“Reliance Kar lo Duniya Muthi mein” vision by Reliance is a real-time equivalent of 0.15 Paisa post card across India. These cheap cell phones in recent years revealed the untapped markets in India’s villages and slums. Companies have long ignored poor markets because any potential profits seemed too slim. It was too expensive to create a distribution system that could serve the consumer who shops from closet-size kiosks or weekly country markets. But instead of using traditional supply chains, many companies are distributing through rural self-help groups and micro lenders that are already plugged into villages. And while profit margins are slim, companies are counting on volume to compensate.

These new series Innovative products aren’t just cheaper versions of established models but these are really new models to suit the needs. For Example- Tata Motors -“Nano” car under $2,200 is a model of its own and not a replica of any other model.

For the village housewife, a wood-burning stove has been reinvented to make more heat and less smoke for $23. Oorja Stove by First Energy reinvented the wood-burning stove to come up with a product that had the convenience and the price to crack the same market. Hoping to help village women who spend hours a day looking for wood and keeping a fire going to cook for their families, the Pune-based company adopted the gasifier technology used in power plants to make a stove that would burn more efficiently and with less smoke. Engineers from the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore designed a stove with a perforated chamber that uses a small fan to get just the right amount of air to keep a fire burning at a high temperature, meaning less smoke and quicker cooking. It has sold around 400,000 of the $23 stoves across India.

For the slum family struggling to get clean water, there is a $43 water-purification system. Hindustan Unilever spent four years developing its battery-powered portable water-purification system called Pureit. The $43 water-cooler-size system is now in more than three million Indian homes, many in hard-to-reach rural areas, thanks to its network of 45,000 women, who demonstrate the Pureit and other Unilever products in their own homes. They then sell door to door around their villages, often from the back of bicycles.
For the villager who wants to give his child a cold glass of milk, there is a tiny $70 refrigerator “Little Cool” that can run on batteries. Godrej, one of India’s oldest groups, which is involved in everything from padlocks to pest management, saw cell phone companies sell millions of new handsets a month in India’s rural backwaters and wanted in on the action. Fewer than one in five Indian homes has a refrigerator, so Godrej figured it could attract a huge new group of consumers if it could get the price right. It sent surveyors into village huts for months at a time to discover the needs of farm families. The result: The “ChotuKool,” or “Little Cool” in Hindi, looks more like a cooler. It opens from the top and is about 1.5 feet tall by 2 feet wide. It is tiny because the poor live in small homes and don’t buy food in bulk. It has handles to make it portable for the migrant workers who move a lot. It has no compressor to break or make noise. Instead, it runs on a cooling chip and fan similar to those used to cool computers. It can survive power surges and outages common in the country kitchen and even has the option of running on batteries. While designed with cost in mind, it uses high-end insulation to stay cool for hours without power. By keeping it small and reducing the number of parts to around 20 instead of the 200 that go into regular refrigerators, Godrej has been able to sell it for only $70, which is less than one third of the price of a regular bottom-of-the-line fridge. It also consumes only half the power so it keeps electricity bills at a level the poor can afford.

And for rural health clinics, whose patients can’t spend more than $5 on a visit, there are heart monitors and baby warmers redesigned to cost 10% of what they do elsewhere. A doctor in India uses the GE Mac 400 heart monitor, redesigned to reduce its cost to about $1,000, or one-tenth what standard models cost.

For the farmer who wants to save for the future, one Indian entrepreneur has developed what is, in effect, a $200 portable bank branch. To bring banking services to villages a bank representative goes directly to a village and can set up shop anywhere there is shade. Villagers line up and give an identification number, scan their fingers and then deposit or withdraw small amounts of rupees. The transactions are recorded through the phone and the representative later visits a standard branch to pick up or drop off rupees as needed.
The running cost of his “branches” is about $50 a month to serve hundreds of people daily. A standard branch or ATM costs thousands to run.They made this phone into a branch of a bank. The Zero system is already helping Indian construction workers in Bahrain open bank accounts and sends money home.

These are thought provoking list of items which are not just only business oriented but some of them are really a very good use of knowledge to the mankind e.g. The Oorja Stove. We should really collectively try to contribute to this new kind of Innovation to serve the society.

Hope you enjoyed the video !

This really proves that the sincere execution of any thought with persistent efforts can transform the imagination into reality.

While you may be appreciating the imagination and real hard work of those involved, at the same time many of us would agree that similar creative imagination often strikes them,while solving challenges of a day-to-day problems. The missing part is the sincere dedication to execute it to the limit of perfection,where those becomes real.

