Kodaikanal and Coimbatore

 Kodaikanal and Coimbatore visit happened. Met Dhanapal, and took off for a golf trip. A unique AirBnB in Kodai was beautifully located, and the winter views in the hills were amazing.. a sample.

From the front door of the cottage- Whispering Waters.

Silver Cascade falls.

A dam on the river Varthaman.

2024 - A Recap

 Starting with December 2023, on 30th I attended a wedding - and met Natasha Kothari, who runs Studio Ungap. Dhruv, her fiance, was the groom's brother. Anyway, we met again at her office, and I also wrote a case and invited her for a guest lecture on Entrepreneurship to Prestige University. Went off well, with a video recording too.

Natasha at Indore, with students Bhavna and Silky, below.

It was also a year of weddings- attending them. Sanjana's (she was a student from IIM Indore), another one in Coimbatore where I ran into students from IIM Indore among guests, and so on..

Meetups with long lost friends- Jaya Dulani, Pushpinder Singh, Venkata Rama Subramaniam, and not lost but found Nikita Ray, Ananya Nandi Dey, Shalini Sinha, Abha Anagha Kulkarni, Sheetal Garg also happened in Delhi and Mumbai, and Pune. Prachi Jain also met up before migrating from IMT G to IIT Roorkee. 

Jaya Dulani, market researcher, and below, Shalini, a photographer and Abha, HR in a law firm

The Halves too. 

My ex-student-friends from IMT, Ananya and Nikita.

Golfing also happened, with students, and guests, and Prestige employees.

Ayushi learns .. so does Veronica, my friend from Argentina.

Pretty golfers from Prestige. Vedika Palod, below.

Silky and Sakshi, above.

Adithya Padala from school (now in California), and Annie Singh and Ajay from Greenwood, caught up after long, in Pune and Delhi. So did Madhu and hubby, my wife's colleague from Bangalore.

Adithya, above. Madhu and Mr. Mathur in Gurgaon.

Annie Singh and Ajay, from USA.

Also, went to XLRI for a doctoral consortium (met Vijjy, prof. and classmate, and a couple of lovely young Ph.D. scholars), and on a holiday to Goa (and enjoyed dry days with hoarded whisky), and in MP, to Orchha and Khajuraho via Jhansi.

Research Shows- 6

 My research shows that-

the level of innovation in Indian academic institutions -particularly the management institutions- is low.

We imitate, rather than innovate. We still buy Harvard cases after 60 years, and send faculty to get trained on how to teach cases!!

We are still not doing enough original work, relative to the number of faculty we have in top-ranking institutions. Related to this, doctoral programs are not supported adequately.

Leaders in some of these institutions are not even aware of the lag, or have wrong priorities.

Not all the fault lies with the leaders, as faculty have a lot of autonomy.

Research Shows- 5

My research into the academic work shows-

That teaching-learning is effective only when it has a marketing orientation- not that students are customers.

I mean methods followed need to be appropriate for the students on hand. Tough projects for school kids are essentially done by parents or others, for example.

In-class work is as important as home work.. maybe more, as it can be directly supervised. 

Collaboration needs to be taught through examples, like group assignments.

Evaluation should be multi-modal, with a viva of some sort, or presentations, included.

Feedback should be honest, and if possible, constructive. 

Clear goals written in a course outline help.

Many teachers fail on some of the above.

 

Nathuram Godse in a play

 This is a play about the guy who killed Mahatma Gandhi. It tries to put forth his perspective on the act. Not too convincingly, I might add. 

It's good as far as a perspective goes. But justifying murder for any reason, to my mind, except rare cases of self-defence, is a no-no.

Written and directed by Bharat Dabholkar, a celebrated Ad man. It is well-acted, and is a bit thought-provoking, showing some warts in the Mahatma's ways of dealing with the Partition of India. Anant Mahadevan acts as Mahatma Gandhi, and his son. Bharat also plays a small role himself.

It's also a bit hard to believe that he was acting all alone. Anyway, a good theatre experience. This was the Hindi version.

Research Shows- 4

 My research shows that there are people who feel entitled in all walks of life.

First, are politicians at all levels. Few exceptions.

Bureaucrats, sometimes even more. Few exceptions.

Corporates high up in the hierarchy. With social media on the loose, sometimes even lower down the hierarchy. Not just in India. 

Academics who think they have killed it, but haven't. Lots of them around, if you look for them.

Students from rockstar colleges - read IIMs. There is an inverse correlation with the ranking of the college, in many cases.

Employers with no empathy, for whom employees are cogs in the profit-earning wheel. Both in academia and the corporates.

Employees who think the company/organisation revolves around them. It might not, except for a day or two.

Promoters-popularly known as Lalas in India, who micromanage stuff and run all good things into the ground, sometimes over decades, sometimes a lot faster.

 

Research Shows- 3

Third in the series of research findings. This one's about sports. India happens to be crazy about Cricket, to the exclusion of almost every other sport. 

Yes, we have had Badminton greats, from Padukone to Sindhu, and Chess grandmasters and champs like Anand and Gukesh, and Billiards champions and a couple of Athletes who were World rankers.

But even a struggling Kohli or Sharma or a bowler, will always be in the limelight, for many years, whether we like it or not.

Occasionally, we talk about other sports. But even within Cricket, it's Men's cricket that counts, not Women's cricket. 

Even for cricketers at the State level, it's an uphill battle, to get into a national squad. Maybe it was better a few decades ago, when the money (and therefore, politics) was less, and it was mostly for pride that national teams played. IPL has changed all that for the worse. 

Globally, we don't pull our weight in most competitive sports. And exceptions only prove what is evident, if we open our eyes.