The ordinary lives

I am not a newspaper person. It’s hard for me to go through a newspaper like my Mom or Deepan would – scoring through all the sections and pages across the newspaper of their liking. So much of what I read are by way of Deepan selecting an article and passing it along. Other times I will almost always pick up the Guardian, in hand or via my Reader to keep tabs on articles across a few sections. Even here though I need to skim first and like to be drawn in but very little of writing today achieves that. I find myself putting down the paper sooner than later.
Today, Deepan passed me an article from the FT’s property section that featured this small area in North London that has managed to only see a 5% drop in value in the past year. This is quite a rarity but as the article drones on about for about half a page’s worth, most houses, apartments and the like in this area are extremely expensive [in the tens of millions] and buyers seem to queue up with cash in hand even before there’s anything available in the market. Restricted supply and exclusivity [due to the advantages of the area - large open spaces and yet 15 minutes from Central London by train] has resulted in prices staying high with little to no drop this past season.
Next I skimmed the rest of the section managing to complete an article on an Interior Designer’s ‘favorite’ home in Italy and then put the paper down with a finality.
What is it with today’s media that focuses on the life of the rich & famous or the ugly & notorious? Whether it’s the front pages or the detailed features [god save us from weekend editions!!], all that really matters seems to be extemities of life.
I find this very unappealing and perhaps this contributes to my safe & measured distancing from media products. I just can’t relate. I don’t want to be inundated with the tragedy of a young infant that was continuously tortured by his parents until he gave up and died. I don’t want to hear about rich ‘old’ or ‘new’ wealth family heads refering to their houses in Italy, Switzerland and other places around the globe. I don’t want to be reminded that some individuals are getting ‘help’ in the form of millions of pounds from their families to build expensive real estate in the city.
With the upper class, it makes me wonder if people actually feel inspired by their show of strength [in green bills of course]… surely I am not. With the sinner class, I wonder if there’s a sense of relief of being apart from a class that is discovering new frontiers of deplorable human behaviour in a continous spiral of doom…again, I don’t feel this relief.
Where I ask are the reports of ordinary lives? Not in the form of reality television, surely. Where are the reporters that go about their jobs reporting ordinary stories that speak of human sentiment – good or a bit lacking? Even ordinary people when they appear on television tend to morph into something else. And this is here in the UK where television isn’t as invasive as other places.
I’ve noticed this media invasion creep into the use of Twitter too. Some tweets are adorably personal and ordinary / others shameless brand building exercises. We don’t seem to have the time anymore to ‘be’ ourselves.
In a conversation with my six year old neice who read out her project for me on the phone and then asked for a notebook and a teether for her younger brother as gifts, I marvelled at the innocense of youth. When we’re not bogged down by warped jobs or misplace sense of selves — instead we’re delighted in the discovery of living and learning. That is so pure and powerful. Parenthood I think is what saves us all from the ailments of ‘being’ adults.

