Operation (Flood) Accomplished - Rest In Peace Dr. Verghese Kurien

Amul Girl cries for the first time,
since her appearance in 1960s.
Image Source: Amul Website

The year was probably 1987/88, and I had seen a film by Shyam Benegal, titled Manthan, which coincidentally shares it's year of birth with me. In those days of Door Darshan, anything other than Krishi Darshan was eagerly lapped up, but a song from the film remained with me. This very song, Mero Gaam Katha Parey, sung by Preeti Sagar, would push me to watch the film again, years later, in around 1994, and I became a fan of Dr. Verghese Kurien.

shovon chakraborty

If there's one single person ever, who has changed the entire landscape of a whole region, thorough his sheer persistence and relentless pursuits of the vision, which he believed in, here was the man. He took on the middlemen - the wholesalers, the moneylenders, and even the age-old feudal structure, present in the villages, in and around Anand. Nobody, from the moneyed classes, were happy with him. But his efforts resulted in the flowing of not red blood, but white milk, and led to a historic revolution among the local untouchables and the economically backward communities. Dr. Kurien lead from the front to create iconic institutions, such as, Amul, Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF), National Dairy Development Board (NDDB), Institute of Rural Management - Anand (IRMA) and many more. His open brief to Sylvester daCunha resulted in the creation of the "Amul Baby" or "Amul Girl", perhaps the most iconic Indian brand symbols.

Vocational Education & Training in India - Industry Association thinks of Vocation University

The Confederation of Indian Industries, CII - in short, had recently convened a seminar on the need to train millions of workers, particularly at lower levels, and making them employable in an industry relevant way. Titled, "Employment Exchanges to Employability Centres", the seminar had been convened at Chennai in the last week of July 2012. In the seminar, Mr S. Mahalingam, Chairman, CII National Committee on Skills and Executive Director cum CFO of Tata Consultancy Services Ltd, said that vocational education programs were necessary to make the best use of the demographic dividend, which our country enjoys. He also emphasized the need for radical changes in the course curricula and the skill training infrastructure. There were a lot of skills required across sectors such as construction, manufacturing, service-related industry including hospitality and healthcare.
shovon chakraborty business blog vocational training
The seminar ended with a note, emphasizing the requirement for setting up one or more "vocational university" in India.
vocational training education university India CII
This particular proposal, at first, made me uneasy. The very mention of setting up multiple university, meant that the government of India, through its regulatory agencies, had the scope of dictating terms. And, when that happens, we all know about the end results. A look at the state of the professional education in India is enough to make us understand about the negative impacts of regulatory bodies like UGC and AICTE. What these regulatory bodies ensure is that the curricula remain grossly outdated and irrelevant from the industry's perspective. As a regional head of an industry body had once mentioned, the professional courses teach our students to play cricket, while the industry expects them to be good at baseball.
vocational training future sharp skills, gram tarang

Speed, that was supposed to free up time! Tata DoCoMo Photon+ reviewed.

shovon chakraborty review product service india

The Photon+ advertisement promised, "Get Speed. Get Time." Catchy enough. Isn't it? The trick is to catch you first and then take you for a ride.
shovon chakraborty review product service india
Photon+, according to its parent company, is a high speed Internet access device and should be able to deliver uplink speed of up to 1.8 Mbps and downlink speed of up to 3.1 Mbps. These stats look great on paper, but the reality is a bit different.
shovon chakraborty review tata photon+
Well, let’s start from the beginning. This Tata Photon+ came to me as a bundled offer with my Lenovo ideapad. Although apprehensive, due to my past "not so sweet memories", I decided to go ahead with Photon+, as it offered seamless connectivity in the North Eastern regions too, unlike Reliance Netconnect+. Starting then, it has been a tale of unfulfilled promises. Let me share a couple of such instances.

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In the first case, the speed had been down to a crawl. After I had lodged a complaint, someone from the Customer Care informed me that a technician would be visiting my house to check the problem. She further stated that if faults were to be found in their network, there would be no service charges. However, if the problem was at my end, I will have to pay Rs.150/- as service charge. The technician duly visited and could find no fault with my system. It seemed that the cause of the problem lay in their network. But, come next billing cycle and surprise! They had added an additional Rs.150/- as the services charge. When confronted, they claimed that something was wrong in my system, which, by the way, was a plain lie. How do I categorize this? As cheating, of course.

