The weaker dog gets the lashing

The current controversy in Indian political scene is a ridiculous one. One might wonder - "so, what is new?". Nothing. Yet, it deserves a small write up.

The story goes that a some unknown New Zealand TV host called our Delhi CM names, or cracked a poor vulgar joke. And our MEA called their representative in India, and gave them a sound blasting [demarche is the diplomatic terminology].

India did not have the spine to called the Australian High Commissioner and do the same when Indians were being hurt, wounded and killed. Recently, our government did not offer support or intervention of any kind when a film producer was detained with jihadi litterature.

So, why did MEA have this adverse reaction to "Delhi CM's name controversy" ?

OPTIONS:

a. She is from the Congress. If the joke was on Mr Modi, it would have been overlooked.
b. India was tired of NZ's tirade about CWG prior to the games; and this was just a good excuse to get back at them.
c. We don't have the courage to stand up to Australia and USA; so we just picked a weaker nation to practice a few exceptional lessons in diplomacy.
d. None of the above. Just a clueless government with clueless reactions. We are all stupid citizens trying to make sense of this.
e. Indian TV need some fodder involving some level of profanity. [ One Indian TV channel does a program on Sex in Indian cities every year - wrapping this up in a sociological study showcase. ] So, playing this disgusting clip over and over, was just our R rated experience on prime time TV. One egg-headed guy on TV was at his devilish best :-)

You may add to this list of options. And start a SMS poll.

One TV commentator finds NZ "as a very white majoritarian exclusivist society". If you can make sense out of this statement, please post a detailed blog. My take is this. We find Kolkata to be Bong majoritarian, Maharashtra to be Marathi majoritarian and Chennai to be Tamil majoritarian. Sure we have our shades of loons who argue that their language is the best in the world. At a certain level, India is not alien to linguistic, casteist and religious divide and tension. Thank God, we have the centrists who keep the discourse reasonably balanced. In some sense, can we not cut the exclusivist pie in so many ways. YES. WE CAN. So, what was she saying ?

IMHO, this needs to stop. The more we pay attention to these trivial issues and brand nations as racists, we look like jokers.

May be NZ is racist, but this ain't the reason why we should conclude that they are. Indian crack more profane jokes on fellow citizens; Americans joke about blondes; there are Polish jokes. Profanity in jokes is nothing new; and yes, lots of people do find this disgusting.

This one does not qualify as a joke. This is vulgarity at best. We just move on.

Most importantly, I would love for our MEA to be active when Indians are at the receiving end of violence and injustice. Our TV should focus on the core issue and ask where Mr Krishna was when Indians were being slaughtered in Melbourne.

Stop this BS. Lets get our priorities right.

Obstacles to real e-commerce experience in India

Several articles have been written, talk and interviews recorded on the topic of why e-commerce has failed to take off in India. Experts have predicted a boom, analyzed and delivered their judgment on why things are in the shape they are in. One simplistic and easy answer to give and close the discussion is to blame. A few popular inputs I've heard when I talked to folks having their e-commerce sites are:

1. Damn customers!! I hate these stingy guys
2. They prefer to go to shops and look around and buy.
3. Stupid folks don't trust the web.  
4. Most don't use credit cards online. That's why. 

I wanted to spend some time and offer my view - looking at the problem end to end. The basic workflow in e-commerce can be depicted as follows:

1. I want a product or a service
2. I go to the net
3. Find a supplier through a good search service or another website
4. Go to the online storefront
5. Evaluate the 'goodness' of the product or service
6. Pay for it [ Use my Credit Card or Debit Card or COD; Use a secure gateway to pay for it; Ensure that the payment has gone through ]
7. Need a courier name
8. Tracking Number
9. Product arrives at your doorstep.
10. Give feedback if it was worth it.
11. Expect to have a good replacement policy in face of customer dissatisfaction
12. Post Sale customer service to resolve "use" and "quality" related issues.

Throughout this process, we need a solid handshake that says, this is what you wanted, and this is what was done. I would like to use amazon.com as a reference and I am sure there are others which are very good. This is not to say that Amazon has no room for improvement. It simply in one site which has several of these critical pieces integrated neatly. By using a reference e-commerce site, it is easy to explain the non-negotiable requirements for a successful e-commerce site in India. In other words, we are trying to determine the crucial factors that can trigger the growth of e-commerce in India.

