Lest The Acid Fall On Us

The pain, the trauma, the agony, the feeling of being in a society amassed by timid people, lifelong suffering for the victim and the family, endless infliction of amiss on every sight of the defaced... I fear if these should be the outcome of righteous resistance against licentious barbarian brutal act. I am always of the opinion of corrective punishments but I can never think of anything lesser than capital punishment for such heinous crime. 

I feel sorry how none of us talk about this episode. How can we be so insensitive? That the culprit's lives be snatched is undebatable. What I can invite people to debate is whether these monsters who've committed this crime should be publicly executed or shot in full public view. It is not just defacing of one's face, it is the sheer contempt of nature's law of 'respect for the dignified life for all, irrespective of sex, race or anything else'.

We saw how little time our Hon'ble President took to reject the mercy plea of 26/11 lone surviving terrorist. In less than 2 days time, decision was taken, file was sent back to Maharastra Govt. with Home Ministry's approval for the execution. Why can't they form a law to tackle such heinous crime? Lokpal, corruption, everything can wait and should wait for we must enforce laws to expedite sentencing of such criminals at the earliest.

Won't it be great if Hon'ble Supreme Court takes into cognizance of such acts and formulate a law for the benefit of the citizens? Acid attacks and rapes are crimes that must not wait for someone filing a PIL to draw attention from Hon'ble lawmakers. Who would like to see a face burnt, dreams shattered, life ruined? None of us. Alternatively till the time a law to tackle such crimes is formulated and strictly enforced, we can also urge few professionals to do nothing to do the justice with these criminals. 

When these criminals are taken up for hearing, we can urge policemen not to let them cover their faces. People of a civilized nation very well know how to treat these criminals so when these  criminals are being taken to custody or hearing, we can urge the policemen to do nothing (at least for a few minutes). I am supremely confident that  justice will be done in no time. When such criminals approach lawyers to take up their cases, they can again do nothing... Sometimes such inactivity from certain professionals can go a long way in creating a civilized nation.

Till the time laws to tackle such crimes is formulated and enforced, we can also urge the netizens, the bloggers, media and social fraternity to keep the issue up and spreading. Radical transformation is not to happen but definitely we can start moving in bits. I resolve to do my bit by writing, highlighting and circulating...What's your bit friends...?

5 Minutes to Writing Excellence

Awareness is the key aspect that often goes missing when we start writing an article. If it is a professional piece of work, we tend to include the routine nuisances of the content, context and the jargons. This too is somewhat easy as we learn the way to get around as we face the challenges on a day-to-day basis. But when it comes to personal write-ups then the problem starts as we loose the grip. The awareness of the context falls and we tend to deviate from the topic.  One of the effective ways to check this problem is to turn on a timer and set it up for 5 minutes and begin writing. Once we start writing with such a limitation then our mind works well and remains aware throughout the writing process.

Five minutes of writing also helps us to stay focused as it is easier for us to stay focused for a shorter duration of time in one go without putting too much exertion or restraints on the mind. In face when we keep the focus of 5 minutes then it also becomes easy for us to take time out from our busy professional or personal routine to do the write-up.  Short duration of the focus makes it easy applicable and we can plan for a series of such focused writing when we work on a complex project which requires high degree of attention.  It also works when we write on a fun theme as the focus helps us deliver the best.

Contrary to the common observation, the limitation does no harm to the quality or creativity of the writeup. Since we know that we have limited time and to write something on a topic, this is the block that I have planned, it starts a preparatory exercises in the head and sets the motion going. Ideas start flowing in and you really do not have to work hard to bring the beautiful things on paper. It is a fact that what you inscribe on paper is nothing but all that is on your mind. The 5 minutes limitation only accelerates the process and allows all the relative ideas to drop on paper.

The beauty of 5 minutes writing is that you do not require much of editing, because most of the time, the editing is required when we write something which is out of context and which we do often. But when the writing is relevant and does justice to the theme then the scope of editing gets limited only in the areas of grammatical mistakes, misplacing of punctuation.  Such type of editing does not require too much time. Say for example if you write 500 words in 10 minutes then you would require just 5 minutes to do the editing. It is because you do not write anything irrelevant in a limited timeframe.

This rule of 5 minutes writing has done wonders for me and could definitely do the same to you as well!