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In the second instance, which started on the morning of 25th May 2012, the connectivity had pulled a Sorcar like trick and had disappeared altogether. I tried calling the customer care at around 12.30 pm. No success. Around 6.30 pm on the same day, after 7th or 8th attempt, I could speak to a Customer Care Executive (CCE) at last. But, it did not solve the matters and the CCE told me that some kind of upgradation work is being done in the area where I lived, and assured me that normalcy would be restored within 2 hours. Even after 7 hours and 4 more phone calls, the situation remained the same. It was 1.30 am on 26th May 2012 by that time. What followed next is the tale of going round in circles without any solution in sight. However, by that time, I managed to do two things. I had sent a formal complaint mail to the Customer Care, thereby raising a ticket. And, I somehow checked the available bandwidth, which was a princely 11 kbps. After 36 hours had passed since the beginning of the connectivity problem, at last I could get a reliable estimate of time period till normalcy to be restored. A CCE told me at 10.45 pm on 26 May 2012, Sunday, that the services would not be back to normal state before Monday (27 May 2012) morning. Monday morning arrived, but the problem persisted. It was only around noon, that the issue was finally resolved and normal connectivity was restored. However, no one bothered to contact me for the resolution of the complaint till 31st May 2012, when a lady called me to say, ".... Sir, regarding your complaint with ticket number xxxxxx, I would like to inform you that we are closing the same as resolved, as the connectivity problem no longer exists." Without really giving me a chance to say anything, she ended the call abruptly. May be, that’s the newest way of resolving customer complaints!

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Overall, the Photon+ service has not been able to stand up to the hype surrounding it. The major issues with the services, according to me, remain as follows -

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1. Pricing: Photon+ is definitely costlier than its competitors. When Reliance is offering 3G 5GB unlimited services at a speed of up to 7.2 Mbps at Rs.600/- per month, Photon+ 5GB unlimited data plan costs Rs.950/- plus taxes and that too at a lower speed of up to 3.1 Mbps. 

2. Speed: As I have been using wireless Internet connectivity since 2005-06, I have had the opportunity of experiencing and experimenting with almost all the available service providers. I can definitely vouch that Reliance Netconnect+ Broadband provides a faster connectivity in Kolkata and surrounding areas. 

3. Reliability: Photon+ does not provide a very reliable connectivity and as such, it should not be depended upon as the primary mode of Internet connectivity, especially by the professional users. 

4. Signal Drop: Another major problem seems to be the drop in signals after a few hours of continuous use. The only remedy to this problem is to follow the Disconnect and Reconnect routine. At the middle of some serious work, it can be really annoying. 

5. Customer Care: The less said about the Customer Care, the better. The CCEs seem to be totally clueless as to the happenings in the network. When it comes to even the most simple of trouble-shooting works, their lack of technical prowess comes to the fore. Add to that the tendency of the CCEs to finish the calls in a hurry, probably to meet some call time target, and you have what you can call a totally "uncaring" Customer Care.

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On the positive sides, Tata Photon+ has got a decent network coverage, that covers even the North Eastern states. Also, one should get relatively fast Internet connectivity in all the major regions of the country. The same however, cannot be said about its competitors. In case someone has to travel a lot and the travel itinerary include the states of the North Eastern region, only then, I would recommend buying a Tata Photon+ connection.

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Otherwise, my advice would be to steer clear of Photon+. One may check out other service providers’ offerings and settle for the one that offers reliable connectivity across different regions , without any substantial drop in the speed and at a cheaper price . With 3G and 4G services kicking in, it might not be a bad idea to consider a GSM product too. However, the only problem in choosing a GSM service would be the vast difference of speed between any of 4G/3G with that of an EDGE or a simple GPRS network.

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P.S. While writing this review, I have had to follow the Disconnect - Reconnect routine twice!

In Focus - LiveChant.com, the start-up to watch out for

I have this habit of looking up random websites, new ventures et al. People fiddle with their television remotes for zapping through channels, while I go through web directories, search engine results, entrepreneurship forums and groups to learn about new ventures, visit their website(s), try to understand the underlying business model(s). If possible, I also try to analyze the robustness of the business basics, conduct a simple SWOT analysis and make an attempt at predicting how good, bad or ugly the business would fare in the future. Of course, I am no Warren Buffet, and I do this simply because of my love for strategic management.

shovon chakraborty

LiveChant, a platform
for sellers & buyers, is
a portmanteau of
Live and Merchant

