Being a researcher has its own pros and cons but the opportunity this profession provides to learn new things is big enough incentive to be a researcher. The last six months period has been a blur considering the events, fieldwork, report writing and fighting deadlines of several other things in between. When I walked into IIFM for my post graduate diploma I never thought being researcher as one of the possible career options. But again someone wisely stated that the most of the career paths are never planned. And that happened to me as well.
If you are wondering why I am getting nostalgic and IIFM-sick, there are a couple of reasons, a) exactly five years back I landed up at IIFM, so five years of being an IIFMight. b) last few days, I have been heavily referring to books on SPSS, statistics and quantitative research, something which dominated the first two terms at IIFM. It reminded me of my first two terms at IIFM, those two terms would be surely be remembered by most for Levin and Rubin/Sweeney and Anderson and late night prowls for the elusive fellow students who could throw some light on quants assignments to be submitted next morning. Now, when I go back to those books or SPSS/SAS, some memories of those days do stretch their limbs and try to push me in a reverie.
Oh..again now you realize how a mention of IIFM is always accompanied by some memories, I started with talks of being a researcher and spent almost two paragraphs talking about IIFM. Though this time it was not too off target, as fortunately or unfortunately I am working for a sector which uses the same set of jargons, tools and techniques, and my research skills owe a lot to the exposure at IIFM. Now, with a lot of focus being shifted on Base of Pyramid markets, the unique course curriculum (sometime we wondered what is the use of topics such as tribal culture, forest produce etc.. if I am going to work for a bank or consultancy) would become more useful. Oh.. it seems I am writing a sales pitch for IIFM and I don’t think I need to. 
On another note, my blog became five year old last week. …..
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A few months back a colleague of mine termed me as a ‘brand slave’ and I just laughed it off as I did not see any truth in it. Just possessing a few ‘decent’ shirts and some gizmos does not make someone a brand slave. But his remarks made me think for a while and there were some specks of truth here and there.
Some introspection, retrospection and inspection of credit card bills confirmed that I might not be brand slave but I share many common characteristics. Recently I have been shopping like a maniac and shopping from the big brands..paying some extravagant amounts for things which could have easily been acquired at half the prices. Though this has more to do with my laziness and propensity to visit only a few locations (read shopping malls in Chennai) on weekends and most of the things catching my fancy there (hmmm .. do not get me wrong most of the time I am looking for things I really need .. no clean clothes.. presentation in morning hours.. no option other than buying some new clothes..) were having tags from big names. I cannot recall how many times I wanted to buy just a book but ended up buying which I never intended.
So what now… the last two months I have completely curbed by desire to shop (though the I had already made up my mind to get MacBook for my personal use so I am not counting that … anyway a Mac is a necessity considering the terrible to Windows Vista) and realized I am far better off this way. It is not long enough to conclude anything, but I realized that I never wanted to go for brands, it was just that whenever I decided to buy something I was at places which were dominated by big brands. Probably if I had lower priced alternative that prominently registering their presence I would have gone for that. Moreover I realized that I am in bad habit of not looking at price if something caught my fancy.. thanks to ICIC Bank and their pestering tele-callers who pushed three credit cards in my pocket. I don’t want to tell you how I felt when I used to get the credit cards bills. But thankfully things are under control.
On other front, I am halfway through two books and hope to finish them once I get some breather from these couple of hectic work weeks. Both the books are quite interesting.. hope to write about them in details once I finish them..
- “What I Talk About When I Talk About Running” by Murakami, and
- “Kill Your Friends” by John Niven
Last month, I visited Ranchi for a couple of days almost after
the water tank on hilltop
23 years. I was so excited to visit that place, to see my school and go to those places which were slowly getting eroded from my memory. But the menace of ‘Naxalism’ completely ruined my enthusiasm. We could not go to remote villages and surely not in a ‘car or jeep’ as they generated extra attention, and one local naxalite expert told me that in election time Naxals do not think before bashing up any outside face. Their policy.. first bash them up.. we will see the other issues later.
Though Ranchi city seemed quite peaceful, I ventured out on bike to find my childhood school and all I knew about that school was that there used to be a small hillock near the school and at top of that hillock there was a water tank. I called my mother to get more info, she told that the school was near a Hanuman temple in Harmu. We drove in and around Harmu and were able to locate almost 4-5 temples but the hillock was nowhere. That means there was no way to get to my school. New constructions and other developments made this place completely different from the image of this place I had in mind.