Index	Requirement	Issues in the current e-commerce implementations
1	Need for a product or service	1. That we prefer to shop in brick and mortar stores are a not just about Indian consumer behavior. Its true worldwide. However, most advanced economies provide for excellent mechanisms for ensuring that the product and service related information is made available to the customers. Good information leads to good decision making. 2. Today, the real fear in our consumer base is predicated on the level of poor information being handed out to the customer. So, the real argument becomes one of minimizing the level of getting cheated by being physically present and checking things out before making the decision. The fear is not something related to credit card usage on the web. It’s about the way the customer gets manipulated with a poor product and lies; without the support and luxury of a good report that discusses the product dispassionately. 3. Good e-commerce strategy must begin with good information to our customers.
2	Internet Access	1. While BB access is about 1.5% or so, Mobile BB penetration could be larger. Mobile penetration is not the same as mobile BB penetration. I believe that most of the penetration in India is with prepaid cards. Not necessarily a BB related one. But this also means that we have a platform for enabling mobile commerce but making internet come alive on phones. 2. Internet vouchers will seduce customers to use the net at the nearest cafe for a few minutes and make a purchase to gain a certain discount could be a start for creating a push factor for increasing e-commerce.
3	Search for a product or service	1. We need a nextag.com; priceline.com type services which will provide a one stop service for all products, reviews, specifications and prices. 2. There is a need to make consumer reports type platform a reality by providing a platform for addressing customer / consumer issues when they are not resolved by the suppliers.
4	Online Storefront	1. Range of products and services are very narrow. An online store like amazon.com competes well with a brick and mortar store like Barnes and Noble in terms of its ability to carry a large collection of related products and services. This is not the case in India. 2. Most shops provide for a few select models of watches, phones, other items - rarely a comprehensive range. 3. For the products and services offered, the supplier / storefront take no ownership to create the right level of customer awareness about the products in terms of technical specifications, product reviews and market feedback. The approach seems to be "if it sells, it sells. Else it is alright". 4. There is no goal orientation in the search processes in our websites. There are no websites that offer benchmark goal oriented product searches. What do we mean by this? Goal orientation of a cell phone can be in terms of talk time, number of Sims, pixels in camera, price, nature of keyboard. This is how we communicate in a phone store. I need a talk time of 5 hours with a USB charger, costing about 4000 INR, color display. Why would our approach online purchase decisions be different? E-commerce sites have not addressed the fundamental customer requirements gathering and product filtering procedures in their store fronts. Tigerdirect.com is an excellent site that gives us a sense of goal oriented search schemes. There was recent tweet from a celebrity that actually demonstrated the absence of goal orientation in our websites -  "Need Dual Sim, QWERTY, GPS, CDMA/GSM, Good Camera and talk time - what do you suggest?". Try getting an answer in our online shopping centers and you will understand what I mean by goal orientation. 5. We do not have an e-commerce enabling vehicle such as nextag.com or priceline.com which actually searches across multiple stores and offers the best price to the customers. Vacation planning sites like makemytrip.com attempt to do this. But fail miserably in providing true low cost alternatives. E-commerce must succeed with middle class if we have to see a boom in this space. This means budget hotels and budget travel alternatives need to be a dominant theme in our vacation / tourism enablers. Most sites in this segment stop with star hotel offerings. Most Star hotel users are the rich and famous or those whose stay is paid for by the corporate. This is too narrow a customer base for e-commerce to see an explosive growth. redbus.in is a definite step in the right direction. 6. For basic sale to happen, most of would want to see several competing alternatives along with pricing information. We do not have e-commerce enablers that can help us make a decision between formal shirts from Raymonds, Arrow, LP or Van Huesen. But this is exactly what a visit to the mall enables. 7. In order to enrich the shopping experience, we need to have an aggressive mail order campaign that provides for discount vouchers, fabric samples for people get a sense of the product feel - and other specific sale enabling tools.
5	Evaluation of the product	1. Product evaluation is simply a function of three vectors. One is to do with credible quality reviews about the products and services from people who make similar purchases. 2. We need a serious product review site / magazine that deal with consumer reports and evaluations. Such information is rarely available. 3. In most multi-brand stores, each brand is represented by a company representative who simply forces a buy decision by "misinforming the customer" that a competing product is not available. Credibility of such stores is always poor. But customers are forced to make a purchase because in the absence of quality information for making a decision, the poor customer is left with going with a "loud sounding advice", which is usually incorrect. 4. Online review tagged with the product along with the pros and cons about the product serve a very useful purpose of making the customer aware of the nature of the product from a price, performance and quality stand point.
6	Payment Procedures	1. Most sites accept Credit Card, Debit Card. 2. For handling people that fear misuse of a card, it will help if the customer can call a number to give his credit card details to make his transaction happen. For this to work well, this platform needs to be a credible one and not one of the outsourced companies who care a hoot for customer experience. 3. SodexHo type vouchers is an innovation that can be brought about. Banks and other establishments can sell such internet vouchers to the customers to encourage online internet transactions. This will address the "I am afraid to give my credit card number online" fear. 4. COD services must be enabled across the length and breadth of the nation. Today, a limited number of pin codes dealing with the heart of metros is what is serviced by private couriers. The India Post VPP service works across the nation; it is slow and inefficient. COD ideally enables pain free mechanism because the trust issue is eliminated. If business can work with an assumption that about 5% of the sales will be dishonored by COD customers, then this is a viable option.
7	Product delivery	1. Couriers handle metros and major cities well. 2. Tier-2 delivery performance is usually bad or even unacceptable at times. A package from Bangalore to Chennai has taken 4 business days because the person in a certain delivery area is in vacation. 3. No viable COD product from any of the couriers servicing the nation. It is no use providing COD in Metros, where awareness is high. COD is a viable non-metro / tier 2/3 / rural offering.
8	Feedback about the online experience	1. There is a need to build an online community that gives concrete and credible feedback. Amazon reviews and recommendations serve this valuable need.
9	Customer Service	1. IVR is OK, but most people want to talk to a person; there needs to a paradigm shift in the way we approach customer service with a personal touch. 2. Amazon.com provides a call back option where the customer enters a phone number and someone talks to him in a few seconds. This is an amazing customer delight generating factor. 3. gadgetsguru.com takes more than 3 months to process a refund claim and there is no communication from the site when the updates do not happen.
10	Customer Returns Policy	1. Customer returns policy needs to be fleshed out. In most cases, unhappy customers remain unhappy because our "sellers market" psyche forces a purchase decision irrespective of the nature of customer experience with the product. 2. What would it take for a no questions as asked refund - like it happen in USA?

