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I came across a few numbers browsing through stuff on the internet. And, I was quite shocked to see something. This is to do with the state of the Indian tourism industry. While some of these data are from different timeframes, they intuitively make sense.

As per this article in The Economic Times, India received a total of about 5 million tourists from abroad. Contrast this to the tiny island-nation of Singapore – it got over 10 million tourists in 2007 alone! I mean India is hundred times bigger than Singapore and has far too many  attractions and things to see & do. The culture is rich, there are great food choices, there are the hills and the plains and the beaches and the backwaters. But, the numbers fall very short of expectations. It may be just inadequate marketing. Or it can be bad perceptions about the tourism & general infrasructure in the country. Or it can even be poor word-of-mouth from tourists who had a not-so-pleasant experience. Whatever is the case, there is an urgent need to come up with a holistic approach to tap this important revenue stream.

What do you think are the top reasons for the below par performance of the Indian tourism sector?

Wow! Was that 2008 that just zipped past me!! Time flies. 

It has been an eventful year for me. I got promoted. I left my job at Gallup India. I got married. Yay! I had a wonderful vacation in Thailand. Yay, Yay!! I joined Towers Perrin in Sing a pore. I went about Singapore. And so on.

Meanwhile, a lot of posts on this blog got quite popular. And, I thought it will be a good idea to do a quick round-up of the various things I wrote about in 2008.

• The concept of “Micro-Boredom” and how the mobile phone has become my saviour.
• My wishlist from the grand-daddy of internet – Google.
• The business case for Employee Engagement. This post got a lot of attention and was eventually published on the front page of Deccan Herald’s Career Supplement DH Avenues.
• I got myself an iPhone 3G and wondered if it is “smart-phone” enough. Subsequent fixes from Apple have resolved some of my issues with the almighty phone.
• I borrowed from some research by my company to think about “deal-structuring” for employees or how we could maximize employee RoI from their relationship with organizations.
• 2008 was the year of economic ‘pain’. I mused about how we could manage differently.
• I am bowled over by the wonderful system of ‘incentives’ in Singapore. But, why are restaurant staff here not incentivized enough to provide great service to customers?
• I became a fan of TED. Fascinating stuff. Kevin Kelly impressed with his talk on the next 5000 days of the web.
• Mumbai will not forget 2008 so easily. Neither will I. I blabbered as Mumbai took the bullets.
• I started thinking about simplifying the interfaces of enterprise applications. I think this is a big big opportunity.
• I stumbled upon an idea to convert the employee benefits system into a ‘marketplace for benefits’. I have completely given up on looking at traditional system thinking on solving this critical problem that so many organizations face. An innovative and experimental approach is more likely to lead to a solution. I am looking for organizations who would like to partner with me on such an experiment.

And, if you think, I have bored you enough with this serious stuff, go straight to my alternate blog at Tumblr to enjoy some really cool pictures, videos, quotes and fun stuff. Or meet the shutter-bug in me at Flickr. Or, just head straight to my FriendFeed page to get a snapshot of all my online activity and networks. 

Here’s to a peaceful and fulfilling 2009. Cheers!

I have not stayed in Mumbai during my life. I have been there quite a few times for work and family commitments. In fact, I have never stayed in any one city for more than 7 years. I have lived parts of my life in Kolkata, Nepal, Ranikhet, Noida, New Delhi, Bangalore and now, Singapore. A rolling stone gathers no moss, one would say, and I have no special affinity for any one city. Sure. But, beyond cities, its the sheer tragedy that humanity faces is what hurts me the most. Whether it is Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Ahmedabad, Kabul, Baghdad or Jaipur that is attacked, ultimately it all leads to tragic losses for so many of us. Mumbai, surely, has a resilient soul. It will bounce back, but sometimes, I just feel that we are just “indifferent”, not resilient. Whatever I have seen in the last few years has affected me a lot. I see a dramatic change in the way my mind has been conditioned, re-conditioned and again re-conditioned over the years. Thankfully, neither I nor any of my loved ones were directly affected in the chaos that has affected so many innocent people in so many places. But, time and again, I feel that my soul has been shot at and torn apart by grenades and bombs. Time and again, I feel an absolute sense of insecurity and disgust. 

Today, I live in Singapore, which has a reputation for its safety record. I know that I have nothing to worry about. But, sometimes, it all makes me feel very guilty. Guilty about not being there with my countrymen, guilty about not able to do anything about the problem, guilty about being a mere bystander on the sidelines. But, at the same time, I feel very proud of the people in the thick of it – our security forces personnel who risk everything for us, brave mediamen who bring all the stories to the masses, common men and women who are there to lend a helping hand to people they barely know and a brave new generation of bloggers, photographers, twitterers and other social media activists. Hats off to them!

