What can I Give to My Nation?

The title is taken from the Address to the nation by the President of India Dr. A.P.J. ABDUL KALAM on the eve of the 58TH REPUBLIC DAY - 2007 . If you have not read it until now, please read it here.

A must read for every Indian who loves his nation...

After reading it, i am unable to wait for the India of 2020 with 100% literacy rate and nearly zilch People below Poverty line.

The address also stresses the role that needs to be played by each and every Indian especially the youth for such a future. I was especially attracted by the call to the youth to enter the politics. Politics has always been a career option that i have been looking at for a very long time. [If i am entering politics, surely would be running for elections in TIRUNELVELI only:-))

But, with the current set up of Indian politics, it is virtually impossible for any honest youth to have at least a semblance of chance to win the elections. To win, you need a backup of a well known-party to win the elections. Also you need your fair amount of supporters to campaign. Add to this, the money that needs to be spent for publicity and various other purposes related to elections. Hope this changes so that youth like me who are out there wanting to do something for the nation are given a chance to take part in the Indian political scenario.

But the President's call is surely a tonic to my dreams. Especially his final call to the youth of the nation to have

"Courage to think different,
Courage to invent,
Courage to discover the impossible,
Courage to travel into an unexplored path,
Courage to share the knowledge
Courage to remove the pain
Courage to reach the unreached
Courage to combat the problems
And Succeed,"

JAI HIND!

Racism & India

Right from the time, the recent racial(is it so?) remarks against Shilpha Shetty in 'Big Brother'(the U.K. reality show) hit the news(Read the Story here), every Indian has lifted a protest flag complaining that we are always at the fag end of the racial attacks. But before pointing our fingers at others, let us first examine ourself.

According to Oxford dictionary, the racism is defined as "Belief in superiority of particular race; antagonism towards other races"

Going by that definition,

Is not the still prevalent caste system(the National SIN of India) in India a kind of racism?
Are not the recent attacks by the ULFA on Hindi-speaking people racist?
Can not be the regular Shiv Sena attacks on non-Mumbaites be called as racist attacks?
Are not we treat the outsiders(who are also INDIANS) as second-rate citizens?
And who can forget this photograph?...

Even thinking about this has made my heart to lose all the happiness & joy. Oh! India, even after living for more than 50 years as a single nation, you are not able to integrate?


Please.. Please.. Before pointing fingers at others, let us think about us?

"Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?. How can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye."
- From the Bible(NIV edition)


Not that i am trying to justify the racist remarks against Shilpha Shetty but let us remember we as a society also have our own faults. And acceptance(repentance) is the first step to correction(redemption).

- An Indian who is a part of this racist nation

Why Tirunelveli is "The City" of the world!!!

"In life, we meet a lot of people, but make friends with few... In those few, some touch our life in such a way, that their presence is felt in their absence too..."

Ya! You guessed it right. A regular SMS message from one of the umpteen number of friends of mine...

But................
This message was different.....

Reason:- It was from one of my very close friends who has been with me right from my school. He for some reason saw it fit to send this message. (He has never forwarded me a SMS before). To cut the story short, this message made me thinking. Made me to understand why wherever i go, Tirunelveli will always be my city of the world!!! It made me to think of the awesome friends that God has gifted me in my childhood.

Those of us who had seen the Microsoft Ad would accept that it is the people who differentiates the organizations and gives it the competitive edge. In the same way, it is my friends who differentiates Tirunelveli from the rest of the world. It is because of them, Tirunelveli will be The City of the World (at least for me). Each person was unique; Each person was different; And Each person was great;

Jerry, the creative
Thirumalaiappan, the interrogator
Dalton, the born leader
Karthick, the passionate(i.e. short tempered)
Veera, the helper
Raffic, the joker
Nishanth, the *** Doctor
Arun, the religious
Krishna, the mimicker
Balaji, the silent(to the extent of being dumb)
Sabeela, the match maker
Vivek, the nerd
Chock, the handsome(Always be our envy whenever we walk near a girls school)
And the list goes on....................................................

And importantly, the 'n' number of beautiful girls whom we never noticed!!!!

Figure - Aerial view of my school campus
[Rose Mary Matriculation Higher Secondary School, the Abode of State Toppers]

Ya! I know every school has its own Tom, Dick and Harry. But they did not have a Dalton, they did not have a Thiru, they did not have a Jerry, a Karthick, a Veera, etc.. Most importantly, they did not have a ROBIN!!!

Tirunelveli Zindhabad! Tirunelveli Vazhga!







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Think About the Newspaper U Read

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Right from my childhood, "The Hindu" has provided my life with a staple diet of current affairs (for knowledge and thought). "The Hindu" has been and always will be synonymous with the word "Newspapers" in my life. You never understand one's importance unless it goes off from your hands. Now living in a land, where i can receive my beloved Newspaper only a day late.. that too in the afternoon made me to realize how i have grown up on the newspaper.


NO! This post is not about Hindu. But about Indian newspapers in general. Indian newspapers have a rich and unique past. A Set of newspapers not formed for profit, not formed to provide people with news of what is going on in sports or business but to aid the nation's struggle for freedom. The history of Indian newspapers are dotted with such great personalities! But what had happened to the Indian newspapers now is a matter of great shame and sorrow. The Newspaper industry too like other industries has become so engrossed with profits. Nothing wrong in it. But changing newspapers into tabloids!!! God! How can I Accept that!


