A Review of " An Economist in the Real World: The Art of Policymaking in India "

Kaushik Basu was the Chief Economic Advisor (CEA) to the Government of India in the same period when I was a student at IRMA. I say this because those years were the ones where I developed a deep interest in policy making, development , economics, and sociology. Hence this book took me to the days when EPW was favoured over HBR!

The CEA's role as Basu writes in his book is to generate new ideas and look at age old problems in a new way. Creativity is thus essential in this role. I still remember one of the Economic Survey during Basu's period had an IS-LM graph on the cover, possible depicting the impact of interest rates on the real world economy. Those were the days where India was facing massive inflation. Basu perhaps will also be known for advocating a unique solution to combat what he termed "harassment bribes". These are bribes which are given to people who are responsible for delivering goods or services to the citizens. These include for example, an electricity connection. His solution was to make the act of giving the bribe legal and only treat the act of accepting the bribe illegal. The solution was criticised heavily in the media. I personally felt it was worth a try.

The book itself is a good read for those trying to understand the problems that emerging markets face. These include food security, inflation, access to financial services, sanctity of contracts, etc. Basu also touches upon the impact of culture and social norms not only on policmaking but on the science of economics. He argues that policies developed for third world countries should take into account the social norms and culture of that particular country or region and first world policies should not, as we now know after observing the impact of Washington Consensus policies,  be thrust on these countries.

I was forewarned by friends that Basu can be too "heavy" to read. I accept that parts of the book require some basic knowledge of economics especially when he explains the mechanics of food procurement in India and the impact it has on prices and farmer welfare. This largely draws upon his article in EPW which was published sometime in late 2010 or early 2011.

The book is neither a memoir of a CEA nor an academic text on policymaking. This I believe is the strength of the book. For those interested to go beyond the politics of policies, and are looking for reasoned debate on why policies work and dont work, this book is essential read. But then, in countries like India, populism always trumps good policies!

Kolkata

I moved from Bengaluru to Kolkata a month back. Kolkata was one of the cities where I always wanted to live once. Mumbai, Bangalore, Kolkata, London and NY make up the list. So when the opportunity came up, I grabbed it with glee.

Kolkata is more Mumbai than Bangalore. It has a character which Bangalore doesn't. It would be unfair to compare Bangalore to either Mumbai or Kolkata. But Bangalore has grown into a large city and hence will draw comparisons.

I arrived at, what colleagues who work here told me, the best time to be in Kolkata. Its cold, and since its December has a festive look to it not seen in Mumbai or in Bengaluru during this time of the year.

Kolkata is also cheap- cheap transport, cheap food, cheap housing. Cheap of course does not mean poor quality of life. Not once have I ever had to look for change- the coins in circulation are plenty and no tea vendor or bus conductor has ever asked me for exact exchange. In Bengaluru, the auto drivers and the bus conductors always round it up to the higher denomination. Rs 25 is always Rs 30 if you don't have exact change to give to the auto driver.

2014 has been the year of travel. I hope 2015 gives me the opportunities to explore the world. As JRR Tolkien wrote "Not all those who wander are lost".

Two years.....

...after passing out of IRMA, life has been boring and at times extremely saddening.

Amidst the good news of so many of my batchmates tying the knot, I had to deal with news of the death of the King..Dr Verghese Kurien, my finance professor Prof Shiladitya Roy and my batchmate Abhishek Tiwari who lived on the same floor as I did in IRMA.

Hopefully I shall resume blogging on a regular basis.

Drucker on the privileged access to management

"No greater damage could be done to our economy or to our society than to attempt to "professionalise" management by "licensing" managers, for instance, or by limiting access to management to people with a special academic degree (empahsis mine)"
                      -Peter F Drucker in the "The Practice of Management" first published in 1955.

