Friday, December 5, 2008

Where was I ???

I published my last post on this blog on 15 August, the independence day. And then i made myself independent from my love for writing. There was so much to write during this period. From the global economic meltdown to the terror attacks in Mumbai, from the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers to the farewell of Sourav Ganguly, from the Chandrayaan to the Tata Motors fiasco at Singur. How I missed such things?
But better late than never. So again from today, I am starting the thing I love most i.e. writing.
I just feel sorry for such a long gap. I was just lost and then I lost. Strange !!!
So from tomorrow, things will change.
Just let the sun rise again.

Friday, August 15, 2008

Being Free!!!

"Which is the most precious thing you have?" It is my freedom. The feeling of being free. The feeling to celebrate the diversity of ideas. The freedom to express myself and the freedom to always smile.
The freedom that i am talking about is not the National Independence that we got in 1947 but the freedom of every individual to think, act and lead distinctly. Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom. Are we really free or living in an illusion?? Are we really thinking, acting and living out of the box?? Are we doing justice to our potential??
Freedom means complete chaos, the thing that doesn't allow u to sleep. When the shackles of slavery are broken and freedom is realized, the environment thrives and grows.
Be free. Enjoy the feeling of being free. And if the world can be changed in this way....it is most welcome.
By the way....Happy Independence Day !!!!!!

Saturday, July 26, 2008

India : The Epicentre of Innovation

To many people , India is a very crowded country. But to some, it is a huge untapped market. We are more than a billion and with it we have more than a billion needs and aspirations. Now, we are living in an era where we have reached saturation in higher end of the market with a large number of active business and marketing forces. Now almost all business players in our country are concentrating on the huge untapped markets at the bottom of the pyramid or, simply on Indian Middle and Lower Classes (economically). This gives a mammoth opportunity to all of us young aspiring engineers, technocrats and entrepreneurs to think,innovate and expand towards the direction of developing low cost, low margins but high quality products and services. When such businesses expand, people thrive and grow.
Take for example, the TATA NANO , it has broken the cost barriers in the automobile sector.Now, all the best automobile companies are working in the directions of manufacturing low cost cars. It has again proved that 'impossible is nothing'. It will provide a clean , and safe mobility solution to millions of people, not only in India but to the world. Or let us talk about the Indian drug manufacturers.....they are one of the largest generic drug producers in the world and hence provide low cost medicines to patients across the globe.
The companies like SKS Microfinance (whose CEO Vikram Akula was in the list of 100 most influential people of the world in TIME magazine) are providing direct microfinance loans to poor people. One construction company in Pune is developing a new RCC technique that will hugely reduce housing costs. The ITC's e-choupal programme is helping farmers in the rural areas to sell their produce to far off markets at a better price via internet.
There are a large number of other such successful innovative business stories in India. All these are changing lives of millions of Indians. But we need more such stories. We need more engineers, technocrats, scientists, entrepreneurs etc. who can think, innovate, act and lead differently. The profit margins are huge, and if it helps in changing lives of our people, it is more of a welcome.

Tuesday, July 1, 2008

Rising Oil Prices - a Boon in form of a Crisis

EVERYONE loves a booming market, and most booms happen on the back of technological change. The world’s venture capitalists, having fed on the computing boom of the 1980s, the internet boom of the 1990s and the biotech and nanotech boomlets of the early 2000s, are now looking around for the next one. They think they have found it: Energy.
Many past booms have been energy-fed: coal-fired steam power, oil-fired internal-combustion engines, the rise of electricity, even the mass tourism of the jet era. But the past few decades have been quiet on that front. Coal has been cheap. Natural gas has been cheap. The 1970s aside, oil has been cheap. But for many years, the prices of oil have been artificially kept low (and hence favouring high demand) by various nations in form of oil subsidies. The one real novelty, nuclear power, went spectacularly off the rails. The pressure to innovate has been minimal.
In the space of a couple of years, all that has changed. Oil is no longer cheap; indeed, it has never been more expensive. Moreover, there is growing concern that the supply of oil may soon peak as consumption continues to grow, known supplies run out and new reserves become harder to find.
The idea of growing what you put in the tank of your car, rather than sucking it out of a hole in the ground, no longer looks like economic madness. Nor does the idea of throwing away the tank and plugging your car into an electric socket instead. The price of natural gas, too, has risen in sympathy with oil. That is putting up the cost of electricity. Wind- and solar-powered alternatives no longer look so costly by comparison. It is true that coal remains cheap, and is the favoured fuel for power stations in industrialising Asia. But coal is also non renewable, and it a great emitter of greenhouse gases.That has opened up a capacity gap and an opportunity for wind and sunlight. The future price of these resources—zero—is known. That certainty has economic value as a hedge, even if the capital cost of wind and solar power stations is, at the moment, higher than that of coal-fired ones.
The reasons for the boom, then, are tangled, and the way they are perceived may change. Global warming, a long-range phenomenon, may not be uppermost in people’s minds during an economic downturn. High fuel prices may fall as new sources of supply are exploited to fill rising demand from Asia.
The market for energy is huge. At present, the world’s population consumes about 15 terawatts of power. (A terawatt is 1,000 gigawatts, and a gigawatt is the capacity of the largest sort of coal-fired power station.) That translates into a business worth $6 trillion a year—about a tenth of the world’s economic output. And by 2050, power consumption is likely to have risen to 30 terawatts.
Any transition from an economy based on fossil fuels to one based on renewable, alternative, green energy—call it what you will—is likely to be slow, as similar changes have been in the past . On the other hand, the scale of the market provides opportunities for alternatives to prove themselves at the margin and then move into the mainstream, as is happening with wind power at the moment. And some energy technologies do have the potential to be disruptive. Plug-in cars, for example, could be fuelled with electricity at a low price . That could shake up the oil, carmaking and electricity industries all in one go.
Now, Energy has become supercool. Elon Musk, who co-founded PayPal, has developed a battery-powered sports car. Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the founders of Google, have started an outfit called Google.org that is searching for a way to make renewable energy truly cheaper than coalThis renewed interest in energy is bringing forth a raft of ideas, some bright, some weird.Brazil, meanwhile, has the world’s second-largest (just behind America) and most economically honest biofuel industry, which already provides 40% of the fuel consumed by its cars and should soon supply 15% of its electricity, too (through the burning of sugarcane waste).
There are lots of terawatts, gigawatts to play for. And if the earth is going to be saved in the way, it is all welcome.



