Just like that...

We Indians have a tendency to generalize thing so much so that it hardly takes any effort from our side to paint the world in one color. Often as an extension to this exercise to tend o extract particular characteristics of people from a city, and I quite believe that any self respecting engineer from a decent engineering college in India must have had great fun using them to describe their friends. Almost every where you can find 'Baba', 'Guru', 'Ziddi Jat', 'Sirfira Sardar', 'Bihari', 'Taant', 'Gulti', 'Kannadiga', 'Khatta', 'Ghatan'... and the list goes on and on... while I was siting wih some of my senior friends we happened to discuss the changing times.. the arch typical '... those were the day, ...' and one of my senior friend was quite amused and interested to learn the diversity, he then told us that back then during his times such richness and variety was unheard of and as a result of which he would often be referred to as 'Madrasi', now that was real bad as this could be the worst form of identity crisis... he complained that all those from 'North India' used to refer any one down south with the same term and he would never be able to take that... and in order to have revenge on them he would paint them (Northies) as 'Bihari' and that had far reaching affect on them and upon complain he would highlight the similar difference to them... and that probably sowed the seed to heightened verbosity currently in use... seems like this is what is referred to as evolution of language ;)

Disclaimer: With malice to no one... have fun, n'joy!

Buckle up - Enterprise Edition

Time and again people ask me, if I still think I made the right decision to cut short my 'coveted' foreign assignment to return India because I felt it 'did not add value'... well let time keep tab on that. My story is that... whatever role life gives you play it big [this one is lifted from Smirnoff's ad, we can even learn from a Daru company ;)].

We[Indian IT industry] started real small with back office support work but soon gained confidence of the world to provide medium to large scale system enhancements from where we incrementally we created value to achieve customer delight through our efficiency and professionalism. It is no wonder that today IT captains are trusted partners for very large scale system transformation exercises. In essence, we have incrementally moved up the value chain.

Now, it is important for us to move up to the next step where in we need to conceptualize and develop 'product(s)'. Definitely, this would be a much riskier business. But, then are there any options for us but to grow better. The world will truly respect our technical prowess if we 'create' new concepts and 'implement' them... and can there be better times than these. Here is why I think these are the best of time to go deep...

• Under the current scheme of affairs techies prefer to stay home because much of the quality work will be done off-shore and more importantly an increased focus on domestic projects gives them an opportunity to solve 'their' own problems. This tends to improve employee job satisfaction as it allows them to play 'lead' roles.
• Working on domestic projects will create more avenues where we can find generic 'patterns' to be created as 'products'.
• Investing into products will make employee confident about the longevity of vision of the organization leaders.
• Confidence breeds success.

NASSCOM is equally exhilarated to display the abounding capacity of Indian software companies representing products conceptualized, designed and made in India. It has come up with a logo as displayed above. You may wish to read more here

It is all in mind and we can definitely make a difference by shaping our reactions to the events in life.

Work starts@home to innovate

Thanks to information technology revolution in the country I have a comfortable job which allows me to dream about a bright future ahead. Often I find it difficult to imagine if there exists a better profession than my own which bestows such great powers to change the face of the society. Having said that, I still face the frustration first hand when I visit places like banks, govt offices etc. Just imagine it took me three hours to complete trivial activities at the bank, I would not name the bank because it will be gross injustice to their employees commitment to work.

My observation was that some how the whole computer thing is a cosmetic entity, as much of the work can still not be done the e-way. There is a greater need for creation and integration of systems.

Over the years, we as Indian software industry have stepped up continuously from a back office service provider to prime time solution provider. Today there are voices raised from all corners for us to innovate, create new product ideas but then this seems to me has certain degree of challenges because of our predominant attachment to solving problems of the rest of the world. We have historically focused on export market and almost ignored home requirements. It will only pay for us to look inwards. This comes from my own experience while working with US/European telecom companies and for Indian telecom majors. I found myself to be better aware of the exact requirements, the existing inefficiencies in the system and could better predict customer expectations and their behaviors being a consumer of those services myself. It was more satisfying to solve problems and shall I say easier to innovate.

There is so much to do all around us in all spheres and at all levels to make the life simpler even for the common people. May be the brighter side to all this is that we have a clean slate available to us, as far as IT applications are concerned. We can therefore use this opportunity to create similar efficiencies in to system from grounds up and recreate the magic of 'One Rupee - One India' from telecom experiences.