So came back to guesthouse, disappointed and full of thoughts. Naxalism, Development, Urbanization etc.. My plan to take a road trip to Daltonganj, Garhwa and Ranka stood cancelled. I wanted to use this weekend for that. It would have been an experience to visit these places but the fear of Naxalites and poor connectivity to these places have left me with no options. Probably I will dare again, after the elections when the naxal activities subside.
my school
Next day I as busy in my official chores and I had given up on finding my old school in the concrete jungle, but a local resident and employee of the host organization here in Ranchi, blessed me with his local knowledge. He knew the location of the hillock which has a water tank on top. I realized I can still see my school and I ventured out. He took me near the hillock, in front of a very big nice looking school, St. Francis High School. He was sure that this was my school, but I knew I was not that lucky to have studied in schools like these. But I could still see the hillock and the water tank on top, our favorite place for having lunch around 23 years ago.
I wanted to go there again on the hilltop and somehow I found a way to go there and on the way I could see a almost dilapidated building and here I was. That’s my school, I shouted. Rajkiya Krit Madhya Vidyalaya, Harmu – 12. Suddenly those faint memories became vivid. I could remember the place I used to stand for morning prayers and the school gate and numerous related incidents. School gate was a common factor in most of the incidents. I jumped the wall to go inside the campus (once inside I realized there were numerous ways, and surely not intended ones, to get inside the campus, the surrounding wall was broken at many places) and saw menu of the food served under Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan painted on the wall.
I pulled out my cam, wanted to capture these moments of relived, realized nostalgia. Great feeling to be there. If I look back on my school days, the biggest complaint (apart from not being able to study in any ‘decent’ schools) is my fathers job forcing frequent school changes for me, that means I could never have those childhood friends. All gone. No trails.
So finally I know what my schedule is going to be tomorrow, what I am going to eat, where I am going to spend my time and whom I am going to meet. Yes, the nomadic life I have been living for last four months is finally over. At least for the time being. 
Traveling is always enjoyable if you control your schedule, you know what is next and your mind is not preoccupied with hundred thoughts and trying to find out some illusive insight (does it exist?) amidst natural beauty of lush green forests or scenic sylvan settings. We were on the mission to understand some piece of BoP market (Bottom of Pyramid market for the un-initiated.). And considering the number of places and meetings were packed in this tour there was very little scope for sight seeing, though we made good use of whatever time available after all the FGDs(Focus Group Discussions) and interviews. I could still manage to s
ee Puri and Konark (thanks to Shrey) and get a glimpse of divine beauty of Munnar (will surely make a leisure trip to this place. It’s amazing). I think after this four month long trip I know which places to visit if I have time.
In the four months we covered, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Orissa, Karnataka, Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala and Tamil Nadu. And yes, these visits were not to the urban centers most of the time we were 100 kms away from the district headquarter meeting villagers, tribals, villagers trying to act like naxals and naxals trying to act like villagers. We could not visit a number of places as we were not allowed by our host organization; they could not ignore the risks of naxals in election time.
Now I am back. Back and too busy with report writing and analysis. The next couple of months are too much packed with professional commitments.
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Since last one year we have been working on it, right from developing concept paper to fine tuning the methodology. The District Level Economic Governance for Tamilnadu is now in news.
See the links..
It all started with the concept paper ( http://ifmr.ac.in/cdf/downloads/egi.pdf) I wrote last year and since then we have been working on developing indicators/ sub-indices and facing the problems such as how to assign weightage to different sub-indices, how to ensure buy in from different stake-holders..etc. Now we are in quite advance stage and very soon this index is going to make a lot of noise…
Last few weeks gave me a snapshot of a wanderer’s life. Moving one town to another, meeting all kind of people, doing all kind of stuff right from proving my self dumb to get some bits of information to handling drunken villagers.. it has really been an experience, and more or less a pleasant one. After all, I was doing the things I enjoy doing, I got a chance to visit my home state, read books while waiting for the next plane/train, and to see some exciting aspects of rural India. I do not want to mention the list of unpleasant things (the list is damn long..) as they form the integral part of this package (think about reading some utterly boring documents, writing some long reports, answering some ‘intelligent’ questions.
