Monday, January 11, 2010

I had a dream...

Most of us are caught in an endless cycle – waking up late, driving like a maniac in a mad rush to reach the office before the clock strikes nine, slogging all day long, listening to the endless rebukes of the boss, heading home late only to be received by a dejected family upset by your neglect. In this race of life, it’s easy to forget ourselves, our dreams, our passions. When growing up, many of us loved to paint, to dance, act, write, sing... But as we grew up, the realities of life took over. Very few of us allow our creative side to dictate our careers and most of us opt for professional degrees that lead to beefy paychecks. But what if we could enjoy the best of both worlds?

There are people who work five days a week and on weekends they pursue their passions. For example, Dramatech, a 25-year old group, was founded by three alumni of IIT Delhi in 1984. “While at IIT, we had a very strong dramatics club wherein we used to call a director from the industry to direct our annual plays in Hindi and English, and because of that grounding we had a very strong interest in dramatics, which carried on even when we passed out of the institute. Later on, Dramatech grew to attract other students from Delhi University, IIM etc. It became a place for the transient population, the young population in Delhi, to go and do theatre. This is an amateur group and nobody is paid anything, neither the director nor the actors. Everybody is mostly working or studying in college or even school. People do it entirely as a hobby, but we do try to put up a good level of theatre, near professional standards you may say,” says Ravi Raj Sagar, who directs plays for the group and otherwise works as a Marketing Communications Manager with Hewlett-Packard. Most of the people in Dramatech are working with renowned companies like Pepsico, HP, KPMG etc. “The kinds of people we draw are people who are working professionally as executives and now many of them are senior managers, corporates and in the government, so the remuneration motive is not present in their case,” adds Ravi. The motivating factor for them is their passion and not money, which is why they don’t mind taking time out every Saturday and Sunday. Hello Dolly (in Hindi) is their latest production, which debuted on 14 November 2009, and its shows are also being held in December and January at the Sri Ram Centre in New Delhi.

Chetan Bhagat worked with Deutsche Bank for eleven years and gave it up for his dream to become a writer. Dr. R.K. Pachauri left his job of a railway engineer when his interest in the environment took precedence. Since 2002 he has served as the Chairman of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and has also gone on to win the prestigious Padma Bhushan and Padma Vibhushan awards. Ravi Subramanian, however, is the Senior Vice President and Head of Consumer Finance with HSBC, and is also working on his dream to become the John Grisham of the banking industry. As of now he has penned three books. One doesn’t need to leave their jobs to pursue their passions. With a little time and plenty of initiative, one can live the life of their dreams, a life with no regrets...
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Source :
IIPM Editorial, 2009


An IIPM and Professor Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist) Initiative

Friday, January 08, 2010

A small step in right direction

Top hospitals start casualty management courses

At a time when there is no stopping the government from touting India as the next medical destination for the world, it seems there is total disregard for the treatment needs of our own people. Today, trauma is a big killer for people in the highly productive age group of five to 40. Every year, nearly one lakh people die due to trauma and yet there is negligible focus on the issue of emergency medicine and trauma-related infrastructure. Even in the metros, it is just confined to ambulances and demarcating rooms for related cases. Even doctors accept that trauma centres in the country have junior doctors, mostly interning. TSI spoke to many doctors and specialists just to understand the seriousness of the issue. The most crucial period, the “golden hour”, according to the experts, is the first hour that can determine between life or death for a patient. Hence, for our country where pro-active thinking is like a flash in the pan and issues like health are neglected and good emergency care is going to be a dream for decades. While we were researching on this issue, AIIMS, emerged as one of the three training centres in this area. Max Hospital. too, has started a course in Emergency and Trauma medicine in collaboration with the US. But for nearly a year now, AIIMS has been able to churn out just 160 doctors who are well versed with this management and Max will have to wait for another year to see its doctors going out to treat people in trauma cases.

Dr Mahesh Chandra Mishra, the pioneer of this movement, is busy training doctors and believes that trauma management is a must for every doctor. He has developed the concept of A, B and C types of diagnosis to make this stream easy to understand for a common man. He says that if the A, B & C levels are normal, then comes the time for secondary diagnosis, but doctors don’t even have the basic training like helping a patient to breathe, if the wind pipe is choked. His course in Life Support for Trauma patients will not be of much use in the absence of readily available ambulances. "We have a severe shortage of trauma-equipped ambulances, whether in the big cities or anywhere else in the country," he says.

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Source :
IIPM Editorial, 2009


An IIPM and Professor Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist) Initiative

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Ravished and Banished

Many of Orissa’s 40,000 unwed mothers are minors from tribal areas or remote villages. Ostracised by their neighbours and braving daily taunts from their own kin, these girls have none to call their own, writes Subrat Dash

Had you asked Deepti in those days to name her deepest desire, you would have got just one answer: Take me somewhere, anywhere – away from this hellhole. For, ever since she was born, she can’t recall a single day when her parents, both daily wagers, had not fought. On the rare occasions when there was peace at “home”, Deepti, now 16, felt like she had received some rare and priceless gift.

Then one day Deepti met a man in whom she thought she had found her deliverer. It took no time for the shrewd Gatikrushna to see how easily the vulnerable girl could be seduced. His kind words and the cheap baubles he gifted Deepti soon won her over, and within days they became “lovers”.