The scars are deep. Profound. Sometimes I wonder, on my next trip back home, will I need to stay holed up in the safe environs of my house? Will I be able to go out, without fear, for a nature walk in Bangalore or to my favourite eating places in Kolkata or just to see my dad in his clinic in Nepal? I want to and I will. Perhaps, it is easy to bomb humans than it is to mutilate the human spirit. They simply cannot. No matter how many of us they shoot down, they can’t take away our small joys. Our future. Our hopes. Our dreams. For a better, brighter and safer tomorrow.

I got engaged last Sunday to my sweetheart of almost 7 years. As I put on a plastic smile for the cameras and greeted every relative I don’t know so well, I got a funny feeling. Almost everybody tried to tell me in their own signature style about how marriages are a ‘life-altering’ event. Somebody mentioned that I would need to start being more social with family & friends, somebody said I cannot live in the same house after marriage and would need a better, bigger (read expensive) place. Some friends said I would need to regulate my lifestyle a bit (you know what I mean!). Some people were happy only for the simple reason that I would get a “tiffin” to work everyday and won’t have to unwillingly nibble at dosas & idlis. Some even went to the extent of saying that I would need to start dressing up more formally and start looking more like a ‘married’ man!! “ऐसे करो, वैसे मत करो!”

As I wondered about why people associate so much change with a marriage, I decided to take some cues from our movies. No better source to understand the Indian mental makeup. I recollected the zillion ‘love-story’ movies that our filmmakers have belted out (sometimes I get amazed at the fact that how many movies can people make with the same damn theme!! Hail Bollywood!). What is interesting is the portrail of our actors / actresses before and after marriage.

Before marriage, people are portrayed as very informal and easy-going (just like you and me). What is more interesting is the portrayal of women. Before marriage, actresses are seen in mainly Western clothes (can be skimpy as well and nobody minds!). They openly express their love, wear-whatever-do-whatever, seduce their men and live a blissful life. But, after marriage, the same characters put on a different skin. Marriage immediately brings an overdose of sobriety and maturity to them. Dressing changes from Western, casual & cool to traditional, formal & suave. The way of speaking becomes more restrained and formal. All of a sudden, society and family has a new meaning.

Exuberance, vibrance, fun, lack of inhibitions, free spirit – all become very minimalistic adjectives to describe married life.

The Indian society is pretty much the same, at least in the ways I have experienced in the traditional realities of a ‘modern’ India. The society expects you to change your mental makeup, attitude & values as you progress in your social life-cycle. Yes, social life-cycle and not the biological life-cyclical. Its contrary to logic, but personal change is not a function of age, but of whether you are in the prime of your जवानी (youth – as defined by one’s marital status) or a बाल बcचे वाला (married person, doesn’t matter if you don’t have kids).

As per economics, an incentive is any factor that provides a motive for a particular course of action. It is simply a means to encourage people to do more of good things and less of bad things. Incentives can be remunerative, moral, coercive, social etc.

I have recently been reflecting on how different countries digest incentives or disincentives. India, of course, has a law or rule (on paper), for just about everything. There are penalties for smoking in trains/airports, fine for jumping a traffic signal, underage driving etc. More often than not, we feel that these rules are not implemented properly. The other side of this is that citizens do not adhere to these rules. The simple explanation is that of inadequate incentives/disincentives. Fine for caught smoking in a train – Rs.100 (who cares!). Fine for jumping a signal – maybe Rs.50….and so on. Low value of penalties coupled with weak implementation – leads to very low probability of an average citizen feeling encouraged to adhere to the law.

Move on to Singapore & Dubai, and you find very high disincentives attached with the ‘wrong’ things. Smoking inside an MRT station – fine S$20000!! Jumping a signal in Dubai – something like AED 2000! You make the disincentive so penalizing that an average citizen doesn’t break the rules + put in healthy levels of implementation.

 Let’s go West for a change and you find that the USA, where most incentives/disincentives of these kinds have become moral incentives. Smoking in a prohibited area, jumping a traffic signal etc. have moral connotations (atleast in the sane hours of the day!). On a recent trip, I didn’t see sign-boards informing people about the penalties associated with such an act; instead the sign-board just said – no smoking. Cross-roads had surveillance cameras, but nothing to inform people about the rules. It appears that punitive incentives have been internalized to a large extent in that country.   

So, these countries represent the continuum through which incentives are designed, implemented, redesigned, re-implemented and finally yield the desired outcomes.