Little Push,2016 to 2017

This is my last Blog of this year 2016, as we are going to enter the year 2017

A year which brought so many changes and opened doors of so many opportunities.

For me the whole year was both positive and a little bit of negative.As everything in this world have

two factors that is negative as well as positive.

But it depends upon us,which side we lean.Look even here when I was talking about negativity

I used the word "Little bit", We always want to Be POSITIVE

This what human nature is,we find difficulties ,sometimes we feel so passively that we are not in a

situation to go forward.

But even a small push,make us to do such which we have never thought of doing even in the dreams.

The only requirement is that little push ,that little effort

Took the example from "Ramayana" the Hindu Epic ,where "Hanuman" forgets about his powers

but a little effort of others, made him realize about his hidden potential.

We all have that same Potential equally embedded by the creator

"This world is full of sorrows" What Buddha has said..Life is too short ,look at Syria and what the

world is facing today.Everywhere there is misery,

But there is a solution to every problem. Just a support system needs to be strong.

One can become support system of other and that person can become support system of other.

This way the life can become Beautiful,Just fill the GAP

May this Year Brings more happiness, more success and most important thing more Fun.

I remember the poem of Harivanshrai Bachchan

Lehron se dar kar nauka paar nahi hoti

himmat karne waalon ki haar nahi hoti

Nanhi cheenti jab daana lekar chalti hai

chadhti deewaron par sau baar fisalti hai

Mann ka vishwas ragon mein saahas banta hai

chadh kar girna, gir kar chadhna na akharta hai

Akhir uski mehnat bekar nahi hoti

koshish karne waalon ki haar nahi hoti…

Dubkiyan sindhu mein gota khor lagaata hai

ja ja kar khaali haath laut aata hai

Milte na sahaj hi moti paani mein

badta doogna utsaah issi hairaani mein

Mutthi uski khaali har baar nahi hoti

himmat karne waalon ki haar nahi hoti…

Asafalta ek chunauti hai sweekar karo

kya kami reh gayi dekho aur sudhaar karo

Jab tak na safal ho neend chain ki tyago tum

sangharshon ka maidaan chhodh mat bhago tum

Kuch kiye bina he jai jai kaar nahi hoti

himmat karne waalon ki haar nahi hoti

Smile Please :)

Do you ever wonder what people are feeling when they smile? Do they smile because they're happy or do they smile because they want people to believe they're happy? Maybe they smile because they want you to smile and be happy.

A smile can touch a person's life in ways you can never imagine. It's infectious and can cause a chain reaction. It can be memorable to someone you pass on the street or the mall or driving... and it only takes a split second to smile and forget, yet... to someone that needed it, it can last a lifetime. Maybe I should smile more often.

"Smile a while ,while you smile 

others will smile

while others will be smile,

there will be miles of smile"

"Tu haqiqt hai ya koi fasana,
Tu roshni hai ya andhera,
Tu jo bhi hai,
 hai to meri Sanso me bassi"

Running For The Destiny

Life can feel empty when you have no idea what your destiny is. You have a

feeling that there is something important, significant, and worthwhile that you were
born to do, but do not know what. Through the trappings of materialism many
people envisage their calling as being some kind of mega rich.

Your true calling is something that you have to put together piece by piece; it's not
something that arrives already assembled as a gift. You construct your destiny
from your instincts about the things that just feel right. Instinct is the closest thing
to destiny and we must rely on our feelings to guide us to the things that are natural
for us and develop our potential fully from there.

Running is one basic part of your destiny. When you run there are times that it just
feels instinctively right. There is a sense of satisfaction and fulfillment that you can
reach in running, which happens every time you work on a part of your true
calling. Running may not be glamorous or unique but for everyone, it is part of
your destiny.

When you were a baby, your first mission in life was to stand up but that is never
enough. Every baby knows they have to learn to run. Infants run everywhere, by
instinct, and you can see the joy they get when they are doing what is natural; they
know running is their destiny.
Once you master the art of running, it lays down one cornerstone of your true self,
one part of your calling. As children, we should keep strengthening this
cornerstone of our destiny through our love of games and running. As we grow up
and enter the adult world, life becomes more diverse and there are many
distractions that call us away from our true path.

Running is easy to neglect with demands on our time such as studying, making
money, family, and the appeal of easy pleasures. Once running has slipped out of
your life it takes a conscious effort to get back into enjoying it. "I just don't have
time," is a common excuse, but people who run know that it gives them more
energy and they do more in the same time because they work more effectively.
Without running your life feels stagnant and lacking vigor. One of the many
advantages of hitting the track is that it actually improves brain power by
delivering more oxygen in the blood to your brain. It has been shown that running
helps people make clear decisions, concentrate longer, and recall information
faster.

Running activates the instinctual parts of your brain that help you find the other
parts of what make you who you really are. When you run you attain one part of
your destiny. But to find your true self, you need all the pieces together. Like a
puzzle, you have to put all the pieces in the right place to get the complete picture
of who you are. Running is one essential step to take you towards finding the other
parts of your true self.

During a run when you are mentally sharp, feeling good, and inspiration is there,
you can identify clearly other aspects of what is important in your life. Running
increases your creativity to find how to attain your destiny, increases your will
power to keep on towards your true calling, and ideas become crystal clear after
taking them out on a run.

We should use the parts of our life that instinct leads us to, such as running, to
stand higher, to get closer to reaching who we really are. Make running a key part
of your lifestyle to be instinctively sharp and use the boosted brainpower to help
you attain your true calling.

To THE LIFE

To love. 

To be loved. 

To never forget your own insignificance. 

To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. 

To seek joy in the saddest places. 

To pursue beauty to its lair. 

To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. 

