India Investology: Global Challengers 2011

India Investology: Global Challengers 2011: Earlier this year BCG (Boston Consulting Group) came up with BCG Global Challengers 100 list, rising stars from rapidly developing economies...

Article on Late sitting.....Sir Narayan Murthy

Very Good Article on Late sitting

Email from the boss

Mail sent by Narayan Murthy to all Infosys staff:

It's half past 8 in the office but the lights are still on...

PCs still running, coffee machines still buzzing...

And who's at work? Most of them ??? Take a closer look....

All or most specimens are ??

Something male species of the human race...

Look closer... again all or most of them are bachelors.........

And why are they sitting late? Working hard? No way!!!

Any guesses???

Let's ask one of them...

Here's what he says... 'What's there 2 do after going home...Here we get to

surf, AC, phone, food, coffee that is why I am working late...Importantly no

bossssssss!!!!!!!!!!!'

This is the scene in most research centers and software companies and other

off-shore offices.

Bachelors 'Passing-Time' during late hours in the office just bcoz they say

they've nothing else to do...

Now what r the consequences...

'Working' (for the record only) late hours soon becomes part of the

institute or company culture.

With bosses more than eager to provide support to those 'working' late in

the form of taxi vouchers, food vouchers and of course good feedback, (oh,

he's a hard worker... goes home only to change..!!).

They aren't helping things too...

To hell with bosses who don't understand the difference between 'sitting'

late and 'working' late!!!

Very soon, the boss start expecting all employees to put in extra working

hours.

So, My dear Bachelors let me tell you, life changes when u get married and

start having a family.... office is no longer a priority, family is... and

That's when the problem starts... b'coz u start having commitments at home

too.

For your boss, the earlier 'hardworking' guy suddenly seems to become a

'early leaver' even if u leave an hour after regular time... after doing the

same amount of work.

People leaving on time after doing their tasks for the day are labelled as

work-shirkers...

Girls who thankfully always (its changing nowadays... though) leave on time

are labelled as 'not up to it'. All the while, the bachelors pat their own

backs and carry on 'working' not realizing that they r spoiling the work

culture at their own place and never realize that they would have to regret

at one point of time.

So what's the moral of the story??

* Very clear, LEAVE ON TIME!!!

* Never put in extra time ' unless really needed '

* Don't stay back unnecessarily and spoil your company work culture which

will in turn cause inconvenience to you and your colleagues.

There are hundred other things to do in the evening..

Learn music...

Learn a foreign language...

Try a sport... TT, cricket.........

Importantly,get a girl friend or boy friend, take him/her around town...

* And for heaven's sake, net cafe rates have dropped to an all-time low

(plus, no

fire-walls) and try cooking for a change.

Take a tip from the Smirnoff ad: *'Life's calling, where are you??'*

Please pass on this message to all those colleagues and please do it before

leaving time, don't stay back till midnight to forward this!!!

IT'S A TYPICAL INDIAN MENTALITY THAT WORKING FOR LONG HOURS MEANS VERY HARD

WORKING & 100% COMMITMENT ETC.

PEOPLE WHO REGULARLY SIT LATE IN THE OFFICE DON'T KNOW TO MANAGE THEIR TIME.

SIMPLE !

Regards,

NARAYAN MURTHY.

Entrepreneurship is always social.....

Over the past decade or so, the term social entrepreneur has become a fashionable way of describing individuals and organizations that, in their attempts at large-scale change, blur the traditional boundaries between the for-profit and nonprofit sectors. Given the ceaseless appearance of innovations and new institutional forms, we should welcome a new term that allows us to think systematically about a still-emergent field.

One danger, however, is that the use of the modifier social will diminish the contributions of regular entrepreneurs—that is, people who create new companies and then grow them to scale. In the course of doing business as usual, these regular entrepreneurs create thousands of jobs, improve the quality of goods and services available to consumers, and ultimately raise standards of living. Indeed, the intertwined histories of business and health in the United States suggests that all entrepreneurship is social entrepreneurship. The pantheon of model social entrepreneurs should thus include names such as railroad baron Cornelius Vanderbilt, meatpacking magnate Gustavus Swift, and software tycoon Bill Gates.

THE STEW OF POVERTY

People tend to think that advancements in health care, for example, are the achievements of either government or the social sector. More recently, they note how the work of social entrepreneurs is improving population health, particularly in developing countries.

Yet the experience of the United States demonstrates that business entrepreneurs have done as much—if not more—for American health in the past century and a half as did medicine or public health. In the middle of the 19th century, most of the U.S. population was ridiculously poor by today’s standards. Americans not only had low incomes, but also spent the bulk of their money on life’s basics: food, clothing, and shelter. What they purchased, moreover, was of questionable quality. Because there was no refrigeration or ability to transport foods over long distances, most people subsisted on a kind of stew that, by all accounts, was simple and tasteless. A poor diet meant poor nutrition, which meant poor health.

