Hold your Breath | 2014 Passing by

Hold your Breath!

We have landed to the last day of one more year. Year 2014!

And as usual we tend to be carried away with what rest of the people does. Is not it?

We will have fun, have party and enjoy till late night today.

Midnight onwards SMS, Whatsapp, Email, Facebook, calls will be flooded to each other with lot of Love, wish.

Everyone will expect the New Year 2015 will bring lot of happiness and prosperity. All mistakes, all problems will just get vanished with the fresh air of year 2015.

But believe me this is not true. We will be trying to mislead ourselves. Tomorrow is not that rosy and it is not that wealthy as the same is being apprehended.

Trust me future is going to be very gloomy and we will be in deep trouble if we are not cautious now.

Are we able to do something which we love to do (let us be student, employee, employer, entrepreneur, business man or anything else)?

Answer is “Big No”.

If you see the trend, any geography across the globe is not safe. Security of Individuals are at risk once you are out of your home. Terrorists are everywhere and those are growing almost every day.

Once our child are out of home we cannot have our peace (tension is even more if she is Girl Child).

Are our jobs are secured? Is our businesses are Safe?

Then what happens to the mid-level lay off in one of the big Indian brand?

Are we not threatened of similar incidents in year 2015?

We are talking of technology advancements, cloud, big data, and analytics. But do we know more we become dependent on technology, human analytical power is getting restricted.

We keep on talking hadoop, cloudera, mongodb, Cassandra and so on. These are few tools on big data technologies. People are studying, focussing on the same keeping future boom in mind.

But do you feel without the power of mathematics, statics, logic these tools will function as per our desire?

Who will provide the domain expertize behind this tools/technologies?

Hence let us be careful. Let us take a break and think alone what we should do.

Which are areas we can focus to avoid future risks. How we can work on something which we would love to do.

Let us listen to our hearts, not our minds.

Let this be our New Year resolution.

Internet of Things

Year 2014 was congested with SMAC and IOT. SMAC stands for “Social Mobility Analytics Cloud” and IOT stands of “Internet of Things”.

We intent to connect anything and everything and collect lot of information (big data) from different sources, Analyse, structure and use them as per our need.

We are talking of Smart cities where everything, everyone is connected using fibre, wireless in lightning fast speed so that collection of information happens in a flash and decision making becomes faster even before we can think.

But what all we are connecting?

We are trying to connect non IT elements ( since IT elements like computers, storage, router, switch , firewall, server, mobile etc are meant to be connected by default) like UPS, Genset, Air conditioner, Biometric, CCTV, Passive Cables, Rooms, Doors, Gates, Apparels and anything else you may think. We are deploying RFID, Wi-Fi, Cable and other technologies to connect.

But interestingly we are trying to connect elements which are not having life.

What happens to the living elements? How do we connect with our near dear ones, our friends, relatives and even unknowns? How do connect with animals, trees, other living creatures? Can we collect data of minds, thoughts, emotions, dreams and analyse?

Can we connect with souls, spirits, and living creatures outside this solar systems?

The answer is “Big No”.

Then what is the fun in concentrating on SMAC and IOT? Rather it is de-focusing from self, from our insight.

Can we not practice and concentrate the powers we have within? Our monks did so for years in ancient ages.

They could concentrate the power of mind, could connect with the other mind, and read them. They used to analyse the astronomy and relate with bodily elements and in effect could able to do the trend analysis (let it be past, present or future).

Did we think of this data systems? Is this not big data? Is this not analytics?

Is this not connectivity?

Trust readers could visualize the picture demonstrated in the movie “Avatar”

Friends can we bring our focus back to the real power which can connect life.

The real “Internet of things”.

Mythology vs Management

I have attended a session of Dr.Devdutt Pattanayek during Infocom this Month. Trying to narrate few learnings from that in this.

How management is related with mythology?

Mythology is a collection of stories, rituals and symbols that a culture indulges in. It is considered to be ancient wisdom contemplating mainly about the life, its purpose and how it is meant to be lived through stories, rituals and symbols from which lessons can be derived and interpreted.

IN short mythology is a study of subjective truth (through stories), which reveals the mind map. It can easily be co-related with management of modern times.

A mysterious resemblance can be traced between modern management and the stories from the Bible.

