Rafeeq Muhammed Saved Our Deepavali

Deepavali is a festival of lights. But when there is a power outage on Deepavali, it is no longer Deepavali. Call it mother nature's Deepavali prank, if you will, the Northeast monsoon has washed out the most of Deepavali in Ooty... which meant that there was no opportunity for fireworks in the outdoors. And to rub salt in the wound, there has been a power outage since noon in most of the city. Later I realized that all our neighbors had their power restored but it was only our house that was devoid of power. So I complained to the TNEB as usual in the sincere hope that the kind folks at the TNEB will send a technician home and restore our power in a few hours. But that was not to be... I was told that most of them were on a holiday and the few who were working the holiday shift had been busy fighting the massive power outage due to fallen trees elsewhere in the city. I was told that it is highly unlikely that someone will come to my house today and restore our power. So Deepavali was as good as gone... It was nearing dusk when I called TNEB again. The folks there confirmed my fears... all the technicians have gone home after their day long ordeal fixing the massive power outage. Upon pleading a lot I was told that although the holiday shifts of all technicians is over some might still be around and if I am lucky they might be willing to take a look at my situation. So I rushed to the TNEB office and as mentioned by the operator all the technicians had left for the day... when I was about to leave without anymore hope, I saw a fully drenched individual seated in front of a room heater, perhaps drying himself up. I told him about our situation and he said he is very tired from cutting down trees that had fallen on power lines in the morning and restoring power in that part of the city. He offered to fix it early next morning. I thanked him and started walking out with disappointment... Seeing the disappointment in my face he called me and said "ok, let me take a look... if I have to climb the electric post to fix it I won't be able to do it today. but if it is something in your fuse box then I can fix it today" I was delighted... there was hope again. When he came home and took a look at the fuse box he said, "this can be fixed but I don't have all the tools for it right now"... but he improvised with whatever tools he had and fixed the issue. Thank You, Rafeeq Muhammed! You Gave Us Light on Deepavali.

Dear Mr. PM, please vow to leave no room for religious intolerance in India

Modi Ji, it is time for you to speak up. Whatever is happening in India right now in the name of Hindutva warns us that the one thing that we feared when we supported your Candidature as the Prime Minister of the world's largest "Democracy" is actually coming true. Please stop this religious intolerance before it is too late.

Hinduism is a pluralist religion that openly accepts and encourages various forms of worship of the Supreme Being (if any) and even is open to criticism from atheists and agnostics... If you are trying to defend the interests of the adherents of this beautiful religion, then please do us all a favor and let India be pluralist as it has been since time immemorial. We all take pride in our pluralist country… please let us not hang down our heads in shame.

Here is a story from the Mahabharata about a ascetic who had to learn a lesson on Dharma from a Butcher...

http://literature.syzygy.in/mahabharata-rajaji/chapter-38-i-am-no-crane

Rural Banking Policy in India and Dormancy of Private Commercial Banks

Organizations in democratic societies often encounter detrimental public policies that are later reversed due to rather predictable political cycles. The standard organizational responses to detrimental public policies that we know of include exiting the market altogether, attempting to change the public policy through various political strategies, or passively complying with the policy. But these responses might not be suitable when a detrimental public policy is likely to be reversed. In a paper paper that is forthcoming in Organization Science, I proposed organizational dormancy as, a temporary reduction in an organization’s level of activity, as a viable alternative response. I tested this idea in the case of Indian Private banks that were exposed to a detrimental banking policy that was enacted in 1980 and reversed in 1990.

While commercial banks are epitomes of capitalist organizations in developed economies, the government of India has used the banking industry to promote several of its socialist agendas, such as unemployment reduction and poverty alleviation. One such policy was the rural banking policy initiated by the government of India in 1980.The policy require private banks to open four branches in rural areas for every branch a bank opened in a urban location. This measure was taken to increase private participation in rural areas,which were virtually without banks until the late 1960s. But the challenge for private banks was that they could no longer grow bigger without serving the rather unprofitable rural areas. But expansion in rural areas meant that a bank had to undertake substantial risk and reorganization of their lending activities as they had to deal with poor credit histories and borrowers who lacked collaterals. In the view of many business historians, the new banking policies therefore had a detrimental impact on private banks. 