Clothing was also neither plentiful nor desirable. With little production of new clothing, the average American wore the same clothes over and over again. And they seldom washed these clothes—or themselves—because they lacked indoor plumbing. This was not the only failing of American homes: They were often poorly ventilated, meaning that most people’s lungs labored to breathe air made dirty by cooking and heating fires.

Because of these poor conditions, Americans’ lives were short, and their deaths were usually caused by disease. Yet since 1850, life expectancy for Americans has risen remarkably quickly, from below 50 years to 78 years today. Likewise, annual mortality rates have plummeted, from around 23 deaths per 1,000 people in 1850 to eight in 2009, with infant mortality markedly falling. Meanwhile, infectious diseases have receded as a primary cause of death.

Many factors played a role in these changes, from improvements in sanitation to upticks in education. (The practice of medicine played a noticeably small role here and, in fact, probably did more harm than good for many years.) But one important factor is often overlooked: the increased consumption of higher-quality goods and services. As entrepreneurs invented and distributed these improved goods and services, they deserve considerable credit for the rise in Americans’ health and longevity.

THE ENGINES OF WELL-BEING

One innovation that fueled prosperity, well-being, and further innovation was the American railroad system. The spread of railroads in the 19th century permitted something nearly unprecedented in human history: conquest of the weather. Better movement of people and goods reduced the vulnerability of the population (especially in rural areas, which still dominated the country) to cyclical vagaries. Even in the depths of winter, consumers could purchase food from afar.

The food people ate improved dramatically as well. Long-distance transportation of food required advances in refrigeration and canning. Gustavus Swift pioneered the refrigerated railroad car and built a meatpacking company that was, at one point, among the largest American companies in terms of gross revenue. As a result, consumption of meat, dairy products, fruits, and vegetables increased. No longer were Americans consigned to eating an unappetizing stew.

Railroads also facilitated the rise of large-scale national companies and allowed a geographically disparate country to purchase new and better goods and services. Consider, for example, the contributions to American health and welfare made by just two companies: Sears, Roebuck and Montgomery Ward. Their first catalogs were only single sheets of paper, but in short order they grew to include thousands of items. By making products such as iceboxes and better farm tools widely available, these companies empowered Americans to improve their lives.

Similarly, factory production of clothing and its national distribution in new department stores—created by men such as Harry Selfridge, Alexander Stewart, and John Wanamaker—reduced prices and increased access. Economists have estimated that from the mid-1800s to the mid-1900s, the real value of goods and services available to the average American increased by 700 percent.

The cascade of goods available to everyday consumers continued in the 20th century. The Dallas Federal Reserve has chronicled the steep declines in the amount of work Americans had to perform to afford staples like chicken, eggs, and milk. In 1919, for example, an American had to work 10 hours to afford a basket of 12 food items. By 1997, the work time required to purchase this food basket had fallen to two hours.

The falling costs and increasing quality of food, clothing, and shelter made Americans healthier and more resistant to disease. Accordingly, stature and life expectancy have risen at unprecedented rates from the late 19th century forward.

The lesson of this brief history is not that entrepreneurs can singlehandedly solve all the world’s problems. Public health measures such as establishing regular trash collection and building reliable infrastructures for clean water played vital roles in improving American health, as did scientific research in areas such as vitamins and vaccines. But we would be remiss if we did not count people such as Vanderbilt, Swift, and Wanamaker as social entrepreneurs.

Today, we might also count as social entrepreneurs people such as Bill Gates—in his capacity as Microsoft founder rather than as philanthropist—as well as the late Don Fisher, cofounder of the Gap. Through his dogged pursuit of a vision of personal computing, Gates has revolutionized work and communication across the world. The impact on relationships and quality of life has been considerable. Meanwhile, the Gap has democratized high-quality clothing.

Entrepreneurs typically generate a surplus benefit above and beyond the profits they reap, finds the eminent Yale University economist William Nordhaus. Nordhaus has calculated that entrepreneurs capture only about 2 percent of this surplus, with the remainder passed on to society in the form of jobs, wages, and value. By creating so much value that does not accrue to themselves, regular entrepreneurs are also social entrepreneurs.

CALLING ALL ENTREPRENEURS

What might be today’s equivalent of the railroad and its beneficial social impact? Diseases continue to plague most developing countries, so it is understandable that alleviation of them attracts the attention of social sector organizations (although there is considerable debate over whether these organizations are devoting enough attention to the right diseases). Yet it very well could be the case that the most transformative event in the economic trajectory of developing countries is not the spread of vaccines, but the spread of cell phones.

