Reclaiming Islam And The Future of India-Pakistan

It is 17-December-2014 today… a day after apocalypse (Read: Peshawar Massacre).

As a blogger, I’m very used to write.  But today my hands are shivering….my fingers are not in my control. There’s absolute chaos in my mind.  Not sure…Do I really want to write? Something..? But what..?? Yet write I must today.

I wrote the following section of my post (original) on 29-Sept-2014, before the Nobel Peace Prizes were announced.  Little I knew or imagined that we all would become witness to such a gory, cowardly act of mindless, religious fanaticism.  Not even in a dream, I could have dreamt of seeing so many… of innocent smiles fade in the darkness of abject night of the humanity.  It is darkest one, as the world has regressed in absolute senseless existence.

O Brothers of Islam! Please for God’s sake arise and awake.  Please stand up this time…. to give a glorious, blooming country to your countrymen and the generations to come.  Please stand up this time… to come out of slumber of moderacy.  Please stand up this time… to reignite the flame of humanity, your religion has always called forth. Please stand up this time…. to change & challenge the institutions who have inked the backdrop of such human-carnage, year after years, generation after generations.

Please stand up this time…. to bring the light of smiles on our kids everywhere.  It is your obligation to uphold all children’ faith that their smiles were and are always much STRONGER than guns.  It is your only salvation…. your only vindication.   Kids are the face of the Allah, God or Bhagwan…..  If kids are not, nowhere else God or Allah can exist. Please stand up this time…. to RECLAIM the Islam. #ReclaimTheIslam

*******(on 29-Sept-2014)********

“If the moderate and true Muslims let the thugs use Islam and their brutal interpretation of Islam to kill fellow Muslims and others in the name of their Islam, then the rest of the world will walk away from them. Islam is under threat not from other religions but from within. Increasingly, the world seems to feel it is under threat from the violence and brutality in the name of Islam. It is under threat from those who have hijacked Islam and others who have not the courage to defy them. Others cannot succeed if there is no will and courage to reassert from within. To defeat the violent extremism of ISIS and others globally, the moderate Muslim must reclaim Islam.”

At the tactical level, …..I am also of the opinion that senior & knowledgeable, and moderate Indian Muslims (& Pakistani Muslims, of course) with pristine understanding of Islam & Quraan and die-hard attitude, can actually re-establish the fundamental values of Islam. If they choose all the media possible, particularly, social media, facebook, youtube, google, blogs, websites etc, they are capable to resetting the clock and re-booting the ISLAM on the world-map. Moderate Muslims need to stand up and make it count, because they know very well that–

WHAT DOES ISLAM TRULY MEAN?

However, that triggered an another thought-line in my mind which has disturbed me for quite sometime at least at the level of deeper contemplation.

*************

One more thing, what has been constantly figured in Bharat-Pakistan’s co-existence is that 3-4 generations of both countries WASTED whole of their life-times fighting in their minds for the imaginary injustice done by other side. They never paused for contemplating themselves as 2-Cats fighting for bread (Kashmir) without ever realizing the it was A MONKEY who made them turn fighting cats for…… generations to come without any conscientiousness.

Leaders of both countries deliberately propagated & justified their vary fight for a piece of bread, as the fight for RESPECT, RIGHT, DIGNITY, what more it can fictitiously become. Crores of people lived & died deprived because of  these fictitious values attached to the notion of their nations.

Yet poor thinkers claimed themselves as the BEST INTELLECTUALS of their generation.

What use of the INTELLECTUAL ability, if it could not find out: By very reason of our existence, India-Pakistan should have been the countries best examplified as 2-brothers living & growing in cohesion.

Ah, every leader could think only of what THAT MONKEY wanted them think, do and act, even in the name of their nation, religion, caste & creed. And it is going on for last 67 years…………………………I would not be surprised if it goes on for another 100 years and the lives of 5-6 generations more, are wasted and deprived.

All make perfect sense when it is seen in the light of following lines:

“……………….An ‘average’ drawn upon zeros still is Zero—since no individuality have been/will be permitted. A world with its motor cut off and a single heart, pumped by hand.”

“…………..They don’t ask: Is this true? They ask: Is this what others think is true? Not to judge, but to repeat. Not to do, but to give the impression of doing. Not creation, but show. Not ability, but friendship. Not merit, but pull. “

“…………….When you suspend your faculty of independent judgment, you suspend consciousness. To stop consciousness is to stop life. Masses have no sense of reality. Their reality is not within them, but somewhere in that space which divides one human body from another. Not an entity, but a relation—anchored to nothing. People, committees, conferences. Men without an ego. Opinion without a rational process. Motion without brakes or motor. Power without responsibility. You can’t reason with them. They are not open to reason. You can’t speak to them—they can’t hear. You are tried by an empty bench. A blind mass running amuck, to crush you without sense or purpose. “

In the end, I am left wondering– is this the question of reclaiming a religion, faith OR it is about reclaiming–our faculty of independent judgment.

