Life and Travel – Page 2

Private property v/s Shared ownership

In the real “physical” world, humans went from economies based on shared resources or common property resources as seen during the “hunter gatherer” phase of ancient human civilisation to the economies based on concepts of private property and ownership as we see today in the modern era.

Interestingly, in the digital world, we have taken the OPPOSITE direction. While we owned servers in the past and owned every piece of hardware and digital storage spaces earlier, today we have moved almost completely towards the concept of shared “ownership” . We don’t own our mail servers. Most websites are hosted on shared space maintained by others and we have the likes of the mighty Amazon Web Services that offer shared services.

The Dreamliner

The recent excitement and fanfare around the arrival of the Dreamliner aircraft in India reminded me of the good old childhood days. The average Indian household was then deprived of most of the material luxuries (“durable goods”) that we consider basic necessities today. The most sophisticated device that you could expect to find in the house was the radio or the cheaper handy version better known as the “transistor”. Around the late eighties and early nineties, scooters, televisions and refrigerators started entering the average Indian household. Their arrival was marked by huge celebrations. Friends, relatives and neighbours would all come rushing to take a first look of the new member of the family. Pujas, flowers and chants made the whole incident look like a festival!

I have clear memories of the day when the first television (TV in short) came to my “maama-ghar“. Ours was a joint family with 5 families living in a bungalow tucked away in the lap of the hills and forests on the Chota Nagpur Plateau. My grandfather was a physician who decided to set up his practice in the quaint hilly village of Silli in the tribal heartland of Bihar (now Jharkhand). The huge house was complete with mango, litchi, jack-fruit trees in the backyard and farmlands just outside the boundary with a row of hillocks a few hundred meters away.

It was the first TV in the town! It had to be an event! We knew since morning that the TV was supposed to reach home around evening. It was to be bought from Ranchi (the current capital city of Jharkhand) which was some 55 km away but the road had to cut through the hills and dense forests and often took longer than expected to cover the same distance. The entire town was waiting with bated breath for the TV to come. Several times during the day, our neighbours from the tribal village came down asking if the TV had already come. Kids of all ages lined up close to the house as evening came close. The sun slowly set and darkness fell but nobody would move. It grew darker and people slowly started drifting back to their huts.

Much later the sound of vehicle horn was heard and everybody rushed out of the house. The kids in the house zipped across the large playground in front of the house to the other side to see the van even before it reached the house. The sky blue “Matador” van came tumbling down the slope of the playground, chased by kids of various sizes and came to a halt at the doorstep. Children howled in excitement, the women of the house struggled to keep their happiness in control and the entire neighborhood stood waiting with glistening eyes for the TV to be taken out from the van.

The TV did finally come out and it was set up in the largest room of the house. The antennae was fitted on a long wooden stick, connected to the nearest socket board and then the TV flickered on. Sweets were distributed and the doors of the room were opened wide for everybody in the neighborhood to come in. Almost everybody in the small town came down to the extent that I almost felt that the jackals, elephants and the leopards in the nearby forest would also come down to witness the euphoria.

For about 10 years or so since then, the house was open to neighbours from the nearby tribal hamlets to watch TV with us. The TV room was always jam packed. So much so that the actual inhabitants of the house barely found a place to sit. People of different age groups always made sure that they catch up on the “Chitrahar” and the Sunday movies. Whenever electricity failed (which it often did), batteries were put to use! One of my uncles had a car battery charging unit. I guess the whatever he made in that business (if not more) was used up in charging the batteries for the TV.

India has changed so much since then. Bringing a TV or a refrigerator home is no longer a marquee event. We don’t celebrate them. Somewhere those big things in our life have today become obvious and bland. Is this a sign of development or lost ability to celebrate new things in life. The arrival of the Dreamliner proves that we can still celebrate a new marvel like we did in the past or may be not?