Second half shuroo – Part two

After a quick tea break we were up for speaker number two, who’s topic was titled ‘The idea of India’, rather deceptively, let me warn you. If I thought this was going to be a crescendo the like we’d hear after a good rom-com, it wasn’t. The professor from John Hopkins was a Sindhi who read his speech from a print-out. He had little to no public speaking skills but what he read out was quite an insightful political analysis of the Indian economic journey. He was also the author of the book ‘The idea of India‘ written in the late 1990s. Mr. Khilani’s speech was about the cost we will pay if we do not heed to the many different problems that currently get swept under the magic carpet that is our flying economy! Problems, what problems, you might think. Isn’t the American adage – ‘It’s the economy, stupid’ really the only problem in this world? [Clearly Obama doesn't think so otherwise the world wdn't witness this crazy wrestling match he is part of against gun-tottling Republican madmen!]
So what are the problems we are building up to? [Haven't we heard enough already about poverty and the environment and its like? Will someone call Mr. Kumar back into the room please?] Here’s a list I gathered:
- Mr. Khilnani started with a beautiful phrase – ‘Intriguing inversion of Indianness’: What he means is that in the 70s or 80s most products being sold in India were marketed with pictures of Switzerland. So you’d buy a bar of soap that had a graphic of the Swiss Alps in the background. Today this has changed. Indianness he said is becoming a big selling point and yet he argued, this ‘Indianness’ is as fictional as were the ‘Swiss alps’.
- If anybody has read Mr. Nilekani’s book or listened to his interviews you would be familiar with India’s favorable demographic divident. Mr. Khilnani picks up on this thread early on in his speech. In ten years the average age in India will be 30. Recent survey show that Indians are amongst the most aspirational citizens in the world today. Now, he pauses, let’s bring these two seemingly positive occurences, one a reflection of today and another a calculation for ten years from now – - and let’s ask ourselves what this means. Today in a village, young men can see a shop full of the latest cell phones and gadgets and aspire to ‘one day’ own the one he likes most. In ten years time, will his aspiration be realized? This is the question Mr. Khilnani wants us to ponder. Given our current status quo his argument is a resounding no. Furthermore he adds that the single most common reason for citizens taking up arms is not poverty but a case of dashed hopes. This is what he refers to as the “paradox of a new prosperity that is material for future concern.” You got to love this man’s expressions. So what if he’s just reading it off an article that perhaps was previously published – so what if he doesn’t once look up at his audience? The best part is that he’s not done yet with this argument.
- 1/3 of India is afflicted with naxal-related activities, reflecting this impatience that translates into acts of vioence. Who, he asked, will protect the optimism of the young?
- Finding the answers to a more “equitable growth” will be critical to us not ten years from now but today. The idea of redistributing wealth is not a new one to Indian history. He is referring here to past failed attempts by Nehru’s as well as current failures with positive discrimination [reservation] in private companies.
Interspersed in his arguments are the following stats:
- 70% of Indians are employed in the informal sectors. Who will protect their rights?
- Child mortality rates in India are higher than those of Ethiopia!!!
- 43% of children under the age of five are mal-nourished.
Moving on to his next argument, Mr. Khilnani offers us my favorite expression from his whole speech yet. He refers to the “geographical assymetry of India’s growth” – something that can be easily explained with numbers. Gujurat is growing at three times the rate of Bihar. Punjab earns about five times as much as Bihar. Kerala’s literacy rate is a miracle number for the likes of UP. Mr. Kumar referred to this simplistically as the Northern-Southern divide. Mr. Khilnani instead refers to it as the unweildy scale of some states. At least four states have a population over a 100 million and UP alone will be as large as 250 million. 28% of Indian population are in cities while this number is due to rise to 36% by 2020. Apart from the four big cities today, there will be 70 more of these in the near future. How will we meet the challenges of scarcer resources and a parliament that has more representatives from states that are most populous but not necessarily the same states that are the most educated or the most affluent. The reality of Mayawati as Prime Minister is purely about numbers and this drama is unfolding as we speak where in UP new constituencies are being drawn up as I type!
As I draw to the end of this post [one that inevitably will be published in two posts - Deepan just commented that nobody will have the patience to read such a long post!], I am reminded of the spinning wheel of Time that preceded every episode of the Mahabharata series on television. Time doesn’t wait for anyone nor is it possible for human beings to hold the wheel of time. The call to action for us is in recognizing the humility of our position. We need to reject the chest thumping draw of love and war and instead focus on a more tempered, holistic approach. Having Dr Manmohan Singh is reassuring for he isn’t your alpha male. Having a Sonia Gandhi as head of the Congress is also a blessing, one we are often most arrogant to ignore. Together this team can do more, and have started to in this very ‘Out of the box’ union of leadership.
The wheel is ever-moving and like Willie Darylymple said in his book launch [details in another post] – “…In our life time we will see the world order reversed…” – there is a core fatalistic thread to all this, one that needs to anchor us with resolve and not indifference.