That's how I came across an interesting website, a virtual platform to be more specific, named LiveChant.com. The very first impression, the so called "halo effect", made sure that I would spend the next half an hour or so, exploring LiveChant. What attracted me was the simple, yet solid business model, that the promoters of the business have banked on.

livechant.com

By the time I exited the site, I had already decided to showcase this tech start-up in my blog. So, I connected with one of the promoters, Arindam Paul, who is an engineer from National Institute of Technology (NIT), Silchar and prior to founding LiveChant, had worked with some of the biggest names in the IT sector. After a couple of rounds of detailed discussions, my belief about the viability of the business model and success of the business, were further strengthened. It does not mean that they do not have any vulnerability, but if they continue to play according to their strengths, there should not be any reason for LiveChant to not succeed. These discussions and my own background research, helped me in aggregating enough information on LiveChant.com. Armed with these, let me try and decode its target client base, business model, value proposition and its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, i.e. SWOT, which, when combined together, would determine how the business will shape up in future.

Dot Com - From boom to bust, an eyewitness account

It was the year 1999 and apart from the impending Y2K problem, the overall picture looked rosy. Business confidence was high and so was the rate at which new businesses sprang up. In a way, it was the best of times for a fresher to enter the job market. But, as it turned out later, it was also the worst of times! No one knew about the impending bursting of the Dot Com bubble, and the recession, that would follow. After all, despite all technological advances, there are no ways to predict the future.

shovon chakraborty business blog

As a fresher, just out of the university with a degree in business management, I had also wanted to join the vibrant, cool and a quick-short-cut to riches world of the Dot Com industry. After all, it was 1999-2000 and every other young entrepreneur had secured funding for his/her dot com venture. It seemed that the venture capitalists were roaming around with bags full of dollars and were willing to hand it over to anybody, who could come up with a half-decent idea about a new dot com and a catchy enough name for the domain. On hindsight, I must agree that it was only fair that the whole thing would implode, as the fundamentals for most of the ventures were weak or even worse, almost non-existent.
dot com bubble bursting
So, what went wrong? Well, almost everything!

11 free authoring tools for eLearning, based on Christopher Pappas' presentation

This write-up is based on the original post by Christopher Pappas, who is the Project Manager at ANTENNA Group, which is the largest Greek media group in the world. Pappas had originally posted this write-up at elearningindustry.com and also at LinkedIn.com, where he has given the permission to share his presentation on blogs. As the tools seem to be quite handy, so I decided to share the presentation, along with the tools highlighted in the presentation. Additionally, I have also gone through the entire comments section and added the tools, which fit the criteria.

shovon chakraborty business weblog

As the name suggests, this write-up provides a list of "free authoring tools" that one can use in the eLearning design and development process. Pappas has also requested anyone, who has used these authoring tools, to share with him, a demo of the final output at the URL given above. In case, there are free authoring tools that is not included in the list please feel free to leave a comment describing the salient features and a link to the site.

"Offer Letters" at fifty thousand rupees - When will Indian students act smart?

An ex-colleague of mine had called me up last Sunday evening. He was a bit perplexed and wanted to discuss about a "deal" that his cousin has been "offered". This cousin has been studying in one of the average private engineering colleges for her B.Tech in Computer Science and is currently in the last semester. Although a decent student, she had failed to land up any job offers during the major campus recruitment drives conducted at her college. As a result, she has been a bit tensed over the last 4-5 months and has been attending all sorts of fresher recruitment drives conducted in the city. That's how she came to know a certain person, who claims to be an HR Manager with a company of repute. She had meet this man at one of the pulled-campus events conducted at a different college and where final year students from multiple colleges took part. After the interview was over, the so called HR Manager informed her and some of her classmates, through their college's In-charge for Training and Placement, that theirs were borderline cases and that they could be accommodated in the company if they are ready to pay a certain amount as "Training Fees". Once they pay the sum of Rs.50,000/- in cash, he would hand over the offer letters to them. He justified this by saying that the students did not meet the cut-off criteria set by the company and as such, the company will have to incur some costs in training them on the job and uplifting their skill-sets to the required standard. Even the In-charge of Training and Placement of their college was urging them to take up the offer. Now, the cousin is in a quandary and cannot decide whether to pay or not.
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This is just one example from the thousands of such "offers", which the students are bombarded with, every year. Of course, I told my friend that the most sensible thing to do in such a situation is to walk away. As far as I am concerned, I don't know of any company worth its salt, which will recruit candidates in this manner. But, every year many colleges and students are falling prey to these scamsters.

