People at Work & Play

The World Economic Forum (WEF) named 245 Young Global Leaders for 2008 from across the world to recognize their professional accomplishments, commitment to society and potential to contribute to shaping the future of the world.

The list includes 17 Indians:-

1. GoAir managing director Jeh Wadia
2. Market regulator SEBI’s executive director Sandeep Parekh
3. Lok Sabha MP Sachin Pilot
4. SKS Microfinance’s CEO and Founder Vikram K Akula
5. Chairman of Bhatia Enterprises Sabeer Bhatia
6. MD of Wipro Infrastructure Engineering Anurag Behar
7. Senior NDTV journalist Barkha Dutt
8. Global ITeS’ CEO and president Suhas Gopinath
9. Director of PRS Legislative Research C V Madhukar
10. Chairperson of Thermax Ltd Meher Pudumjee
11. Music composer Allah Rakha Rahman
12. Sitar player Anoushka Shankar
13. Moser Baer India’s executive director Ratul Puri
14. Adlabs Films’ director Pooja Shetty
15. Petro Tiger founder and president Joseph Sigelman
16. DLF Universal and DLF Retail’s managing director Pia Singh
17. Founder and director of Association for Democratic Reform & Centre for Collective Development, Trilochan Sastry.

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The New York Times magazine has one of the finest articles I have read in a long time. It’s called “The Moral Instinct” by Prof. Steven Pinker, the Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard University.

While the article itself is rather long, it gives those interested in the way we behave interesting insights into definitions of right and wrong. How are these formulated in our minds? What’s the thin line dividing what is right and what is moral? How is it that one set of behaviours may be ok in a context but not in another?

Which of these 3 people, starts the article is the most admirable? Mother Teresa, Bill Gates or Norman Borlaug? Which of these 3 is the least admirable? If this gets you interested, read the rest of the article here.

The starting point, writes Pinker, for appreciating that there is a distinctive part of our psychology for morality is seeing how moral judgments differ from other kinds of opinions we have on how people ought to behave.

Read “Rights Vs. Rights” an excellent article in the New York Times about the decision supporters of the Democratic Party soon have to make in the run up to the Presidential elections later this year.

Should they go a way they have never gone before and elect a lady as the Democratic party candidate? Should they go a way they have never gone before and elect an African-American as the Democratic party candidate? Lines are drawn between Sen. Hillary Clinton of NY and Sen. Barack Obama of  Illinois.

Ideally the party supporters would have liked one of them but since Clinton is not an African-American or Obama a lady, they have to make the tough choice. No, there is no African-American lady in the fray at this stage.

Over the years, traditionally supporters of women’s rights have been supporters of African-Americans and vice versa. There have been conflicts too. One bitter case from the 19th century saw a split between the abolitionist Frederick Douglass and the women’s rights’ pioneer Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

Stanton was herself a fervent abolitionist, and a close ally of Douglass, but later confined herself to the cause of women’s equality. These ideals would eventually clash, resulting in increasingly divisive rhetoric that reached a harsh climax after Stanton condemned the 15th amendment — which gave black men the right to vote but left out women of all races — as something that would establish “an aristocracy of sex on this continent.”

This is going to be a tough one. In far away India, I have been a supporter of the Democratic Party since the Kennedy days. I, for one, root for the greater political experience and charisma of Hillary Clinton.

I found a lot of information on the US Presidential election due in November 2008 here.

I was one of the many who wrote about the injustice meted out to Lakshmana, a Bangalore-based software engineer in November 2007. Under “Mistaken Identity”, I wrote about this sad incident where he was mistaken for some one else and punished for a crime he did not commit.

He was wrongly arrested by the police and made to serve a prison term of 50 days in Pune’s notorious Yerawada jail. Not being a famous film star like Sanjay Dutt, a politician or an underworld don, he did not get privileged treatment there. One can imagine the torment he went through.

The Times of India reports he was beaten with lathis and made to use one bowl to both eat and for the toilet. All for some one else’s fault!.