Manoharan

I was busy in office preparing a spreadsheet about a pilot I was running to gain customer insights. My mobile buzzed and I saw an email on IRMA's alumni page. It was about an alumnus named Manoharan who passed away due to cancer. He had passed out from IRMA in the late 80s and was working in tribal areas of Tamil Nadu.It was indeed a sad moment as one always find some attachment towards fellow IRMANs no matter which batch they belong to.
After a few days, I stumbled onto Manoharan's blog. He also had a photo stream on Flickr. Reading his blog and looking at his photos left an impact. His blog postings and photos reveal a man with extraordinary strength. He took the illness in his stride and appeared to be absolutely unaffected by it. He seemed like a gentleman with extraordinary willpower.
As mails from alumni poured in, one came to know so much more about Manoharan. Son of a top Agriculture Government Employee he rejected IIMB and came to IRMA. He topped his batch and went on to work at the grassroots. When he was working in AP, he was abducted by Naxals. But as an alumnus who recounted the episode put it "Naxalites kidnapped him suspecting him to be working for the government against them,interrogated him,got charmed by him and left him"

It is disappointing and sad when such beautiful people suddenly leave us. In the late 90s it was Sanjoy Ghosh who left us abruptly and now Manoharan. Beautiful people in the true sense of the word.

The Rajan Memorial Lecture by Prof Prabhat Pattnaik

Last year, Prof  M S Sriram had delivered the Rajan Memorial Lecture. I had written about it in my blog. This year, Prof. Prabhat Pattnaik of JNU delivered the lecture. Prof. Pattnaik is one of India's leading economists and political commentator. Though I would have loved to be in IRMA to hear him speak live, the video of the talk is on youtube.

IRMA in the news

It is close to one year since I passed out of  IRMA and in the last few weeks, I have received some good news about IRMA and IRMAns.

1. PranbDa making a grant of Rs 25 crore to IRMAin the Annual Budget. In true IRMA style, a lot of IRMA alumni have questioned what it means for the autonomy of the insititute.
2. Two of my immediate seniors have been admitted to the John F Kennedy's Public Policy Programme at Harvard.
3. Mamta Murthy an alumna of IRMA won a National Film Award for her documentary.

It is always a proud moment when the Institute and its brands (the students) achieve any important milestones.

On the consuming class and the destitutes

I make my way through the security and the large crowd gathered to watch a movie shooting. I pass by (now) familiar names-KFC, Taco Bell, Casio, Pizza Hut, Samsung, etc. I go to the box office and take out my Phone and check the booking number of the movie that I have booked online. I enter it into a touch enabled monitor. It throws out the ticket and I enter the  movie hall. There are a couple of foreigners sipping on Minute Maid. I look around and I see people busy on their Blackberries and Iphones.
 So I am at a multiplex in a mall situated in a very middle class locality in Bangalore. I am there to watch "The Descendants". The tickets are obscenely expensive. The minimum is Rs 260 and the maximum is Rs 350. The last row has these leather couches which turn into 180 degree recliners. All those recliners are taken. As the movie begins, I realise that the car Clooney drives, the phone he uses,etc are all available in India. And used by the so called "middle class".
So whats the point? The point is that the consuming middle class has increasingly become global. In 2005, Mckinsey had divided the Indian market into the "global indians" and the "aspiring class" and some more segments. In less than six years, my guess is that a large part the "aspiring class" is now part of the" global Indian" segment. This is co inciding with the recession in the developed countries.
 One part on why businesses are restless with  Indian policy makers is largely because of fewer opportunities available elsewhere in the globe. In an age when companies are filing for bankruptcy over a weekend, businesses are getting very impatient with Indian policymakers.

So while  the middle class educated Indians are enjoying the fruits of their labour, it is a disturbing trend about the" have nots". In developed countries, the have-nots have started believing that they will now become "have never". In India that pessimism is not there as yet. But it will only be a matter of time before the middle class will be accused of being parasitic.Of not having done enough to ensure that income disparity is reduced.