To respect strength, never power. 

Above all, to watch. 

To try and understand. 

To never look away. And never, never, to forget.

The Turn of the Tortoise: The Challenge and Promise of India’s Future

"Whatever you can rightly say about India, the opposite is also true" - Joan Robinson

In early 2000s, an Indian diplomat serving in Nepal visited the Kosi barrage, built across the unstable river whose water volume increases fatally in times of monsoon. He was stunned to see the dredgers, whose work was to regularly clear the river of silt,were lying unused as they were under repair. The diplomat immediately contacted the Bihar government for immediate action but nothing ensued. As it happens ,in 2008, the Kosi floods happened leaving lakhs of people adrift and homeless. Later, it was known that the satellite maps of the river were not being accessed by water resources ministry . The sensors that provide data on water flows had stopped functioning long back. And thus even as the waters of Kosi surged ahead bursting banks, the government had no clue about the state of the river. It was a complete breakdown of government machinery. Snafu.

By narrating this incident , T.N.Ninan, in his book "The turn of the turtoise" underlines how scarily non-existent the government can be. But in the next page, he points out government's efficiency in mission-mode events like elections or Kumbh melas .Thus, in these two pages, the author sets the tone of his book . Despair and hope. This balance is what makes the book stand out from various other tomes which either take the tone of a "Mother India" or an " India : Emerging power".

T.N.Ninan is a veteran journalist who started his career in India Today. He specialised in matters of economy and this experience led him to take up the editorship of Business Standard, a champion of free markets, in 1993. In 2010, he took over as the chairman of the paper. His Saturday column in the paper has a dedicated following among policymakers and general readers alike. For such a career involving prolific writing and keeping weekend deadlines, it is a surprise that it has taken so long for him to write his first book. Or it may be precisely because he was caught in the unrelenting storm of journalism that it took him so long.

This book comes at a significant juncture in the post-independence trajectory of India when we have the first single majority government at the helm since 1984 and our country is trying to reclaim the high growth path which it had once traced in mid-2000s. The book does not focus on a single domain as such but covers multiple aspects which need to be addressed and discussed for India to march ahead. An interesting observation is that we have had our country compared to many animals - be it a tiger or an elephant or even a dragon. But Tinan takes the curious analogy of a slumbering tortoise but it's not all pessimistic as he clearly says that it is the tortoise's turn now.

The book is divided into five sections. In the first section of the book, the author lays a platform of numbers for the ideas to follow in the rest of the chapters. He argues how the 1991 reforms were not deep enough as they touched only the product markets and left the factor markets unreformed. Ninan reminds that our failures have been mainly related to government because it tried to bite more than it can chew -right from running watch factories to making failing airlines stay afloat.

In another sharply written chapter, Ninan reels out numbers like how China's income grew at a rate of over 10 percent in the decades straddling the year 2000,how it's foreign exchange reserves are twice India's GDP and how China has trumped illiteracy and poverty effectively to show that clubbing India and China together is a exercise in imbecility. Even as our priority sectors for manufacturing are basic ones like electronics and garments, China has moved on to loftier aims in high-end numerically controlled machine tools and ocean engineering equipment etc.

In the second section, the author covers manufacturing and private sector. In recent times, there is a huge focus on manufacturing through the "Make in India" campaign. The author stresses that India's cost advantage in sectors like garments in times of China's slowdown is not enough as there are other cheaper options available (Bangladesh, for instance). Thus , we need a wholesale reorientation of our hitherto rigid labour laws, focus on increasing the productivity of workers and undertake urgent large scale investments in infrastructure and above all, ease the process of doing business.

There is a separate section on the Indian state's curious mixture of overreach and under-performance. Ninan feels that government's noble intentions get scuttled by being blind to market realities. The anti-market mindset which we have inherited wrongly from Nehruvian days has made governments interfere with functioning of the marketplace through price controls, import controls and suboptimal public sector enterprises. Corruption is taken up in an inter-country comparison with USA's "Gilded age" when prosperity and corruption were bedfellows. The solution to corruption ,the author concludes, lies in stronger institutions, technology and more transparency in political/electoral funding. When it comes to poverty,  a decent case is made for direct cash transfers as it is less taxing on the governmental capacity to deliver. But the author wants more focus on delivery of merit goods like education and health without which mere cash transfers will amount to zilch.

In the section on Indian society, the author classifies Indian citizenry into four broad types based on expenditure per month per family. These are : Middle- class rich, aspiring neo-middle class, vulnerable no-poor and poor. He underlines how more and more vulnerable non-poor are climbing into the upper echelons in recent years. He believes the median family income will grow from Rs.22500 to Rs.40000 in ten years.

There is a separate section on how India deals with strategic issues like defence and foreign policy. Again,Ninan comes back to economics saying rapid economic growth remains the best foreign policy. In the climate change talks, Ninan faults India for clubbing itself with China i 2009 when China's per capita emission is much higher compared to India's. He also calls for emission caps to be based on emission intensity - emissions measured with respect to a unit of GDP.

In the concluding chapter, Ninan outlines three major trends that will be evident in times to come : huge spurt in growth of middle class, retreat of state from economy and devolution of powers from Delhi to state capitals.Some minor quibbles need to be mentioned as well. The focus on agriculture, education and health is kept to a bare minimum. Also, such a long book on economy could have spent more print ink on the interplay of politics and economy and how economically sound market policies which end up benefiting the downtrodden are not electorally viable. India is at a tantalising crossroad and the steps it takes now will have historical repercussions. Some of those steps can be learned from T.N.Ninan's book so that the tortoise ensures that it's turn counts.

The Turn of the Tortoise: The Challenge and Promise of India’s Future

By TN Ninan