Enjoy the Talk.

Update: Here is a quick review of Clay Shirky’s latest book on the subject of Cognitive Surplus.

Some of you might have heard about Kiva – an organization founded by a passionate couple which allows people to lend money via the internet to fund microfinance institutions in developing countries, which in turn lend money to people in need of funds for small businesses. I simply loved the idea, but was a bit disappointed that they have not yet been able to develop this model strongly for India.

In comes Rang De, which makes a bold attempt to recreate the model in the Indian context. Here is a quick link from their website on what really is micro-credit. So, the concept is dead simple. Rang De puts up profiles of needy people on their site with details about the business they want to start. The business plans are simple – tea-kiosk, grocery store, weaving business, cattle rearing etc. Next, people like you & me review these profiles and provide the funds for these businesses. You can start with as low as Rs. 100 (USD 2). The micro-credit agencies collect all the funds and disburse them to the people, who then pay the money back to you in equal monthly installments (current repayment rate is 99% !!!). And yes, you earn a nominal 2% interest on your social investment.  So, this is no donation, it is an investment. This is our opportunity to become social investors and earn much more than interest on our investments – an opportunity to change lives.

And, it’s all doable at the click of a button, without paperwork. So, whatever the occasion, rise up to it in a meaningful way – whether its birthdays, anniversaries, pay days, celebration of victory, festivals or simply a day when you feel passionate about doing something good. Support someone and let’s share better.

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!

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.

As I think, I feel that the act of “a little more” is symbolic of certain things. For most parts of the last few centuries and even now, India remains a poor country with extremely low per capita consumption of most food items. Offering “a little more” food, I believe, is a sub-conscious way of expressing prosperity. The act is symbolic of the fact that “we are well-to-do and there’s plenty in here.” At the same time, this act also symbolizes another deep-rooted value in Indian culture – that of generosity. The way our motherly figures literally force you to down a few more bites symbolizes that “There is enough and you can have more than you want. It’s all there for you.”

It is quite interesting how basic physical needs, over a period of time, form the fabric of a community’s culture. While in the West, the abundance of food, made it a hygiene need, in countries like India, the abundance of food could possibly signify prosperity.

I have my own bouts of micro-boredom and when I think of it, I love the way various companies are tapping into my ‘nothing-to-do’ space. And, it’s far from being intrusive, but is actually quite helpful at times.

I use a Nokia E62 with Symbian O/S. It helps me check my company’s emails (MS-Exchange) with Mail for Exchange and sync my phone calendar/tasks/contacts to my Outlook. Google went on to create a suite of service for the hand phone. So, I can check my Gmail, add reminders to the calendar, watch Youtube videos suited for mobile phones, catch up on Google News, check out my Google Docs and catch up with my favourite feeds using Google Reader. They even created a handy application for Google Maps, which you can download to your cell phone. It is really useful – so when I have to find out where my hotel is located in Mumbai, I know where to look for it! Then, somebody realized that there has to be a better way to browse the net on a small screen and we got Opera Mini. Ideal for browsing, Opera Mini optimizes the internet for your cell phone. I use it to update my Twitter status; send private messages over Jaiku and connect with people on LinkedIn. It also has a feed aggregator and easy management of favourites. Yahoo Go puts in a host of Yahoo services in your palms – push email, weather updates, news, calendar and of course, Flickr. I browse through my albums, catch up on old times and share a laugh with myself at times. Then there is WidSets. It allows me to add tons of widgets to my application window – Twitter, Gmail, Jaiku, Feed Reader, Weather, Sudoku and tons of other time-killing games. I also micro-blog at Tumblr. So, you have this cool application called Tumbla, which lets you post text, quotes and pictures to Tumblr. In the evening, when I get a message that I need to be in Delhi for an urgent client meeting, I use applications from Jet Airways and Yatra.com to book my flight tickets on the go. Did I mention that I like to track the stock markets? I use Markets on Mobile from Moneycontrol to get updtes on my portfolio and the markets in general. Sometimes, when I get up in the night, I even use it to see how the US markets are doing! Whenever I feel the urge to chat up with a friend, I log onto my Gtalk / Yahoo Messenger. There are tons of options for this like Talkonaut, Morange among others. Though multiplex movie tickets are pretty steep these days, whenever I feel like I use the application from Book My Show to book movie tickets. What’s more, it even allows me to choose the seats of my preference. Oh yes! I swear I use my phone to talk as well.

So the other day, someone asked me “Don’t you get bored staying by yourself?” Nah! No way! Micro-boredom has evaporated into thin air! My phone is my saviour – my very own, personal Jesus Christ.

Salvation lies in your hands!

You may call me a narcissist for reposting an old post, but I really like this one.

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.

What I fail to understand is where does this nationalist feeling go for the rest of the year? All year long, we live with corruption, do everything to make our cities dirty, drive rash, pee on the walls, spit everywhere (dharti ke laal), dig holes on the road and so on. If someone were to ask me – Do Indians care for their country, I do not know how to respond. There are times we go overboard on nationalism like cricket, Indo-US nuke deal, a movie that gets recognized by Hollywood etc. We celebrate like no other nation. But on the other hand, we do not seem to be involved in community-building and hence, nation-building activities on a regular basis in our daily lives. All the zeal suddenly drops dead. On one hand, we do everything possible to pollute the environment around the Taj Mahal and contribute to its deterioration. On the other, we do a big song & dance for it being selected as one of the 7 wonders of the world. This is quite ironical – as ironical as it gets and it confuses me about how we think of our nation and nationalism.

P.S. – This list of words/phrases is really not definitive and conclusive because it is simply impossible to describe a city as wonderful as Calcutta in a few words. Please feel free to add to this list in the comments section.