In that regard, opportunities for the less fortunate should be made available. In my own case, I have been extremely fortunate to have been given the opportunity and choice by a "welfare" state. The whole of my education was subsidised by the government. So it is surprising that many of us are for privatising large part of the education system. Perhaps we are more proud of IIPMs than IIMs!

We need to understand that most of us today who are working in top notch companies, having globe trotting careers are a product of a welfare state and maybe brought up by a generation of parents who believed education was the best investment! And that education was available to all who were willing to work hard.

While we can be extremely proud that most of us are living a life comparable to those of the developed world, we need to be on a constant vigil to avoid the mess that they find themselves in today!

Aligning

If you keep hearing this word too often at your workplace or on a project you are spearheading, be sure that  tough times lie ahead. "Nitin, we need to align XYZ...." or "Going ahead, ABC Dept would need to be aligned". You can bet on it that pace of work will significantly reduce once you start aligning people.

Does that mean aligning people should not be done? Isnt it prudent to involve people so that everyone is aware of  what you are upto? Certainly. But not when its related to innovation or a shift from the "normal". Aligning people should be limited to "FYI". Sad but true,  top managers who have a bias for action will not waste their energy in aligning people which includes "buy-ins".

In fact one has to realise that most meetings which are held in organisations to discuss proposals are merely an attempt to give autocracy a facade of democracy. And in an increasingly fast environment, aligning people may be a waste of time and resources. More importantly, it can paralyse an organisation on a certain project leading to low motivation, lack of focus and procrastination.

Week 2 of '12

As I sit in my small room in Bangalore to write about the past one week, I realise that the road to achieve excellence is a tough one. If the first week ended with a presentation to the Marketing Director, this week had me present the findings of my research to the Managing Director. Honestly, I did not expect to be in front of Rajeev Bakshi (our MD) within seven months in the job. But that is a perk one gets when one works with the Strategy Head.

He was satisfied with our work. But then, as my boss told me later, managers have a bias for action. So as per Rajeev's advice,  we got into the execution mode and made a prototype of the project which will go live next week.

This meant that another weekend was spent in the office. The extremely asocial life that I lead now affords me the luxury of spending most of my waking hours in office. But I am not sure how long will this work life be sustainable. As long as I am enjoying what I am doing, it pretty much does not matter.

This week, I started getting "pings" and calls from my juniors from IRMA. Even those who never spoke to me! I realised that they now enter that phase where certain tough calls have to be made. In other words, its placement season. The question they asked me was largely revolving around " How should I prepare for METRO?". Surprising since the two years in IRMA should have prepared you for all the jobs in the market. But then we dont live in an ideal world. Rather than matching the job to our skills, we tend to match our skills for the jobs. This of course leads to job discontent in the long run.

However, I refrain from giving such advice personally. I realise that its a tough period for them. And I also realise that post placement, they will realise that even this event like the one getting into IRMA are small and even negligible to the larger role that so many other things will come to play in our lives!

Hopefully, the next sunday I blog, I will have executed a pretty good pilot with some good results! Amen to that!

The week that was....

It has been a long time since I blogged. Perhaps my life is not as exciting as it was in IRMA. Or maybe I have fewer issues to write about. But the time is right to start off blogging again. Perhaps 2012 will be laden with events, experiences that will push me to note them down here.

I was in Mumbai for the New Year. No particular reason to be there except to be with the family. Also, I realised I had not taken any leave and most of it would lapse. Hence I took a couple of days off and went home. The break was much needed as the first week of the new year was going to be very hectic.

Currently, I am working with the Strategy Head on a business plan. The market analysis was to be presented to the Marketing Director. Hence most of my waking hours were spent in the office. The presentation went off smoothly. If the week was hectic, the weekend was as lazy as it could get.

Hopefully, the the remaining 51 weeks would be as productive as this week was. With some books lined up for reading, I think it is time to read, and apply it to my life;professional and personal as well.

What is the 'Purpose'?

An IRMAN in a corporate job can lead to some difficult questions. I have had the opportunity of bumping into some eminent alumni at airports, but avoided interacting with them for the fear of revealing to them where I work.

