Reflections from a day of Festivity and thoughts about "The Statue of Unity"

Navratri or the "Nine nights" festival is and ode to Goddess Durga,

a Hindu deity who killed demons and brought peace and prosperity to India.

The festival is marked with rituals & prayer offerings to the Goddess.

In the western part of India especially in the state of Gujarat this nine week festival is celebrated by the traditional dance festival, the 'Garba'.

Here Navratri and Garba are synonymous. This popular dance festival is not only performed by the classes, but is widely popular in rural and urban masses.

Its an occasion for young men and women to socialize and meet, its an occasion for roadside kiosks to big businessmen to do brisk business, its an occasion for people to pray and cleanse their past sins and its often an occasion for politicians to forward their agenda. None the less whatever be the reason for majority of the people to participate in this big cultural extravaganza, its something nobody is going to miss.

This year on the state tourism department organized the "Vibrant Gujarat Navratri Festival" in its biggest city Ahmedabad.

Yes, with atleast over 1 square kilometers of area, the huge Garba grounds did provide the youth a chance to mingle and dance to their hearts.

Over 200 shops did provide for brisk business to the rural craftsmen and urbane entrepreneurs.

The larger than life idols and miniature temples did inspire people to worship as well as get themselves clicked on their mobile-phones.

The display was also of strength of India in general and Gujarat in Particular.

The State Government showcased its ambitious plan to build the world's largest/tallest Statue, "The Statue of Unity".

The Statue is of "Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel" the Iron man of India. "The Statue of Unity" has been correctly named so as it was Vallabhbhai who had pioneered in unifying India on its Independence in 1947. The fate of the 182 small princely states was sealed by this one man and his work can be paralleled to that Abraham Lincon during the Civil War.

Standing at 182 meters the statue shall be as tall as a 60 storey building and taller than the tallest Statue in the world  of Buddha at "Spring temple" China.

The monument shall be two times as large as the Statue of Liberty and 5 times as large as the redeemer and the tallest in the world.

Standing in the Sardar Sarovar dam's basin it would be 1.5 times higher than the Sardar Sarovar dam, India’s largest dam.

It would provide a view which can be paralleled to that of Niagara Falls.

The plan first time unveiled to the general public brought in long queues of viewership and gained more popularity than the Garba festival itself.

The best part is that the plan is permitted for the common man.. and in that sense, the politicians owe it to their taxpaying public.

This display reflects the Indian Mindset. "Megalomaniac" Biggest, Largest, Tallest!!!

The recently concluded Common Wealth Games too showed the same kind of mindset.

But in its pursuit to show that it is the best, should it not work on being the best?

Is INDIA forgetting what it should also invest in?

i.e. in Better Education, Nutrition, Security  & Climate ?

After all can the public live with the best figures in illiteracy, poverty, economic disparity, crime, malnutrition and pollution?

Perhaps more and more young people like us MBA aspirants should work more towards the betterment of the society, to try and apply ourselves each day to better the Climato-Techno-Socio-Politico-Economics of the society, country and the world. And perhaps that day we could live each day as a festival, without guilt.

SME rankings make me smile

     Today going through the headlines of the frontpage article of a national daily,something made me smile.
It read "Ahmedabad No.1 among 100 cities for small & medium enterprise". It was not part of the once too often regional jingoism we come across. It was a well established fact published by none other than E&Y.

Here are the rankings:
1. Ahmedabad
2. Banglore
3. Mumbai
4. Hyderabad
5. Delhi
6. Chennai
7. Surat
8. Faridabad
9. Jaipur
10 Gurgaon

Well its not that I liked the article just because it praised Ahmedabad.
The city where I was brought up, did my schooling and completed my under grads.
It was because I was linked with almost all of the cities......and the one city left out...gave me a SIGN......

  As I said earlier, I did my schooling from Ahmedabad, my Alma mater was St.Xavier's High School.
I could see that people here were enterprising right from childhood, I guess it was in their blood.Kids as young as 10 would start their book club, not only foster their own learning, but also make a quick buck!I did my engineering from L.D. Engineering college, one of the oldest,world renown, government engineering college, a part of the Gujarat University.Now this university did not just have a prestigious Engineering college, but also had a multitude of technical graduation courses, the B.Scs & the ITIs among other courses.
You won't imagine college passouts, rather guys who have not even passed out of college setup their own small scale industires. Small plants manufacturing industrial goods, machinery, chemicals, Engineering equipments and God knows what not. I guess they start off young and their backgrounds give them a risk taking appetite. Not to mention the general honesty and work ethic of Gujaratis.

 When I mention Gujarati, I would mention another city from this state, Surat, which is ranked 7th. I happened to work in Hazira, Surat for 6 months. I worked as a the sole procurement personnel for Electrical for the setup of a new plant for ESSAR Steel. I bought stuff worth Rs. 10 Crores way back in 2003, not to mention numerous, revised & improved rate-contracts with existing vendors. Although many quick purchases were made from Surat city itself,because Surat was primarily a textile city & had textile entrepreneurs, most of the purchases were done from Mumbai,Maharashtra,from where we could claim ModVat/CenVat.

 Not only did Mumbai, which is ranked 3rd in the tally, have hundreds of manufacturers of industrial equipment, especially electrical, but also it provided me with 4% Excise instead of 6% GST.  I visited Mumbai often as well, to meet relatives; these visits gave me a first hand look at the enterprise of the Mumbaikar: hardworking, methodical & calculative.

Come 2004 and I decided to join the IT Bandwagon. Leaving behind greener pastures to try something new. I joined TCS in Gurgaon, which is ranked 10th in the SME rankings. Gurgaon is actually a part of Delhi-NCR. Thus Delhi(ranked 5th),Faridabad(ranked 8th) & Gurgaon can be looked at as one region. Each of these cities though have a different speciality though. While Faridabad is primarily a hub of small scale manufacturers of automobile spare-parts, leather and other manufactured goods, Gurgaon is known world over for it BPO/KPO & IT industry, not to mention the prior established Electronic and automobile plants, & Delhi being a big commercial hub, nothing in this world can beat the enthusiasm of a Sardar selling stuff!Although I worked in Gurgaon now for quite a while, I still fondly remember my summer vacation visits to folks back in Delhi.

I used to work for a strategic business unit, TCS-Financial Services, a product arm of the Company which was primarily into IT Services.Imagine 1/50 of the people (3000 of 1,50,000) generating a quarter of the revenue. Imagine that TCS-BaNCS became the no.1 Financial product in it domain within 3 years,this all happened after TCS's public listing in late 2004.Yes I was among the ones who had seen it through. The SBU is headed by N G Subramaniam, based in Banglore(which ranks 2nd in the SME list.) Now Bangaluru, is the IT capital of India. There are thousands of startups in Banglore, not to mention small,medium and large size companies.People from all over India, come here to kick start their careers in IT, as well as Companies from all over the Globe come here to take advantage of the large pool of talent and the IT infrastructure. This explains its high SME ranking.

 When we tend to work hard, we like to party harder. And thats where I will mention Jaipur(ranked 9th), a weekend getaway, at a 5 hr journey from Gurgaon.The Jaipur city palaces are a must watch! Jaipur, primarily dependent on tourism, has a lot many people who have developed various businesses around tourism.

 I can explain my connection to Chennai(ranked 6th) as well. My father was an aeronautical engineer from IIT Madras. This explains my roots to this city.

The only city in the ranking, with which I cannot explain my direct connection to, is Hyderabad.
As an ISB aspirant shall I take this as a SIGN ?
Afterall how could HE leave out Hyderabad......I hope Buddha will smile with me, for me!!