Cell phones cannot cure diseases, but they can spur the development of new business models, new companies, new technologies, and, thus, economic growth. Among businesses, cell phones also facilitate the scaling up of networks, firms, and innovations. They allow people to dream big, rather than focusing only on staying afloat. Several studies in the past few years have found that a 10 percent increase in cell phone penetration in developing countries would increase the annual growth rate of per capita gross domestic product (GDP) by nearly 1 percentage point. If that does not sound like much, consider that a country growing by 2 percent per year would double its per capita income in 36 years. If its growth rate rose to 3 percent, income would double in 24 years. At 4 percent per year, wealth per person would double in only 18 years. The economic multiplier effect of cell phones is enormous.

Such growth would in turn improve health and nutrition by allowing people to consume better goods and services. As Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus, founder of Grameen Bank, has observed, “income is the best medicine.”

This is not to say that public health and vaccination are unimportant in developing countries—far from it. But in the coming decades, it will be regular entrepreneurs—those who start and grow companies—who will be lauded for their role in improving society. Specific individuals and firms stand behind the technological innovations that make growth possible. Entrepreneurs, it turns out, are good for your health.

CV of Manmohan Singh....the most qualified Prime Minister in the World

CURRICULUM VITAE

DR. MANMOHAN SINGH

PRIME MINISTER OF INDIA

ACADEMIC RECORD

1962 D. Phil., Nuffield College, University of Oxford. Topic: India’s Export Trends and Prospects for Self-Sustained Growth. [Published by Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1964]

1957 Economic Tripos [First Class honours], University of Cambridge

1954 M.A. Economics, Panjab University – First Class with first position in the University

1952 B.A. Economics(Hons.), Panjab University – Second Class with first position in the University

1950 Intermediate Panjab University – First Class with first position in the University

1948 Matriculation, Panjab University – First class

PRIZES AND AWARDS

2000 Conferred Annasaheb Chirmule Award by the W.LG. alias Annasaheb Chirmule Trust setup by United Western Bank Limited, Satara, Maharashtra

1999 Received H.H. Kanchi Sri Paramacharya Award for Excellence from Shri R. Venkataraman, former President of India and Patron, The Centenarian Trust

1999 Fellow of the National Academy of Agricultural Sciences,New Delhi.

1997 Conferred Lokmanya Tilak Award by the Tilak Smarak Trust, Pune

1997 Received Justice K.S. Hegde Foundation Award for the year 1996

1997 Awarded Nikkei Asia prize for Regional Growth by the Nihon Keizai Shimbun Inc. (NIKKEI), publisher of Japan’s leading business daily

1996 Honorary Professor, Delhi School of Economics,University of Delhi, Delhi

1995 Jawaharlal Nehru Birth Centenary Award of the Indian Science Congress Association for 1994-95

1994 Asiamoney Award, Finance Minister of the Year

1994 Elected Distinguished Fellow, London School of Economics, Centre for Asia Economy, Politics and Society

1994 Elected Honorary Fellow, Nuffield College, University of Oxford, Oxford, U.K.

1994 Honorary Fellow, All India Management Association

1993 Euromoney Award, Finance Minister of the year

1993 Asiamoney Award, Finance Minister of the Year

1987 Padma Vibhushan Award by the President of India

1986 National Fellow, national Institute of Education, N.C.E.R.T.

1985 Elected President, Indian economic Association

1982 Elected Honorary Fellow, st. John’s College, Cambridge,

1982 Elected Honorary Fellow, Indian Institute of bankers

1976 Honorary Professor, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi

1957 Elected Wrenbury Scholar, University of Cambridge, U.K.

1955 Awarded Wright’s Prize for distinguished performance, & St. John’s college, Cambridge, U.K.

1956 Awarded Adam Smith Prize, University of Cambridge, U.K.

1954 Uttar Chand Kapur Medal, Panjab university, for standing first in M.A.(Economics), panjab University, Chandigarh

1952 University Medal for standing First in B.A. Hon.(Economics), panjab University, Chandigarh

Recipient of Honorary Degrees of D.Litt. from :

- Panjab University, Chandigarh

- Guru Nanak University, Amritsar

- Delhi University, delhi

- Sri Venkateswara University, Tirupathi

- University of Bologna, Italy

- University of Mysore, Mysore

- Chaudhary charan Singh Haryana Agricultural University, Hisar (D.Sc)

- Kurukshetra University

- Thapar Institute of Engineering & Technology, patiala (D.Sc)

- Nagarjuna University, Nagarjunanagar

- Osmania University, Hyderabad

- University of Roorkee, Roorkee (Doctor of Social Sciences)

