Wit Wisdom and Whoop

  The country on 8th December 2021 as the day progressed heard the horrifying news of a air crash on which the first and serving Chief of Defence Staff, a four star General Bipin Rawat and his Wife and other senior colleagues had died. In any country the death in an accident such as this of such a high ranking military officer would raise questions and hopefully the investigations would find the reasons for this tragedy. Senior political leaders from the Government and others have expressed their condolences but the extra anguish from the PMO was obvious. This was not an ordinary death and while every unexpected death hurts, life still moves on. But from the comments, looks of the powers that be indicated special challenges this would pose to whatever the Government, the Defence services had planned. However much plans may be committed to paper, a substantial thought process, planning, vision, ideas, etc that would have involved the CDS, PMO, RM, NSA would be lost and expecting t...

In the meantime work meant we met various people in uniform and everybody spoke of the same thing. But a few meetings were more than normal. One officer Maj Unnikrishnan had been martyred in the operation along with another commando. Meeting a Brigadier responsible for training commandoes the first question he asked, actually barked at me, if I may say so was – 2 of my boys died, they were wearing BPJ’s, did it protect them? This question had not occurred to me and I stared at him dumbly saying I had no idea what actually happened in the action. He replied – “you are right, let me check” and proceeded to call up someone and discussed the details. He appeared satisfied with the answers and was all cream and honey after that. As I relaxed I was smiling at this “Humour in uniform” moment I had experienced. For those of us in the sector, we found the behavior, decisions of various states, their police forces, different branches of the uniformed forces very conflicting and it was obvious th...

To come back to that fateful day. I was driving back home rather late in the evening and had no inkling of what was happening. Somewhere enroute I got a call from home saying that some terrorists had killed 3 senior cops. Then came more chilling news that something big was happening. By the time I arrived home the ONLY snippet of news that had stuck in me was that 3 senior cops were driving together in the same car and had been killed. I was thinking that when company management ruled that groups of senior management should not even fly together, what the hell were 3 senior cops doing together? In any case the information I had was sketchy at best. Walking into home the first scene that I saw on TV was visuals of Mr. Karkare wearing a Bullet Proof Jacket and the anchor all excited and sombre at the same time announcing the killing. Sombre at the death but excited that he died wearing a BPJ. My first comment – Hell that isn’t even a BPJ he is wearing, what the hell are they talking ab...

  Every year, since long 2 life changing and world eyeball attention grabbing events are remembered. One is the 9/11 terrorist attack in USA and the other 26/11 terrorist attack in India. People write various memories of that day and owing to a concatenation of circumstances I had some involvement of the events of 26/11 and share those experiences and my own opinions. I claim no expert knowledge but just share various observations, hearsay comments and with 10 years gone by hopefully this has passed what is called the statute of limitations. Also this is not meant to malign or cast aspersions but to share my opinion based on whatever little knowledge I have in layman terms. On that fateful evening I was working in a role in the defence industry and so had begun to understand various security issues at a more professional level. One of the products that we sold was the Bullet Proof Jackets (BPJ) to the various security agencies in India. Firstly, a slightly important educative digre...

Way back in the early 2000's a Pharma industry newsletter asked me to write a article for them and I had written about "Outsourcing" which was published. Sadly I never saved a copy or even if I did, have lost it. But cleaning up a old computer I stumbled upon the soft copy of what they had sent me. I share that verbatim here. Note that this is easily 15 to 20 years old as an opinion and the contents must be judged accordingly. Outsourcing enables companies to utilise every available resource be it finance, manpower, infrastructure for the core business and for development of new products and markets, says Ravindra Vasisht The Indian economy over the last decade has developed as a knowledge-based industry in the global arena. With a population of over one billion, the condition of healthcare facilities for the majority of the citizens is abysmally poor and that is a contradiction considering that the Indian pharmaceutical industry is one of the knowledge based industries t...

We all remember that old story of Archimedes and the Eureka moment. However not all Eureka moments need be about the water rising in the bath tub and the flash bulb in your brain going off. It can also be that moment when you hear the final gurgle of the water going down the drain leaving you low and dry, maybe with soap all over. Often this latter Eureka moment happens when individuals or even organisations embark upon a journey where their actions and decisions are based on the prediction they have already made. This happens more often than one thinks it doesn't happen. An American colleague asked me about the recent example of Ford exiting the Indian car market which prompted me to write this. Most headlines screamed about how India is a difficult market, tough market, price sensitive market and all the usual excuses doled out by those who fail. They rarely if ever want to look into the mirror. One important note before you continue - For 5 years I owned a Ford Fusion and since ...

I stumbled upon this video https://youtu.be/lOAeMW3uNhE   in a online by Ms. Debjani Biswas & hope she will not mind if I share a few old memories. For those who don't know her, Debjani is Founder of a Executive Coaching organisation in USA. She has been a Author, TEDx Speaker, has held Directorial and senior positions in some globally renowned companies and an alumni of IIT and IIM from India.  In 1981/82 I was yet another confused kid & wanting to do what seemed popular - join a B School. Totally incompetent I joined a small group of folks who were being trained by a org called TETCOS. Debjani was one of the instructors & *gasp* just a 2nd year student at IIM. An extremely lovely & gorgeous girl it took 1 minute to "fall in love" & all of 2 minutes to "unfall in love" as you realised she was tougher than nails. She tore you apart & then put you back together in class. The "love" 3 minutes later was undying adulation like one a...

Talking of travels an online friend suggested that I must share some of my more memorable visits globally and so here is the first one in this series of Travelogues. This is from Vietnam and the visit was in June 2013. For most who have had a sense of history, especially American, the Vietnam war was the most famous. A giant of a country like USA had attacked a small puny country Vietnam to save the country from communism. The war stretched for around 10 years, and finally public outcry in USA forced the USA to pull out. The enduring image of that war was this. The popular opinion was that the USA had been brutal, excessively violent, and the Vietcong in spite of this had survived and prevailed, in an unjust war. This piece is not to debate the war or who was right but to share what I saw when I got a chance to visit the jungle area museum – called Cu Chi Tunnels - where even today Vietnam has honestly displayed the horrors of the war. This is just that – sharing images of the horror...