Humanity Deprived of Sensitivity

Once in a month I go to a temple, and last Sunday I went to ISKCON as part of my monthly ritual and the moment I entered the gate, I saw two men carrying an old lady on their shoulders. I paused for a minute and noticed that the lady could hardly stand on her own, let alone walking on a normal surface. I saw these two men requesting the lady guard to body check the old lady and allow her to be taken inside the gate from the men’s entry once her checking is done. These two men never denied the checking or asked for leniency in security checking. They were just pleading to let the lady enter through the men’s gate or let them enter through the women’s gate after they’re checked at the other gate.

What followed after that left me upset for the day. The lady guard listened to none of their pleas and convincingly told these two men to let the lady stand on her own. She said nothing would happen, and if it did she would take care. There was another lady standing at the gate who seconded the first lady guard. As the fate of the old lady had it, the men let her at the mercy of the guard. The lady was standing with the guard’s support and the moment this guard bent down to check her, she uncontrollably fell to the ground. To these lady guards this was so amusing, they could not stop laughing. I rushed to help that lady, and by that time these two men too came close..as they had sensed this fall.

I felt bad and could not stop myself from arguing with these two insensitive lady guards. When I told them that they must not make fun of it..they said, bhagwan ke ghar me girna to achcha hai bhai sahib (it’s ok to befall at god’s place, brother)..I also felt bad as why do these people not understand it is not important to come to such places, no matter how divine or virtuous it might be when you are humiliated in such a way. Why on earth one must struggle to access divinity.

But why people come to such places is my least concern. I am more concerned with the insensitive attitude of the staff. Just because one cannot walk on her own, she should be deprived of her wish to move to the place where she finds some respite. Must she be confined to her home? We talk of equality, universal accessibility, infrastructural growth…boasting of our growing status in comparison to the west and this is how we treat those who are as important to the society as we are. This reminded me of the struggle of one of my mentors, the founder of accessibility. Now I can feel how difficult her fight has been, mainly because she has to fight against the indifferent and insensitive attitude of people rather than mere lack of infrastructural resources.

But I believe in happy ending and though this incident left me disturbed for the day but it also pushed me to seek corrective action from my end. I took the pledge, I will not expect others, the society, the government machinery or the people concerned to act but I will definitely do my bit.

Transparency at the Heart of a Promising Business

If you look at the success of leading international companies you will notice that they are very clear in their vision. The areas of business they cover, they services they offer as well as the target group they cater, everything is predefined. As the business evolves, the vision, the objectives, task execution process everything is accordingly redefined so that there is clarity in thought and action.

If we notice we will realize that nothing in our business world is ever static; it keeps on changing in real time. The moment it stops changing, taking new shape, it starts waning. It is this clarity which should be given due space in creating the DNA for the companies on the basic parameters of transparency. Before the companies bring the transparency to their dealing with the customers they need to bring it into the team. Their professional ethics, organizational eco system has to be transparent. They should give equal growth opportunity for all its employees without any biases.

It is this transparency which is playing a big role in the development of business domains marked by uncertainty, products or services of lesser value to the customers. While talking about Indian market, especially retailing, we see the rampant malpractices, failed commitments, lack of standard retailing practices, absence of customer’s grievances’ redressal mechanism. These are the reasons which have led to growth of organized retailing. In fact the service providers addressing these very problems are playing crucial role in taking the retail industry to the next level.

At present nearly 8 % of India’s total retailing is organized. The share of organized eretailing has risen to 10% of this total organized retailing. This is a remarkable growth which can be attributed to the value delivered by the online retailers. Of these retailers, Snapdeal has been one of the eretailers which has successfully positioned itself as the pro-consumer. The success it has achieved in such a short time can be largely accounted to the transparency policy it has adopted. Right from choosing a deal to getting the discount, a customer knows exactly what price he or she has to pay to the merchant against the services or product. There are no hidden conditions or confusing deals which naturally help the customers to come to Snapdeal for authentic deal on best products and services.

Similar initiatives have been taken by another rising e-retailer, Flipkart. The growth of these retailers is a testimony to their commitment they make and deliver to their customer keeping the transparency at the core. We shall have to keep the essence of this transparency for healthy business ecologic system.