My Life ... My Journey

The FY20Q1 GDP results came in recently. It shrank by 23.9%. A quarter marred with the pandemic and its higher order effects including lock-down brought one of the most vibrant economies to a halt. Many people dwell on various aspects of this number. The critics of the government have admonished it for being the poorest performer among G20 nations. Others gaped in horror thinking about the actual impact as the informal sector's impact is not accounted in the GDP. There are others who see the silver lining. GDP denotes the sum total of goods and services produced in the country. It is a figure which tells us what has happened in the past. Present and future are altogether different aspects. The PMI figures for August were 52 indicating expansion in manufacturing output compared to previous month. This indicates we are returning from the downhill ride. As the government allows more relaxation under new phases of pandemic response termed 'Unlock', one would expect the economy

A lot of people have been contemplating on going wide vs deep in their life -profession or otherwise. What exactly does one mean by going deep? Going deep means gaining expertise in a specific area by devoting one's attention to the same. There are many anecdotes to support this thought. There is a famous idea prevalent in the contemporary society that one requires 10000 hours of practice to develop mastery of any art. Expressions like domain expert, industry expert, Black belt etc. denote the same concept. They all point towards perfection or deep knowledge achieved in a particular trait through long-sustained efforts. Now lets turn our attention towards going 'wide'. Width refers to the expanse, or how far you can go. If you owned a piece of land wide enough, you may come across many different artifacts and changes in soil, topography, etc. Width thus essentially has come to correspond to the ability of knowing multiple traits. In professional world, people are calle

Ever since Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced on US Election eve that 500 and 1000 denomination notes would not be any longer legal tender, the issue of demonetization has been a topic of heated discussions. The response to the move has been varied and interesting. While some political parties like TMC immediately demanded a rollback, others waited to catch hold of some straws to beat the government on the issue. There were multiple aims of this exercise- 1. Temporarily check flow of counterfeit currency which is used to fund terrorism, insurgency and drug cartels 2. Attack on black money hoarded in form of cash 3. Give a push to a less-cash society with better accountability Most criticism has been around the preparation or the execution post the decision. Let's look at the stated goals and the criticism to evaluate the decision. For the first two goals, demonetization as a move is effective only when  it comes as a surprise and there is little time to make alt

Freedom of Expression has also gone into the list of words abused a lot as people use it in unrelated context and unsparingly. What constitutes Freedom of Expression (FoE)? The general understanding is that each individual has the freedom to express (display) his/her opinion without fear. Is FoE constrained or is the freedom unlimited. As an individual, you are free to do what you wish. No one can't curtail the choice you make but of course, you have to be ready to bear consequences. In the law of jungle, you may do chest-thumping or incite a predator but you should be ready to face consequences for your foolhardiness.  We don't live in a jungle. We live in a society and the membership of an individual to the society is based on social contract . Put simply, individual puts curb on his/her freedom, rights and choices in return for law, order, and mutual benefit. In modern state like India, these rules of society are codified in form of constitution. Indian constitutio

I recently watched the film by Anand Gandhi. the movie was awarded the Best Feature Film at the National Film Awards. The starting frames allude to the eponymous thought experiment that whether  a ship which was restored by replacing each and every one of its wooden parts remained the same ship . The movie is composed of three smaller stories. The first story is of a blind photographer who tries to visualize things through her camera. She listens to sounds and uses a camera aid to click snaps. She gets the photos etched, analyzes it with finger-touch and takes feedback from her friend/lover to confirm if the photos reflect the scene she perceived. When asked why she took up photography, she says first to document and archive, and secondly to explore, understand and see. But it's more than that for it gives her a purpose in life. She comes across as an unfazed indomitable spirit who refuses to keep any accidental good clicks for it represents something which she hadn't per

India is the 3 rd largest economy in the world in terms of GDP (PPP). It has grown at a rate of 7-8% p.a. for most part of the last decade. However, to grow further and bring the remaining 1/3 of our population out of poverty, India would need to grow at these rates. After 1991, there haven’t been significant reforms and India needs another round of substantial reforms. A majority of these reforms need to tackle the supply side bottlenecks as there is a strong demand. One of the major concerns is the ease of doing business and the support structure for enterprises. The country languishes in infrastructure. There aren’t adequate roads, railways is suffering from under-capacity, waterways and aviation require lot of capacity creation. Energy is also a big issue as more than 70% of crude oil demand is met by imports. There is no reliable power supply available to industries as the power plants can’t meet the demand due to shortage of coal. Getting skilled labour, environmental clea