As we can see, the real issues and obstacles to a successful e-commerce strategy in India are many. There is no dearth of customers who are ready to explore a paradigm shift. What we lack is an e-commerce industry which will deliver the real internet shopping experience that address several of the points mentioned above. 

Yes, there may be many more - but one thing is clear. E-commerce offerings in India is far from being 'production worthy'. Most are built around the premise that web programming is cheap and something can sprout fast. Remember the golden rule - if you pay peanuts, you will get monkeys :-) The industry needs to look at this as a scratchpad full of opportunities and make a solemn resolve to do something about it.

Hello! I lost my Identity

I was on vacation with my family in South India, in the middle of nowhere. Cell phones worked hard to detect a signal. My Blackberry burnt more fuel in searching for networks, than doing something useful. Occasionally, we would come to some village head quarters or a town. We would feverishly call a few friends and check a few mails and that's it. The family outing was perfect. Enjoyable. None of the cell phone interruptions. No calls. Perfect.

In the cyberspace, something was going wrong. Really wrong for me. One of my friends sent me an SMS informing why I was spamming the mailboxes. A mail that talked about me buying an iPhone or some such garbage was the content of the email. I read the SMS and laughed it off.

My vacation ended and I was back at work. After being away for a week; things had piled up. When the backlog came down to manageable proportions, I logged on to my gmail account. It would not allow me to get it. I was certain I used the right password. It was really frustrating and I asked gmail to send me a new password. Bang came a response, that my account has been blocked and disabled. So many things that I do on the net has been intimately tied to email ids, that now I went around checking for places that used this email id. Picasso threw me out. Blogsot threw me out. Facebook came back saying that they have disabled the account. I lead my example. I was the first to be fired from Facebook; even before the "Quit FB Day". I have no regrets. FB has a Blackberry client that I had downloaded. I entered my user id and password. It came back saying "cannot connect to server". I was pretty upset and was actually joking to colleague that now FB has a Trojan horse on BB for trapping your login id / password. I am inclined to believe that this is where my miseries began. Anyways...