You better judge yourself!

With thanks,

Rajneesh Kumar

Arriving at Śūnyatā

Journey a new I begin,
Stride a huge I make
I take on, Oh Life!
Harder you come at, the rock I am.

 

 

Fresh a new world, I desire
Fragrant a morning, I breath in
Attitude a new look, I put on
Journey a new I begin,
Stride a huge I make.

 

 

 

 

Hope an aspiration, I find everyday
Trauma a desperation, I leave behind
Dark shadow of ghosts, I despise
Journey a new I begin,
Stride a huge I make.

 

 

 

 

Golden bright of path, today I walk
Divine an invisible hand, march me ahead
Blessings of the garden, I am showered
Flowers of the river ‘Life’, I am touched
Journey a new I begin,
Stride a huge I make.

 

 

 

 

Fears, Scars of the battle, I bear in
Silent prays of feelings, I smile
Truth and the Love, I cherish
‘Free’ soul in the web, I am
Journey a new I begin,
Stride a huge I make.

 

 

 

 

Oh furious winds! The force I am
Reaching for the stars, the fish I am
Painting of him, the destiny I am
Arriving at Śūnyatā, the ‘I’ I am.
Journey a new I begin,
Stride a huge I make.

When EXCELLENCE & BRILLIANCE is reverse-engineered….??

Lately I was going through with the latest post made by one of prominent blogger Jim Taggart who essentially thrives while writing about ‘Leadership’ from various vistas.  In his post, he was attempting to search about an intersection-point that probably be reached while comprehending:

1. Real Innovation Vs Incremental Innovation,
2. Creative Destruction as the impetus to creativity and innovation,
3. Fragilista Vs Antifragilista, where the term Fragilista stands for someone who is fragile and non-adaptive and an Antifragilista is an individual who is able to quickly adjust to unpredictable events.

Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder

Nicholas Taleb, author of the best-seller The Black Swan and a new book Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder, makes a statement:

“We didn’t get where we are today thanks to policy makers–but thanks to the appetite for risks and errors of a certain class of people we need to encourage, protect, and respect.”

This last statement by Taleb is aimed at entrepreneurs and inventors, people who create jobs and who contribute to our collective standard of living by bringing new products and services to us.  I was largely in agreement with the statement.

**********************

When I pondered in deep, then the following thought-line made the loudest echo in my mind.

Every single time, when the thread of EXCELLENCE & BRILLIANCE has been reverse-engineered, A certain class of people have been found in the background………….Yes, this is A CERTAIN CLASS of people.

Richard P. Cooley
Chairman of Wells Fargo (1966-1978)

I remember, the senior leadership of Wells Fargo strongly believed (1970s) that instead of mapping out a strategy for the change, injecting an endless stream of talent directly into the veins of the company would be a better option.  They hired outstanding people whenever and wherever they found them, often without any specific job in the mind.

Their former CEO Richard Cooley shared his opinion as, “That’s how you build the future.”  He said, “If I am not smart enough to see the changes that are coming, they will.  And they will be flexible enough to deal with them.”

And Cooley’s approach proved prescient in later years.  No one could predict all the changes that would be brought by banking deregulation in USA.  Yet when these changes came, no bank handled those challenges better than Wells Fargo.  At a time when its sector of banking industry fell 59% behind the general stock market, Wells Fargo outperformed the general stock market by over 3 times.

 **********************

Diamonds in the rough.

BUT the identification of this CLASS among hordes of employees, managers and leaders has never been easier. In GE’s terminology, they are called ‘Diamonds’…..and indeed they know as well that such ‘Diamonds’ might uselessly be laying in the rough…….and at GE, they always make a point of identifying them. Thus they have institutionalized in their organization the philosophy and mechanisms to identify such diamonds in the rough.  Now it runs through their DNA and the whole fabric of what they do at General Electric.

Until & unless, good companies learn the beliefs & practices for identification of this class of employees…………………………….they can’t even think of encouraging, protecting, and respecting them…………..forget about serious innovation & creative destruction as the impetus to creativity and innovation.