Great Indian Drama After The Petrol Price Hike

Since the last price hike by the central government, there has been a lot of sounds of discontent from different quarters, specifically targeting the prime minister Mr. Manmohan Singh and the finance minister Mr. Pranab Mukherjee. Most of the political leaders have taken this opportunity to fish in the muddied water. So, we have a General Strike on 31st May, called by the BJP (or is it NDA?), we have a UP bandh called by Mulayam Singh's Samajwadi Party, we have protest rallies by CPI(M) & the left front, and even by their sworn enemy, the TMC. At last, amidst this intolerable heat and humidity, some good news! We are going to have some off days to chill. And, in the process, Indian economy will lose some hundreds of crores of rupees. But, that's acceptable. After all, the interest of the common man is sacrosanct.

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Common man? Yes. At least the political leaders, as well as our netizens, would like everybody to believe that.

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You still end up asking an idiotic question. Who actually can be tagged as the all important "common man"? Now, come on! Please don't show the entire world the true depth of your intellect, you will be told. Still, you persist on knowing how the common man is effected by the hike in the price of the petrol. You will be told in a very condescending manner that the common man in India today owns 2 wheeler and 4 wheeler, goes to his workplace normally driving his own car, goes to the neighborhood market riding his bike and still you ask such questions. After all, isn't India shining? You shake your head in acceptance and walk away.

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In the fear of making a joker out of yourself, you fail to ask the questions that had been trying hard to open the lock-gate and come out of your mouth. There were so many of them. You wanted to know whether the people who cannot spend Rs. 32 per day in a metro or the people who earn Rs. 33 per day, are they called "uncommon man" ? The people who travel by public transport system everyday because they cannot afford a 2 wheeler, let alone a 4 wheeler, whether they also are called "uncommon man" or not. The villager, who depends on the 100 days work scheme, what's his tagline? How do you classify the hawker on the pavement, the conductor on the private bus, the porter at the rail station, the panwalah near your home, the newspaper hawker, the domestic help, the vegetable seller? And this list is endless. Are not they the numerically superior group of people? If so, following the principle of democracy, should not they be called the "common man"?

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Oh, come on! These are irrelevant questions and raised simply to derail the agitation of the leaders of the masses. So what, if the daily labourer and his family have to skip a meal due to the strike? If the people from the bottom most strata of the society go on empty stomach for half a day or one day, is that a big deal? After all, they are used to it.

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But, we, the empowered common men of India, cannot travel in the crowded buses amidst this heat and humidity. We cannot walk to the market as we don't have the time. We have to switch on the AC in the car to beat the heat. And, all these require petrol as the source of energy. So, if the Government has given a free hand to the oil companies in deciding the price, that is so unethical. So what, if the oil companies have to bear huge losses by selling petrol at a price lower than the cost? So what, if ultimately the taxpayers' money is being used for compensating the oil companies? At least, we bought petrol at a cheaper rate na!

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And the circus continues!

Recent Controversial Advertisements

They say that an advertisement agency's job is a thankless one. Ad agencies are expected to deliver that killer ad every time, thereby resulting in a huge pile of additional cash for the advertiser. If it succeeds, the advertiser is the one basking in the glory. When it fails, it's head is the first one on the chopping block.
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It should not come as a surprise then that the agencies would try to hardsell the advertisers' offering(s) through whatever means, law permitting. Consequently, the mantra for the ad agency is to "sell, sell and sell". And if "everything else fails, then start chanting sex, sex and sex; because sex always sells".
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In the recent past, we have seen ad agencies falling back on this adage rather liberally and the resultant ad contents have sometimes bordered on the outrageous. As a consequence, both the agency and the advertiser have managed to more than ruffle a few feathers.
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In the end, even our parliamentarians took notice of the resultant commotion and there was a raging debate in the parliament on the ways of stopping such ads from appearing in the media and polluting the minds of the innocent general people of the country.
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Actually it amazes me that the politicians view themselves as self-styled guardians of the very people, who are otherwise matured enough to cast their votes and decide that the same set of politicians would be running the country for the next five years. At that time, the people are capable enough to judge what's good or bad for them. But, when it comes to the depiction of anything related to the most basic urge in the media, these same people are considered to be incapable of taking the right decision. Hence, the parliamentarians have to act as chaperone!
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While I do not support the creation of yet another regulator or the idea of censorship, even then I have to accept that some of the advertisements were really in bad taste. Let's take a look at the controversial advertisements that left a bad taste in the mouth.
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1. Clean & Dry "Intimate Wash": The advertisement for a new skin whitening product for private parts, Clean & Dry Intimate Wash, was the latest in a series of controversial ads, which created a public outrage. The campaign earned the wrath of different women's groups, who called this "an ultimate insult to women”.
The commercial promises that the product, with its special pH-balanced formula, cleans and protects the private area, and even makes the skin fairer.
To me, the very idea of the ad is sickening and the execution, appalling. When I first saw the ad, the questions that came across my mind were, "What the hell! Where are we going? What's next?" The fascination of the Indians about the fairer complex is well known. This has also resulted in a very real life discrimination against women of darker complex. Knowing all these, if a company introduces and promotes - during prime time - a product like Clean & Dry Intimate Wash, then the business ethics of the company should be questioned. Perhaps the company and its management are unaware of the term, "corporate social responsibility".