Let us recollect the story from the Book of Exodus (on which the film The Ten Commandments was produced). It describes people living in gloomy poverty are deprived of dignity till the Prophet appears and aspires them to dream on the Promised Land. Following commandments to reach The Promised Land is like signing a covenant with God and the problem found in this process was people’s non-compliance. Similarly, in the business world, people find it difficult to stick to the memorandum of rules despite knowing that success is only possible when they stick to it.

“Swarga” (Heaven) is the place where we can have anything and everything we wish to have. There are three elements or objecs such as “Kamdhenu” (the cow whose udders were always filled with milk), “Kalpataru” (the tree whose branches were always laden with fruit) and “Chintamani” (the priceless wish-fulfilling gem). If we relate these to business, Heaven is the destination where someone can have Infinite Returns without investments.

Indra, the king of Indraloka, has everything imaginable. He is the king of the kingdom and having all the possible wealth. But he always suffers from insecurity and nervousness. He is afraid of losing “Lakshmi” in effect he always sends ”Apsara” to disturb the saints, he steals the Horse, he gets involved in conspiracies to destroy the Asura (the evil).

Similarly the businessman (In modern times) is always terrified of competition.

On the contrary, Vishnu stays in Baikuntha Dham and having no tension at all. He is cool, relaxed and he can adapt to the situation.

“Indra” tries to retain “Lakshmi”, but “Lakshmi” in attracted towards “Vishnu”.

In terms of business, we need to think if we would like to be like “Indra” who reaches out to the market in order to find “Lakshmi” as customers or be like “Bishnu” where business has created a product/service where customers are stepping in themselves

Business stands on the mythological LSD model i.e Lakshmi (wealth), Saraswati (Knowledge) and Durga (Power). When we get high-paying job (Lakshmi) after acquiring knowledge (saraswati), we aspire for  job security (Durga).

The old Hindu ritual of “Yagna” is not a fire sacrifice but a policy of give-and-get where the devotee or investee makes an offerings to the fire only to expect god’s “tathastu” or Return of Investment.

If we shift our contemplation, business will appear as a fantastic forum of charity in terms of offering jobs to the unemployed.

 

Renaissance Club

Renaissance Club ! Sounds interesting?

We had inaugurated this last 29th November, 2014.

This is neither having any registration nor any formal/legal entity so far. Rather we are not aiming for that as well.

The idea conceived by Pritam Bhattacharya, my friend and founder at Wordsmith Communications. He is a creative writer and runs an online magazine as well.

Apart from Pritam, the chairman, three other members joined in – Self, Mr.BN Bhattacharya and Mr. Pradipta Chakraborty.

Mr.BN Bhattacharya was a government official before his entrepreneurial journey. He is working on presently social entrepreneurship in rural Bengal which involves education, training and agriculture.

Mr. Pradipta works in a big MNC, but having very creative mind.

Our philosophy is to have this loosely coupled where we will think high, exchange thought, discuss and work some interesting creations. Similar minded people share ideas, pain points, joy face to face beyond the virtual community (Facebook, twitter, whatsapp).

Our observation and realization is the situation has reached to it’s worse situations in education, culture, social and other domains as well. Nothing can be worse that this.

Hence there should be an about turn to raise bar for Bengal and Bengalis. And we are trying in our own way.

Any inauguration does not get success without good celebrations with food.

Special Attractions were “Phul-kapi and kadaishuti Singara” (chef from North East India with 45 years of domain experience), Telebhaja, Gulab-Jamun (a special item from an entrepreneur from Chapra district), Blended Assam and Darjeeling Tea and local Bengali sweets made from “Nolen Gur”.

Apart from general “Adda”, Pritam read some section of Muztaba Ali, Mr.BN Bhattacharya read his own article of “Ahmaddpur Katowa Local” and I read couple of my poems.

Looking forward towards our next meet.

  

  

December 14th, The Miserable Day

December 14^th, 2012 my father expired.

In line with my yesterday blog I thought of writing a small biography of my father today to cover his interesting journey in 67 years.

But as usual 14^th December has always some unexpected incidents so far.

Last year (2013) 14^th December was my father’s first death anniversary and during the rituals suddenly my mother fainted and there was nerves breakdown. We had to consult neurologist further for her recovery in due course.

Today around 1pm my mother met an accident inside the house only. She was crossing a corridor and could not balance herself and fell down. During her fall she could not hold the grill besides and right hand got twisted. This resulted shoulder dislocation and in effect we had to rush to a private hospital since local doctor/diagnostic facilities were almost unavailable in leisure Sunday.

