Elections are back, in a few states. My former state of residence, Karnataka, very soon, and my current state of residence, Madhya Pradesh, a few months later. So I thought I would coin a few slogans for anyone who might use them. I would claim royalty, please remember..
Sev your pals, from Indore and Bhopal. Vote XYZ.
Ee saala IPL cup hamara hai. Vote for ABC
You got free swimming pools earlier. Now we promise you diving boards.. in Bangalore.
The Metro will be built, including the Bannerghatta Road stretch, the new MG road station, the airport connection..we just don't know when..
We will develop M.P. and make it the Export hub, the I.T. hub, the Food Processing Hub, and the eating-out hub.. no spokes will be allowed!
Belgaon will become Belshahar, one of the most developed cities. If you vote ABCD.
Dharwad will compete with Harvard.
Jargon has a way of perpetuating itself, and going viral. One year ago, many of us wouldn't have heard of ChatGPT, only GST. Now, everyone uses it in conversation as if it's been around for 20 years. It's besides the point whether anyone has actually used it.
Earlier, life was simple. People were only experts in a few things. Now, all of a sudden, you see experts (mostly self-certified), giving us gyan about everything under the Sun, Moon and the Milky Way. They sprout faster than sprouted lentils, and are, like the almighty, everywhere. God may not be happy with the comparison, but...
If you want to become an expert, all you need is a social media account. You can spout eloquent on any topic under the sky (Sun, Moon included), and you will have a few people acknowledging you as the Master (of the subject, or the Universe as the case may be).
Then you just bask in all that attention, and come back with renewed vigour, putting the Yohanis to shade. Dhinchak Pooja did that for a while, too, but the experts remain. They cannot be erased so easily from the ether.
Met this amazing lady yesterday at a function at Prestige campus. She spoke in Hindi for about 45 minutes. Forthright, no-nonsense stuff about how she came to Indore for a project in 1985, and just stayed on. From Chandigarh, which she used to think was a great city.
Solar cookers were what she and her Irish husband Jimmy propagated, and built a training centre for Adivasi (tribal) women where they learnt how to operate these and much more! They went into their own villages and started new enterprises -including making sev (an Indori fetish) and selling it, to increase incomes.
Lots of stories, and wisdom. Including on time management. She says the smartphone is for me, I use it when I want to. She does not shop, period. She grows almost everything she needs around her house. She has been our ambassador to the U.N. several times, and does not pull her punches when it comes to the government, or anything else!
It was great to see a woman of substance! Her energy-she is 75- would put all teenagers to shame, not to speak of us oldies!
Habits are formed unconsciously, many a time. We learn, of course, from multiple sources, starting with our parents in formative years. Moving on to friends, classmates, teachers and anyone else we may get inspired by.
We tend to pick up habits or learnings from all these. If you tend to spend a lot of time with a few people in your immediate circle that you like, they may influence you a lot. Or role models whom you look up to.
But my theory about this goes a bit further. You may end up learning from people you dislike too. For instance, a corrupt bureaucrat may inspire you to be the opposite. Or, if you find an incapable administrator, or leader, you may start thinking about performing that kind of a role, just to prove that you can do it better.
Any examples come to mind, of either kind? I have a few, and have written about them elsewhere.
I have noticed that social skills are not uniformly distributed across genders, even if you keep some things constant. There seems to be a gender disparity, that is statistically significant. The women in general, have much better social skills, than the (poor) men. I am not sure if the men are aware and are happy about this (if they are aware, that is). But in my view, we should not be too thrilled (again, assuming my findings are right).
Why do I say so? I have now interacted with thousands of students in and out of class. During the teaching term, if any students came up and asked for any more inputs or expressed a fear of stats (what little was in my Marketing Research courses), it was mostly the women students. Also for extra-curriculars, clubs, committees, it was the women members who took the lead to approach me to participate, write, contribute, etc.. no idea why.
Even more pronounced is the banter on social media. Though a couple of men students/alumni are good at it, including comments (one in particular, from KIAMS), in general, the women alums known to me from various B schools are generally more involved, more frequent in engaging in a chat, or in asking for advice about a course, or responding positively to any request to meet up in their city. I have therefore ended up meeting a lot of alums of the fairer sex in all these years. This includes a couple outside India such as Smita in Dubai and Swapna and Vidya in Singapore. These have been very enriching meetups too, I must add, for me.
With ex-colleagues, it is more balanced, with some of the men outdoing the women in catching up- maybe for a drink or a game of Golf. So far.
Not sure about readers of the blog yet, unless there's some more research to back it up.
I am generally in favour of brevity, with conversations. On the phone, particularly. Of course, there are exceptions. With friends, and over some beverages. I recently had a long phone conversation with a schoolmate who lives in USA near Sonoma, the wine country. North of San Francisco. He has done a lot of wonderful things since leaving school. He got a Computer Science degree in South Carolina, at USC. I had been to Clemson, SC around that time too.
He then did various things, like inventing a sound amplifier with myriad applications, including in the military. He also sold millions of these, I guess, along the way. He has experience of being funded for his venture, and also running it without the funders.
He was present when TiE was founded, he said. TiE is The Indus Entrepreneurs, a body meant to encourage entrepreneurship. We also discussed his coming over to talk about entrepreneurship to our students at Prestige University! His wife, a lawyer, has helped him in his own enterprise. He has a daughter who is in college, and doing well. His dad was in the Indian Air Force, and is in his 90s now, living with him.
Could be inching towards the 30th in the last few weeks. But they are addictive. This one- on 29th July 2026- was dedicated to Mohammad Ra...
