration for the three types of Karmas.  To begin with, I took up defining the objective of professional Karma. According to me the professional objective of anybody, anytime and anywhere is to do the duties of one’s professions in such a way that the profile (resume) of the person becomes as small as one’s name. Till such time that we get there everybody takes the support of identifying by trivial and tangible identities of being an Engineer or a doctor or an MBA from the ivy league university or a DGM or GM or CEO. But the moment one reaches the professional objective, the person on its own renounces all these identity support infrastructure. And very soon I realised that this definition applied aptly to me to Mahatma Gandhi, to JFK, to Vivekanand, to Abraham Lincoln to Sachin Tendulkar to APJ Abdul Kalam and to all great achievers and other mortals and immortals that we have known to would in all likelihood know in future.

Objective of Personal Karma is to live a life in a way that anyone from your past comes in front of you and says, “Hi!”, you do not have to run away from him and can look into his eyes without blinking. And Objective of Spiritual Karma is to reach a level of equanimity when the worldly affairs do not affect your personal emotions.

With all these years of quest for finding answers to my anxieties on objective of life and especially last five years journey of an entrepreneur, I have come to realize that the purpose of life is to be Happy and only Happy and one can be truly happy only if one carries on the professional, personal and spiritual karmas treading the path of Dharma and when someone does that, irrespective of the stage, place, situation and degree of achievements, he shall be equally happy compared to anyone else anytime and anywhere for Happiness has no unit of measurement.

By Gaurav Shukla

Employability is a passé, Innovation is key to Right Employment

Very often I hear and read the word "Employability" as a major concern not just in India and emerging markets but also in the developed economies. In most of the developed economies the same concern is paraphrased as "21st Century Skill sets". It remains a big challenge and will remain a big challenge and that is the nature and pace of the global economy.

 

The polity, the Corporate world, the educational institutes, the regulators through various seminars across have made Employability a household name. While published opinion becomes public opinion, I would like to differ based on my native experience over the last few years on ground. In the last 3-4 years I have visited extensively over 220 colleges across 30+ cities of India, interacting with over 20000 graduating students in India. And to my utmost disappointment I found Employability much below the published statistics of 21-23%.

 

With about 4 Million graduates coming out of India every year, and such low employability  ratios, we as a young country are already staring at a large chunk of graduates under-employed or un-employed. While the job market in  India not being as bad as in the developed world, the un-employability of graduates is creating a great pool of job vacancies on one hand and un-employed and under-employed graduates on the other hand.

 

While continuing to emphasize on Employability sometimes brings some changes at regulatory level but acceptance on implementation and compliance has its own challenges. This pool of under-employed and un-employed graduates is increasing a pace faster than our inflation, rupee depreciation and definitely impacting in enlarging the organized sector labour pool there by impacting the GDP growth. Very soon, like infrastructure has hampered GDP and its proven without doubt, lack of employable pool would become another irreplaceable and indispensable hurdle in the economic growth of the country in the short to medium term and most importantly would become a very big social problem in the medium term.

 

The need to of the hour is not to banter about the phrase employability but to focus on innovation. While the greatest of the innovations/inventions in the last two decades or even in past have been seeded in the institutions of higher learning in developed economies and then they have been commercialized by the corporate world, the irony in India is that the most simple and mature innovations are not accepted by the institutes to upgrade. There is an unbelievable chasm created because of this simple catching up and this gap is manifested in the products coming out of these institutions when I hear Engineering graduates applying for the post of a bus conductor or preparing for clerical exams.

 

This dismal scenario, soon to take monstrous social propotions, already an economic problem, need to be and can be reversed only and only through innovations driven by institutions and not be preparing students on employability, for we have missed the bus of employability. Employability is a passé, Innovation holds the key. The reason is that only Innovations can spread and proliferate at a rapid pace and bring everyone to the steam quickly. Eg. an innovation like Facebook, Google has overnight made people computer literate across the globe irrespective of the geo-political landscape. Mobile phones have brought literates and illiterates on par in terms of communication and have made post cards or telegrams redundant. We need to focus on many such innovations which would adapt to the haves of the people in general rather than discriminating people on basis of haves or have not by ranting out the oft repeated jargon called "EMPLOYABILITY".