Potential of above :

Let us begin by setting the agenda for understanding the role of Leadership in these tough, troubled and challenging times. Dealing with it from the point of view of the contemporary situation will enable us take a practical stand rather than leaving the attempt at only a theoretical exercise.
Today, India and China are racing to see who will be the next dominant player in the world both as an economic giant and equally importantly on the political front as well with China being in the lead at the moment. For each one of them the challenges are formidable and the enemies clear. The challenges and the enemies can be concisely put in three broad categories – corruption, demographics, and the gripping hand of the past in all its aspects.
It is time for Indian business and political leaders to act and be like one rather than pretend to be one – to stop sitting on the sidelines and waiting for the world to reshape itself. That is the old India – the new India must move now to take an active and not a passive role in creating the new economic and political order by ‘framing the agenda’ rather than continuously responding to it. It will not happen by continuing with the behaviours of the Raj era or the bureaucratic remnants of socialism – it will happen with a new view of  what it is to be human – what it is to be accountable – what it  takes to generate real value in the lives of the people they represent and  lead and who we are for and with each  other.  This is the time when India can and must stand up and take its place in the world.
Let us be very clear – Leadership is not a trial and error process of evolution, in reality it is all about designing and learning. In that sense we can define  leadership as about creating and managing the mood of the people and designing and creating the architecture of future for and of the people you promise to lead in your chosen field be it politics or business or whatever. Rather than following the traditional approach of looking at this phenomenon of leadership from a trait point of view, we can say that a leader ought to develop a set of competencies that generates the capacity to produce the desired and expected result. Sounds simple, doesn’t it?
We also need to recognize that, in the world of business, the central concern of leadership is the overall strategic direction the company will take and the development and growth required for its continued survival, well being and prosperity. Management by contrast is focused primarily on coordination of action within the scope of objectives established by the leaders to accomplish that goal! However, it is not so easily learnt and the exercise of effective leadership can become overwhelmingly complex if proper attention is not paid to learning, developing team work and trust amongst the people who are directly impacted by the actions of the leader. Since the leaders communicate via a language of their choice and the words they use, it is important to note that to engage effectively in this conversation, leaders will typically have to take on the following roles and responsibilities and learn the practices of:
1. Reading the world and creating a vision
2. Declaring a mission and the narrative
3. Making Alliances
4. Building the organization and appointing individuals to positions of authority
5. Creating followership
6. Generating resolution and mobilizing action
7. Managing power
8. Producing unsettlement and results thereto
As we set out to explore the eight basic conversational practices of leadership it would be pertinent to point out that we are not at the end of the journey but this is just the beginning! No one ever became a leader by reading a book or an article! Leadership lives in a process of action; it is about learning and creating a new capacity for action.

Our next goal is to learn the agenda of generating the New Capacity for Action.

-By Hatian –(Vibhuti Jha)

The Physics, we know today, depends on the existence of an elementary particle that no one has ever detected. This particle is  called the Higgs boson, named after British theoretical physicist Peter Higgs who first proposed its existence. This is also called the God Particle, which is believed to be the last missing piece of the so called Standard Model.

This God particle is assumed to give mass to all fundamental particles e.g. quarks and leptons, which makes the neutrons, protons and electrons, and in turn make up atoms and molecules and the entire universe. The beauty of this daring adventure is that the LHC experiment @ CERN would be still be a success even if it fails, because that will suggest to re-visit and revise the Physics we know so far.

The details can be studied at  CERN-LHC  But, I am more keen to map this to our understanding based on our knowledge, since early childhood days. We were told that God is in every bit of matter and God is the source of supremene energy. How true, this may turn out to be if the God Particle is discovered. The Scientists are hunting for this God Particle to solve the mystery of matter. This experiment is aimed to produce the conditions present, just a fraction of a second after the Big Bang, in order to detect this particle. This experiment theoretically on the contrary, can also produce a tiny black hole which is believed to be very unstable and will evaporate due to Hawking Radiation. The LHC may also come across the “super-symmetric” particles with this collision. All such  discovery would help to provide a unified theory for explaining the four fundamental forces. This is also called the M Theory (Mother of all Theory) or  TOE  ( Theory of everything) or The String Theory which  would explain all the basic interactions in the universe.

You will be amazed to know, how closely the String Theory matches with the Lord Krishna’s expression in Geeta about the illusionary world. Gradually, it seems that the Scientist are inching close to our concept of time and epic(Brahma’s day and night), the Creator(Brahma), the Preserver(Vishnu) and the destructor(Mahesh) theory may prove to be true even scientifically.