He has now decided to sue the telecom giant, Bharti Airtel and the concerned Government authorities for Rs. 20 crores in damages. Mistakes do take place but in such sensitive cases, should not organizations take extra care? After all, it involves some one’s life. The blame game will go on. Bharti claims the police asked for wrong information and got it. The police say Bharti gave them wrong information. Perhaps the truth will never be known.

Nothing can make up for the humiliation and hardship Lakshmana and his family must have gone through. I hope the public will not forget this case in a hurry. I hope the National Human Rights Commission will play its part.

Let’s hope the swell of public indignation will make sure that salutary measures are taken to ensure that such cases are not repeated ever again-not even by mistake.

Millions of words have been spoken and written about the Tata Nano. The much awaited Rs. 100,000 car. This was exhibited for the first time in the Auto Expo a few days ago. What about the team behind this achievement?

I am delighted that media and his organization have given due credit to 37 year old Girish Wagh and his team at Tata Motors. I am pleased that Tata Motors have given Girish Wagh the exposure to talk to the press and appear on many TV channels, because it was primarily his team’s efforts that led to the Tata Nano.

When he first joined Tata Motors 16 years ago, Girish Wagh had no idea he would one day head the company’s now-legendary Rs 1-lakh car project. Although he was part of the Indica vendor development team in 1997, Wagh was actually reluctant to get into full-scale product design with the Ace.

He remembers how Tata Motors MD Ravi Kant hand-picked him for the job and convinced him that it was as important as the work he was doing with the company’s excellence group. That was December 2000. The Ace rolled out in May 2005 and almost singlehandedly helped beat a recession in the commercial vehicle space. Impressed by his ability to deliver under tight deadlines, chairman Ratan Tata and Ravi Kant decided to move Wagh to the small car project in August that year.

Girish is a mechanical engineer from the Maharashtra Institute of Technology , Pune with post-grad. in manufacturing from SP Jain Institute of Management, Mumbai.

Girish’s story is typical of many bright young Indians. Given the right environment and support they can turn in excellent performance. I am sure his example will be a motivating factor for many young engineers .

Sad to hear of the death of Sir Edmund Hillary. He died at home in New Zealand at the age of 88 on January 10. May his soul rest in peace.
For many of my generation, he was one of our earliest heroes as he was the first man to conquer Mt. Everest. When he climbed Mt. Everest in 1953, he and Tensing Norkay, the Nepali Sherpa with him became household names all over the world.

On May 29, 1953 he reached the peak of the 29,028 mountain peak, doing something which many have done since, but no one had ever done before.

Sir Edmund worked for environmental causes and humanitarian work on the behalf of the Nepalese people for the rest of his life. Sir Edmund lived a life of determination, humility, and generosity.” Hillary summarized it for schoolchildren in 1998, when he said one didn’t have to be a genius to do well in life.

”I think it all comes down to motivation. If you really want to do something, you will work hard for it,” he said.

The New Zealand flag will be flown at half-mast on all government and public buildings until midnight Saturday to mark Sir Edmund’s death.

In spirit, I am sure one will fly at half-mast on top of Mt. Everest as well.

Cultures across continents never cease to amaze me. What is perfectly acceptable in one country may quite be abhorrent in another. What is fun in one country may be sacrilege in another ! Recent events prove my point.

You know the huge controversy that erupted when it was alleged that Harbhajan Singh called Andrew Symonds a “monkey”. Close in its wake, almost in retaliation,”Symonds baney Hanuman” was published in the Courier Mail.

I thought it to be in very poor taste and extremely provocative. Hanuman is revered as a God in India. It is almost like asking a newspaper in India to morph Harbhajan as one of the Saints or Jesus Christ himself (which shouldn’t be too difficult as he already has a beard).

In the same week, the now retired great Aussie fast bowler Glenn McGrath expressed surprise when India’s captain Anil Kumble was upset at the end of the infamous Sydney Test. Kumble had every right to be upset after all that he and his team had been through. It is alleged that Kumble, the perfect gentleman cricketer was called a “B*****d” by Brad Hogg.