Twitter was decent; it allowed me to get in and change my email id. And my world came to a stand still. That made me work overtime to address the issue. I decided to spend an entire night ensuring that all the site and accounts I used had a valid email id. The single sign on had played a havoc in my life. 

I had filed close to 6 forms in all to Google explaining to them about the problem I was facing, Google did not respond. It appears that they did send a mail to my disabled email account. That was not a bit funny. In fact Google groups is filled with postings about disabled accounts and how people struggle to get help from Google to address their problems. In terms of Customer responsiveness - Google clearly gets an F-. It sucks.

I was back in Chennai this weekend - on a business visit. One other gmail account was disabled. I was livid. I went through the "ask for new password" cycle, this time Google threw up a new screen asking me for my cell phone number and country information. It send me an 6 digit code for verifying the account. We are used to these 6 digit OAC code menace, thanks for Citibank in India. I entered the code and suddenly things worked on that email id. I tried the same trick on my disabled account. I entered the cell phone / country info. Google sent me a code. I entered the code and bingo. The gmail account was enabled once again. Why Google disbaled my account [ possibly because of the email burst that was not started by me; why it chose to remain silent and no respond to my emails / notes and why caused it to enable the account without informing that it is now ready to do so - is a mystery to me.

It all seems surreal. In the meantime, I had created another email id on Microsoft Live and ensured that I move away from Google.

Moral of the Story: Keep away from any ecosystem that expects you to have single sign on. It is simply a recipe for a disaster that is waiting to happen. If you believe in having one, buy a domain and get Google to host the email for that domain. That was Google can simply refuse to host you, but you can always retain your email id by choosing a different service provider.

The last 2 weeks have been stressful indeed. I can sleep peacefully tonight.

Life's Lessons - Part 2 : Lessons from World Cup T20 in West Indies

The age of criticism and cynicism has dawned upon India - as our demigods let a billion people down, thanks to the spectacular defeats in the super 8s. It is time for the journalists and cricket enthusiasts to come together to discuss what we could have done better from the cozy comfort of their drawing rooms sipping some hot tea. This is the easiest part. The slightly more difficult part of the puzzle is to with BCCI making sense of this defeat and taking purposeful action - hopefully.

This is not the purpose of this blog.

I would like to spend a few minutes thinking about the lessons we can learn from looking at the performance of the teams at the World Cup. This a tad difficult and even a bit esoteric. But I suppose we lose nothing by giving this thought experiment an honest chance of survival and success.

1. Team Composition: Track record and experience is a good indicator for team selection. Often times, HR interviews do a good job of focusing on this vector. The aspect that we overlook - at least I have been guilty of this several times, is to do a good job of judging if there is hunger to contribute. Tiger teams that we put together to create an exceptional product or service, requires a clear commitment to the goal and alignment with the vision, combined with the energy to make a difference. This fizz is extremely crucial. Its hard to judge in an interview. But that's no excuse for doing a shoddy job of this. Teams with rich resumes hardly perform as well as team with rich resumes and great energy. Moderately glamorous resumes with rich energy and hunger to succeed - typically outperforms a team of  "retired" stalwarts.

2. Seniority in an job or skill is not a good reason for not getting a kick in the butt when you under perform. Often times, seniors do get away with less than optimum performance. They get into the role of mentoring juniors - essentially taking a laid back approach to their own assignment and letting the project suffer. Seniors must spearhead the "attack" and must help the team a) understand the big picture b)  make in road in face of stiff product targets c) enable the team members to play to their strengths.

3. Accountability: When you screw-up; learn to stand up and say -"We are sorry, we screwed up". Period. Keep it short.

4. Like all the products and services we purchase with our hard earned money - where price is always tad lower than value - so must our total compensation be. Earning more and earning more very quickly results in erosion of our values and the way we look at rewards. It suddenly becomes an issue of entitlement as opposed something that must be earned - requiring hard work as an essential input.

5. No matter what your mother, wife and sister tell you, please remember that there are scores of folks who are brilliant, a better bundle of talent and energy and more affordable than you. This constant reminder will ensure that your feet always stick to the ground beneath.