“To laugh often and much…

To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better; whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you lived. This is to have succeeded.”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Credit bureau” for air travellers

Some people just don’t want to switch off their mobile phones when the flight is about to take off. The same guys happen to be equally keen on switching on their mobile phones (if at all, they have switched them off!) even before the flight touches down. Some others feel that putting on the seat belt is against the fundamental right to freedom. Even if they do put them on, after “intense” insistence from the cabin crew, they do ensure that they unlock it and spring up on their feet even while the wobbly flight is finding its way to a stable parking bay. There are a few others who take immense pleasure in poking the assistance button every now and then for inane requests.

I was wondering if we could have a credit bureau kind of a thing where you could report flight “behaviour” of passengers on a compulsory basis and use the flight behaviour score (a la Cibil, FICO, Equifax, etc.) to decide the premium that the concerned person should pay to board another flight.

Such a bureau would record details of the passenger behaviour as reported by the cabin/ground crew of the airline companies and give scores. So, if you are hell bent on yapping or texting away when the flight is about to take off, you get a negative score. Similarly, if you don’t understand that you need to keep your seat back upright and somebody has to tell you five times to do so, you get another round of negative scores.

So, with a score of 300 you can bid goodbye to flying for a period of atleast 2 years. The chronic “defaulters” can then easily be kept off the “access to airline services”.

One more question, has anybody done any research on why the same people who are incredibly fast in getting up immediately after touch down (and yanking off the oversized baggages from the overhead lockers) are the same people who just dont want to get off the airstairs when they are climbing it down?

Enjoy your festivals!

Why are festivals important?
A. It gives you the excuse to do things you dont generally do everyday. Meaning it gives your brain the rest from usual work to help you refocus.
B. It gives you an excuse to bump into people you never met/spoke to before.
C. It gives you an opportunity to expose yourself to good old “quaint” ideas that you completely disregard in your day to day life.

In brief, celebrate festivals!! (off course,once in a while.)

“The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows”

Possibly the best motivational speech in the history of cinema: Courtesy – Rocky Balboa.

The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. It’s a very mean and nasty place and I don’t care how tough you are it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain’t about how hard ya hit. It’s about how hard you can get it and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done! Now if you know what you’re worth then go out and get what you’re worth. But ya gotta be willing to take the hits, and not pointing fingers saying you ain’t where you wanna be because of him, or her, or anybody!

Do they “need” us?

A friend, who is doing some great work in the space of delivering quality healthcare to remote rural customers, narrated a story of how she went to meet an old lady whose medical tests revealed that she had a high risk of cardiovascular disease but when suggested regular monitoring and diet restrictions,the old lady said that she is doing absolutely fine and that she does her daily chores without any problem! Even her family thinks she is fine.

My friend asks, do they need our “help” at all? Who are we to them? Are we being forceful ? What is their purpose and what is ours? A good set of questions for all those “BoP enthusiasts”. (I admit I am not very impressed with the way in which the term BoP is used by most “experts” today.A clear urge to sound “cool”. For all that you can see, I avoid using the term BoP. But then, who cares if a minnow like me is not impressed?)

Ok, coming back to the topic. I face a similar situation. In the work that I do, we sell cattle insurance, purified drinking water, smoke free stoves, all of which, by all means have little or no felt need amongst our existing remote rural customers. If need for healthcare is not felt, it is obvious that the same people will not value any of the things we are selling.

I hav a very different analogy for this. Imagine the world before iPods. People were happy with normal MP3 players and could never believe that hearing experience could be better. Even if they knew that hearing experience could be better, they couldn’t justify spending the exhorbitant amount for ipod. They said, whatever quality the normal MP3 s offer, is good enough and that there isn’t any problem with that quality of listening.

Then some of the rich brats started purchasing iPods either because they appreciated better quality of sound/design or because they wanted to be a part of the elite tribe that owned sleek,stylish and expensive ipods. Slowly, more and more people wanted to buy iPods and soon a lot of the “normal MP3 people” now wanted to buy the ipod! They were suddenly dissatisfied with the sound quality and clumy shapes of the normal mp3 players. After a while, iPods became the defacto music player for the great “discerning” middle class. The “normal MP3 people” have now started seeing and appreciating the better quality of sound/design of the iPod.

