Wit Wisdom and Whoop

A brief thought as I complete 2 years dealing with many folks in a new role - as consultant - very different from as a employee since my own way of dealing with them changes. The reader looking at this from a employee/sales person eyes versus the more neutral eye can understand my comments better. At one level very often these head honchos want to use a consultant to independently endorse their ideas so that they can get their shareholders/ family/ others to accept them. Some decide to jump on a horse that looks to be the flavour of the day and expect the consultant to make that happen. Some others think the consultant is their operating manager who will given them the results while they go on a "vacation" and when the penny drops blame the consultant for not giving them results. One lot don't listen to the advise given, do their own thing and then when they stumble, hurting themselves expect the consultant to make the pain go away. There are some folks who thrive and are...

Quite a long time back when I first got the opportunity to sit in a company board meeting, I noticed the Chairman making a strange remark as he opened the board meeting. He used to say something like – “Please unhide your hidden agendas and keep your vested interests outside”. Young, intrigued I finally summoned enough courage to understand this from some other seniors and got a lesson I have never forgotten. He said that be it a person or an organisation, in many a situation, they have a stated intent and a real intent. Meaning that when they approach a situation, they explain what is their intent which would be more popular, acceptable and palatable to the audience but the real intent could well be very different. Most likely the real intent would be self-defeating or unpopular. In this just concluded election for the Lok Sabha we saw this happening in full flow and to my mind the BJP likely missed reading the message. It is not as if I have some inside information but am using log...

  This is NOT about Narendra Modi, even though he is the central character. This is about the evolution of a leader particularly in the BJP and in the NDA/ India in general. Post the electoral defeat in 2009 the BJP was rudderless, notwithstanding the presence of LK Advani. He was old, tired, defeated and BJP could not find a pan India leader to lead the party in the Lok Sabha elections of 2014. They had leaders like Gadkari, Rajnath, Jaitley, Sushma, and however popular none could qualify as an all-India election campaign leader. Popular opinion was it would be a hung parliament. The nation was in a mess, and nobody wanted to clean it given that voter expectations were high, trust low. Kejriwal/ Hazare had mortally wounded the Indian political system. BJP at that point needed a fall guy.  Someone to do the hard work, and if they failed to win, take the blame. If they won, there would be many aspirants to stake a claim to be PM. Parties, barring for those family owned, rarely ...

Life & weight, certainly changes with time. This is both enduring & educative. A picture they say speaks a million words. The allegation is that in the last 10 years only opposition leaders have been arrested by the Modi govt and these are only political vendetta and nothing more. Let’s not argue that point and grant it as true. That does not mean there are no questions that cannot be asked. The problem is nobody has dared to raise these questions and if one raises them, bingo, the allegation is that one is supporting the Modi govt, blinded being a bhakth and unable to see reality etc. The message is – don’t anybody dare ask questions. Only the old eco-system has the wisdom and freedom to ask questions. Those who ask any question that is inconvenient to the old eco-system you become an apologist for the evil, fascist, dictatorial kind of adjectives. But questions must be asked. They will be asked. If folks don’t have the courage to answer and prefer to be belligerent, then so b...

Risks of Digitisation: A Congress and allies government “used” Aadhar to create vote banks by giving illegal immigrants the opportunity to become voters leveraging this proof of identity – famously termed as a non-identity document. Case in point are West Bengal and Jammu Kashmir.  The Modi Govt leveraged this same system to improve the delivery of cash to citizens and then by linking this to PAN and other transactions brought in an ocean of data to be analysed. Over time this has only sharpened and like all decisions of (any) Govt, there are those who have been affected and others benefitted. If the number of beneficiaries are far higher than those affected, the criticism of the affected gets blunted. In the case of digitisation, recall what happened in Canada recently, where a supposedly liberal and democratic leader used digital technology to silence not just the truckers who were protesting for very genuine reasons but even common citizens who dared to support the truckers....

Kashmir: It is nobody’s case except those who had a personal stake in the older eco system and policies, that continuance of Art 370 was a perversity. Pakistan absorbed the areas it had captured in 1948 within itself, gave away large tracts of land to China and left just a sliver of land as a dispute across the border. India, even after the Himalayan blunder of vacillating and delaying military action in 1948 not only created this pernicious Art 370 but subsisted with it for 75 years. The BJP and its earlier avatar Jan Sangh, red flagged this and opposed it since 1948, demanding its removal. The Modi Govt achieved this target after 75 years and bifurcated the state. Making Ladakh a UT was key especially since the Chinese attack and as a border area, the central Govt had to maintain complete control. While one can debate converting J & K as a UT, instead of the state that it was, again this is a strategic move. The bar for a future non-BJP Govt to revert to the old system of hav...