Interval katam, Second half shuroo – Part 1

The second half of the India focus event at the British Museum was a study in contrast of male postering. Much of our glimpse of the world, its success & failures are in the perspective of men. A history class teaches us more about wars than about culture. Are wars solely about men? For the most part yes. It should follow then that the business of war is also man-made.
Without getting all feminist-like, and to avoid digressing this early into my post – I have been reluctant to write about the second half of my day at the British Museum. When I poked at that reluctance, it offered up a couple of reasons. The first of course is about male postering. The second is that with every exciting project, and India will always be an exciting project, is the need for a ‘call to action’ [one of my favorite American phrases] – - A need for us, participants in the exciting project to get our hands dirty realizing the project – and neither discussions in that second half had that on offer. I would further hypothecate that this too is a ‘guy’ thing and something tells me I wouldn’t be too far off.
Post lunch we settled into our rather uncomfy seats to listen to the Co-director of the Aditya Birla India Center at the London Business School. Mr. Kumar is a confident public speaker who’s written a book that got released 3 months before the recession started speaking of “India’s path to overtaking the US GDP by 2050″ [borrowing the expression from Willie Darylymple's book launch that we attended on Friday evening]. I don’t remember his book’s title however so you’ll need to look that up. As a marketing prof, this man was full of stories. His first story was about SLPropac [not sure if that's spelt right] – a company that was very keen on getting Mr. Kumar’s expertise. Having never heard of this company before and aiming to be strategic about the ‘kind’ of clients he offers his service to, Mr. Kumar politely tried turning them down. They insisted and flew Mr. Kumar to Mumbai for a preliminary discussion. This resulted in a book that sums up the different stories of Indian companies and their path to going global. Note: You’ll find the SlPropac story in the book. In short this company has about 35% of global market share in plastic tubes the kind that make up our toothpaste or a L’Oreal cream/gel casing. In this talk Mr. Kumar spoke about the different paths Indian companies were taking to go global. Some highlights that I remember are:
- Companies that make it big in the Indian markets are very easily able to scale operations globally. Even if they don’t want to go global, they have but little choice. Eg: Mahindra & Mahindra: A big player in the Indian market went global and now has a third of the market share of tractors in the southern states of US. The head of M&M told Mr. Kumar that he would be doing a disservice to his employees if he didn’t go global.
- Companies that are big in the Indian market have surplus of cash – so much so that they are compelled to acquire foreign companies. Once they acquire foreign companies [Tetley, Jaguar, Carlton etc], they are able to convert what was a ’slow margin – slow growth’ business into a ‘high margin – high growth’ one. We’ve only seen the beginning of Indian acquisitions. Be prepared to see a lot more.
- Having spent some time recently in Bangalore, Mr. Kumar is of the opinion that India is aiming to be the innovation center of the world. Yes, it started as Outsourcing, next came Services and now the next curve is innovation. He warned that the Western world’s approach of waving goodbye the Outsourcing & Service jobs gladly, hoping to retain the ‘value-add’ work may not pan out the way they hope.
While the first half of his speech was cheerleader quality and by now I had adrenaline buzzing through my veins [remember the male posturing comment..], Mr. Kumar then started to talk about the challenges that this progress brought with it.
- Integration: Indians like to hire Indians. How does an Indian company hire a Japanese manager and integrate them with an Indian HQ? This will be a major challenge. The US, he said, were the best at integration. Since I work for an American company, I have first hand experience at what this means. Europeans on the other hand are pathetic. His phrase was TMT browning – the % of ‘Brown skin’ on your ‘Top Management Teams’. British company boards, he said, were an unemployment scheme for British aristocrats who have little worth anywhere else.
- India doesn’t have enough people: In order to feed the growth we are all talking about we will need a well-qualified workforce that we lack today. Our primary and secondary school systems will need to be improved, if we are to stand any chance of realizing our potential, he warned.
- Innovation is not going to be easy for Indian managers, he said. This is because Indian managers were masters of efficiency. We traditionally lacked sufficient resources and so we excelled at making do with too few. Innovation on the other hand requires waste something Indians will struggle to accept. Why does this matter? He used the example of two big Software companies that started in the early 1980s. One of them has a turnover of 4 billion with profits at about 1 billion. The other has a turnover of 60 billion with profits at about 20 billion. This is the difference innovation can make. The former company is Indian and the latter American.
- What about the cost advantage? Some of the real estate in Mumbai is more expensive than London, he said. To hire a financial professional in parts of Mumbai is more costlier than in New York. So the cost advantage will only stay with India for about 10 – 15 more years.
Mr. Kumar ended his talk with the following rather catchy phrase — We need to, he said, stop renting IQ and start creating IP. We need to go from ‘Outsourced and Made in India’ to ‘Imagined and Owned in India’.
Clearly at this point I was ready to spring up from my chair with a vociferous ‘Jai Hind’, waving an imaginary Tiranga – but that wasn’t to be, quite.
End of Part One.

Durga, Gaya and the sacred Thames

The second talk at my day long event at the British Museum was by a cultural historian. Yes, this is a real profession and yes I was feeling pretty envious by now. Having just listened to a Kew scientist, I was now facing an extremely articulate cultural historian – and I wondered where I was when God was giving out these professions.
In any case the premise of the talk was about myths and those of immigrants can influence local populations and sometimes even mutate into local myths.
An example was of a museum that for the past seven years has been collecting Hindu artefacts from the river Thames. In doing so, we see the revival of the ‘Sacred Thames’ with the only exception that it was for an entirely different faith.
The speaker wasn’t too coherent with her talk but seemed to take off on the morbid impact of climate change and suggest the re-adaptation of Hindu myths as ways to awaken us from our dazed, insolent and selfish treatment of Mother Nature. She referred to the Hindu trinity – The creator married to knowledge or Saraswati, the sustainer married to wealth or Lakshmi and the destroyer married to Mother Nature or Durga. I felt quite thrilled to hear her speak the name of Durga on the eve of Navratri. She spoke about the two forms of Durga – Parvati and Kali and their contant manipulations in order to keep Earth alive and kicking. She then made the parallel to the findings of Havelock’s Gaya theory and Hindu myths that both refer to the Earth as the greatest goddess of all. Seen from space Earth pulsates like a living organism, expanding and contracting at will, Havelock is said to have documented. Note: She did end on some morbid notes brandishing us for ignoring the call of climate change that influenced my post-lunch notes – Below is an extract [Quite morbid stuff, really which is why the third talk of the day had me singing with glee - coming up in my next post]:
How do myths die?
In myself I view a person that flaunts rituals, practices or symbolism. When selecting a venue to get married, it didn’t make a difference if we married under a Peepul tree or a Banyan tree. The idea that we were associating our marriage with renunciation [banyan tree] was a tad much for my brother in law – as he tacitly put across at the right moment. Thus succinctly put, I was albeit quick to align myself with the fortuitous choice.
Who are the custodians of our myths? The stories of our past- are they just a remnants of childhood – to be shed when entering the world of adults? Since when did being an adult become such a dirty, trying chore? We look around us and there are only examples of what’s going down or away – is there any reason why happiness is so hard to find when you’re an adult?
Post script: I do really wish I can hear Devdutt speak – his knowledge on mythology is just amazing. Mithya is quite easily a daily companion, always refreshing and insightful. I do believe that human sanity can only be restored by the proper employment of myths – that we share them with our children not for their pleasure but to retain our own sanity.

