looking for talent in other places

In the article, the writer makes a case for why companies should look to hire people from an informal, countryside, Non-MBA, inexperienced backgrounds, for the kind of talent that exists there.

Here is the article: Making a case for inclusiveness

He closes with:

I hope to see recruitment advertisements which read:

“Girl students from low-income families who have studied arts in regional languages at “unknown” colleges in nondescript towns and villages are invited to join our 2020 Leadership batch!!”

We want a corruption free nation

Hey kids, study well, and think of the nuts and bolts for getting there and may be once in a while check this blog!

Formula One and Mumbai University

It's fun to see the contrasting elements that make up India.

On 30th October, we were hosts to a formula-One race, two days later, a news report said that Mumbai University (MU) had fewer taker's for its post-graduation courses.

Well the decline of Mumbai University ain't news. It's been happening since a looong time. I often laugh at the fact that we have just one university for so many in Mumbai.

MU is the oldest of the modern universities, and if we need the economy to cruise, say to be a formula-one economy, we can't afford this, can we?

To become a developed economy, we need something called as Meta-Ideas. These are the institutions that help create new ideas. University is just one of them.

Paul Romer writes in the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics:

Perhaps the most important ideas of all are meta-ideas—ideas about how to support the production and transmission of other ideas. In the seventeenth century, the British invented the modern concept of a patent that protects an invention. North Americans invented the modern research university and the agricultural extension service in the nineteenth century, and peer-reviewed competitive grants for basic research in the twentieth. The challenge now facing all of the industrialized countries is to invent new institutions that encourage a higher level of applied, commercially relevant research and development in the private sector.

My remedy: Break up Mumbai University. It's just too big to manage folks.

On celebrations of the 7,000,000,000th baby

Union healt minister - Mr Azad to media:

"What's there to celebrate? We'll celebrate when population stops growing."

India no country for rock-stars

Music composer A.R Rehman says:

“I think in India, we don’t have a true rockstar. Culturally, we are a family-bound society and rockstars are known to do all sorts of things."

Given our historical and real circumstances, rock-stars of many kinds are missing in most areas.

Mr. Rehman refers to the family. I reckon the same.

Well, scratching deeper, It's easy to see the bollywood dimension which is that bollywood music crowds out individual music, and it affects both the demand and supply, and may be some other things are happening too.

We are in an equilibrium and it is usually difficult to get out of it and this most likely takes a long time, even at 9% GDP growth.

Rock-stars ain't happening any time soon.

Should the govenment do these things?

Shashi Tharoor and Keerthik Sasidharan in the following articles suggest a few ideas that the government can work on:

Article 1:The world's not enough

Article 2:The end is a journey.

The first idea is about helping the newly educated to get an experience at some MNC in and the second idea is about helping young people travel across the country so that they could have a better understanding of their fellow citizens and the country's diverse cultures

Both Ideas are interesting, but I am skeptical whether the government should take them up. Our government seems to be anyways having a tough time managing the provision of public goods, why burden it with such creative tasks. Shashi tharoor, himself is in the government and should know this.

The latest round of resentments about governance deficit by folks like Mr Azim Premiji is, here.

There are plenty and it's pretty conspicuous.

A documentary - City hawked

A documentary made on street vendors in Bombay, by us.

Here are the links:
City hawked (1st half)(2nd half)

Total running time - 20 minutes

A corrupting oath

As loud a cry against corruption we may make - as the prime minister says - there ain’t no magic wand to waive corruption away, but here’s a good starting point:

Article: Ministers need a new oath

Mr. Haseeb Drabu suggests that the ministers take the oath of transparency rather than the anachronistic oath of secrecy.