The abovementioned has surely had some serious impact on the time available for activities like blogging and other online commitments and as I am writing this post I am looking at the heap of clothes that need to be cleaned and packed for the next part of the field trip and wondering whether I should finish writing this or start doing something about the clothes. The other thought (though in stark contrast to my recent resolution ..) is coming to my mind that do not waste time on cleaning these clothes for travel, give them to dry cleaners here and buy some new clothes as and when needed on the tour itself. It is very difficult to be a minimalist.. 
(, you have to negate the impact of countless beauties inviting you to be worthy of their attention by acquiring item x..y…or z. Never worked for me. Though a decision to do some shopping might have been good in recession..yup it can trigger multiplier effect. But the decision to not indulge in this immediate shopping is more rooted in my recent drooling over the three things… Fiat Linea , MacBook and iPhone/Sony Ericsson Experia. I want to save money.
Yes. I saw Fiat Linea at Bangalore airport and as advertised (Admiration Guaranteed); this is a mind blowing beauty. We were stuck in front of it, ogling at its curvaceous
s body (yeah.. this beauty on four wheels made us oblivious of Vijay Malaya’s handpicked beauties roving around.). There was only one thought in my mind ‘ I want to ride this beauty.’ You know the first thing I did after reaching the hotel was to google Fiat Linea. And the features and gizmos made me go more crazy about this car.
The other two drool items have always been on my list. But now my Sony Ericsson P1i is giving me some trouble and I need another laptop. So they became too prominent in my things to acquire list. The new MacBook with multi-touch track-pad is really cool. And iPhone is iPhone. Period. Though one of my friend (seem to be diehard Nokia phones) enlightened me that iPhone is for iDiots. Hmm. No comments. Lets see when I am able to get these drool maals.
Meanwhile, I finished a few books and am halfway through another 2-3. Here is a summary of my readings this year so far.
- Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior by Brafman
- Outliers by Gladwell
- Gang Leader For A Day by S. Venkatesh
- Games Indian Play by V Reghunathan
Fiction
- Sacred Games By Viikram Chandra
- Bandicoots in moonlight by Avijit Ghosh
- The Girl with Dragon Tatoo by Steig Larsson
- Memories of My Melancholy Whores by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Non-Fiction
- Egonomics by David Marcum and Steven Smith
- The Cult of Amateurs by Andrew Keen
- A Perfect Mess by David Freedman
- Super Crunchers by Ian Ayres
- Wikinomics by Tapscott and Wiliams
- How to change the world by David Bornstein
- Stick to drawing comics, monkey brain! by Scot Adams
- Getting things done by David Allen
- The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch
- The Stuff of Thoughts by Steven Pinker
- Madness and Civilization by Foucault
Half Read / Unfinished Books
- Imagining India by Nandan Nilekani
- The Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner
- Hot Flat and Crowded by T. Friedman
- Dreaming of Jupiter by Ted Simon (Thanks Srey for the gift.)
- India: The Emerging Giant by Arvind Panagariya
- Phantoms in the brain by Blakeslee and Ramachandran
- Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
- Tribe by Bruce Parry
Surely I could not read a lot of fiction this year and spent a lot of time on non-fiction/ pop-economics. Though I wanted to read some good fiction titles. I bought many books last year and I think I need to speed up my reading to consume them this year.
There were so many things happening around me or with me that nothing was happening on my blog. No time to blog. Finally things seem to get normalized and I am back on my blog.
Last quarter of the gone year was a really chaotic one, both on personal as well on professional front. I tried my best to grab attention on professional front and more than my best to avoid ‘unwanted’ attention on personal front. I seem to be successful to some extent on both fronts. .
A few months (and around 15 kgs) back, I used to wonder how people gain weight so fast.. why these people are not doing anything about the visible paunch… I got the answer. At the beginning of 2008, I started to get conscious when I was getting clicked. The reason, visibility of my incipient paunch from certain angles and in certain type of attires. By the end of 2008, the incipient paunch was no longer ‘incipient’ and now it was proudly registering it presence in all camera angles and in almost all kind of attires.