What’s your bio climatic envelope?

Deepan enrolled me to spend a day at the British Museum at an event that was focused on the potential [past and future] of India. The day consisted of four talks / discussions in addition to an optional tour of the related exhibits at the museum [Kew's Indian landscape being my main draw].
I went with trepidations because the day started out like a normal work day for me – something that I grumbled about. Getting up in the morning, ensuring that I cooked a main meal and by the time I sat down within the Central line tube car I was bushed already. Forty-five minutes later I was at the venue, wary of how the day would progress – even my anticipation of viewing Kew’s Indian landscape buried in a small corner of my mind.
The first speaker was a man from Kew who quickly took a look at the audience and quickly singled himself out as the only scientist. I was a tad offended. Scientist I might not be but I wasn’t all too sure about what about our appearances had him thus resigned! Five minutes into his introduction he professed expertise on the continent of Africa thus sidestepping any real grasp of understanding the environmental contraints of the sub-continent – none of this doing him any favors in the eyes of his audience. His presentation then carried forth a series of slides about the Millenium seed bank initiative [one that I absolutely am totally behind] intersperced with a few ideas & facts & figures about it’s relationship to India.
Here are my notes for those of you interested. [I am partial to facts & figures[starved as I am to those collected around India especially] so you’ll see more of that here than any of my observations]
About the Millenium seed bank project:
- Their main seed bank in the Arctic is protected by polar bears.
- Only 0.6% of our natural biodiversity [solely crop seeds] is being targetted in this project.
- Will it work? 5% freeze doubles the span of a seed.
So why should India get involved?
- 61% of Indian land is used for cultivation, 3.29 million km2 land surface area.
- 62% of population in agriculture and 32% of gdp is from agriculture.
- Source: IFPRI, 2008 – 200 million people in India are hungry.
- India’s population: 1966 – 500 million growing to 1.5-1.7 billion in 2050.
- Problem statement: Need to feed 500 million people in addition to current demands.
Threats to all countries:
- 50% of all of our calorie intake come from wheat, rice and maize.
- 80% of intake from 12 plants, 4 tubers and something else that I wasn’t fast enough to capture.
- Diminishing diversity: 60k – 100k are threatened to extinction [We don't even have an inventory of all species - something Kew is working on currently]
Threats specific to India:
- Lost land – Salination is a big threat.
Is it possible to restore land to natural habitat? Example: Use of salt tolerant species to reduce salt levels and thus reclaim the land for agri. purposes.
- Water scarcity – 92% of water devoted to agriculture, 70% of irrigation comes from ground water. By 2020, demand will outstrip supply / if not sooner.
Can we build ground water supply by restoring catchment forests that aren’t just using monocultures but a complex ecosystem?
- 193 million cattle [our holy cows] are putting pressure on forests that need to be cleared to provide pastures.
- 6k tons of topsoil lost to river
- What about reclaiming mining land for agriculture or restoration of catchment forests? Example in Australia where land used for boxite mining is then followed by a restoration process by putting back 100 species.
Climate change threats:
- Increase in CO2 levels and pests.
- Temp increase of 2.5deg C – 4.9 dec C: Loss of 32 – 40% of rice and upto 52% of wheat.
- 1m increase in water levels can displace 7 million people.
Conclusion points:
- Plant based solutions can only be part of the solution.
- Put research into practice as it suits local conditions.
A new phrase I learnt: ‘Bio climatic envelope’ – It’s basically the conditions available for a seed to germinate. The shorter the period the less we will attain the potential of the seed. I believe it can be applied to other contexts as well and is a wonderfully brilliant concept.
Something I learnt pertaining to the UK: There are three “sacred cows” for the British government – Health, Education and foreign aid.
Stay tuned for my posts on the 3 other sessions held that day.