To avoid this risk, several private banks reduced their branching activities substantially. By foregoing the opportunity that came with opening new branches in the lucrative urban areas, private banks were actually able to reduce their exposure to rural areas. This strategy of reducing their expansion activity in response to the detrimental policy indeed paid off for the private banks. The detrimental policy was eventually relaxed in 1990.

While the enhancement of rural credit delivery was welcomed by the Indian electorate, industry associations and Chambers of Commerce voiced concerns about it. These parties criticised rural credit delivery and other similar detrimental policies that were imposed on private corporations during the 1980s. For example, the Confederation of Indian Industry’s theme paper in April 1991 urged Indian policy makers to implement liberal economic policies and lift several trade barriers that were hindering economic growth. With respect to the banking industry in particular, various industry associations recommended that the branching restrictions imposed on private banks be lifted and that the banking sector be liberalized. These issues were only addressed when the economy took a toll in the late 1980s due to the Indian government’s socialist policies.

The weak economy also resulted in an unstable political order and no party was able to gain a majority in parliament. Following a balance-of-payment crisis in 1990,appealed to the IMF and the World Bank for hefty loans, which were granted by these agencies with a clause that the Indian economy will be liberalized. The new government appointed several committees to get input from industry associations and Chambers of Commerce to kick-start the sluggish economy. These committees revealed that liberalization was unavoidable if the Indian banking industry was to be globally competitive. The Government of India responded to this call by introducing several banking sector reforms in 1991. Although the government was still monitoring rural credit delivery, private banks were no longer required to open four rural braches for every new urban branch.

After the Indian economy was liberalized, the growth rates and profits of private banks increased due to their newfound legitimacy. Other areas of the Indian economy also witnessed tremendous growth. The manufacturing and service sectors, which were concentrated in the country’s urban and metropolitan areas, played a specifically strong role in triggering India’s economic progress. This sustained growth of the Indian economy also helped revive private banks in India. However, private banks that already had a strong focus in urban areas were best suited to cash in on their revived legitimacy and the growth opportunities in the Indian economy. 

The response of Indian private banks to the detrimental government policy that was later reversed reassembles the notion of dormancy from physiological ecology. Dormancy (also called torpor, aestivation, and hibernation) describe the flexibility of an organism’s metabolism in response to predictable changes in the physical or biological characteristics of the environment – which eventually help the organism to increase its rate of reproduction. During dormancy, organisms remain only minimally active, insulating themselves from adverse climatic conditions while remaining able to resume their normal metabolic rate when the environment returns to a favorable state.

I theorized that organizations might emulate organisms in dormancy when organizations reduce their activity to buffer against a detrimental public policy and become active again when the policy is reversed. I formally define organizational dormancy as a temporary reduction in an organization’s activity following the onset of a detrimental public policy that allows it to avoid unwanted radical adaptation and rejuvenate when a favorable policy returns. Remaining dormant enables organizations to avoid the damage caused by full compliance and conserve their routines. It promises some of the benefits of exit, without a loss of legitimacy, and allows for voice tactics in the quest for a policy reversal.

I drew on extant research on corporate political activity to identify four important sources of organizational heterogeneity that determine if an organization can use dormancy as a response to a detrimental change in public policy: a) political awareness and capability, b) discretion in making strategic choices, c) fitness to the detrimental policy, and c) capacity of limited activity to sustain the organization. I also theorized that remaining dormant while the detrimental public policy is in place increases an organization’s performance when a favorable public policy is implemented. I found support for my theory of organizational dormancy by examining the shifts in branch banking activities in an unbalanced panel of 35 private commercial banks in India that were subject to a detrimental change in branching policy in 1980 and the reversal of this policy in 1991. 