That is less disconcerting than the questions I ask myself every night. "What is the purpose?" is something that the Prof KVR, one of IRMA's legendary professors once told us to ask ourselves. If the purpose is ensuring a good bank balance, then probably we are not doing something right. That is  more or less achieved once you pass out of a good B school and you are lucky to be living in a high growth economy.

I think the question "What is the purpose?" is less philosophical than most of us think. It is in fact a very pertinent question for managers. There is no definite answer. But it is a question we must answer. Managers in the current scheme of things are as powerful as heads of nation states and religious leaders. As leaders of coporations, they wield immense power. As the financial crisis of 2008 showed, managers can create havoc if they do not manage properly.

For the last two months, I have been in an operations role handling activities of a New Store Opening for my company. As I handle warehousing which means ensuring that the right goods arrive at the right time, the purpose is to ensure that goods worth more than 10 million are in my store and on the shelves. This involves working with manual labourers. The bigger purpose as a manager, is to reduce drudgery. It is to ensure smooth operations. It is basically to follow basic principles of management. Most of us do not care if the manual labourers work 14 hours a day. Or if we keep the truck waiting at the dock because my documentation process is slow. But it affects all of us. For example, I see truck drivers who have transported goods from far off places. They are deprived of sleep and proper food. The only thing they are concerned is about unloading the goods and leaving. If as a manager, I keep them waiting because my documentation  process is time consuming, it affects them adversly. We all hear about truck accidents dont we?

So the purpose as a manager is to reduce drudgery, to make life easy for those who are working for me. Because in the scheme of things, they will only follow directions. As a manager the purpose is to give directions which ensures effectiveness and make work little less stressful while being aligned to the company goals.

Management jargon demystified- A corporate newbies guide for MBA aspirants

"What have you specialized in?" is a common question that people ask freshly minted MBAs. The answer to that one is usually marketing, operations, HR, finance, etc. Some even specialise in strategy! However, once you pass out from a B school and enter an organisation reality hits you! The above management functions take on a whole new meaning. This is roughly what they mean to me after having been in an organisation for 4 months.

• Marketing = Selling my company's value proposition/offer (and not a product) to kirana stores in slums of Mumbai! Now, not even Kotler can help me with that.
• Operations= Spending twelve hours in the Goods Receiving Area with truck drivers for company. 
• Strategy= Making ppts with interesting charts and diagrams and talking GAS ( similar to the "we are selling an offer and not a product mentioned above)

On a serious note, I think an MBA tag makes it even tougher to gain acceptance in the organisation. Humility and empathy are the most important traits required for winning the trust of many in the organisation who believe that a mere MBA is not sufficient and will always look to point out flaws in your work. So while an MBA might ensure a hefty pay packet and a great start designation wise, it also invites ire and discontent of many for the same reason.

Harish Hande-The man who lights up lives!

It was sometime in Jan 2010 that Ifirst heard about SELCO. One our alumnus, Thomas Pullenkav was on a panel which was discussing social entrepreneurship during IRMA’s B school fest Udaan.

Thomas was one of the first employees of SELCO. His talk on his (then) company was fascinating. After the panel, SELCO was an organization everyone wanted to intern at for the summers. However, some practical difficulties ruled out SELCO for me. Their stipend minus accommodation in Bangalore was a disappointment. Also, they wanted engineers! One of my batchmates did intern at SELCO and had a good experience.

SELCO again came up when a doctoral student at IRMA gave a lecture on social entrepreneurship. SELCO was used to discuss the issues surrounding scaling of a “social enterprise”. In one more panel discussion, Prof. Sriram pointed out the stringent process that Harish Hande followed in accepting capital from various sources particularly the for profit venture funds. A case study in the rural marketing class drove home the point that SELCO’s business model was something that had many people fall in love with it.