By the time Deepti realised what this man was all about, she was already six months pregnant. When her parents asked Gatikrushna to marry their daughter, he bluntly denied that they had ever had a physical relationship. And by the time they got to file a case against him the scoundrel had disappeared.

Deepti was just 14 when she became an unwed mother. Anyone familiar with the Indian countryside will not need to be told what Deepti went through in Bhusandpur village of Khurda district, Orissa. Because now it was not only her hut that she dreaded – it was the entire village. Even her friends and relatives did not spare their barbs, all pointed at the “bastard” she was carrying. As for Gatikrushna – he did finally surrender in the court, but was soon freed. Ask Deepti whether she still dreams of marrying him, and she snaps back: “Marry him? Why, I want him hanged! I would do anything to have him hanged!”

Deepti is currently an inmate of Sanjeevani Ma Ghara (Sanjeevani Mothers Home) run by an NGO in Palaspalli – an upscale locality in Bhubaneswar. The home shelters unwed mothers – many of whom, like Deepti, are in their teens or their early twenties. But clearly, Orissa which has the largest number of unwed mothers in the country – 40,000 – needs more such homes and a criminal justice system that will bring rogues like Gatikrushna to book.

For Complete IIPM Article, Click on IIPM Article

Source :
IIPM Editorial, 2008
An IIPM and Professor Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist) Initiative

Thursday, January 22, 2009

Downright impractical

According to Prof. Nicholas Stern, IG Patel Professor of Economics and Government, India Observatory, LSE, “The world needs to cut carbon dioxide emissions to 2 tonnes per capita by 2050 and India would need to do the same. Therefore, India needs to look ahead now.” Easier said than done, as – even for the Indian government – to move over to the so-called green fuels in one shot is not only prohibitively costly, but downright impractical.

Add to it the fact that carbon trading, as a concept, and as a monetary unit, still lacks global acceptance. Said Bill Sneyd, Director, Advisory Services, The Carbon Neutral Company to 4Ps B&M, “There is still a lot of volatility associated with the carbon price. This is caused primarily by the economic downturn – the expectation is that there will be lower demand for Allowances under the EU-ETS because companies are contracting (or at least not growing as fast as was expected).” Add to it the fact that there have been growing voices in the EU that post 2012, India and China should be restricted from trading in the carbon market unless they also take mandatory sector-wise energy efficiency targets. Clearly, unless Indian companies learn the art of being as unethical as developed economies and their companies have been, perhaps India will continue getting carbon-date raped!
For Complete IIPM Article, Click on IIPM Article

Source :
IIPM Editorial, 2008
An IIPM and Professor Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist) Initiative
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Monday, September 29, 2008

The plan to clean up the Yamuna is flawed

Suresh Babu suggests an alternative. “Simultaneously, steps should be taken to achieve dilution in the river–mainly by reducing the demand for freshwater by upstream cities like Delhi. Fiscal instruments – like taxing water-guzzling flush toilets – can work. Simultaneously, an attempt needs to be made to revive the water bodies and their catchments to store maximum run-off, which could then be used for local water needs, or could be released into the river for dilution.“

Now, let’s take a look at what’s happened with the cleaning up of the Ganga. According to the Public Accounts Committee of Parliament, the monitoring mechanism for the Ganga Action Plan (GAP) has collapsed, leading to little progress in the river clean-up scheme, The Committee mentioned in its latest report that it “was astonished to note that the monitoring system of such a prestigious and important plan is its weakest link. There was no detailed record of the outcome of the field visits and review meetings with implementing agencies by the National Rivers Conservation Directorate, as also of the follow-up action as has been envisaged in the Plan itself.”

On the funds utilisation under GAP, the Committee has said that while, on the one hand, states have complained of lack of funds as the main reason for delays and failures to achieve targets, on the other, several implementing agencies have failed to spend the money made available to them. “The Committee is of the firm view that no amount of additional resources would rejuvenate the GAP till the system stops tolerating officials who do not perform. This requires amelioration in governance through improved performance and accountability through public participation,” the report added. Worse, in the absence of an effective control mechanism, state governments took full advantage to divert and misuse the funds. Bureaucracy, lack of political will, useless schemes, and government apathy have collectively turned the Ganges and Yamuna – two of the most sacred rivers in India – into cesspools. But successive governments have kept ignoring the issue. After all, cleaning up rivers doesn’t really translate into electoral votes. Therefore, the two rivers continue to flow, and be polluted. And the river action plans get muddied.

the snapshot

Nearly Rs.1,500 crores has been spent to clean up the 22.4-km stretch of Yamuna in Delhi

The initial aim is to lay 50 kms of interceptors, 2-3 metres in dia, to intercept 150 small drains discharging into three main drains of Delhi

There are plans to add another 50 kms of interceptors at a cost of Rs.1,950 crores to intercept sewage from another 150 minor drains

The Problems

The Yamuna Action Plan is not based on any scientific estimate of sewage spawned by Delhi

The plan would require millions of litres of freshwater to dilute the intercepted and treated sewage; the city has no such reserves

In the case of the Ganga Action Plan, the monitoring system was its weakest link; there was no detailed record of any follow-up action

For Complete IIPM Article, Click on IIPM Article

Source :
IIPM Editorial, 2008
An IIPM and Professor Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist) Initiative
Read these article :-
ZEE BUSINESS BEST B SCHOOL SURVEY
B-schooled in India, Placed Abroad (Print Version)
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The Indian Institute of Planning and Management (IIPM)
IIPM Campus

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