Engineering with a Cause – Chewang Norphel, Ladakh

Meet Chaweng Norphel – better known as the Glacier Man of India, who has developed a simple technique to harvest water into an “Artificial Glacier” using simplest of locally found materials and pipes. Norphel has made seven such glaciers. One artificial glacier costs just $7,000, compared to $34,000 for a cement water reservoir! Read on..

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Corp Morality!

Did you read the text of the MBA oath being taken some months back (and even now..)? Something similar to the oath being taken by medical professionals.. Well, there is this surge of morality even in boardrooms and courts. (There was this judge getting down from the bench deciding the Ambani's case - because his daughter was legal advisor for another Ambani firm.) How much of it is cosmetic or real is something that varies from case to case - but the way it is being put forth in media is something appreciable. With Tata Tea doing a campaign on anti-corruption drives, and with Google being branded as the best place on earth to work ('Don't be evil!' is their motto) - life looks cleaner? Corporates forgot profit maximization? Corporate good or an illusion of public relation? One company recently donated a day's salary of all its employees to the Karnataka Government for relief work in floods - but no individual employee got the associated tax benefits from the company. Reason - the company was building a good relation with the labor ministry of the state and got incentives at the company level - with its employees' salary money - and no employee is directly involved! What do you say - good? Bad? Depends? Of course, this is a positive environment being built (or rebuilt?) and it will have its associated issues of implementation - but better few than none and better late than never! I am sure that the impact made in B-school blackboards and corporate boardrooms is going to be big. Recession corrections or just another passing fad?

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Mickey Mouse in IIMA

Mickey Mouse sneaked its way into the Louis Kahn Plaza causing a flutter on the Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad (IIM-A) campus which is recovering from the jolt of the global meltdown. For the first time Walt Disney picked interns from Asia’s best B-school for ... (read the full story here) [IIMA has retained the topmost rank amongst India's B-schools: Read here.]

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Decision Process Vs Decision Outcome

http://StrategicFraming.com Roch Paryre, Ph.D. describes the challenge of rewarding decision process instead of decision outcome. Excerpt from a 2008 talk on strategic thinking and decision making.

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Why violence

Why does someone resort to sudden violence? It is not about people whose way of living is violence but about people who are very peaceful historically - and then are found to resort to unimaginable levels of violence. There is an observation that if someone who is not addicted to anything (say, smoking) starts an addiction, (s)he ends up being more addicted than normal folks. It is as if a suppressed feeling is suddenly let out once the borders of tolerance are broken.. The recent Maoist violence in the country is an example of this behavior. It is the lack of basic resources that they have been deprived of continuously in the last many decades and this has resulted in such a outrage. In fact, one of the groups is named as 'People against police atrocities'. Instead of looking at the visible violence, we really need to look deeper at the root causes involved.. ..

It's a failure of listening to the people. If the state consistently doesn't listen to the people who are the sovereign, then what results may seem like "irrationality."

Shall we start listening please..? I am sure this internal violence is a passing phase for the country's economic growth. In fact, the mineral rich tribal areas are going to further contribute to the economy once peace prevails.

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Most Significant Achievement?

Although some achievements like being the state topper in matriculation, or getting into one of the topmost engineering colleges, look significant to people close to me, I differ.

This takes me back to 1999 when the eastern coastal state of Orissa in India was ravaged by a super-cyclone (officially called Cyclone 05B). I volunteered to be with one of the teams doing relief work.

I call this as an achievement because I found myself working with the army, handing over food packets to people who were hungry enough to kill each other for a handful of rice - I found myself collecting floating corpses so that they could be burnt before deteriorating further - drove a jeep in knee-deep mud to rescue kids surrounded by flood waters - and could not forget the face of hunger and calamity plus a determination to survive for the joy of life. Strangely enough, I also witnessed the worst faces of humans when I saw things like robbery, bribery and rapes even in such dire situations - it metamorphosed me emotionally as well as intellectually.

It taught me how to look beyond categories of people, and showed me the core of life's existence. As I sit today in my office in an air-conditioned environment, I feel one with Mahatma Gandhi's description of  his experiences in the Red Cross camps of South Africa (1906). I learned to have a vision bigger than individualistic goals and to 'be' the change that I want to see. It taught me real leadership when a single decision can save as well as jeopardize lives. It brought out the real leader in me. Life teaches..

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Debate: Global Impact.. of Global Indians

WSJIDEBATE: What Does the Galleon Scandal Tell Us About the Impact Made by Indians Abroad?

What does the Galleon Scandal tell us about the impact made by Indians abroad? Click here for an interesting debate.

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What is Strategy?

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Entrepreneurship gains ground as a career choice on campuses

Campus incubation centers are filling a vital gap but must offer the right mix of seed money and mentorship.

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