This is mild stuff for McGrath because in his time he was supposed to have asked Shivnaraine Chanderpaul, the West Indian batsman, about a sensitive part of Brian Lara’s anatomy and was supposedly told in return to check with his own wife. He was extremely offended because sadly his wife had breast cancer. But he asked for it, didn’t he?

The Indian Ministry of External Affairs has a hot potato being tossed up to it soon. No, no pun intended. His Excellency Nicholas Sarkozy, President of France arrives as the Chief Guest for the most prestigious ceremony in the Indian year, Republic Day. In some countries having his girl friend/possible fiancee, supermodel Carla Bruni accompany him formally would perhaps be considered perfectly acceptable. In more traditional India, it is bound to raise many eyebrows, apart from creating issues of diplomatic protocol.

Admittedly cultures are different but shouldn’t we be sensitive to such differences?

Having one set of rules for us and another for others reminds me of a popular phrase during my younger days : “Sauce for the goose is not sauce for the gander”.

The results are out. A very pleasant surprise. In the New Hampshire primary for nomination to be the Democratic candidate for the President of the United States, Hillary Clinton beat Barack Obama. In the early days of the campaign, she was supposed to be far ahead. More recently, she was beaten to the third place by Obama in Iowa.

Her show of emotion in New Hampshire has brought to the fore an issue which could either help or stop her from becoming the first lady to be the President of the United States. Is it ok to show emotion? Are tough guys/tough gals not supposed to display their emotions? Is showing emotion a sign of weakness?

I believe showing emotions is a good thing. It brings out your inner feelings and makes you more natural and genuine. I am not suggesting that one should be melodramatic or over do the emotion bit. Even at work, it is sensible to show emotion appropriately to get others to know how you feel about something. Keeping your emotions tightly within you does you no good over time.

One day it is bound to erupt -with consequences far worse than if you had showed your emotions in the first place.

A 47 year old Indian-American lady has just won one of the world’s most highly prized jobs. Now being called the geek queen, Padmasree Warrior, has been appointed as  Cisco’s Chief Technology Officer.

She fills a post left vacant since July when Cisco promoted former CTO, Charles Giancarlo to the post of chief development officer. Cisco Systems was ranked No. 11 in the 100 Best Companies To Work For in 2007 by Fortune.

Warrior was the highest-ranking female executive in Motorola’s near 80-year history, achieving the rank of corporate vice president and CTO. Cisco chairman John Chambers , to whom she reports, has already dubbed her the world’s technology visionary.

She was once ranked as the 11th most influential global Indian and called a “rising star” by Fortune magazine.

To her credit, while at Motorola, Warrior was acknowledged for the introduction of a blog, ‘Innovate’, on which the company’s 25,000 engineers were encouraged to share ideas and information. “The future belongs to the genius of the collaborative innovator. In the past we had this notion of engineers working by themselves in isolation and trying to come up with things. And that whole paradigm is changing,” Warrior said

Warrior holds a MS degree in chemical engineering from Cornell University and a BS degree in chemical engineering from IIT Delhi. In 2007 she was awarded Doctor of Engineering, Honoris Causa from New York’s Polytechnic University.

Another case of a lady making it to the top of her profession. Another case of an Indian-American executive making a name for herself in the corporate world.

On November 8, in a post titled “Stupendous Operation”, I had written about a very complex operation performed in Sparsh ( which means “Touch” in Hindi), a Bangalore hospital.

Here’s some great news as a follow up.Lakshmi, the 2 year old has recovered well and is due to to be discharged from the hospital today.

She had been born with four arms and four legs. Lakshmi will return home after recovering well enough from last month’s marathon operation to separate her from a headless, conjoined twin, said surgeon Sharan Patil. He led the team of doctors that performed the 27-hour operation. The surgery, which cost 2.4 million rupees (60,000 dollars), was performed free.

Dr. Patil says ” At Sparsh, we do not look at it as an obligation, but as an opportunity to touch lives”.

Great job done by you and your team, Dr. Patil.  It is very heartening to see photos of Lakshmi after her operation. 

Little Lakshmi leaves the hospital more than a month after the operation to remove her extra limbs - as a new person.