Finally there was not any major fatal like fracture etc which would have forced us for surgery. Doctors could set the shoulder by local anaesthesia. She has been given an arm pouch to have the shoulder on rest for 3 weeks at least without any movement.

But again due course of the incident and after effects, I had run though the miserable healthcare system which is driven by referral commission. It takes advantage of the situation and imply charges absolutely without parity. The attitude reflects favouring the patient party. Even after all these, patient party fail to get access to right access to right resource in an optimized way.

Will be you believe a shoulder dislocation treatment in a day care system of a medical hospital of the city impacts your INR 12000/- ? (this does not include medicine, OPD doctor fees etc)

The doctor who was called to the residence was very reluctant to come ( at least the body language did not show any urgency to me even though he stays after 3 / 4 houses from my house) . But once he came, after writing a prescription and referring for Xray/Orthopaedic, he was very proactive to connect to the Xray centre, Nursing Home etc. Finally he did call up the Hospital and put the appointment on my mother’s name. He did it from his own mobile (though he forced me to take a rikswa for the distance which is walkable 3 mins).

The doctor treated my mother in the hospital was good in communication. His approach was good and he did the job efficiently. But you will be surprised to know the mockery.

He asked me to get a hospital OPD ticket (by that time he has already seen my mother and put her inside the OT) and then he wrote in his letterhead “advising OPD admission” and then again asked me to go to the reception for “OPD admission”

Even though he was charging 12K package (though I still do not know the breakup, they said they will issue the bill after 3 / 4 days), he was reluctant to throw away his OPD charge INR250.

There was so many other facts which I might illustrate in some other blog.

Overall In nutshell, below is my conclusion on Indian healthcare system:

• Lack of professional guidance and validated relevant information
• Absence of feedback mechanism
• No framework with Comparative information with granular details
• No integration between different services
• Missing patient history – secure storage and access of medical records
• Less customer facing approach – Missing human touch – patients feels helpless and devastated
• No parity of fees and services in different facilities
• No proper compliance/law and it’s enforcement

I need to think seriously on www.health360plus.com

Some other day I will write the small biography for my father as a tribute.

All my regards to him and also the Supreme Power for saving from larger trouble during today’s incident.

13th December

13^th December, the horror time begun on 2012.

13^th and 14^th December are the darkest days of my life.

It was around 5pm on 13^th December, 2012. I got a call from my home with an emergency that my father is almost not responding. Similar incident occurred 15 days back also, when it was found sudden massive fall of sugar level and pressure. That time local doctor treated on emergency by pushing injection etc and recovered him even he had to be admitted in Nursing home ICU.

But this time the doctor was not reachable. My mother and wife were only available in house. Immediately diluted sugar in water was applied by sipping.

I was in wifi site survey in central Kolkata along with my team and got completely puzzled and disturbed.

Moreover I was having car as well that day.

Immediately I rushed to return with my car and kept on calling home to understand the situation. Meanwhile doctor came and situation little revived.

In between I missed the road and instead of coming towards Rabindra Sadan , I took the road towards Hazra.

The moment I crossed Hazra crossing and turned right, I understood my mistake and was thinking how to take “U” turn or should I take the EM Bypass root. Meanwhile I saw in the car mirror that someone in a bike is waiving his hand behind my car and signalling me to stop the care by the side of the road. I could not understand, but slowed down the pace of the car.

The person came left side of the car and asked me to stop the car. I was still confused, but stopped the car left side of the road. The person parked his bike and came to me introducing himself as a police surgeon.

He demanded my car did a severe violation of braking the signal and it is eligible of large case with car seizing or a penalty of INR 15K. I was not in the mood to counter since time was passing by and I explained my mental situation. I was sure I did not break the rule. But even if something had happened, that may be due to my mental condition. Then he revealed that he also stays in Birati (my residence area) and his wife also was working in IT Industry (my domain) . But still he was not ready to release me, rather was harassing me by killing the time. I went to the negotiation mode and settled it for 6K (withdrawn the money from nearest ATM) without receipt. Later I realized, he took advantage of the situation and I was carried away.

Anyway , meanwhile I had checked that my father was stable and under observation by Doctor.

On return to home, we decided along with doctor that next day morning we will admit him to the hospital to find out the root cause why sugar is dropping like anything.