Flying Machine's campaign raised "some" dust.

2. Flying Machine: Flying Machine had hoped that its newest print ad campaign would help engrave the brand into the minds of India's youth. Instead, it has flown into a storm of controversy. One of the earliest home-grown jeans brands, Flying Machine, had released a series of print advertisement where the camera zoomed on the buttock of a female model wearing tight fit jeans. The tagline in big, bold font screamed, "What an Ass!" It was probably meant to inject or highlight the oomph factor and the cool quotient in an old brand, perhaps even mimic the edginess of the "All asses were not created equal" tagline from the advertisement, released last year, by larger rival Levi Strauss & Co. While the jury is still to be out on whether Flying Machine's latest campaign has been able to achieve the avowed objectives, the advertisement, most definitely, has been able to generate heat in some quarters, especially the women rights groups.
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3. Amul Macho - Yeh to bada toing hain!: Frankly speaking, I never saw anything wrong with this ad. There were three different versions of this ad and were shown mostly during the evening prime time hours. I thought that the ads, although suggestive in parts, were pretty hilarious, as well as good and could capture the essence of the product's tagline, "Crafted for Fantasy". Well, the persons, who actually matter in these cases, evidently thought otherwise. The ad was banned from the prime time hours due to its vulgarity and suggestive sexual acts. Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI), the self-regulatory body of the advertising industry, later cleared it for public viewing. Judge for yourself.
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4. Fast Track: Fast Track, the cool brand of watches & shades from the house of Titan, introduced a TV commercial titled, "Why the world moved to autopilot?" The ad starred cricketer Virat Kohli and the chirpy Genelia D'souza. The content of the ad, created by Lowe, raised quite a storm as the ad showed the pilot getting cozy with the air hostesses. Predictably, neither the pilots nor the air hostesses were amused and asked for the withdrawal of the ad. I guess the ad agency guys were really over the top here. Worse, they stereotyped two professions and the professionals as of amorous nature. Check out the ad below.
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5. Tata DoCoMo: The last one in my list is the awful Tata DoCoMo ad. In another case of stereotyping people associated with a particular profession, the Tata DoCoMo ad shows a maid stealing a mobile phone and her employer catching her in the act when the phones starts ringing. The tagline, “No Getting Away”, suggests that wherever you may go, you'll have access to the Tata DoCoMo network. 

However, the depiction of the maid in this ad created a lot of controversies. There were several complaints that the advertisement was extremely crass and in bad taste, apart from casting aspersions on the integrity of the domestic workers as a whole. Activists argued that the domestic workers were a "super exploited lot", without any customary – let alone legal – rights worth the name. They also contended that the ad further reinforced the common prejudices against the domestic workers through stereotyping them as thieves.

The ad was, indeed, in a bad taste and the concerns raised were also very real. As a result, the company had to apologize and withdraw the ad.
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In spite of all these, be rest assured that we shall be able to create another list of awful ads around this time next year too. In the mad rush for selling one's products or services to the most number of customers, both the ad agency and the advertiser sometimes allow ethics to take a back seat and the resultant output deeply offends the sensibility of the prospective consumers. In the end, the advertiser, instead of gaining new clients, manages to even lose a part of the existing base. Yet, neither the agency, nor the company, has learnt the lesson. That's the amusing part.

Vocational Education in India - Next Blockbuster or Dud?