For, companies need to strive for achieving clarity of vision…..a sense of direction, AND be prepared for opportunistic groping and experimentation at the same time. They would have to learn to exercise tighter control when issues concerning ideology emerge, while offering exceptional AUTONOMY of operations to their employees, and future leaders. Only then they would be blessed with incisive ability to change, move and adapt………….whatever the circumstances they may encounter!

With thanks,

Rajneesh Kumar

Mobile: +91 98106-63271

Company URL: http://www.luminisindia.com

Join my network of Leaders, Managers, Sales Professionals, Educationists, Trainers, CLO, Management Consultants, Six Sigma Professionals, Marketing Professionals, etc at: http://in.linkedin.com/in/rajneeshkumar1

 

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The Lure of a Strong Idea

The quest of a powerful idea is all prevailing in all fields of knowledge, and so are its perils in all fields of human endeavors.  The inclinations to find a path-breaking idea(s) are so fundamental to human nature that they can over-shadow everything else and everything around.  At the one hand it has led to some of the greatest inventions of all ages.   On the other hand, it has led to so many of disastrous conquests of history that many books can be written on them.  What makes an idea tick? And what doesn’t?

There are few things intrinsic to an idea:

• An idea is just an idea, nothing more, nothing less.
• An idea sometimes is a vision, a philosophy or an ideology, but still it’s an idea.
• An idea has its seeds in the mind of one or many people.
• An idea has to encounter the reality it is germinated into.
• An idea has a certain likelihood of fulfilling its promise.
• An idea has a corresponding degree of relevance or irrelevance at the same time.
• An idea is not an island in itself.
• An conceived idea is a jig-saw puzzle in itself.
• An idea is not bigger than the human factor.
• An idea is essentially a provocation, and challenges the status-quo.
• ……………
• ………
• …

(more characteristics can be added here or subtracted from this list)

Sometimes I ponder upon—

What makes an idea a powerful idea or better say a successful & relevant idea?

Even more than that—

Sometimes I wonder upon why so many people, especially entrepreneurs or business leaders/managers fall in this trap of the lure of a strong idea and essentially fail, yet without learning anything in return?

WHAT’S YOUR TAKE?

With thanks,

Rajneesh Kumar

Mobile: +91 98106-63271

Company URL: http://www.luminisindia.com

Join my network of Leaders, Managers, Sales Professionals, Educationists, Trainers, CLO, Management Consultants, Six Sigma Professionals, Marketing Professionals, etc at: http://in.linkedin.com/in/rajneeshkumar1

A Footnote to…….Why India’s Education System is failing?

It was very disheartening to read the front-page news in TOI, “Higher your education, Harder it is getting a Job,”  (Dt:18-July-2012).

First, it is a clear pointer to STRUCTURAL FLAWS of our educations system which is producing robots–qualified but not employable. Who is there to judge the worth of qualifications or skills actually possessed by a promising candidate? Neither is such talent among HR fraternity nor in place are appropriate HR mechanisms. Remember, the mediocrity is enshrined there as well.

After all, the whole structure of education–Primary, Middle, Secondary (10+1/10+2), Graduation, Post-Graduation is leading students NOWHERE. What the hell is the use of such rotten education system? No one is ACCOUNTABLE for the wasting a large part of these 17-18 years of our students……………mind it, these are the most important formative years of their lives.

Since we can’t achieve a complete over-hauling of this structure in near future, I would refrain from making any kind of ‘tactical’ suggestions or recommendations. For, there are more intelligent & knowledgeable educationists, who have a closer experience or exposure to academia.

If I am to contribute I would suggest to over-look the whole structure of existing system………..comply only that much which is enough to serve the class-grades or degree/certificates……………

BUT if we’ve progressive bunch of like-minded able people at our institutions, then we can seek to create ‘A Centre of Excellence’ there (very much similar to ‘Productivity Offices’ in corporates with enough powers to make competent changes) …………….and deliver the parallel education.

Ultimately, the task should be visualized as having a large part of these 17-18 to 20 years of education at our disposal and the PRIME FOCUS should only be at the final outcome (reviewed and re-viewed and contemporary)……………… there is no point in stay cold-footed forever.

I remember one of my teacher during my B.Com times, he was famously known as ‘Swami Ji’ as he was greatly influenced by Osho Rajneesh. He used to complete the syllabus for the year only in one-month time, all the remaining time was used in preaching OSHO’s philosophy.

Using the same analogy, we probably can seek to encourage our teachers to find ways of delivering academic syllabus as quickly as possible………..then they should whole-heartedly utilize the remaining time of academic calendar for providing ‘high-quality’ parallel education and extended knowledge from all the relevant fields.

