One More Child is Lost

It would have been better, if we could have left her identity unknown, Give a thought to her family, they will have to go through the trauma again and again. She would not like it.

It was never her wish to become Brave Heart or Nirbhay, she just wanted to live a normal life like all of us. All medical report suggest that she fought to the end to live, why perforce a sainthood of #BraveHeart or #Nirbhay on her. Accept her as your daughter and make a resolve to let a girl child live her life. That is from a Womb to her fulfilled life, without fear in her life.

A  life, where she can decide what she wants to be, what she wants to wear, which career she wants to choose, where she want to go, what time she wants to go and so on.  Just a normal Childhood that any parent would be proud to give.

The most enriching tribute to life lost in its prime, we must commit to make a change in our society by changing ourselves by making our children respect the humans and being Human. It is the mutual respect that will be taught in the childhood, laws to protect our children, force the corruption of thoughts and not just money out of our social system. Agreed, their will still be rouge elements or fringe elements in our society but at the least not in mainstream society. The strict laws that will drive fear in the minds and body of offenders.

How come we all become judges on half of our population and perforce a code of conduct, if that is correct for Women then why not same code for men. Can we grow up as a society and make a resolve that our girls will be safe from womb and through out the life and live.

Let us understand the nature of our universe, it is all about existence of opposites and contradictions. Let us celebrate our differences and diversity even being a male and female.

Let us make a resolve today and dedicate this year 2012 to "The Anonymous Indian"  through out the year and their braveness to make a change in their death they taught us a lesson.

Thank You My Daughter, You taught us to Live in Your Death.

A Tribute to the Brave Heart

Tribute to the Brave Heart 

Year 2012 has been a year off with lot more emotional moment and personal. Today, when I see a "Sea of Crowd" via the News congregating at Jantar Mantar, Raisina Hill, Parliament and many other places protesting against the #Rape of the #BraveHeart. It makes me think, how much we have allowed ourselves to be deignerated and allow us to fall to such levels.

The question that pricks my conscious is "How did we fall to this level & state as individuals  and at a higher level as a society?. I don't have answers but few thoughts, largely unstructured, what is that we are not doing correctly that at every step their is heinous crime that comes our way and forcing us to think and making our generation get on the roads to protest. 

We the generation of 1990's who were born in late 60's & 70's were divided by an arch-type Politician Mr. VP Singh, who divided the Young India of that time into "Higher & Lower Caste Young India"  The Anti-Mandal Commission was one of the spontaneous protest started from Jubliee Hostel of Delhi University with Student Union Presidents gathering in the Lawns of the Hostel amongst us. We took to streets, protests, Mashall Jaloos, self Immolation and getting badly mauled by Delhi Police through Water Canon,  Tear Gas Canon etc. The youth students were smart they applied Chunna water around eyes and wet handkerchiefs to avoid hurting eyes and throwing it back on the Delhi Police. 

Where is my generation, which all will be parents of this generation in the street protesting:

1. How did we allow state of our country to come to this point?
2. Why are we not voting in a Govt. that will be responsible to our children safety?
3. How come we allowed such corruption to happen, while we were enjoying the fruits of un-plugged, economically resurgent India?
4. We were the politically conscious generation, knew what these political class can do to our society, still we did not do anything?
5. Why don't we vote and our voice make impact ?
6. Why didn't we stop giving bribe for anything & everything?
7. How do we turn around our face from a  crime happening in front of us taking it to be some one else problem?
8. We don't ask uncomfortable questions in the forums that we interact in society may it be in our "Resident Welfare Association" etc

In nut shell, have we not dithered from our responsibility of making ourselves accountable to "Ask Questions? in right forum.

The True Tribute to "Young BraveHeart" & many other "Brave Hearts" that we ask questions and not bribe our way and make ourselves accountable for act of omission and commissions. 

Employer, Employee Hiring, recession, post-recession..

To see company's who actively laid off in the name of recession, scrambling for hiring. It will be interesting to see the response of employees. Yesterday it was companies who had upper hand & now it is the turn of employees. Now, employees are moving around with 2-3 offers and leaving the employers/prospective employers in lurch.

Maybe, all will learn the lesson, "Layoff" is not the best option in a recession, now the growth of such companies are getting stunted because of this and biggest casuality is Branding amongst employees. The employees should also watch out we are still not completely out of it.

In my opinion companies should look at their policy closely instead of letting go people they could have explored other options of survival.

1. Take a bigger cut in salary at Executive Management level i.e. company get more room CEO drawing 1 Million salary could have done with 800K and similarly other down in the management hierarchy and employees taking cut in salaries or a temporary freeze/cut for companies and employees to pass through the tough phase.

2. The communication to the employees from top management that will sensitise the employee's what the problem the company is facing and what are the suggestion from the employees to make it a participative decision, specially in a scenario it is going to affect the large chunk of employees.