Historically, the Indian subcontinent, which covers the modern day Pakistan, India & Bangladesh, had its own system of education. Some say, they had the best system of the time, while some others, as usual, disagree. One thing is sure, in the historical entity called India, there were many avenues of learning. And this learning process not only included the teaching of Vedas or Economics or Jurisprudence etc. but also included different trades, so vital for the effective running of a society. The education systems of those era, not only concentrated on creating white collar professionals by teaching the Nyay or Niti-shastras, but also produced workmen. A person, who wanted to be a carpenter or a soldier or a blacksmith, could learn the art of their chosen trade through their Gurus - that too, theoretically as well as practically, through apprenticeship, and the society accepted this as the general practice. It's true that a person with knowledge of all the Vedas, Niti, Nyay and economic theories would be revered by the society. But that did not mean that the carpenter or the blacksmith or the masons were looked down upon as being part of lower strata. This ensured the rise of the Indian kingdoms, which in turn gave rise to the stories of their legendary wealth. On hindsight, these stories of richness attracted the attention of many groups of people, who, although not as sophisticated or civilized as the locals, definitely had better martial skills.
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Over the centuries, the region has been invaded by numerous groups, some of whom assimilated with the locals while others chose to retain their distinct identities. These people also brought along themselves, new beliefs, new systems and of course a different social structure. This melting pot of a country or sub-continent, thus developed a mixed system of beliefs, religions, social practices and over the ages, the dignity of labour was forgotten.
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Cut to current day India. An India, which has grown at a blistering pace over the last 20 years. A country, which has one of the largest talent pools - in terms of number of persons within the working age - and despite that there is a scarcity of employable candidates in almost all the fields. Now, isn't that a bit confusing? On one hand, we have the largest talent pool and on the other, we are not being able to effectively feed the hunger of industry's ever-increasing requirement of the manpower. This can only mean that either the industrial growth has been too high and as such the manpower requirements cannot be met from within the country or that our education system simply does not produce the skilled manpower that the industry is looking for. As we know that our growth-rate or actual growth hasn't been that high, so the only answer would lead us to accept the shortcomings of our education system, which, according to an industry veteran, teaches us to play Cricket, while the industry demands that we should be good in Baseball. You'll have to add to it the perception of social status among a large section of India's population.
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I was earlier talking about the great education systems of yesteryear, but can I claim the same for our present systems too? The answer is a plain and simple "No".

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If we look in to our education system, we'll find it to be divided in to pre-schools/KG/pre-primary, Primary, Secondary & Higher Secondary and Tertiary sections. Out of these, pre-schools are mostly in private hands and the Government's real intervention starts from the Primary Education. In these divisions, where does Vocational Education & Training (VET) fit in? The best fit would be to introduce vocational education parallely along Secondary & Higher Secondary and may be allowed to continue up to the Graduation. Of course, professional and technical education run along a different track on a separate plane altogether. This would have solved the problem faced by numerous "educationally qualified" but unemployed, as well as unemployable youths.
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Let's take the real life example of a person, who had cleared 10th standard with 41% marks and enrolled in the 10+2 Arts stream. He cleared the Higher Secondary examination too, but with a similar 43% marks and then enrolled in B.A. with Bengali, Political Science and Philosophy. In due course of time, he graduated with 42% marks and then started looking for a job.
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A couple of very valid questions then arose regarding his employable skills and those questions are valid even today for thousands of youth like him. What kind of job is this guy fit for? And, where is the scope for practical application of whatever he had studied/learned for 15 years?
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Unfortunately, this person, who had been one year my senior, has remained unemployed till date. In his case, the degrees obtained were merely for decorative purposes, so that his parents and family could claim that he is a graduate. The Indian psyche would still rate this "good for nothing" educational qualification as higher than that of a classmate who had enrolled in an Industrial Training Center (ITI) and earns five figure salary per month working as an automobile mechanic!
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Luckily for us, the situations have started to change at last, although the rate of change is way too slow. The ruling powers at both the center, as well as the states have or at least claim to have understood the importance of vocational training and have come forward with active support in terms of resources as well as creating an atmosphere that is conducive for such training and education. Suddenly, there has been a bevy of activities in this "supposedly" lucrative market segment in India and every Tom, Dick & Harry are coming up with a vocational education division. This may actually backfire and may result in people losing whatever faith they have in these training programs. Many of these companies also have some kind of tie-up with either the National Skill Development Council (NSDC) or some state government department(s). But the unrealistic target that they quote in terms of number of youths to be trained within a certain time period, makes one wonder about the long term ramifications.
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My personal experience tells me that no amount of Government subsidies or grants can ensure the success of the vocational education & training initiatives till the mindsets of the population are changed to accept the vocational qualifications as at par with the traditional degrees when it comes to deciding the social status. But, for that to happen, the entire primary education system, including the teaching methods, need to be overhauled completely. Moreover, the recruitment process for teachers should also be made free of the political considerations. But, in India, no one will seriously believe that such a thing could happen overnight. The Government can also help in this regard by designing courses/degrees which will be equivalent to the traditional ones.
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May be, the best bet for the vocational education & training would be to continue working with the same zeal and the results will start to show 5 years down the line. Its a long term business proposition in India. If the companies are there to make a quick buck, then they should rethink their position & goals and should take an informed decision whether they are in the right business or not.
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Ultimately, the success or otherwise of vocational education in India will depend on the seriousness of the training providers, quality of training being provided, a positive push from the Government's side and the perception of the general population, especially the middle class, about the vocational degree, diploma and certifications. By 2016-17, it should be clear to us whether we have been able to bridge the targeted gap or not.