*************

Second, Teachers must believe in ever-widening networking with people from all walks of life, media, press, business, industry, …………… just about every sphere of society. So as to use their own influence to assist the rightful,  highly promising students REACHING to places of influences again in all walks of life………………and then continuously striving to expand the same network of influence in the way AMWAY operates.

They should not become satisfied from the two-words of respect or appreciation from anybody (particularly from colleagues or students)…………they should be at their persuasive best while asking for a concrete favor, in lieu of the help or guidance they accorded. (I’m not talking about Alumni Meets).

*************

HRITHIK ROSHAN, actor said, “The poison of our world is the fairy tales we tell our children. There is not one that speaks of real life where there is no happy ending.”

Yes! Teachers must make their students understand that–There are no fairy-tales in life!

An individual ‘Teacher’ is the solution, even if nothing else works.

These were my impromptu thoughts I shared with you.

With thanks,

Rajneesh Kumar

Mobile: +91 98106-63271

Company URL: http://www.luminisindia.com

Join my network of Leaders, Managers, Sales Professionals, Educationists, Trainers, CLO, Management Consultants, Six Sigma Professionals, Marketing Professionals, etc at: http://in.linkedin.com/in/rajneeshkumar1

Related Articles:

1. Why India’s Education System Is Failing?
2. What was my father’s role in my life?
3. India’s Education System: A Strict Adherence to Western Doctrines
4. Education System in India: My Perspective
5. Indian Industry Is Not Able To Pin Down Exactly—What They Are Looking From The Students?
6. Shouldn’t India be ready for a War For Talent?
7. DACUM: Incorporating Industry-Requirements into Training Curriculum

What was my father’s role in my life?

What was my father’s role in my life? Even before that, what was the role of my Grand Father in my father’s life?

Both were teachers and obsessed with providing good education to their kids and were quite harsh on them in the process (including me) and it occurred more often than not. They never relented and very conscious of what their kids were becoming. They placed a good emphasis on academic studies throughout the up-bring, but they were at their most strict ways, when it came to values, ethics, integrity, and social cognition……………….they never made even smallest compromise on this front. In fact, they never spared any student of theirs………….EVER.

But at the same time, they taught students, tuition-ed them for free most of the time. They were never relieved of their role. Whole of my life, I could not understand why they were like this. It’s only recent, I could make sense of ‘Why’ of being them like this…………….Because they were teachers…………………..When people sent their wards to them, they were always assured of ………………..assured of what? Assured of what their kids would need to learn, develop, and evolve………….and above all of the future of them. Parents just wanted their kids to be more in their company…………be around them…………they knew in the hindsight what a good parent needs would automatically be gained from a teacher.

This is probably the biggest role a TEACHER plays…………. even before a teacher gives shape to individual student’s future, he brings the biggest & calmest ASSURANCE to the society in which a teacher lives. This is such a vital point of the whole society, business, economics, & everything else……………that the WHOLE revolves around it………….a country, society, system, and complete civilization revolves and evolves around it.  A teacher is the pivotal point or axle of this giant wheel, you remove it and the whole would come to a grand standstill.  And that’s what we all sensing, though we run short of expressing it well.

Society or System is not the solution, because it ‘takes’ from a teacher and his education delivered, not vice-a-versa. It never was. It never occurred even from the times of Socrates.  It has always been temporal when a teacher or institution was granted patronage of the state or affluent.

Thus an individual ‘Teacher’ is the solution and the seeds sown by him make the future harvest that any society needs at any point in time.  When a large many individual teachers are painstakingly burning their candles for mushrooming the good crop on the basis of their own individual efforts, here and there, everywhere, even in remote………it will yield the fruits which any society craves for its own sustenance.

****

Nalanda

Though sometimes I reflect upon the forgotten glorious academic history of India in the eras long gone by, when we had world-universities of Takshila, Nalanda, Vikramshila, Ujjain, Vallabhi,  etc.  I wonder what it was they were teaching in those times, what it was that attracted the world’s foremost scholars to their door-steps for centuries at least.  I imagine that they were teaching the world almost everything that mattered to the world.  Then I wish to take a higher flight of imagination to know that what subjects they were teaching, if there were individual subjects …………….