Saturday, June 28, 2008

Education, Healthcare and Self Respect

From the time of our independence we have a popular socialist slogan - " roti, kapda aur makaan". It was (and is still) considered that the government has the responsibility to provide basic amenities to all our nation. We are now more than a billion and with it we have more than a billion aspirations. From our sixty years of independence it is now evident this socialistic mindset can no longer deliver the desired results in this highly competitive world. We should now move on from " give a man a fish to eat" to "teach a man to fish ".It is the need of this hour to move from "roti kapda aur makaan" to "education, healthcare and self-respect."
Education is the right of a citizen.We all know the importance of education in civilised world. We can hardly imagine what can be the education rate of our country when the National Literacy Rate is only around 65%.The conditions are improving at the level of graduate studies with so many Private institutions coming up.On the other hand, the conditions at the primary level in Bharat(not in India) are stagnant. The government spends huge money at primary education but about 94% of this money is just wasted. The problems are plenty, we should search for the solutions. First, it should be allowed for foreign universities to open their campuses in India. Secondly, transfer the control of goverment schools from state governments to local bodies like village panchayats. They should be free to hire their own teachers. Thirdly, use of the information technology - like video lectures via satellite , e-classes,etc.
Healthcare facilities protect people.Only a fit and healthy individual can sustain himself and then his family, society and country. He is more productive. But, the health facilities in India are crumbling. Just go to any government hospital to see and feel the conditions there. A man dies after suffering from an internal head injury just because there is no doctor to attend him. There are not enough doctors and the infrasructure is crumbling under pressure. A medicine which costs Re.1 for a dozen is sold for Rs.10 in retail. Amidst all these problems our honourable Central Health Minister Mr. Ambumani Ramadoss is busy in a dirty fight with Mr. Venugopala Rao(one of best heart surgeons this country has ever produced) over control of AIIMS, and in advising Film Stars not to smoke or drink on screen.
Self Respect is vital in protecting the rights, thinking and occupation of an individual. Only when a person is guarded against abuses, violence, threats, inequality, etc. he can have his self respect with him. So how can a billion people have their self respect-- the answer lies in a just, functioning and transparent judiciary or judicial system. We all must have watched Indian movies and hence, have got the taste of our judiciary.
I, believe, that education, healthcare and self respect can solve most of our social and economic problems. But the simpler the solution , the complex is its implementation. All the suggestions and comments are highly welcomed

Saturday, May 3, 2008

IDEA Enterpreneurship

The Power Of Idea
Capitalism is changing. Cash, the currency of capitalism and its prime driver, no longer rules. Today, successful capitalism is about successful ideas. Ideas, not cash, spawn new businesses. Ideas help companies grow. Ideas create wealth. Ideas burn cash and produce billionaires. But most importantly, ideas change lives. And ideas build the nation..
The shift in the balance of power away from cash and towards the idea is one of the reasons why capitalism is changing. If cash driven capitalism was all about creating wealth. idea-driven capitalism is all about changing lives. This is a profound impact on business, economy, society and mankind.
Not that capitalism 2.0 ignores wealth creation. But transformation of the nation and mankind at large is now taking precedence over mercenary wealth creation. Now, the fruit of capitalism has now become the seed of greater common good. The foundations run on ideas and not rules. Enterpreneurship is rising above profit minded nature of capitalism.
More power to the idea. Ultimately, only ideas change lives. Not governments. Not businesses.