Sexing Up the CV - An Indian perspective

Just the other day, I came across a message in an HR forum, posted by a lady who presumably works in an IT company. She had a major cribbing point about the background checks done by different IT companies and the resultant actions taken on the rogue employees. Continuing her whining, she tried her best to justify putting false credentials & experiences in the CV - which brings us to the point of trying to understand the general perception among employees in India about the practice of "window dressing" or "sexing up" the CV.
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Unfortunately, in a country like India, where corruption is omnipresent, candidates, especially at the entry level, do not think much about incorporating false information about a skill, a certification or diploma or work experience if that helps them in bagging the coveted offer. They would then hope that the falsification(s) would not be detected by the prospective employer and that they will get away with it. Over a period of time, these lies can get accumulated and may create a semblance of a profile which would invariably be as different as chalk and cheese from the real competence of the person.
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Going back to the post of "our lady in the HR Forum", the shocking part is the brazen manner in which she has tried to justify this unethical conduct. From my personal experience and inputs received from my professional acquaintances, this brazenness is reflective of the general perception of Indian professionals!
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A study by Indian Council for Market Research (ICMR) during the first few years of the century had revealed that the phenomenon of fake CVs was not just restricted to the software industry. It was also prevalent in other sectors like ITeS, BFSI, Retail etc. They also pointed out that Rs. 400 crores had been spent by Indian companies for filling 200,000 jobs a year in those sectors and 10-12% of the selected candidates had submitted false information in their CVs, leading to a huge waste in recruitment costs alone. Since then, this figure has been on the rise year on year. According to The Risk Advisory Group (TRAG), 65% of CVs submitted in 2007 contained false information, a rise of 16% on the previous year’s amount. The latest research figures suggest that as many as 3 in 4 people, i.e. a whopping 75% of candidates, deviate from the truth on their CV, mostly about qualifications, job description & period of employment and salary.
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What's more interesting, is the perception of most of the candidates towards the crime being committed. Most of them lie in their CV because they think that everyone else does it and hence, to remain competitive, they must do it too. The general perception is that the sexing the CV or windowdressing are ‘harmless’ and the benefits of lying far outweigh the risks of being caught.
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According to TRAG, women in their early 30s were the biggest culprits, with 77 per cent of resumes containing some kind of untruth. Even among the statistically most honest group, men in their early 20s, half of all CVs featured misleading information.
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Another company, which specializes in background verification services and screens over 3,000 candidates per quarter, said that job seekers misled firms over everything from gaps in employment to fraud committed against previous employers. The most common inaccuracies were in employment history, with 55 per cent of candidates inventing a more impressive career. A further 36 per cent lied about their qualifications. While many of the discrepancies are simple errors of omission, around one in ten are more serious, viz. failure to disclose criminal convictions, fraud against previous employers or even terrorist links.
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Although exaggeration is widespread, outright lies can lead to a doomed career as it’s not so much a moral issue as a legal one. If a candidate is offered a job on the back of information contained in her/his CV that the employer believes to be correct, then the employer is legally entitled to withdraw the job offer or sack the employee without prior notice if they discover that the CV contains false information. So employees found guilty of lying can lose their job and worse still, receive a reference that refers to the reason why!
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An ex-colleague's case is a classic example of this. We used to work in the same division, although in different profiles and he had been with the company for a far longer period than myself. During the last quarter of 2010, he received a good offer from an MNC with around 40% hike in the salary. He did not even bother to serve the notice period and joined the new company within a short period of time. One month down the line, he was begging our VP to get his old job back. As I knew someone in the other organization, I came to know the reason behind this. There was a discrepancy in his Graduation degree and so the MNC had withdrawn the offer. He was out of job for the next 8-9 months before joining a much smaller and downmarket organization with a lower salary than his previous job. I would still say that he has been lucky enough to get another chance, but there have been instances when the companies, especially in the IT & ITeS sectors, have sacked employees en masse on integrity issues or candidates even ending up in prison on forgery charges.
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The combined effect of all these have seen the birth of a new industry vertical in itself - that of companies specializing in Background Checking services. While many bigger organizations outsource background checking to these companies, even the ones which do not, are wising up to applicants' lies and doing more checks than before. Even industry bodies like National Association Software & Services Companies (NASSCOM) have initiated efforts like National Skill Registry (NSR) in order to counter this ever growing menace.
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After being in the industry for a decade, it is crystal clear to me that if someone does not want to destroy her career, she should not resort to lying in her CV. There are ways of promoting a profile and making them look attractive to the prospective companies without resorting to lies. If one is gifted with words and expressions, one can do that herself. Else, one can always hire a professional CV writer. That really works. And, without having to jeopardize one's career prospect by lying.

