Looking for the Bottleneck

The most abused word on campus is Opportunity Cost. Do you need a really smart sounding reason to cover up your lethargy? Tell them that the Opportunity Cost is too much.

In the danger of over-abusing that argument, I have been trying to make some use of my newly acquired Opium (OPM- Operations Management) skills to locate the "Bottleneck" that affects my capacity utilization or rather time efficiency.

I began to make a short list or rather a watch list which goes like this: Pre-reads, Assignments, Travian, Afternoon Nap, Reading Students 2010 e-mail, Refreshing Facebook, Replying on Facebook, Exploring Second Life, Dinner (extended) and of course, Contemplation (Day Dreaming).

The MBA skin began to show when you started canceling out or rather discounting heavily everything that I love doing. The final list looked like Assignments, Pre-reads and Student 2010 e-mail. The opportunity cost argument is amazing. It helps you cut to the core and get very easily to the conclusion-eliminate Pre-reads.

Thats easy. Thats what everyone does. The smart-ass Opium addict I am, I arrived at this kick-ass strategy to reduce my batch size. Let me explain. Read an article before the afternoon nap. It also helps your sleep. And another before eventually hitting the sack at 4.00 AM.

Opium is finally making sense. I enjoy higher capacity utilization now. But now the bottleneck is Facebook. What do I do about Facebook now? I am sure they will teach me another theory to deal with that in the next term...

The Manifestation of The Self

The self is an elusive quarry. Many are not even aware of its existence. Not that it matters much to these folks anyway. Because many of those who are aware, do not even care. Of the remaining, persistent (maybe foolishly) folks like us, many spend their lifetimes hunting it down in vain. Many of those who have actually hunted it down, when the sun had set, ended up in history books and the others in graves, like the rest of us.

So what is it that makes this quarry elusive? As a hunter who is seemingly (or at least I wish to believe so) at the head of my personal hunt, I have been led to believe that it is the camouflage on the skin of this beast that makes it hard to track down. And the beauty is that this camouflage originates from none other than your own mental estimation of the "self".

Funny right? The more you think about the self, the more it eludes you. (Why am I reminded of the philosopher's stone in Harry Potter?)

I feel that the "human" urge to control and the fallacy of "being aware" leads us on the path to a mirage that sends us on a wild goose chase, losing the remaining of our identity in the process.

"Being aware" is more about listening than "knowing" or even "interpreting". I am sure many of us, so far unlucky but getting there, hunters already know as much. But what might be the next pace of the hunt might be to actually listen without being judgmental or applying prejudice. But again, I am speculating or maybe I am truly "aware". We will know soon.

Learning from Caesar

From when I remember, I always spoke to myself...... sometimes aloud. Today I will speak louder and should you want to listen, you are invited.

Grandpa called me on the next morning of the "War of Mumbai" and asked me to return back to Trivandrum. I asked him, "If this happened at the Taj in Trivandrum, which was hardly a few hundred meters from our home, what would we have done?"

A safe place to stay and work is an evasive commodity or rather an illusion in this global village where even terrorism has gone global. Using the boons of modern communication and Information Technology to divide tasks and decentralize terrorism is a scenario that is even more unimaginable. I would not be surprised to see MS Project installed on a terrorist's laptop or PDA and a Project Server with a SharePoint installation in a terrorist camp in POK.

Investing into even better technology, forces and understanding the way the modern terrorism is organized and conducted is essential. But this will only serve to reduce the number of incidents and the damage inflicted. It will not make the world a safer place to live in. The manifestations which terror can assume in the days to come are too complex to imagine.

When I was young I played a computer game called Caesar. In this you had to deal with a group of barbarians. I was rich from trade and invested heavily into my army. I used them mercilessly against the barbarians. Their uncoordinated random ravaging, took all my attention. Trade suffered. My people were insecure. Administration started to fall apart. I somehow kept things under control and right at that moment, the real enemy - an external power, struck. My forces were exhausted and dwindled fighting the proxy war. My finances were in a bad shape. We lost a battle we could have won easily.

The next time I got a chance to play the game, I used missionaries to tame these barbarians. It was much easier than I thought. When the real enemy arrived, my army was fresh and strong. I had money to buy them the best of infrastructure and the enemy was easily handled.

There is a message here. Politicians definitely need a dressing down. But the answer to this monster might not be the army afterall. An army is meant to protect the nation and its territorial integrity from the ambition of external powers. It is meant as a source of strength to give confidence to the nation to standby what it believes and pursue its independant economic and foreign policy. Their dignity and strength should not be weakened by chasing rats around underground sewers. The ongoing operations in Kashmir have already weakened our forces and purses enough.

I feel that to address the problem, we have to look more into the problem itself. I would not be too much perturbed by hired mercenaries from foreign powers inflicting terror. A fine intelligence and security establishment can easily handle this. Besides, it is almost suicidal for a country to sponsor and send such mercenaries in these modern times.

The key here is local support. Take this away and terrorism is crippled. If you look at every captured terrorist, he has a story to say. From the taxi driver who aided the Mumbai blasts a few years ago and the story of the videos of the Gujarat riots to these young men of the "War on Mumbai" and their story of army actions in Kashmir and Palestine, the modus operandi to create militants have remained the same. They capitalize on the "divide and rule" strategies of vote-bank politics which has served to bring insecurity to certain communities. When cornered so, it is easy to corrupt them with a chance to take revenge for the mistreatment to them and their kin. Motivation is bought with vivid videos and photographs.

If only we could bring confidence, trust and security back to every Indian.....they could never be corrupted to act against their nation and fellow humans. Afterall, we are all humans and designed the same way. Circumstances create terrorists. Take away these circumstances and there will be no terrorists.

What we need now, I feel, is a vibrant, young, motivated and enlightened political leadership. The entire system needs a complete format. Time is ripe for all of us to look upon "politics" as a wonderful career and a great opportunity to make the world a better place to live in. Let us join hands and do a "complete format". Time has come to transform ourselves as a nation.