Why posting it here rather than writing letters to the editor?. Simply because the editors and reporters of a newspaper provide the news and other things we want, not the news they would like to see on the newspaper. If we want scantily clad and semi nude models staring at us every morning, they have no other choice but to provide them.

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Wrote this post a month back but did not post it.. Since i thought, i have to add some more stuff... On reading the recent Supreme Court verdict "Not Imposing a blanket ban on publishing obscene photographs and material in newspapers citing the right to freedom of speech and expression enjoyed by the press".. (Read the news here. Obviously a link to Hindu's Online version)
I thought i would post the things i wrote long before(without any additions or deletions)..
The crux of the post..

"Never forget - IT is because of Us the obscene materials are(will be) there today(tomorrow) on the newspapers"..

In Service for Sight

This post is on the request of one of my friends who asked me to write/post on any interesting material that we, the management guys(:-)) would come across. As someone who blindly loves his home town, it is natural that I post on the case which made my home town to appear in the map of one of the management books I study. If you are thinking about what I am talking about, just answer this connect question…

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Connect Harvard Business Case Studies, A Small Temple Town in Southern Part of India and Cataracts…

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It is none other than Aravind Eye Care Hospital.

Ø A role model for many hospitals and subject of study in many business schools

Ø A Hospital to which the Google co-founder and president (Products), Larry Page, flew down to look at the overall view of its functions.

Ø The only examination centre of the Royal College of Ophthalmology, United Kingdom, in the country

Ø Designated by the World Health Organisation as a collaborating centre for prevention of blindness

Its laurels are many.. But..

Until I was there in Tirunelveli, if somebody has talked about the Aravind Eye Care Hospital as an extraordinary and an exceptional organization, I would have probably laughed at him or her. For me then, it was just another hospital. I never knew its vision; I never knew its unique model; I never knew its achievements and Most of all I Never knew people in IIMs would know about it.

[Figure: Aravind Eye Hospital, Tirunelveli ...Cannot resist the temptation :-) ]



So what is special about Aravind Eye Care Hospital that it was published as a Harvard Business Case Study?

“With vision to remove needless eye blindness in India, Dr. Govindappa Venkataswamy started Aravind in 1976 as an 11-bed eye clinic in an old temple-city. Today it is the largest and most productive eye care facility in the world. Taking its compassionate services to the doorstep of rural India, Aravind's stunningly effective strategies vaulted barriers of distance, poverty and ignorance to create a self-sustaining system that now treats over 1.7 million patients each year, two-thirds of them, for free. “

Dr. Govindappa Venkataswamy fondly called as 'Dr. V'

USP of Aravind Eye Care Hospital:

Self-Sustaining Model:

The revenue generated from the "paying" patients offsets the cost of caring for the "free" patients. This type of cost shifting is nothing new. Then you realize that only about 30% to 40% of the patients are paying, and that paying is optional (i.e., a wealthy person can stay in the "free" hospital if he or she chooses). Aravind prides itself on being self-sustaining, i.e., no VIP donors, no government grants, and no bank loans. The technology is cutting-edge (all the newest phaco machines—the same models found in the United States, including the Alcon Infiniti).

Social Marketing:

“If Coco-colas can sell billions of soda and McDonalds can sell billions of hamburgers, why can’t Aravind sell millions of sight-restoring operations and eventually in the belief in the human perfection?” Ya! Aravind Eye care took the concept of social marketing to new heights.

To solve the problems in rural India, Aravind organizes camps to attract patients in rural India. If it finds someone for whom the operations are necessary, the hospital van picks them up and after three days are over when the surgery is completed, the patients return back to their home.

Management:

Aravind Hospital is a very good example of a well-conceived strategy platform. From 20 beds in 1976, it is now more than 2,500 in a four-hospital network.

Eye care is the motto, and patient's ability to pay is not focussed on. Cataract is concentrated on because "cataracts cause roughly 75 per cent of the 30 million cases of blindness in India". In 2002, it screened nearly 8 lakh patients free of charge and another 6 lakh for a fee.

The HBR mentions that the average ophthalmologist in India performs about 200 cataract surgeries a year, while "an Aravind doctor performs about 1,500 - an efficiency multiple of 7.5." How are they able to keep costs low? "In 1992, it decided to produce intraocular lenses in its own facility, Auro-Lab. It cut the cost of each lens to just $7, so by 2002, all patients were able to receive it."

There is also "the paying segment" which is important to nonprofits. In the case of Aravind, this segment subsidises the cost of free care, and also helps set the benchmark. "Paying clients set high demands on quality care, and those standards are used as a benchmark for non-paying clients as well."

It is not enough to have good intentions, because they say the path to hell is paved with only them. What is required is the application of the best of management tools and economic models to the delivery of service.

Dr. V by his single-minded focus and vision has shown us what is possible for a single person to achieve individually in the land where we live in. Is it not possible the same way for us also, to do something that the world would take note of?

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“Are you in earnest? Seize this very minute;
What you can do, or dream, you begin it;
Boldness hath genius, power, and magic in it,
Only engage, and then the mind grows heated.
Begin; and then the work will be completed. “

- Johann Wolfgang Goethe