Entire night me and my mother were sleepless on supervising him.

Next day we had taken him to the hospital. We started from home by 8.30pm by ambulance.

He was in his full senses (though very week) and enquired about the hospital where we would be going. He had taken tea and biscuit from home.

We reached hospital at around 9am. During admission, they checked BP, ECG etc and found normal. Still we admitted him to ICU to keep under observation. But then the shocking time started. Suddenly heart bit dropped to 30. Emergency medicine, external pacemaker applied. Blood Pressure went to Nil. Ventilation applied. But could not save him. It seemed like a massive cardiac arrest and suddenly a machine just got stopped. Finally his death was declared at 12.25pm on 14^th December, 2012.

Still today, I am clueless how a person can die like this.

He was not well for last six months. He was losing weight rapidly. We ran from local doctors to the best of the bread doctors in Kolkata. But no one could figure out the root cause. Initially it was told about diabetes, then fatty liver, then Sodium/Potassium issue and so on. Due course I had understood, felt the poor situation of indian healthcare situation. Everything was pre-defined. It was not based on disease, but based on patients paying capability. Still there are doctors, service providers, facilities which are really good. But we do not get access to the right kind of information at right time. Same way finally we could land in to a doctor and he in effect figured out the root cause and we started applying medicine under his supervision. It was kidney related issues. But when we could figure out and started applying medicine, we lost him within a month from that. Who knows, if we could trace out right issues much beforehand we might have saved him.

My father was healthy before this problem. He had always maintained disciplined life, food habits. He used to walk and carry out physical exercise. Still we lost him at the age of only 67 years.

Birth, Death, Disease and Oldage , we do not have any control. It is being controlled by the supreme power.

I pray to almighty, may his soul rest in peace where ever he is.

Let me have enough power to deliver the conceived project www.health360plus.com

Having Fever, Not Coming Today !

Above is neither a quote from a great management guru, nor from a motivational trainer.

But one of the great punch lines to keep the entrepreneurs on their toes.

Normal philosophy we should keep on adding challenges so that we can work out of the box and life does not get monotonous. The challenges help people to be “alive” instead of being relaxed.

Still confused? Not able to relate? Hold your breath for something very interesting.

The above line is one of the most common SMS from the employees for any organization at 9.30am on a busy working day.

The SMS can be reframed in any other sentences also like follows:

1) Not feeling well, will not come today

2) Need to go to doctor, unable to attend office

3) Have some urgent work, will not come today

4) Food poisoning since yesterday night, not coming

5) And so on

More interestingly all these come by SMS only and followed by “mobile switched off” or “mobile kept ringing”.

Besides, even though I have written the full sentences of the SMS, but in reality it comes in very crisp format (shortening of words like “nt” in place of “not” , “ofc” for “office”, “wrk” instead of “work” etc) inline with twitter/whatsapp era.

The noticeable fact is that all the messages are coming as “informing a decision” instead of “seeking approval”.

I caught a sales guy on a Tuesday since he was absent on Monday by sending a SMS “not coming today, going to doctor”, followed by non-answering of calls.

My apprehension was there might be some extreme emergency (like his own heart attack or someone in family would have been seriously ill and had to be admitted in ICU). Otherwise he could have taken an approval last working day (Saturday) or might have taken a permission over phone Sunday evening (the mobile connection is given by company and charges are borne by office only) if it was a planned activity.

But I was wrong. It was a planned activity to visit a doctor for a routine checkup and he did not attend office even after doctor visit was completed by 12noon. And he remained unanswered once I wanted to have justifications.

I was shocked like all other clueless facts in my short entrepreneur journey.

If he would have called me on Sunday evening and take permission for a doctor visit, who will not allow?(unless someone is mad or inhuman).

Only this preplanning would have helped the organization to schedule the Monday activity without him. But yes, organization would have asked him to join work in the 2nd half instead of taking off for the whole day.

I have started my entrepreneur journey after working in several big corporates in different positions.  I started as a trainee engineer and gradually climbed a path. But even in my last working tenure (where I used to head a regional vertical and my reporting boss was in mumbai) I was same way hesitant for taking any leave as it was 15 years back. I still cannot recollect a single day where I have taken a sick leave suddenly. Yes I had taken leave with proper approvals, delegation of responsibility and a proper hand holding of the person who can carry out tasks on my behalf. More precisely organization should not have impacted due to my absence.