- Doctor of Laws by the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada

- Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar University (formerly Agra University) - Doctor Letters degree

- Indian School of Mines, Dhanbad (Deemed University) D.Sc. (Honoris Causa)

- Pt. Ravishankar Shukla University, Raipur

WORK EXPERIENCE AND POSITIONS HELD

May 22, 2004 – till date: Prime Minister of India

March 21, 1998 – May 22,2004: Leader of Opposition, Rajya Sabha (Council of States) Parliament of India

June, 2001: Re-elected as member of Rajya Sabha for a Term of six years

August 1, 1996 - Dec 4, 1997: Chairman, Parliamentary Standing Committee on Commerce, Rajya Sabha

June 21, 1991- May 15, 1996: Finance Minister of India

June, 1995: Re-elected Member of Rajya Sabha for a term of six years

September, 1991: Elected Member of Rajya Sabha

March 1991-June 1991: Chairman, University Grants Commission

Dec 1990 – March 1991: Advisor to Prime Minister of India on Economic Affairs

August 1987 – Nov 1990: Secretary General and Commissioner, South Commission

Jan 1985- July 1987: Dy. Chairman, Planning Commission of India

Sept 1982 – Jan 1985: Governor, Reserve Bank of India

April 1980 – Sept 1982: Member-Secretary, Planning Commission, India

Nov.1976 – April 1980: Secretary, Ministry of Finance

Dept. of Economic Affairs,

Government of India

Member [Finance], Atomic Energy

Commission, Govt. of India

Member[Finance], Space Commission, Govt. of India

1972 – 1976: Chief Economic Adviser, Ministry of Finance, India

1971 – 1972: Economic Adviser, Ministry of Foreign Trade, India

1969 – 1971: Professor of International Trade, Delhi School of Economics, Delhi University, India

1966 – 1969: UNCTAD, United Nations Secretariat, New York

Chief, Financing for Trade Section

1966 : Economic Affairs Officer

1957 – 1965 : Panjab University, Chandigarh

1963-65 : Professor of Economics

1959-63 : Reader in Economics

1957-59:Senior Lecturer in economics

OTHER ASSIGNMENTS

Leader of the Indian delegation to the Commonwealth

Heads of Government Meeting, Cyprus (1993)

Leader of the Indian delegation to the Human Rights World Conference, Vienna (1993)

Governor of India on the Board of Governors of the IMF and the International Bank of Reconstruction & Development (1991-95)

Appointed by Prime Minister of India as Member, Economic Advisory Council to the Prime minister (1983-84)

Chairman, India Committee of the Indo-japan ;Joint Study Committee (1980-83)

- Leader, Indian Delegation to :

Indo-Soviet Monitoring Group Meeting (1982)

Indo-Soviet Joint Planning Group Meeting (1980- 82)

Aid India Consortium Meetings (1977-79)

- Member Indian Delegation to :

South-South Consultation, New Delhi (1982)

Cancun Summit on North-South Issues (1981)

Aid-India Consortium Meetings, Paris (1973-79)

Annual Meetings of IMF, IBRD & Commonwealth Finance Ministers (1972-79)

Third Session of UNCTAD, Santiago (April-May 1972)

Meetings of UNCTAD Trade & Development Board, Geneva (May 1971 – July 1972)

Ministerial Meeting of Group of 77, Lima (Oct.1971)

- Deputy for India on IMF Committee of Twenty on International Monetary Reform (1972 – 74)

- Associate, Meetings of IMF Interim Committee and Joint Fund-Bank Development Committee (1976-80, 1982-85)

- Alternate Governor for India, Board of Governors of IBRD (1976-80)

- Alternate Governor for India, Board of Governors of the IMF (1982-85)

- Alternate Governor for India, Board of Governors, Asian Development Bank, Manila (1976-80)

- Director, Reserve Bank of India (1976-80)

- Director, Industrial Development Bank of India (1976- 80)

- Participated in Commonwealth Prime Ministers Meeting, Kingston (1975)

- Represented Secretary;-General UNCTAD at several inter-governmental meetings including :

Second Session of UNCTAD, 1968

Committee on Invisibles & Financing Related to Trade, Consultant to UNCTAD, ESCAP and Commonwealth Secretariat

- Member, International Organizations :

Appointed as Member by the Secretary-General, United Nations of a Group of Eminent Persons to advise him on Financing for Development (December, 2000) PUBLICATIONS

(i) Author of book “India’s Export Trends and Prospects for Self-Sustained Growth” [Clarendon Press, Oxford University, 1964]

(ii) Have published a large number of articles in economic journals

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S/o. Shri Gurmukh Singh

Born on 26^th September, 1932

Married in 1958 to Smt. Gursharan Kaur

Have three daughters