6. Chetan Bhagat once said, I quote, "Life is one of those races in nursery school where you have to run with a marble in a spoon kept in your mouth. If the marble falls, there is no point coming first. Same is with life where health and relationships are the marble. Your striving is only worth it if there is harmony in your life. Else, you may achieve the success, but this spark, this feeling of being excited and alive, will start to die. One thing about nurturing the spark - don't take life seriously. Life is not meant to be taken seriously, as we are really temporary here. We are like a pre-paid card with limited validity. If we are lucky, we may last another 50 years. And 50 years is just 2,500 weekends. Do we really need to get so worked up?." This is one thought that keep ringing in my ears. It has made life much more enjoyable and purposeful. The pre-paid card analogy works well for just about everything - about our lives, jobs and everything in between.

7. In other words, it is OK to lose some battles, just as it is OK to win some.

8. Never assume that all projects have fairy tale ending just because you organization and family cheers you every step of the way. The key question to ask is "Did we deserve to win?". The simple answer sometimes is "no". There is no shame in losing to someone who is significantly and consistently better than you.

9. I am reminded of something that I read sometime ago. It is a good summary of what I set out to say. Bill Gates gave a speech at a High School. The summary of which can be captured as a few rules.

         1. Rule 1: Life is not fair - get used to it!
         2. Rule 2: The world won't care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something before you feel good about yourself.
         3. 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.
         4. Rule 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.
         5. Rule 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your Grandparents had a different word for burger flipping: they called it opportunity.
         6. Rule 6: If you mess up, it's not your parents' fault, so don't whine about your mistakes, learn from them.
         7. 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.
         8. 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.
         9. 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.
        10. Rule 10: Television is not real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.
        11. Rule 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one.

10. I am not sure if Mahendra Singh Dhoni and Co / BCCI  care to learn lessons or not, this World Cup T20 failure does throw up a few bitter lessons for all of us in our corporate cricket fields - if we drew a parallel between a few critical projects at our workplaces with a World Cup. Poignant. Stark. Humbling. Wholesome.

Life's Lessons - Part 1

Several years ago, I attended a training, or call it a work session. The main theme of the workshop was to introduce a paradigm shift in our thought processes. The shift was related to the way we approach problem solving in our day to day life. What would happen if we stopped whining about things beyond our circle of influence; things that we cannot control and instead focused on finding solutions holding ourselves accountable 100% of the times, no matter what the circumstances were.

At first blush, there was a dark side to the argument. Participants ( and that included me ) immediately joined hands together and attempted to shout down the moderator of the session. Tea break that followed saw us forming islands of team small subgroup, each filled with chagrin at the prospect of holding ourselves accountable for the solution. Somehow, this meant that we would hold ourselves guilty of having created the problem in the first place, which was neither implied or stated. Perception. It was stunning how a group of people could sit in a room, looking into themselves - ie introspecting, could come to a similar conclusion that we had to feel guilty before we galvanize ourselves into action and solve problem [ as a sign of atonement ? ].

The purpose of this posting is not to get into the details of the course, work session, workshop or whatever it was. Or to pass judgments on the value of such sessions. I wanted to document what this meant to me and how it changed the way I approached issues.

While, I would not like to state that all of a sudden, something kind of flashed and a huge change occurred. That would be theatrical, dramatic and even untrue. I had to struggle with this thought that no matter what the circumstances, how do I make sure that I am focused on the solution space. I could no longer bitch and moan about my boss and my HR, I could no longer whine about the people around me, and I had to consciously practice the art of detaching myself from the temptation to complain about things that are "wrong". Gradually, it came to pass [ this took me a good 5 years or so ], as I practiced this with rigor, that I started to focus on how to fix issues, no matter who caused the problem. This did not mean that I ended up doing all the things myself. It meant that I spent time with folks around me on how they solve problems instead waiting for Godot. It meant that I shared and taught folks around and used these valuable platforms of personal change and practice, on how to look at the solution space.

Wayne Dyer in his book "Power of Intention" said, "If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change". This was a powerful statement. This lesson has been etched in indelible ink in my psyche. I am not saying I am perfect. I am saying that at the point I realize my imperfection, I have a powerful tool for taking a step back and dedicating my energy to problem solving instead of problem highlighting. The problem with discussing and debating endlessly about issues, is two fold. It fills us with negative energy and this cycle continues over and over again. It is an energy sapping experience. It is not an uplifting experience. At the end of the day, it can at best be categorized as "low effort, low influence, low consequence". We engage ourselves in this, because it is one good way to kill time and perhaps boredom.