Myspace.com - From $580 million to $35 million

When Justin Timberlake & Specific Media LLC bought Myspace.com, reportedly at $35 million, I was really curious to know as to what went wrong with the company. After all, it had been acquired by News Corp. at a whopping $580 million only 6 years ago. Even that amount comes across as a paltry sum when compared with its peak valuation in 2007, a cool $12 billion!
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Since its inception in 2003, Myspace had been leading the social media sites pack till March 2008. The following month, Facebook overtook it in the number of unique world wide visitors. It took Facebook another year or so to overtake Myspace in the USA rankings. Since then, it has been a downward spiral with no sign of a turnaround for the company to which many a widget or accessories providers like YouTube, Flickr, Zynga, RockYou!, Slide.com etc. owe their successes to. In fact, now a days, one can access Myspace with a Facebook ID! They are trying to position themselves as a complimentary service to Facebook instead of being a competitor.
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So, what went wrong with the first real behemoth in the social media field?
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There are many explanations and counter-explanations. But, as an early user of both Myspace & Facebook, I have experienced the good, the bad and the ugly sides of both. Myspace came across as too dependent on music & entertainment, that too, probably heavily tilted towards the tastes of a USA-centric audience. While Facebook, which initially looked cumbersome, added newer features, games, better security etc. to provide the users a whole "social media" experience, Myspace chose to remain largely the same, without caring for innovations.
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Moreover, Myspace had tied up with Google for a consideration of $900 million which enabled Google to serve ads based on Google Ad-sense. While this provided cash inflow for Myspace, it actually resulted in further slowing down of the site. At the same time, Facebook had been providing a clean, fast loading home page, which added with the offerings from different widget providers, further enhanced its appeal. At the same time, Myspace decided to do everything themselves and in trying to do that, spread themselves too thin instead of developing around the core idea of social networking.
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Security vulnerability was another negative aspect. Myspace was viewed as less secured than Facebook, which indeed was true to a large extent. The publicised incidents of cyber stalking & identity theft further dented its credentials. Ironically, this can happen in any social networking site.
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Probably, the last nail in Myspace's coffin was hit by its targeted user groups themselves. The "Myspace parties", where adolescent users organized parties and chose to spread the news over Myspace, leading to creation of law & order situations & even death of a teenager, created an overall negative perception among the prospective users. Myspace was being viewed by many as a part of the underground social network. While Facebook has been successful in attracting users from all age groups - young and the old alike, Myspace could not attract the older users and its appeal was more or less limited to the 13 years to 24 years age group.
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All these factors, combined together, led to a downfall in the fortunes of the very first truly successful social networking site. While many others started with the Myspace model in mind and then gradually redefined and reinvented themselves depending on the market responses, Myspace failed to change itself with the changing times and ultimately, has become an also-ran today with a user base of around 30 million unique users. The way its fortunes have nosedived, it will be nothing less than a miracle if the present owners - piggybacking on Justin Timberlake's popularity, to some extent - can turn things around. Till then, its fate has been signed and sealed. Just like the Myspace User ID and Password, that I have forgotten over the years, it has been all but removed from the average users' memory.