But I found the accountability, ownership, responsibility etc are completely missing in present work culture.

Am I expecting something “out of this universe”?

Let me comeback to the punch line. My immediate reaction to this should have been like this:

“What kind of fevers did you have? Dengue? Ebola? You had to be admitted to hospital in emergency?”.

But “No”. I have stopped reacting to these since overall echo system is like this. We may keep on replacing people but attitude, approach remain same.

Hence we keep on accepting, accommodating, holding our nerves without taking disciplinary actions.

But how long?

Bengal needs a social and cultural revolution to lead India. The same can happen through a Renaissance only.

And we all have to do it together to change the game.

Love to see reader’s opinions.

Making a Difference

It was awesome evening today as I attended the session by Dr. Kiran Bedi in Infocom 2014.

The theme of the discussion was “Making A Difference”.

Kiran Bedi was the first lady IPS officer which was the paradigm shift in the Indian context. Today she explained the keynotes through the experience of her life.

She explained five principles of life which can be the differentiating factor:

1. Staying Focussed

• Once objectives. Goals are set, we need to stay tuned to achieve it,
• We need to set challenges of ourselves to come out of our comfort zones. We should keep on competing with ourselves. It is a fight with self to be better and better.
• Destiny will place us towards our aims provided we are courageous. There is no failure in life if we have the courage to attempt at least.
• Reaching out should become a habit.

2. Self-Evaluation Continuously

• Continuous feedback mechanism from customers, employees, vendors so that latest situation is know and corrective action can be taken,
• The fight to be won in the battlefield. The leader should drive the team at the field so that team is motivated, geared up for the big leap.

3. Not to be monotonous

• We need to enjoy our life and try all different options/ angles so that it does not become monotonous,
• Sports is one of good medium to make life exciting. Sports along with education makes a life perfect and creates the base for success in life.

4. Trustworthiness

• Living up to the trust is very important,
• Let it be social cause or political or business honouring the trust of dependent, team, stakeholders, following will set the roadmap for success.

5. Gratitude

• The confidence, the belief of “It is possible” is the ice breaker for making a mark.

If we indent to leave a mark to our life, let us think differently so that our action may have more impact. Let it create values to change the society.

    

P.S : The above is not directly copy/paste from her speech. I took the message and blended my thoughts as well and hence should not be treated as misquote etc.

What is Success?

It was an Inspiring Speech today by Chetan Bhagat at Infocom 2014. It was a life story and I could relate lot of them with our lives.

Here let me try to narrate the philosophy with his thoughts along with my thoughts.

It’s not individual brilliance which can always make an impact. In any exam, there can be only one topper. But what happens to rest of the students who are mediocre and did not achieve the desired score. Our education system, exams, academia are constructed to have a filtering process. IIM, IIT etc are treated as benchmarking. Engineers, Doctors, PHDs are treated as top notches. But what about the rest of the crowd? Yes ideas, innovations reside in the common man. The desire to change the rule of the game (changing the game is comparatively easy) differs someone from the rest. It is not only a good creation, but also penetration towards larger audience is absolutely important. Passion, the burning passion sets the path. Even a Rocket can’t take-off if fire is not put behind it. Chetan confessed that he might not be the best writter, but he is still a best-selling writter. Importantly he knows how to connect to the larger audience so that he can influence them towards progressive society.

What is success? Is it of having lot of money, building large enterprise or stepping into higher grades/positions in work? We always tend to achieve something which has already been achieved by someone else. But it is an illusion. Hence we get trapped into following or copying other and tend to become successful as driven by our minds. But ideally it should be reverse. We all are successful in life. The way we leave, struggle, survive, sustain in every aspects of life are all measures of success. Hence we should do something which we are capable of doing and we love. If we listen to our hearts, we can reach greater heights.

Generally human beings are reluctant to go out of the box. In our life we live in house, we use laptop, television, mobile. We travel by car. All of them are nothing but box shaped (please think carefully). Hence thinking “out of the box” is not there in our nature. We are being taught by our society, academia that “we will be not able to do it”. In effect we become confined and get settled in our comfort zone. Our risk taking appetite gets evaporated.

We need to come out of our comfort zone, listen to our heart, strategize to create a wave to reach target audience.

Let us not only strive of success, let’s focus to the glory!