Lets now look at the state where we can sacrifice boredom through purposeful action taking. Let us start with an example to highlight the concept. I may appear to be whining, but I am using these as symbols to drive home a point. So, I seek some latitude in explaining the concept. Let us take Green Revolution. The basic [ rather simplistic for purpose of explanation ] being that natural resources are scarce. Therefore, we must do our very best to ensure that

     a. we use these scarce resources judiciously
     b. we do not waste these resources
     c. we look for ways to optimize our usage patterns
     d. if possible regenerate these resources

Instead of waiting for government to cut down the prices of CFL bulbs to make it affordable, [ by the way, if GoI did this, I am certain the carbon credits would be immense ]; let us find out the benefits of purposeful action.

     a. Use tap water judiciously while brushing your teeth, face wash and shave. One observation we can make is that the speed of water outflow is proportional to level of urgency behind the effort. I got to rush to meeting, let me shave my beard - usually ends up being tap turned on to its max as we apply lather on the face. This is one action we can take consciously and practice personal accountability.

     b. The second one that comes to my mind is slightly odd. It was based on a research finding. We know that electrical appliances are seeing dramatic improvement with respect to power consumption. Since leakage current is low, we believe that switching off the TV with power on is OK. We leave the microwave switch on. The research paper spoke of a product that would cut off power supply to the devices completely, so as so eliminate leakage or whatever. Switch off your PC desktop and printer. Logging off is not enough. The cynic in me first reacted saying that this is a ridiculous idea [ negative energy cycle commencement ]. I talked to people about this appliance and finally I asked myself what would it take for me to physically switch off the device [ no just the ON/OFF button on the appliance; but switch off at the plug point ] and see what happens over a 3 month span. This was a painful change to practice - to be intolerant to every switch being ON when the appliance is unused. Family members found this funny and at times irritating as well. Eventually, I checked the electricity bill at the end of 3 months. I saw about 8% average reduction in the bill over three months. More importantly, the practice of making a lifestyle adjustment to ensuring that my approach to electricity consumption underwent a metamorphosis.

     c. Does it make sense for us to attend a Greenathon and contribute 2 lakhs driving to the event on your gas guzzling Hummer ? Is this wrong ? Is there a balance ? Just as we want the rich nations to be accountable for environment - more than the developing nations - the same logic applies to rich and poor in India. Providing Solar lamps to poor is a fine idea. We should use Solar energy where ever possible. The question is simply this - can the rich and famous, upper middle class in the nation do much more at a personal level to go green. It is painful but it is possible. Rainwater harvesting is a fine idea. May be we should stop waiting for government to make it mandatory and do something about it in our own homes and surroundings. I am talking of little changes such as these. Can we simply have a ring of rain water harvesting pit around the boundary line of every cricket stadium so it actually replenishes the water it uses up for growing grass. Heard that Aquafina has a drive to replenish the water that it uses up. the idea is noble indeed.

In other words, nothing works like personal change. Nothing really works like taking accountability to bring about change. Now take up issues that you face in your work place and home. Sit back and give it a deep thought asking yourself how you can be part of solution instead of simply whining and discussing how helpless a pawn you are.

You would, with practice, see three major changes in your psyche.
    
     a. Self belief that you can solve and handle challenges no matter what would grow dramatically.
     b. Your attitude and faith in "Impossible is Nothing" would be firmly anchored
     c. Indeed, when you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change. You would start seeing opportunities for making a difference, instead of playing the role of the familiar helpless victim.

Thanks Dr Wayne Dyer.

Tragedy at Carlton Towers

Carlton Towers disaster was avoidable.

Loss due to human negligence is not OK. It is the government approved the building plan and was okay with violations. Lack of infrastructure - roads, parking, water, electricity, fire engines and water in fire engines - the list of ridiculous excuses simply is astounding.

Giving INR 50000 - INR 200000 is not the solution.

1. The government or civic official who has issued "everything is ok" certificate must be culpable of homicide and involuntary manslaughter.

2. Section 144 must be clamped at the site of disaster / accident. Citizens of Bangalore crowding around Carlton caused immense damage and loss of lives.

Now, the post-mortem of the accident will be performed and an odd newspaper will choose to publish the reports. But public memory is short. And this tragedy will fade away from our memory and thought.

We must not allow this to happen. We must sacrifice the 'adjust-maadi' mentality.