3. To explore options, like taking compulsory off for a month i.e. Leave without pay for all employees that could have reduced the cost but at the same time, will be able to retain and increase loyalty to companies.

4. Imbibe, cost savings in the organization by implementing operational cost reduction by strictly implementing finish work in working hours, people hardly realise that in an organization 30% of the cost is due to making people productive i.e. electricity bills, phone cost, the list can go on. It is rather strange the value of the employee contribution is judged by how much does he/she stays in office or work late and not by his completed task.

5. In IT companies specially, their is lot of productive hours that are wasted in NOT getting right the first time culture, my experience tells me the same work by a smart worker is done in 2 hours but some other worker takes 2 days but due to T&M contract model leads us to give more work and patronize the mediocre person. The biggest causality of services model is promoting medicrocity in the system rather than productivity models that promotes meritocracy in the system.
Though, the critics will say, we are implementing the productivity model but may I ask them where is the incentive to do the productivity model remember it is hourly billing.

6. Lack of legacy planning i.e. Today their is a project the companies goes all out to fill their project and bench. What is the marketing, sales, practice doing in their planning based on their manpower planning. If, I may say so their is a major disconnect in the business process planning, though being a major input.

People make Great Companies and NOT Companies make great Employees....Remember. So, next time you are choosing a employer be careful to join the company that will treasure their employees as their family heirlooms.
As for employers.. Employers treasure your manpower, that will make you a Great Company.

Bill Gates speech: 11 rules your kids did not and will not learn in school

Rule 1: Life is not fair - get used to it!

Rule 2: The world doesn't care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.

Rule 3: You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school. You won't be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.

Rule 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.

Rule 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your Grandparents had a different word for burger flipping: they called it opportunity.

Rule 6: If you mess up, it's not your parents' fault, so don't whine about your mistakes, learn from them.

Rule 7: Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you were. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent's generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.

Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT. In some schools, they have abolished failing grades and they'll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer. This doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.

Rule 9: Life is not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you FIND YOURSELF. Do that on your own time.

Rule 10: Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.

Rule 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one.

Coorg: A must on the places one must see

Coorg, known as Scotland of India...it is seen to be believed. Medikeri, Raja kee Seat view as enchanting as any nature could present in its pristine beauty. Abbey Falls, looked just fascinating with the nature at best, every fresh droplet falling on the face, has been a pleasant experience. Dubbare Camp, seeing elephants in their own setting taking bath in the river, Siddhesh enjoyed every moment bathing the elephants and then taking a ride on it. Then, stopped by the Golden Temple, devoted to living God Dalai Lama has been an experience that is humbling and made you feel that, how Tibetans are fighting the grim battle to keep their culture alive in alien setting, seeing young Tibetans studying at the temple and their bright young faces strengthened by hope. Wish, them the best for their fight to regain their own land. Anu, Siddhesh & Rakesh all enjoyed the trip of coorg, leave aside minor adventure when the car broke down near Biridi, 30 kms away from Bangalore. Thanks, to Hyundi emergency services pulling us back to Bangalore with a Santro. Good, to be back home but Coorg has made a small place in our hearts...

Is the end of Search Marketing near: with growing footprints of Social Marketing

Search Marketing is the buzz word, today for Marketer’s all across the globe. Most of the e-marketing/digital marketing is the mantra for a quick return specifically buying the Pay-Per-Click option as the key to their success for lead generation, diverting traffic to their website.
The other key aspect is Google key word ranking; the attitude is if you are in the first top 10 ranking in the game of key words you are pretty much up there. The war is fought on the bidding of key words, where the relevance take the second seat and the bidding war takes it to the level that if I am not in the ranking on those generic key words then I am not their in the internet world. (Yahoo’s, MSN please excuse me, you were once their but no longer exist in the internet search user frame of mind).

The bigger question is in this bidding game who is the winner, is it you the advertiser or it is the Google, who ends up with Billions of Dollar of your advertising money.

More, so when the world is changing relevance and who generates the content is becoming the order of the day. Try, looking for “Best recipe for Chicken Pizza” or round the corner store that will give you the most delicious “Pasta” the answer will be not based on that single result that will meet your criterion but perhaps Google search will throw up 10,000 pages of the search. Get the picture…. Now, consider the scenario Face Book, Linked in, Orkut and many others of social networking sites irrespective of their positioning of business and fun usage have millions of user driven content. Add to it, the new trends of online journalism of billions of user’s blogging and constantly adding to the content for the search in the website.

Presto, you have added more than 100 Billion of content on various topics across the globe dynamically and getting added every second. Imagine, these entire social networks were having 100 Million users and each one was writing 1 blog a month, how much content will come into the public domain, i.e. 1.2 Billion blogs worth of content. Consider, who will be the owner of this content, it will be owned by the Network and being supplied to the search engines i.e. Google. The Billion Dollar question that is, if these networks were to put a price tag on supplying this content, where will be the Google will be getting content for the searches.