Let’s look at the objectives of Human Life, which can be broadly classified into following categories by the followers of Sanatan Dharma. These are also referred to as Purusarthas:

1. Dharma –Righteousness – Ethics
2. Artha – Livelihood -Wealth
3. Kama-Sensual Pleasure – Pleasure of all sense organs
4. Moksha- Liberation

It is really difficult to come up with such a classification. So, this leaves me wondering who might have put these thoughts and imagination into Vedic literatures.

At least one would agree that someone with a higher intellect value than most others must have done it. One can attempt to prove it to be merely a wrong figment of imagination but it is widely accepted by people across geographies and people across the time i.e. beyond contemporary society.

The collective thought process of individuals on earth in given period of time is very much similar. The difference in the thought level can produce a leader who can govern the thought process of rest alone.

A significantly higher level of intellect than the rest can provide the ability to lead the thought process of entire planet or universe; so theoretically, it may be possible to have such an individual. (e.g. if a person of this era goes to a 3-4 generations in past, he can lead them with his current knowledge). Thus, it may be possible to have a mind which travelled across time to have the relative super-abilities.

The above point of view gives a thought to believe the theoretical existence of GOD. i.e. the definition of GOD is at least a real definition.

God is someone beyond the time-scale and knowledge defined by us. In short, which one can’t define is defined as GOD which is TRUE; thus whatever defined by GOD has to be true, this is why I believe that Dharma will always win over Adharma needs to be TRUE.

Let’s explore the possible objectives of the primary school education seekers and the objectives of founders of the school. 

Those who wish to establish a primary school for education would really make use of their good past experience.

As a hatian we feel privileged that we experienced a bit of the ancient Indian culture, the gurukul way of understanding the righteous knowledge, this perhaps would demand that Sanskrit should be the chosen language for School.  

I am confident that many of us would  wish it to be Sanskrit, but only if the whole world society starts appreciating the knowledge what we had in our Vedas, which is also our spiritual and cultural heritage.  The power of ancient Indian literature and culture is such that it is respected even today, therefore, it is evident that it has traveled across time boundary. 

In recent era, every one felt Sanskrit was not easy for the masses to pick up, So, Hindi evolved and it gradually became more acceptable, despite the fact that it was not as structured as Sanskrit.  Hindi was not only, easy for the contemporary society to understand, but also widespread. It worked well to gel the parts of India together post Independence.

But with the advent of Globalization, the modern day knowledge, replaced our ancient education system, and to a great extent our culture too. So, the masses demands a global language of choice, and thus, the objectives of school education seekers will be driven by his experience in the era of rapid globalization.

We are part of that society; where there are certain pre-determined education milestones are already established.

1. IIT (Eng.) 2. AIIMS (Doctor) 3. Civil Services (IAS, IPS, IES etc)   4. Management (CAT-IIMs/GMAT)   5. Higher Education -Research etc.

All these global competitive environment has an established preferred language as English. 

I believe this would be the single most important criteria for School Education seeker in the present day society. Their ambition wouldn’t be limited to any region but the whole world. 

If we don’t give a due consideration to it, then we may sulk later. Let’s think what if we translate our ancient  concepts, textbook chapters from Sanskrit and Hindi to a more prevalent language such as English.

The language anyway serves as medium to communicate, what are being communicated remains the thing of utmost importance. The basic chapters, specified in the English medium, if gets revised to courses specified in Hindi medium but retains the English as Language, would that help ?  I think, we might just have an agreement here …

With the excess US Govt. spending on the stimulus plans which may be a major biggest contributor to the GDP, a double dip recession possibility can’t be completely ruled out. The consumer spending which was single most important factor for the US growth story in the past is also the biggest cause for the recession. The US trade deficit being another important factor, as the world economy was just flying on one engine. All this while Germany, Japan or any other country failed to provide the necessary support engine for the world economy. The US GDP still remains the major contributor to the world GDP.

The excessive consumer spending which was responsible for this mess is also the key to get out of here and return to the growth story, but not the past way. The rational spending although can’t match the irrational exuberance of glorious past, but will accelerate the recovery.
Rational spending, what it means? Any spending which will bring value addition to the society, I would term that as a rational spending. Investment in the areas of research and Innovation may prove to be rational spending. Spending on Education, Infrastructure, Manufacturing, and Industries can be also viewed as rational spending. Any spending which can potentially benefit the society may be considered as rational spending.
The challenges are plenty with the changing dynamics of world, the geo- political stability, changing climate, natural catastrophes, rising population leading to shared resources shortages including food grains. Thus the rational spending requires a proper analysis to determine the priority.

If everything else remains constant, the double dip recession view is unlikely but the spending from here onwards must be rational, else it may lead to a bigger depression soon..