Takshashila

(A Supplementary Note: It is recorded that at one stage, Takshila had 10,500 students including those from Babylon, Greece, Syria, and China. Experienced masters taught the Vedas, languages, grammar, philosophy, medicine, surgery, archery, politics, warfare, astronomy, accounts, commerce, documentation, music, dance and other performing arts, futurology, the occult and mystical sciences, complex mathematical calculations, etc. )

…………… or If the knowledge delivery was extremely well-knitted in inter-disciplinary mechanics of subjects………..how such delivery was executed………what was the structure and scheduling………how the synthesis was achieved day in and day out………what was the governance model………how they managed to stay immune to the influences of the society or the state or any system that prevailed………… when and how the specialized knowledge was inculcated…………  how the accreditation were being accorded………..how the codes and criteria were established and maintained generations after generations…………..

Phew!  This line of thinking just makes me sit and be silent to my bones and my soul.  And I am left praying, “May God bless us with some ways of knowing answers to such questions.”

I may not know answers to these.  But I can perceive who they were and what skin (soul, I mean) they had and what were their pursuits for lives………….you know, Why?  Because, I know only one thing, i.e., There were teachers…….. and they were teachers, indeed.

With thanks,

Rajneesh Kumar

Mobile: +91 98106-63271

Company URL: http://www.luminisindia.com

Join my network of Leaders, Managers, Sales Professionals, Educationists, Trainers, CLO, Management Consultants, Six Sigma Professionals, Marketing Professionals, etc at: http://in.linkedin.com/in/rajneeshkumar1

Related Articles:

1. A Footnote to…….Why India’s Education System is failing?
2. Why India’s Education System Is Failing?
3. India’s Education System: A Strict Adherence to Western Doctrines
4. Education System in India: My Perspective
5. Indian Industry Is Not Able To Pin Down Exactly—What They Are Looking From The Students?
6. Shouldn’t India be ready for a War For Talent?
7. DACUM: Incorporating Industry-Requirements into Training Curriculum

Why India’s Education System Is Failing?

Several students scored 100% in their recent school-leaving exams — but the system they belong to is failing miserably.

India suffers a serious lack of quality educational institutions. In school, students get pushed into one end of a disciplinary triangle — ‘Science-Commerce-Humanities’ — right after class 10. A caste-like system mars education hereon, science anointed top, commerce middle, humanities lowest.

This goes with routine, unimaginative pedagogy, discouraging students to conceptualise how history and economics may interlink or physics and cinema go together. Instead, students are lectured, hectored and coached, but not taught how to challenge assumptions, make presentations or do group work.

Things don’t improve radically in college — India’s about 50 years behind other countries encouraging interdisciplinary learning, individual thought — and the luxury to learn from mistakes. Instead, our universities continue tunnelling students into constricted streams, taught by few quality institutions, sought by many anxious thousands.

It’s vital we re-examine such narrow education. Just the numbers of perfect scores, even in subjective fields like English literature, illustrate how mechanical our education is.

Good education should open minds to think creatively and logically, able to process different kinds of knowledge. But by stitching students into tight subjects early on, buttoning these with monologue-teaching and objective-type exams, India does the opposite. This is often justified using an old fixation, namely education must equal jobs. Of course — but it must also create a society capable of creating jobs, finding solutions and innovating.

Suffocating education suffocates growth, lazy teaching and rote-based themes cutting off the birth of new ideas, new possibilities — and new universities.

It’s essential our pedagogy enters a freer world of what good education is really about.

(Source: Editorial, Times Of India)

With thanks,

Rajneesh Kumar

Mobile: +91 98106-63271

Company URL: http://www.luminisindia.com

Join my network of Leaders, Managers, Sales Professionals, Educationists, Trainers, CLO, Management Consultants, Six Sigma Professionals, Marketing Professionals, etc at: http://in.linkedin.com/in/rajneeshkumar1

Related Articles:

1. A Footnote to…….Why India’s Education System is failing?
2. What was my father’s role in my life?
3. India’s Education System: A Strict Adherence to Western Doctrines
4. Education System in India: My Perspective
5. Indian Industry Is Not Able To Pin Down Exactly—What They Are Looking From The Students?
6. Shouldn’t India be ready for a War For Talent?
7. DACUM: Incorporating Industry-Requirements into Training Curriculum

A Small Piece Of Wisdom

‎”An individual’s life is like a ROOM with huge glass windows at all of its walls.  When it is bright & sunny outside, it need not any more light, the room would seem full of light completely.  But when it is quite dark and dense outside, it would seem full of black completely. 

Thus it is always better to rely upon a small lamp lit inside the room, because it would keep the room full of light even when it is dark & dense outside.  Hence the individual has a choice of either relying upon the walls made of glass windows OR a small lamp burning inside the room.”