Here is an SSRN link to the article: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2655260

Long live the new wave movie maker

When Indian film makers make a movie about a rose, some overemphasize the thorns, others exaggerate the beauty of the flower, and still others try to send out a "message" by showing that beautiful flowers can grow in thorny plants or that even a beautiful flower is surrounded by thorns... as though the viewer cares. But then there are those that don’t make too much of the thorn or highlight the flower more than its fair share or try to send out an unasked-for message... they just say a story of a flower that grew in a plant with thorns... after watching such movies the audience don’t feel bad that their life isn't as good as the rose, they don’t feel bad for some flowers that are surrounded by thorns or take home a message that their life can be better if they learn to appreciate the flower in their thorny lives or strive to blossom despite the many thorns in their lives... they just come out of the theater with a “that was a good story” feeling. And that is the feeling that I want when I get out a theatre. Premam gave me that. So did Neram, Soodhu Kavvum, Jigarthanda, and a few other recent movies… Long live the “new wave” movie maker.

Full many a gem...

Thomas Gray wrote thus in An Elegy Written In A Country Churchyard

“Full many a gem of purest ray serene
The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean bear:
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.”

It is my dad, a writer, who introduced me to these seemingly beautiful lines... but the poem bothered me in a profound way. It portrayed a very grim picture of small town lives. Our country sides are full of geniuses that perish without being discovered. As a boy who grew up in one of the smaller towns in India, I sincerely hoped that one day I will make myself renowned in the world for whatever that I am good at but I feared the curse of the small town.

Thankfully my dad also introduced me to a Malayalam translation of these immortal lines. In it, the poet, a wishful thinker perhaps, added one additional line that loosely translates to "Of those one gets noticed one day".

My observation over the recent years have taught me that it is no longer wishful thinking, it is not just the occasional odd gem that gets discovered but these days several gems are getting discovered in regular intervals, thanks to the internet and the networked world that we now live in. And even some of those gems that have been shining for decades without getting a glimmer of attention are now being spotted with ease. Can anyone forget Susan Boyle?

Today, I would like to introduce one such gem from Madurai: Mr. U. Subramaniam. He is a writer who has published six short story volumes over the years. Here are a few short writeups about him that have appeared recently in the popular press.

Hope this gem gets discovered soon and gains all the accolades he so deserves.

Legacies of Indian Prime Ministers

Most Indian prime ministers who held that office for at least 5 years have left a long lasting legacy... It is Jawarhalal Nehru's vision for an educated India that gave us the IIMs, IITs and AIIMS. It was Indira Gandhi's vision for alleviating rural poverty that gave a strong rural banking network. It was Rajiv Gandhi's vision for a technologically advanced India that paved the way for technological behemoths like Infosys and TCS. It was Narashima Rao's shrewd political acumen at the time of an imminent national crisis that showed that coalition governments can last for the whole term and more importantly, pulled India out of an abyss of poverty and self-destruction and charted a bold new course towards a vibrant India. I fear to imagine what India would have looked like today had he not been at the helm in 1991. It was Atal Bihari Vajpayee's vision for a connected India that saw the sprawling national highways of India transform into an efficient highway network that seamlessly connected India's big cities. Also to his credit was the revival of India-US political relationship. It was Manmohan Singh's silence that exposed the many weaknesses of the ailing congress party and brought an end (hopefully) to the Dynasty's control over Indian politics. Our current prime minister, Narendra Modi, I am sure will leave a legacy that far exceeds that which most of his predecessors have left... His vision for a powerful India will see India becoming a permanent member of the UN and eventually transforming into a superpower to reckon with. His foreign policy is of the kind that we have longed for all these years.

To eat or not to eat a cow, that's the question...

I am a vegetarian, but I respect the rights of others to eat meat or whatever they choose to eat (with the exception of a cannibal's diet, I suppose). As they say, one man's food is another man's poison. Just because I don't like a certain food, I have no right to force others not to consume it. Most importantly, the government doesn't have any business telling people what they should eat and what they shouldn't. If cruelty to animals is what you are bothered about, then why be selective and if cruelty to cows is what they are bothered about, then shouldn't they also ban artificial insemination of cattle, which is widely used in India to breed high yield milch cows and cattle. But hell no, where will the vegetarian get his milk from? India is not like the Arab world or Israel which bans people from eating pork... It is also not the Vatican which bans people from having a freedom of choice in matters other than eating food. We are a secular country and religion doesn't have a place in determining what is lawful and what is not...