A 'clever' blog of a 'free' mind
Posts tagged business
Protectionism – is it good for economy in the long term?
01065 days
I have been having this question in my mind since a very long time and unfortunately could not find anything that would give me right answer.
After reading much about President Obama’s stimulus plans & his policy over outsourcing jobs, things do not look very promising for Indian companies. There is a good news article written on BusinessWeek.com that outlines how his policies would affect Indian IT & outsourcing companies in India. In one of his policies, Obama outlines how he plans to prefer giving jobs to more native americans than immigrants. Sort of protectionism !
I can obviously understand the rationale behind him doing so, i.e, to create more job opportunities for the americans and try to revive the economy. Good enough reason ! On another note, he is not ‘forcing’ the companies to stop doing outsourcing to other countries, he has only stopped them from availing the tax benefits. If the company thinks they get good profit by moving work offshore (at lower labour & operating costs) they might as well continue to do so, but obviously need to pay more tax.
What impact this change in policy will have on US itself? Is it being more protectionist and changing its image of the most open economy in the world? Is it moving towards protectionism?
I have heard cries about how US is playing its foul play and being protectionist over its economy and assets and how they should not do it. In this context, when I think of India, I do not find much difference itself in what India have been doing in past.
Protectionism has been happening in democratic India since a very very long time. May be from the time of its independence from the British rule. The very form of protectionism in India is called “quote & reservations” in education, government jobs & quite a few other areas for few typical casts & religions. The original idea of cast reservations in education & jobs was to give the backward class sectors an opportunity to learn and upbring themselves on par with other (so called advanced) societies in India. However, over the years, this has become misused over and over again and has totally lost its original meaning.
Year on year, the governments in India have been unable to remove, or even reduce the reservations and unfortunately moving towards allocating it to more casts. Considering today’s world, I believe the concept of “reservations” is outdated for for a developing country like India. We need talented individuals to come forward and help build the nation.
What worries me, in long term that, if the countries such as US & those in Europe go further on the way of protectionism and impose policies that would stop (or significant impact on) immigration and inflow of talents from India and other developing countries, where would this talent pool go? The dearth of opportunities for higher education and government jobs in India for talented individuals is making them look for private sector or move out of country for seeking better opportunities and if the developed countries shut their doors, what will happen?
Lack of entrepreneurship & innovation in India – root cause in education system?
41079 days
There is an article on Forbes.com by Sramana Mitra where she debates about the lack of innovation & entrepreneurship in Indian IT industry and also lack of any enthusiasm from the upcoming engineers to venture into innovation.
She has made few very good points on the topic and I agree on most of the points with her. In her post she mentions of the incubator programs that are run within the IITs that promote entrepreneurship within the aspiring engineers and guides them whilst they are still pursuing their studies.
One point that made me think further as a reason on lack of entrepreneurship was the fact that the increasing width between Tier 1 engineering colleges (IITs) and Tier 2 (NITs) and Tier 3 (regional universities and others) colleges. To really find out further information, I actually visited the websites of each of the IITs in the country and have a look at their incubators and obviously left me impressed with the level of work that is being carried out in there. Myself, being an Alumni of a NIT, (National Institute of Technology), considered only next to IITs in India, I could not stop myself compare the work done in IITs as against some of the top notch NITs in India and I actually found a significant difference in there !
Within none of NITs (of the ones I visited) I could find any similar program as IIT incubation programs and I really wondered what kind of innovative programs are being run in these institutes ! If this is the state of the Tier 2 engineering colleges in India then I really wonder how and where you would find entrepreneurs coming out !
In India, the IT service industry is still the most powerful in terms of job availability and obviously most of the curriculum of the Tier 2 & Tier 3 colleges is more of providing service oriented engineers rather than innovators. As correctly mentioned in one of her posts, generic requirement of an IT engineer is to earn a well-to-do job so he / she can buy a car, a house and so on .. !
On the point of innovation, I guess its more to do than just what culture you have in your degree college etc., Its more in the root of primary, high school & college education than those 4 years in the IITs or NITs or your engineering college.
Education in India, right from primary college is more of a culture of “learn-what-is-told”, rather than “learn-on-your-own-with-experiments”. Teachers teach you from pre-defined set of books all those years and you are expected to answer in the exact way as mentioned in the books, anything extra and you would lose your points in exam. The education culture does not encourage thinking, innovation, experimenting but eventually discourages the student to do so.
There is a great change required in the education system in India to make the education to promote experiments, innovation and unless this happens from ground level, I guess, there will always be a shortage of Indian scientists, innovators and entrepreneurs !
As Obama said, “The world has changed, we need to change too”. I hope India is listening.
Outcome based results & individual accountability
01093 days
by Swapnil
in Business thoughts
Whilst on the lunch table today, one of my colleagues in other project mentioned the possibility of our company introducing the performance based accountability factor in one’s salary and pay cheque and I was really stunned with the way things are now going downwards..!
Essentially the point my colleague was making that there are discussions happening within the organization to make individual more accountable by introducing ‘fines’ against someone who would make mistake while implementing the product or change that would eventually lead to any monetary losses to the company. This is probably something that was never heard of for the permanent employees, possibly has happened and happens for contractors though !
I think this may or may not be a wise step to do, especially within the Production Support and Application Support environment where teams are expected to work 24×7 under a pressure cooker scenario.
If taken in a right spirit (which normally does not happen), it may help keep the people on their toes whilst doing the critical job and make them extra cautious and avoid obvious mistakes. I am afraid, it might turn out to be a disaster if individual people are blamed and put to sword, in front of other colleagues, it might turn them off and leave them demoralized. Its like dishonouring individual’s contribution to the projects, however successful, if they make one single mistake.
I remember one incident in the past that happened with one the other projects where one of the DBAs accidently deleted few tables from Production database instead of the pre-production environment. This led to the production portal being down for 3 consecutive days whilst the recovery was ongoing in background from backups etc. This issue, forever left a blemish on his career and he was always perceived as ‘the person’ who took production down, rather than how good this person was and what previous contribution he made in the projects. He was immediately sacked from his role and probably had left the company as a consequence.
Whilst, I am in favour of stronger accountability across the management chain and down to the individual, I am strongly against putting the blame on one single individual or a group of team members who work day / night to ensure that the project stays on track and the product is delivered on time. Normally the rewards are taken by the management, if the team does brilliantly, but all the issues and problems cascade to the down-most possible level of organizational hierarchy.
In my opinion, the people within organizational chain, who are directly involved in the outcome of the project, should all take their share of blame. However, traditionally what is seen in the organizations (as depicted in the picture below), the accountability of the project lies most with the lowest leagued people, whereas the bonuses earned by Sr. Management are the highest !
Picture – Traditional models for accountability vs year end bonuses paid !
Whilst I do not want to make any recommendations with regards to the suggested model for introducing the ‘fines’ to individuals, I think the blame should be shared with all those people who are directly involved in making the project success. Be it the person who is developing it, the one who is doing quality check, the one who is project managing it, the one who is actually implementing it and of course the people who are providing infrastructure to make whole thing work !
As usual, rest is left to you to think and make your own judgement !