With thanks,

Rajneesh Kumar

Mobile: +91 98106-63271

Company URL: http://www.luminisindia.com

Join my network of Leaders, Managers, Sales Professionals, Educationists, Trainers, CLO, Management Consultants, Six Sigma Professionals, Marketing Professionals, etc at: http://in.linkedin.com/in/rajneeshkumar1

Shouldn’t India be ready for a War For Talent?

Before we go ahead, let’s have a look at– What is a talent?

By talent we mean demonstrated ability, achievement, or skill in some special particular field of study or interest.

Having a bird’s eye perspective, we can now easily distinguish few important developments taking place everywhere in Indian Job-marketplace:

1.  Without getting trapped in the various publications’ projections about Employment Outlook in India for 2012-13, I would just use approximation to make the point clear.   There are enough pointers that overall employment scenario in India seems vastly improved in comparison of years of 2008-2009 or 2009-2010.

A general theme that emerges is that approximately 40-45% employers expect fresh hirings to take place, where as 1-5% employers feel that decrease in hiring would take place.  But 35% expect no change from the year gone by.  And most believe that ‘a bloodbath’ has already occurred’ and not likely to occur again.

3-Sectors in India, viz., Financial Services, Infrastructure, Healthcare and Pharmaceuticals have shown consistently encouraging signs.  Other sectors such as IT, ITES, FMCG and Retail, Manufacturing and Engineering, and Telecommunications, also seem to have become stabilized and are cautiously optimistic for new hiring.  Since most of the sectors were hard hit during the recession and may never see employment numbers recover to pre-recession levels.

2.  Most employers have serious concern for ‘Employee Retention’, as they witness that the job-satisfaction and engagement among employees are at historical lows.

3.  Most employers are unanimous that they face a marked shortage of talent among existing employees and to-be hired candidates.  Especially, when it comes to the question of how to attract and retain the younger employees, they run short of ideas and right understanding.

4. Demographic difference among the employee-population is already causing a serious headache for employers, as they testify that there is vast difference of skills among the older-generation of current employees (baby-boomers) and current lot of younger-generation of employees (Gen X and Gen Y).  It is Gen Y that is more of a challenge to them.

5.  Though the leadership of most good companies is found to be more involved now into the talent management endeavors, but there is still a high degree of anxiety among employers about their readiness, preparedness for their talent-conquests.

What’s happening there that is not meeting the eyes?

Recessionary cutbacks which are still in effect at many employers, have required employees who are still on the jobs, to typically work more hours for less pay.

Endless re-organizations of structures or businesses have taken places at companies and these have already weakened employees’ bonds with their bosses who are busier than ever.

In the process, organizations may have underestimated the effects damaged work relationships, work-related stress and work/life balance are having on their employees.

More than a few employees are prepared to leave whenever the opportunity arises.  For now, the job market principally favors employers, but this won’t last forever. Employees will often leave when they are badly managed and the organization is confusing and uninspiring to them.  A bad or even soul-destroying job held now, may only be a necessary placeholder while actively networking for the next job.

While unemployment in India still remains relatively very high, the companies’ looking to scout for talented people are not getting it any easier.  Reality is that demand for employees with the right skills, right experience, and right job-fit is rising very high, but at a time when the overall supply available of such employees is all set to fall continuously.

India also have its fair share of baby-boomers—employees who are fast approaching their retirements.  The companies who find that their baby-boomers are critical to their operations are at the cusp of serious onslaught of intense competition for a shrinking talent pool, as they would be forced to fill these vacancies with younger employees.

Let’s talk about India’s younger generation. 

With the estimations of Census of India, it is well-established that we have approximately 65-70 crore youth with us (the data need not be exhaustive or conclusive).  There are very clear indications that a majority of organizations remain unprepared for bringing these younger generations into their workforce.  If somehow they manage to get them in, they struggle then to keep them in.

Reason is that they are quite ‘conditioned’ by a long recession.  These younger employees do not believe in job-security and feel they need to be prepared at all times for a new job. They are more directly involved in managing their own careers, and they use social-media technology to network with others so as to find more job-opportunities.

As employer, you are in the danger of loosing the younger generations, even before you begin your recruiting efforts.

No company can afford to make their strategic HR initiative for their baby-boomer (soon to-be retired) employees.  As a consequence, younger generations are now, or will soon become, their source of talent.

Leadership-Competencies are getting harder to find.