Book reading continues to take back seat with every passing months though every now and then a typical bibliophilic guilt results in some intense (but often transient) activity on this front. The frequent visit to different shopping malls and unabated desire to possess books is causing my anti-library to grow. I am yet to count the number of books I have read this year (many books are still unfinished with colorful bookmarks stuck in …waiting for their turn..); I am sure the number is nowhere near the usual number. Most of the reading this year happened either on airports waiting for the connecting flights or on the upper birth of railway bogie coping with intruding requests ranging from ‘Garam Chai/Coffee’ to ‘hero /chikne jaldi nikaal….’ from ilk of Bobby Darlings. Since I am traveling for entire first quarter of this year, I hope to utilize these train/air travel time to the max. I would love to read some good Hindi modern classics this year. (I already started Raag Darbaari by Sri Laal Shukla).
There were no new year celebrations, I had promised my friends to join them but somehow I could not do it and decided to enter into new year sleeping peacefully. No visits to temple on the first day of the year. No new year resolutions. No big plans for this year. Just go with the flow.
We looked from the car window to find ‘Raju Ka Hotel’, no signboards nothing, no sign of a decent eating joint on either side of road. All we could see were small shops selling all sorts of daily use items. Some tea stalls, where small kids were engaged in different activities, one trying his best to make the tea glasses clean by wiping them in his over-sized shirt dirt coated shirt, another holding a plate of ’samosas’ for the customer. But now all of them were looking at our ‘Qualis’, not a common site for them.
We were in a remote village of Bihar, in search of some elusive insights on development puzzles but at that moment the search was for a place where we could get food, and ‘Raju ka Hotel’ was the best bet for us as per opinions of our hosts. We stepped out and asked for ‘Raju ka Hotel’ and we came to know that the tea stall we were standing at is the place we are looking for. We were supposed to have our lunch there. We entered into the hut and we could see people having food there. So finally.. food.
We looked around, no empty tables (yes they had some tables.), I could spot one table where a kid was happily having food. He was enjoying his lunch, dressed only in shorts and with a ‘gamchha’ on his small shoulders. We headed to that table as there were three seats available. The kid saw us coming to his table and the moment we tried to sit there, he grabbed his unfinished food and left the table. We tried to stop him and asking him to continue eating as there was enough space on the table. He looked at us with some unidentifiable expressions in his eyes. He muttered something to the shopkeeper and moved to another table. I enquired the shopkeeper and he explained “Saheb aap log amir log hain is liye wo aap sabke saath khana khane main ghabra raha hai (The kid is not comfortable eating with you people as you are rich.)”. We looked at the kid, he was still questioning our presence in that place. I looked at myself and my friend, probably we were stinking. Stink of money? May be.
Sometime back I was discussing recruitment processes with my friends/colleagues and some professors; the discussion started getting focused on the key skill sets/attributes/features playing critical role in selection. Though we are quite aware of most of the skill sets and attributes affecting selection decision, an interesting attribute was the network a candidate has access to. Yes, your network constitutes a significant part of your net worth.
A recruiters (especially those recruiting for managerial posts and not for skill specific jobs like programmers or firefighters) primarily assess the total value a candidate brings to the table and unlike one’s individual skill sets, knowledge and training, whose effectiveness is tested only after certain amount of time, network’s effectiveness is pre-established and known. It brings immediate value in term of providing an indirect connection for the recruiting organization to a network, which can be exploited in many ways. I know many people who rely hugely on their professional network / college network for effective execution of their professional assignments. Ask anyone working in development sector, they will vouch for it. And here by network I am not referring to only college/ alumni network, it can be your family network (being relative of a minister/cabinet secretary!!) or social network or professional network in terms of contacts and references you carry with yourself from your past organizations/assignments.
The other significant advantage of assessing this attribute is that one can predict future performance to some extent based upon the performance of network members. It gives a sense of your potential. It builds one’s credibility.The differential pay packages offered to candidate with same qualification from different institutes is reflection of this value and risk assessment only.
And sometime the network becomes more important than the candidate. After all, the potential of a wire depends on the power source it is connected to.
( There are some ‘head fakes’ here.. You can surely gain some extra points if you know how to use your networks.. .. oh .. there are more than a couple of ‘head fakes’ here.. Sorry I just finished The Last Lecture by Randy Paush .. and I liked the use of ‘head fakes’ …)
