Author: Rajesh Jain

This week’s links:

• The Leader’s Checklist: A new book by Michael Useem, “presents a collection of 15 principles that can help leaders navigate successfully through even the most difficult circumstances.” A Knowledge@Wharton interview.
• Apple could buy the mobile industry: A short piece on asymco but with a remarkable insight on how the industry has been transformed by Apple and Android. “The more remarkable thing is that as market values of phone vendors continue to decline, Apple’s cash will continue to grow dramatically. Indeed, a time may soon come when Apple’s cash will be worth more than the entire phone industry.”
• Return to rent-seeking: An edit in Mint. “India needs economic reforms as never before. They are unlikely anytime soon.”
• Interview with US historian David McCullough: in WSJ. Much of what he says applies to India also. He says “textbooks have become “so politically correct as to be comic.”
• R Chandrashekhar Interview: He is India’s Secretary, Department of Telecom & Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Communication & Information Technology. “Mobile is the only medium which can reach out to 850 million people.”

One of the evenings recently, I ended up watching “Rang De Basanti” on TV. I had watched it after it was released, but watching the movie in the current political context of corruption and middle class frustration with the political class created a new setting. While the solution advocated at the end is not the right one, the points made by the movie are worth thinking through.

In the past few weeks, even the most loyal supporters of the government have been exasperated by the silence and inaction. When I talk to people in the know, they mention the complete paralysis of policy making in the government. This has to change.

The challenges we face on multiple fronts are immense, but without the vision and will to tackle them, we can end up digging ourselves into a hole. If ever there was a time that an Indian politician needed to seize this moment in time and rise as a leader, this is it.

A friend recently asked me why the only I do on Twitter and Facebook is repost by blog posts. Why didn’t I do more? Why wasn’t I more active?

There are three reasons. First, I like to write slightly longer posts. Second, I like to take my time thinking through what I write. Third, given the nature of my work, I like uninterrupted periods of time. Let me explain all the points.

Twitter’s 140-char limit and real-time interaction has terrific advantages. But for me, I like my reactions to be a bit more measured. The blog, for me, gives me the time and space to write how I feel. Like I have said below, I write the blog to help myself think better. If others benefit from it, that is great. For me, writing has always been something which has made me more attentive and thoughtful. The blog gives me the room I need to clarify my own thought processes in a way Twitter cannot.

Also, in today’s world, where there is a near constant spate of interruptions, we are not getting enough chunky amounts of thinking time.  Thinking is very critical for what I need to do – both in NetCore and for the political ideas. That needs less interruption and more continuous stretches of time. Email and SMS anyways beckon regularly. I don’t want to, at least for now, add tweets and Facebook status updates and news feeds to that list.

Every once in a while, I come across a bookshop that is made for a book lover. Strand Bookshop in Mumbai is one such shop. I wrote recently about Manohar’s in Delhi for India books. Another such shop is Manney’s in Pune. (Disclosure: Manney’s owner’s daughter is married to my cousin.)

There is no better pleasure than browsing through such a bookshop and discovering books that one would never easily find on an online store. Standing there amidst the shelves, picking up a book that makes one’s heart leap, thumbing through it, reading a para or two, and then deciding on whether to buy or not — this is what a click can never replicate.

A book shop like this is a labour of love – for it is built by selection of a person who knows both customers and books. There is no better way to spend an hour or two on a lazy afternoon than in a shop made by and for book lovers.

I wrote about this last year, but I just cannot help writing about it again. It is unbelievable that a major railhead like Bandra in Mumbai can have such pathetic access by road. The terminus has been around for many years, and little seems to have changed. Come the rains, whatever little of the road is there is also covered with potholes and puddles. Isn’t anyone even bothered?

It has been just a couple weeks of rain, and already many of the roads are in a pathetic situation. It is the same story every year. Hundreds of crores will again be ‘spent’ fixing the roads after the monsoon. So much for our anti-corruption battle, when the outcomes are right under our wheels every kilometre we drive.

In the case of Bandra Terminus, it is quite unbelievable that we created such a critical component of infrastructure without even bothering about proper integration with the rest of the city. And the silence of passengers makes us all complicit in the tragedy that unfolds.

A few days, I got a message on Facebook from an old IIT friend – who as it turned out was one of my first raggers! As we were reliving old memories, the topic of discussion turned to ragging. I know that today ragging is seen as something of an evil, but in those days (1984, in my case), it was something that helped me open up in ways nothing else would have.