I believe, the same route has to be followed for the things like cattle insurance, purified water, quality healthcare and smokeless stoves (and possibly even information). This means we have to use a sly marketing plan to first break in to the “territory of aceeptability” of those who can spend and then ensure that the “fad” becomes a normal way of life. I must point out here that, aside from the great marketing, iPods are inherently a great product. It has a great sound quality and a brilliantly done design. This means that there has to be an underlying benefit in what you are trying to provide. The product and service quality has to be brilliant if not flawless.

I know I sound like a dirty capitalist (and it might be too simplistic to compare healthcare to iPods) but some where back of the mind I know that the stuff that I want them to purchase (healthcare, cattle insurance, purified drinking water, smokeless stoves) has some underlying benefit which would positively affect lives. Customer “education” as a way of “changing” habits and adopting better products/practices has proven to be expensive and fairly unsuccessful. We have to be sly. Not emotional. Anybody is free to argue against what I say. Opinions invited.

Off course, I do not want a moral debate on what should be available for free and what the job of the state (a la healthcare, primary education, market information)is to provide. Let us get real and accept the fact that the state run machinery has not been able to do a good job of making these available. However, you are free to question whether better risk mitigants like healthcare, purified water, smoke-less stoves and better risk transfer mechanisms insurance are needed at all!

Niche in life

Wrote this sometime back for my friends but thought I should put it on the blog.

When I was a kid, I was not very good at games….frankly speaking, I never had the opportunity to play many games. The only game that I ever played was football. In fact, childhood Bengal was a football academy. From Kolkata’s maidaan to the the small muddy villages, it was football allover. From the wooden spikes to the naked feet, it was football allover. From the anklets to the crepe bandages wrapped with safety pins, it was football allover. From the twisted ankles to the badly swollen shin bones, it was football all over.

Every year the city and the towns (not the villages generally because the people in the villages wouldn’t normally have enough to drape themselves) would be draped in Green and Maroon(colours of Mohunbagan club) or Red and Yellow (colours of East Bengal club), every four years the city and towns would be draped in Blue and white (colour of Argentina) or Yellow (colour of Brazil). Practically everybody was a footballer! Even if somebody did not play, HE had something to say about the game. (Frankly speaking Bengalis play a very few of the “games” on which they have a strong view). The HE is capitalised here to point out that Bengali women were completely missing from this area of having a view on football. The women grew up attending music or dance classes, learning how to cook and getting ready to become a good marriageable “package” right from childhood. Once they are married, they concentrate on controlling the lout who happened to spend time mostly outside the house solving away all strategic worldly affairs. This lout is the husband.

By the way, all that is history now. People do not discuss football and girls are not limited to the home. Its cricket and its Mamata Banerjee.

Anyways, I was digressing a bit too much. My point was “Practically everybody was a footballer!” so finding a place in the class team, college team was always difficult. Given my physique which was several times worse (read thinner) than what you see now, football was a difficult game for me. Well, that is what people thought when they would look at me to decide whether I could join the team or not. Certain answer was a no. I figured out a strategy to ensure I was in the team because I knew that once I was in team I would give my team ample reasons to continue having me in the team. The strategy was, I said I play in the wings (a winger sticks to the right or left flank of the ground during the game).Nobody wanted to play in the wings. Everybody wanted to be in the middle. Everybody wanted to be a midfielder, a forward! But, I said I would play in the left wing. Playing in the left wing meant you’ve got to be able to kick with your left foot. I was lucky to be able to kick with both my feet. So there I was, giving my team a proposition to play in a position where nobody would play! Normally amateur football happens in the middle with everybody chasing the ball around the middle, the flanks remained empty. There lied my opportunity. I took the ball right down from the bottom and went past the midfield upto the corner of the opponents side. Nobody stopped me because every player of the opponent was stuck in the middle of the field! By the time I reached the other end, the opponent players would rush from the middle towards me in the side to prevent me from scoring. Now the middle would get empty. I simply lobbed the ball and centered it in front of my forward who would wait in front of the goal, unmanned and then a smooth header or a slow nudge saw the goal!

I scored a goal only on rare occasions but I had to adpot this weird strategy to ensure I was in the team. To ensure that I could strategically be at a place where no one else wants to be and yet have a ball!! I enjoyed my game.