Add, to it to the relevance of the searches for advertisers to monetize the search through advertising or SEO. The situation looks pretty bleak for advertisers and users from a search prospective. This has already led to players entering into last mile searches and you find VC’s running after localized Search Engine companies to fulfill the gap. The situations for the Local Search Engine’s are going to face the same onslaught from the Social Network through blogs and other user generated content.

The Future, as it seems to unfolding to me is coming to paradigm shift, where the joining of the social and business network as one and creating a content generation and search engine of their own for revenue and survival. The focus will be to generate revenue for pretty much all the aspect of a human need that can be fulfilled online and for advertisers, sliced and diced direct customer segments that can be reached directly with a fraction of cost. Users will get access to the most relevant and authentic content as it will be generated by its peers in the internet world.

Interesting, isn’t it, though I have not gone in the detail of enhancing the relevance. I am sure at this moment, there will technology geeks who will be on the job to figure it out and may also be in the process of rolling out their new companies, with oodles of dreams in their eyes to make it big with millions and millions of dollars pouring in for them.

My prediction for future is the Social & Business Marketing Networks will be the key to marketers with all due respect to Google and individuals who may differ with me.

Written by: Puneet Sinha: A Global Marketer and self confessed student of Online Marketing. This is my personal view and in no way represents the view of my business affiliations and organizations that I work or worked for.

Stop whining: Its about time India hit back at Pakistan

Stop whining India, it is time to do something about Pakistan. A stable Pakistan is not in the interest of world peace, leave alone India. Army controls the country and owns its economy. Pakistan Army and ISI controls 90% of Pakistan economy, unless this is taken into account by our strategic think tank, we are not going anywhere.

Simply put, let us stop talking of a stable Pakistan since a stable Pakistan means multiple attacks on many more cities of India by that rogue organization ISI, which is the core of the Pakistan Army and the heart of Pakistan's economy. Political Leadership of India & we as Indians should take the following steps to destabilize the economy of Pakistan:

1. Subsidize the major export items of Pakistan (like Basmati rice, carpets, gas etc) and provide zero duty regime for such products. Make Pakistan economy bleed with severe losses.

2. Major countries like Germany, France, US providing arms to Pakistan and tie it to their entry into our markets that it will impact their ability to invest in India forget about future projects your existing projects will be in jeopardy.

3. Let China know, that our support on Tibet is conditional and if they don't stop supporting Pakistan India will go ahead and recognize Tibet government in exile and let Tibetans do what Pakistan has been doing in Kashmir and other parts of India. I am sure there are enough Tibetans who are fed up with the peaceful approach of Dalai Lama. This is also to settle the border dispute as per Mac Mohan line, we never had a border with China, it was all along Tibet and we will settle it with them.

4. Let American companies know that actual outsourcing done to India far exceeds the products and services they sell in India and repatriate huge amount of money. If the financial companies of US want to profit from investment from the growth economy like ours then their government needs to reduce equipping Pakistan by $5 billion. This is real politics, not waiting for President-Elect Obama to call us and making it news when he calls. Let us remember that American funds are in desperate search of emerging markets and not the other way about and added with the retirement benefits that they will have to offer to their Baby Boomers who will start retiring in large numbers from 2012.

5. Collaborate with Israel, work on joint base in Indian Ocean Island and circle Pakistan through Afghanistan etc. In short, make friends with enemies of Pakistan and work together.

6. Pressurize all International Funding companies to add additional conditionality like certification that money will not be going to front business of ISI & Army or give it NGO strictly for Human development to the loans given to them or at least do not vote for their loans.

7. Develop assets within Pakistan that will have destabilizing affect on stock market - use it for destabilizing the manufacturers that are supplying to armed forces or have links with them.

8. Revoke the MFN status given to Pakistan through SAARC and if need be throw out Pakistan from SAARC.

9. Ensure that Pakistan is thrown out of every world grouping that they are into. Ensure that they can't move an inch diplomatically. India has the economic power to make it happen; our politicians just need that back bone to make it happen.

10. Destroy their morale; make Pakistan Passport a non-grata in friendly countries, no visa is granted to them. Make it a condition for friendship and investments for any country in India. Let it hurt the army- and ISI-controlled country. This one step will destroy their identity and self-confidence.

11. No companies from India to invest in Pakistan and if they do so have punitive duties on them, till Pakistan stops exporting its own IT (international terrorism).


If Pakistan is disintegrated, and the idea of Pakistan is gone based on religion being the reason for two nations that will resolve many of our domestic issues. This will also end the saber rattling of Kashmiri Separatist.

Such is our strategic thinking in this complex world since our political class that is so influenced by Gandhi-Nehruvian theories that we ignore our interests. That they don't think through issues, it is better to be simple in our talks and vicious in our actions rather than the other way. Hopefully, the Mumbai attack will create an India that has the capability to stand up for itself as Indians.
India: For the Indians, By the Indians, Led by Indians.