Therefore I was extremely happy when news about Hande receiving the Magsaysay award reached me. That he has received this honour in a short period of time (SELCO has been in existence since 1995) is an indication of the wonderful impact that he has had on the communities whom he sought to serve when he set up SELCO.

India needs many more Harish Handes!

Life in a METRO....

....has been about travel, travel and some more travel.

I have been living out of a suitcase for more than a month. And since this travel is undertaken all alone, it gets very, very boring at times. The learning curve is very steep. And that counts more than anything else!

Personally, it has dawned on me that I will have to live alone for some time to come. It does help that one of your siblings lives in the same vicinity as you do in a new city. Since my roommate, my office colleagues and friends are the same set of people, it helps to get away and spend some time with someone who knows you since birth!

Also realised that I have, more or less, been out of sync with friends from home. And hence I suddenly find myself completely on a new base to build new and hopefully more long lasting friendships! I alsways questioned the rationale of long term relationships and in my case I have been proved right as far as friendships are concerned.

But life must go on and it will.....

Missing from blogging....

Apologies for not blogging earlier. In fact, there is so much to write but some technical and logistical problems prevent me from publishing posts. These include but not limited to

1. NO NET. I am not a great believer in blogging during my office hours. In Bangalore, I do not have a personal laptop nor a net connection.
2. I am living out of a suitcase for the last month or so. Been on the road to Delhi, Jaipur, Bombay. My company laptop does not allow me to log on via a wi fi connection.
   
3. And maybe I have not tried hard enough.

So as I sit in a small cafe in a dingy alley in Jaipur surrounded by phoren tourists, I vow that I shall find a way to update this blog more often. Worst case scenario is September 1st week, when I head home to Mumbai for a quarter. My personal laptop and a wi fi connection awaits there. Maybe then there would be deluge of postings...in case if anyone is still interested in reading what I write.

First Impressons of Bengaluru...

Very good weather, love it !!!

Auto guys are no match for the Mumbai autowallahs...The bangalore guys just rip you off

The authorities seem to be in love with speed breakers. They even put up speed breakers on fly overs.

People are very friendly. I guess that is a trait common to all parts of India.

Shifting to Bengaluru......

...for better livelihood opportunities!!!

EPW edition on Cash Transfers

This week's edition of the EPW is devoted to Cash Transfers as a policy measure. It contains several articles which are for and against the move towards cash transfers.
The debates on cash transfers have intensified in the last one year. Highly satisfying to see that I worked on a project in a course at IRMA on this cash transfer aspect.

The Govt. phobia at IIMs

The IIMs want the government out of their affairs. What this will do is that the IIMs will become no more than a placement agency for Indian and more so for foreign business houses.
The IIMs will be completely dependent on the industry for meeting expenditure. I am afraid this will lead to a real loss of "autonomy". There is a conspiracy theory ( conspiracy since I have only heard this from the alumni) about a B school in the eastern part of the country which give out favourable reviews of rehabilitation projects of mining companies only because a large part of revenue is derived from these companies which conduct MDPs for their executives in this B school.
The IIMs have to realise that they are a "management"institute and not a Business school. They also conduct research studies which are supposed to be unbiased and in line with the best interests of the society. This will be lost as they depend on large corporations for revenue generation.
When the government is extending a warm welcome to professionals from private sector (Nandan Nilekani of UIDAI, Arun Maira in the Planning Commission), why are the IIMs so keen on getting the government out of their affairs.
Also, the IIMs especially A, took on Murli Manohar Joshi when he decided to reduce fees. The same IIMs did not even complain when Arjun Singh autocratically and cunningly raised the quotas for OBCs. All of them increased their intake quietly.
There is a protest though against this vocal desire of getting "autonomy". Prof. TT Rammohan, a senior faculty member of IIMA has questioned the rationale of asking the government to leave the IIMs to run on their own.
I think it time the IIMs delve into some introspection and there would be no better guiding light than the vision of each IIM which would always look at IIMs as more than just producing managers for business houses.