Igniting Women Entrepreneurship: Who and How?
India My Land

Igniting Women Entrepreneurship: Who and How?

The new buzz in the conference circuit is the arithmetic argument that there could be a big GDP boost if more Indian women became economically active (77% of urban housewives, 60% of rural do not work outside the home). To me, a more compelling pay off of women earning is the resultant increase in their self esteem and negotiating power with family and society and the resultant social and human development benefits. More importantly, if we could get the poor and the ill educated women to earn their own money, we would have more warriors in the fight against poverty, and more champions of the girl child. The only problem, as always in India, is HOW do we make this happen? Conventional job creation will not happen as fast as we need it to, and poor and less educated women will find it increasingly tough to have a shot at […]

March 8, 2007 0 Comments
“Rural Academies: Way to Go”?
India My Land

“Rural Academies: Way to Go”?

This is an exciting strategy because it is both holistic and flexible, and because it is extendable with easy to make changes, for different employer requests and different community constraints, says Rama Bijapurkar It’s always nice to begin a new year with a note of real hope and inspiration, and here’s the story I have to tell of the Rural Retail Academy, a vocational training initiative from Andhra Pradesh. The first batch of 700 rural youth have “graduated” from three academies, with 90% placement in large and well known retail companies like Future Group, McDonald, Food World, Spencer’s and Reliance, at salaries of Rs 3,000 plus per month. What is even nicer is that this is a government initiative, which is built around the mantras of “being totally market driven” and “private sector partnership”. And nicest of all is the gender ratio of the graduating class – 40% women! Three […]

December 14, 2006 0 Comments
It’s a Global Problem: Innovate the Solution
India My Land

It’s a Global Problem: Innovate the Solution

I had a set of questions posed to me by the ET team: Why do career women in India struggle so hard with their work – life balance? Are lessons from Nooyi’s experience relevant to Indian career women? Who needs to change first, India Inc or the women? They requested that I write a “sharp piece” – which I think means cut out the politically correct BS and get straight to the heart of the matter as you see it. And so I shall, based on the many exchanges I have had with career women around the world, and from my own experience with five “proper” jobs in big and small organizations and then working for myself, while doing the maa, bahu, biwi, beti roles in the forever soap opera that is the typical Indian extended family. First, Indian women are not more beleaguered or less evolved than their counterparts […]

August 14, 2006 0 Comments
The Message of Rang De Basanti
India My Land

The Message of Rang De Basanti

The block buster success of the movie Rang De Basanti forces us to re-examine the picture that media and social commentators have been drawing about India’s urban, educated gen next – that of a bunch detached and disengaged from their national context and interested only in maximizing material well being. My nephew who goes to a snooty Mumbai school where the latest on Nike attracts more discussion than the latest on Narmada, says that his friends loved it and discussed it a lot. A young lady who went abroad at 17 says that she and her Indian friends in college saw it and wanted to head back home. Kamlesh Pande the writer of Rang De Basanti (RDB), says that he was surprised at the way he was cheered at a college convocation and had loads of young people who said “thank you for opening our eyes with RDB”. Several young […]

May 1, 2006 0 Comments
Vive la Difference!
India My Land

Vive la Difference!

The two of us, writing this piece, are battle hardened though somewhat exhausted sufferers of a debilitating physical and mental condition. It is called “trying to be super woman-itis”. Some symptoms of this are “muthering heights”, and “we are just like men in the work place”. But we are now going through treatment for all these, and what better timing than International Women’s Day to tell it like it is and bring relief to millions of other sufferers like us, professional women who are also home makers and family nurturers, and for whom life is a giant balancing act. We spent most of our working lives believing that we were doomed to disaster if we were to even admit to ourselves that there were special, gender specific issues that affected us working women cum home makers; and that even if we admitted it to ourselves, it was professional harakiri to […]