If various surveys or researches are any pointer then we can observe that the most critical & sought-after leadership competencies (in order of their importance) are:

1. Ability to manage change– an important competency for a world now characterized by volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity.
2. Setting Vision and Strategy
3. Solving problems & making decisions
4. Developing others
5. Managing effective teams and work-groups

But how easy is it to find right leaders, can be understood by a quote from Jack Welch of GE,

“Hiring good people is hard.  Hiring great people is brutally hard.”

Remember:  A war for talent will present serious challenges to companies or organizations that have either ignored and been indifferent toward their talent; or worse, treated them poorly through the recent economic downturn and slower recovery. As workforce demographics continue to shift, job opportunities rise, and talent becomes increasingly scarce, organizations unprepared for this New Reality of 2012, may be overcome by the wave of competition for talent.

This workforce has been conditioned by a long, painful recession.   They believe less in job security and more in being prepared at all times to find a new job.  The workforce has evolved into a pool of free agents, where ‘players’ jump from team-to-team, over shorter time periods.   

This is particularly true for ‘actually talented players’ who have more choices. Technology has created broader networks of professional contacts.  Through these contacts the foundations for jumping-ship unfolds.   For the organizations who believe that attracting and retaining talent is only HR’s challenge, the wave of talent leaving them, may be too much to overcome if they are not prepared.

To them, this war for talent is no less real.  

They need no gospel to know that if they wished to survive and thrive, they must accept the existence of the ‘War for Talent’ and meet these challenges head on.

You can download this article (FREE PDF) from:

http://www.docstoc.com/docs/122380501/Shouldn’t-India-Be-Ready-For-A-War-For-Talent

With thanks,

Rajneesh Kumar

Mobile: +91 98106-63271

Company URL: http://www.luminisindia.com

Join my network of Leaders, Managers, Sales Professionals, Educationists, Trainers, CLO, Management Consultants, Six Sigma Professionals, Marketing Professionals, etc at: http://in.linkedin.com/in/rajneeshkumar1

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India’s Education System: A Strict Adherence to Western Doctrines

It occurred recently when I was reading a discussion on Linkedin.com.  I attempted to make sense of what was being written in that thread.  I struggled and …..failed.  They were expressing their sincere views about the importance of education, and how to deliver the better education so as to prepare students of India to face the challenges of 21st century. Though I also felt that the whole issue and underlying issues they were trying to decipher no doubt are strong indicators of the heart-felt dissonance & chronic frustration among the academic fraternity in India. I wrote there that I would imagine that their expressions in that thread & similar discussions were just the tip of ice-berg.  But the discussion provoked a question in my mind and I dared to ask this:

What would you teach by-the-way?

(I continued on Linkedin discussion….)

Please don’t feel offended. I just wish to point out to–what is being fed with existing education system. Everybody knows it is not correct and knowledge is not being imparted, ONLY FILTERED contents are being allowed to be taught.  How would you cut loose, when the system has been very carefully designed to limit what is to be taught?

1.  For example, Western scholars devised an ethnocentric scheme to explain a phenomenon—one that India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, and many other modern Indian intellectuals came to accept– that a previous European people must have once existed, an Indo-European race upon which the world, and India, drew for its linguistic roots and genetic stock. This was propounded as Aryan Invasion Theory. A theory which still had not been substantiated and probably would never be. But we have surrendered to such blindly theories without even thinking of challenging them. One, Max Muller comes (in fact, never comes to India) and imagines something, and it becomes a universal truth for we, Indians. How?

Similar distortions and interpretations were allowed with our historical chronology. No researcher among us is coming with the work that could reverse the damage done to the story called India. Till date, we are hooked up with European ethnocentrism, colonialism, racism, and anti-Semitism and what they wished us to believe and teach.

2.  Now look at the enigma left by Charles Darwin. His theory is simple, perhaps even too simplistic. Life on Earth has evolved through a series of biological changes as a consequence of random genetic mutations working in conjunction with natural selection. One species gradually changes over time into another. And those species that adapt to changing environmental conditions are best suited to survive and propagate and the weaker die out, producing the most well-known principle of Darwinism—survival of the fittest.

The theory has been taught to children for generations. We have all learned that fish changed into amphibians, amphibians became reptiles, reptiles evolved into birds, and birds changed into animals. However, it is far easier to explain this to school children—with cute illustrations and pictures of a lineup of apes (beginning with those having slumped shoulders, transitioning to two that are finally standing upright)—than it is to prove.

Darwinism is the only scientific theory taught worldwide that has yet to be proved by the rigorous standards of science. Why it is being taught as proven ‘Scientific Fact’ world over and in India too? How many scientists and researchers from India are choosing to challenge the Darwin’s Theory of Evolution? There is no debate among us about ‘Tao of Physics’ Verses ‘Origin of Species’.