When I went to IIT, I was one of the typical “mama’s boys” having grown up in a sheltered environment. My first evening at the hostel ensured that life in IIT would be very different! It ended at 3 am, with me cooking Maggi Noodles for one of the seniors. That first day made it very clear that my reserved personality would do me no good, and possibly get me into more trouble. I had to open up in a way that I had not previously done. Being a topper made no difference – everyone was.

Ragging lasted about a month — every evening there was a new group of seniors to be entertained. That was how I made friends – not just with them, but also fellow freshies, as we shared our ragging stories. It made me much more outgoing than I could ever have become. For me, Ragging is something which helped the transformation from a boy to a man.

From a post a year ago:

Since Abhishek started school a year ago, our vacations now have to sync up with his, which effectively mans the IB/IGCSE calendar. So, we have the unusal situation of having June and July as the vacation months for him, even as all his cousins have finished theirs and are back in school!

When I was growing up, summer vacations for me meant visits to my grandparents home in Pune, or the occasional visits to Rajasthan. As a family, I do remember us going once to Kashmir – taking Jammu Tavi from Mumbai on what was then one of the longest train journeys in India slicing through many Indian states. The second vacation that I remember was an SOTC European tour in 1981 (as a 14-year-old).

There is a lot of India that I haven’t seen. I hope we can do that during Abhishek’s growing-up years.

This week’s links:

• IBM CEO Interview: Sam Palmasino speaks to Forbes. “We picked three major shifts and came up with the road maps–first the 2010 road map, now the 2015 road map. The three shifts are 1) global economies rebalancing, 2) the post-PC era driving infrastructure technologies like cloud and analytics, and 3) a changing client that puts a value on integration.”
• A Great Graduation Speech For Engineers And Entrepreneurs: by Krista Marks (via Brade Feld). You hear people say, failure builds character, or fail early fail often. This is not only wrong – it is dangerous.”
• Why are reforms so difficult? A research paper by Alessandra Bonfiglioli and  Gino Gancia. (via Rajeev). “This column notes that many governments fear electoral defeat if they enforce unpopular policies. But it also argues the risk of punishment in the polls is the lowest in times of crisis.”
• India on an inflation treadmill: by Niranjan Rajadhyaksha.”The only long-term solution to the current tangle is to promote policies that shift the supply curve to the right.” Also see NY Times article: “As India’s Growth Slows, Leaders Face Political Headwinds.”
• Revolt of the Outlander: by Swapan Dasgupta. “Anna Hazare and Ramdev appeal to two distinct social classes.” (via Amit).

A few closing thoughts.Through the road and train journeys, I could not help think that I should do a driving tour of India sometime in the next year. One needs to get out of the metro (and South Mumbai) cocoon. Maybe, a small group can be put together to drive, discuss and debate. A good time for such a tour would be in Oct-Nov this year when Atanu is in India.

Parts of rural India still seem to be frozen in time. Just 15-20 kms from towns and the world once again changes – perhaps more sharply than that from metros to towns. That India needs to be revitalised – there are kids there who need education and opportunities. I still don’t think we are doing that good a job in India on either of these fronts. That needs to change.

Finally, we need faster trains. More like high-speed trains. Mumbai-Surat should be done in less than 90 minutes, with another hour getting one to Ahmedabad. Our railway network needs a massive upgrade. Even as we build more roads, we need to learn form China and invest in a massive network of trains that can do 200-400 kms in an hour.

The two days of travel made me think that we need to travel more in India. I am already looking forward to our Binsar vacation in the Kumaon hills of Uttarakhand. I haven’t travelled widely enough in India – most of my childhood vacations alternated between Pune and Rajasthan. With Abhishek now growing and his memories becoming persistent, we hope to do more such travel within India.The India outside the metros is so different. The pace of life is so different. Traffic comprises mostly of two-wheelers and three-wheelers. Commute times are short. Consumption of English newspapers and channels is very limited. The local languages matters most. The local songs and folk music has a different rhythm and lilt to it. People seem to have so much time for each other.

Driving sense on the highways has improved but it is still not good enough. On the positive side, trucks do shift lanes to the left. On the flip side, plenty of vehicles going slower than the traffic still end up in the right lane and have to be honked out to the left!