March 8, 2006 0 Comments
The Anatomy Of Social Tension
India My Land

The Anatomy Of Social Tension

So, what did I learn in the past year? Other than the fact that the problem of traffic in any given city is inversely proportional to the quality of shopping in that city; or that the MPs seem to work on a cost plus basis to price their questions, rather than on a perceived value basis – hopefully! I learnt yet again, that India changes so insidiously that you can never see the change that you are watching out for, until it comes and bites you in the butt in some other form. Over the years, whenever I have shown the income distribution and income growth pattern of post-1992 to foreigners, they invariably ask, “so will there be a lot of social tension, as some get more visibly prosperous than others”? I have always dismissed this idea as a typical, materialistic “western mind” conceptualisation of life, that says everyone must […]

December 26, 2005 0 Comments
The Year of Implementation
India My Land

The Year of Implementation

A new year of nationhood. What should the national resolution for the year be? I think that this should be the year when we try very hard to make the Great Implementation Leap. There is awareness, knowledge and discussion, steeped in every pore of this country, on what needs to be done to solve our several problems, and make us totally proud to be Indian, not just proud in parts. Fix infrastructure, ensure that visitors from abroad, especially potential investors, have a great experience at least for the first 72 hours, till they get over their culture shock and biases! Make civic bodies accountable. Get more children to stay in school. Repeal antiquated legislation that was created for a non market driven paradigm. Improve delivery to the end beneficiary of so many existing relief schemes, etc. etc. There are sound and innovative ideas on what to do for each. But […]

August 14, 2004 0 Comments
The Consumer Vocabulary / Explanation for Anti Incumbency
India My Land

The Consumer Vocabulary / Explanation for Anti Incumbency

Ever since election results were out, there has been an avalanche of comment by politicians, political watchers, journalists, pollsters, intellectuals, advertising and marketing experts and more, analysing the who – what – why of the results. But conspicuous in its absence has been the voice of the voter. “What”, some might say in horror. “This whole thing is about the voice of the voter”. But as I said in as earlier article “Let’s have real vox pop please”, in a business we would insist that market share and sales data numbers, especially when unexpected, be explained through the lens of individual customer attitude and behaviour i.e. what customers did, and what they thought, which made them do what they did. The election result is like market share and sales data. Real explanations are what we are yet to get – too few facts straight from the horses mouth i.e. from […]

May 14, 2004 0 Comments
Can We Have Some Real Vox Pop Please?
India My Land

Can We Have Some Real Vox Pop Please?

I certainly don’t want to be a party pooper but I do feel uneasy reading the results of the Census of India and assorted Development reports side by side with the India Shining campaign and the English newspapers talking about the ‘feel good’ factor. I know both are true, and I know which one I want to believe as the larger truth that the good macro economic numbers translate into. But I can’t help thinking that there are human beings that all these macro statistics represent and that we haven’t really heard what they have to say. In a business, we would insist that sales data be backed up with data from the customer level on performance, both behavioural and attitudinal – percentage usership, repeat purchase rates, brand perceptions and loyalty, customer satisfaction levels, etcetera. What makes me uneasy is the impression I have that we haven’t heard the voice […]

January 14, 2004 0 Comments
Privileged Midnight’s Children, It’s Time for Serious Nation Building
India My Land

Privileged Midnight’s Children, It’s Time for Serious Nation Building

I am writing this especially for my age cohort and culture class, ‘privileged midnight’s children’, and articulating what many of us already feel.*(An Age Cohort comprises a group of people born at roughly the same time in the same place or country, and consequently experiencing the same major economic, political and social upheavals at about the same stage in their lives; their lives are punctuated by the same crises, they share the same nation-memories and they encounter every new decade, each with its own particular challenges, at similar stages in their lives). Born in the first 15 years after independence, the first generation of independent India, we have seen the pain of misguided socialism, the horrors of the emergency, and the humiliation of being dismissed as second class citizens by the first world. We are now more confident of our own identity and talent, and can transact as equals, with […]

August 18, 2003 0 Comments
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