3.  Add to agony, and we find that our own Archaeological Research is lagging at least 100-150 years behind the work done world over. How less we as academics know about ancient Harappan civilization of the Indus Valley and Mohenjo-Daro? Forget about ‘Mahabalipuram’ and the like and where do they fit in our indigenous chronology of historical events.

But how far does the ‘Knowledge Filter’ go?  How much of the actual history of India still lies in the dustbin created by Western ethnocentrism, colonialism, and scientific materialism?

4.  At what point till his/her graduation, a student of science is being ‘introduced’ to the Neil Bohr, Heisenberg, and the works of other prominent Quantum Physicists? When about the famous thought experiment of ‘Schrödinger’s cat’….and the like?

When would they be introduced to alternative worlds of science? When would they be told that there is science beyond the ‘Newtonic Physics’? So on…?..??

5.  Though times have changed. And the ‘Transfer of Technology’ is a bit faster than previous decades, BUT the ‘Transfer of Knowledge’ of all type is still very slow to India, especially if it is a newer knowledge and challenges the pre-conceived notion of knowledge in any field.

India, with her treatment by the West and her acquiescence to that treatment, typifies the way in which Western intellectualism conquered the world. Call it the “West is best” model: a strict adherence to European doctrines.

I personally am of the opinion that the system can’t be changed by mere wishful thinking from any body or any section in the society. It could possibly be changed by directly challenging it, but with solid, independent ‘Original’ works by intellectuals and researchers from India.

Somewhere I feel that it is about cutting loose. Then we would be able to teach whatever it needs in this century and centuries to come. No help be needed.

RK

________________________________________

I was asked a question in retrospection by one of my honorable colleague  Dr. Usha Krishna at Linkedin.com:

“If I were a teacher, what would I do?”

1. Teach according to syllabus
2. Teach whatever you like
3. Teach for satiating the curiosity
4. Teach western course content

_________________________________________

And, my answer went on the following lines of thought:

If I do comply with the stipulated syllabus, then only I would be allowed to remain a teacher, a professional.

If I choose to teach ‘whatever’ (instead of what) I like, then again rebellion against the system would leave me out at the periphery of system itself.

If I choose to teach only for the sake of satiating curiosity, then it would become a crime according to the laws of system.

Here is what would I continue to do? I would ‘learn’ non-stop for satiating my own curiosity inclusive of all variety of thoughts or concepts.

But if I don’t share with students what I think or have learnt because of any repercussion, then what am I doing by being there as a teacher? Is my job just to feed the filtered contents and leaving my students with only unilateral lines of thinking and creating a production-line which produces robots only?

OR

I would pause to think–If my job is about sharing with students all types of multi-dimensional and conflicting thoughts/ideas and in the process, leaving them curious enough, open enough and making them actually thinking persons who can think and act independently.

May be, the kind of thinking I personally have, has its roots in the fact of my life that my father had been a teacher, government employee. And somewhere down the line that it became clear to me, myself that I don’t want to become a teacher. Yet, I love to learn a lot and am open to all types of ideas, vantage points; and even love more to share those. Because sharing those keeps me at edge and never allows the complacency to set in.

(Though I could not add there that even my grandpa was also a teacher for whole of his life.  He and my father, being teachers, induced all the right notions among children, yet probably they also realized that something beyond standard education would be required for their children.  I owe to my father a lot and especially for his encouragement to reading habits.  I remember that I was even a kid of very small age and I was made exposed to 2-libraries of the town.  As the times passed by, it left me with a very wide horizon of thinking……..such a spectrum of information and knowledge of all types. Above all….. with an ability to choose and dwell among the conflicting thoughts/ideas.)

(I continued on Linkedin discussion….)

Though like you and colleagues in teaching profession, I also have strongly digested my inability to deal with system in my own chosen profession. Nothing makes me wise enough to suggest any thing to you all. I just share……….believing in the power of ‘robust dialogue’. That’s about it!

You can download this article (FREE PDF) from:

http://www.docstoc.com/docs/122549720/India’s-Education-SystemA-Strict-Adherence-to-Western-Doctrines

With thanks,

Rajneesh Kumar

Mobile: +91 98106-63271

Company URL: http://www.luminisindia.com

Join my network of Leaders, Managers, Sales Professionals, Educationists, Trainers, CLO, Management Consultants, Six Sigma Professionals, Marketing Professionals, etc at: http://in.linkedin.com/in/rajneeshkumar1

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5. Education System in India: My Perspective
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