Infinite thoughts

Two personalities have been making rounds in Pune for the last few days. Vidyanand Bapat and Santosh Pandit . Both appear to stand against the establishments, yet now appear to have lost the narrative. Mr. Bapat does have a very valid point that DJ and loudspeakers should be banned. They do not serve any kind of purpose in "celebtating" Ganapati Utsav in a traditional way. The utsav was started when there was a need to bring various social strata together under one umbrella. After independence, that need was gone, but the tradition continued. However, over the last couple of decades, this has become more of a nuisance than a way of being together. Almost every corner of the city has a separate pandal, with its own speakers spitting out anything but the "bhakti geete". I must admit there are certain "मंडळे" who do good work, have some social initiatives all round the year. But these are far and few. I want to focus on the noise others generate, as that is ...

Being in the services industry for over a decade and then into consumer focused business for last few years, I have learnt how difficult it is to satisfy the customers on many occasions. Services Industry Software services, as it emerged as a major growth sector, the competition also grew exponentially. The software companies started mushrooming everywhere and each one trying to get a piece of same pie - i.e. US market. It also changed over a period of time and people started focusing on EU and Asian markets as well. But the bottom line remained the same - competition. The Outsourcing companies initially had tough time in outsourcing for several reasons (unproven capabilities, lack of confidence as well as lesser number of options to outsource). As the services companies grew and as it became evident that outsourcing is the way to move forward, all these companies also started hunting for better deals - essentially it started with fishing for lower prices instead of demanding qua...

Are you living in the moment?  Do you think of taking out your mobile phone and click that beautiful scenery even before you spend enough time appreciating and enjoying it? You are not... Do you take out your camera and start clicking the photos when the birthday girl is cutting the cake? Are you paying attention to her happiness or focusing on focusing your camera? You are not living in the moment.. Do you get urge to check your facebook profile when someone is talking to you? You are not living in the moment... And yeah, this is the picture I should post on my instagram stream.. You just missed living in the moment... This is the feeling I always get when I walk around. Recent example is Ganesh Wisarjan (Idol immersion procession). More than 50% of the crowd were taking out their mobiles and cameras and shooting the procession. Most of them video recording it. This was happening at the cost of other view's sight. When you raise your mobile or camera to shoot/click somet...

Simple rules for avoiding Traffic Jam: If the road ahead is blocked, do not cross the middle line of the road and try to move ahead in the queue. If you do, you'd only add to the traffic jam. Everyone in the queue is equally eager to reach the destination and not just you. When you reach a circle aka chowk, and if the road ahead is blocked, then wait well before the chowk/circle to clear the road. This will at least keep the cross traffic moving and will not create a circular congestion. And yes, if you see the traffic jam ahead, do not hesitate to take a diversion to some other road. It would only help in not adding to the traffic jam, even though you may end up taking a little longer route.

A powerful thought - make your customer to stay with you by choice and not out of compulsion!! One of my fellow colleagues spelt it out so well, it covers the basic principle of maintaining/increasing your customer base. The other day I needed to buy some sweets from the franchisee of a well known sweet mart. When I placed my order, I saw that the sweets, the pedhas, were all broken. I brought this to the notice of the salesperson, who outrightly rejected to change the broken pieces. To my surprise, same was the reaction from the shop owner. I decided to leave the shop without taking anything and proceeded to another franchisee few kilometers down the road. Thankfully, the salesperson was good and gave me good pedhas and some othe stuff. Looking at this whole episode now, I realized that I was visiting the first shop out of the need of a shop closer by and not as my choice. That fellow definitely has lost one customer now. If he'd have provided me with good sweets, I would have vis...

Seems to be a season of additional taxes. Everyone is talking about some additional tax. PMC is considering adding vehicle tax to reduce the number of vehicles coming on road everyday. On the similar lines even the state government is thinking of adding congestion tax Mumbai residents. Every individual is already paying up a huge amount of tax for each and every thing that he/she uses/purchases. Here is a list that directly affects a salaried person: Income tax - largest portion on the salary goes under this head Sales Tax - on every legal purchase, you pay this tax Service Tax - Many of the services are under this head. VAT - This was supposed to reduce the tax we're paying. However, what I have observed is I have started paying VAT even on the food items purchased in restaurents, which was not there earlier. Education cess - Many of the tax categories are levied with this cess. One time road tax - when you purchase any vehicle, you pay a lumpsum amount. Road Toll - At various pla...

सध्या सत्ताधारी पक्षाला 'जलद बस सेवे'चे श्रेय पदरात पाडून घेण्यापलीकडे काहिच दिसत नाही आहे. 'BRT' सेवा अपूर्णावस्थेत चालू करून त्यांनी आपली टिमकी वाजवलीच आहे. परंतु आता त्याच्यामुळे होणार्‍या अपघाताची जबाबदारी कोण घेणार आहे? काल रात्री 'BRT' च्या मार्गावरून भरधाव जाणार्‍या 'PMT' ने एका तरुणाला धडक दिल्याने त्याचा जागीच मृत्यु झाला. 'BRT' साठी वेगळा मार्ग असल्याने त्या वेगात जाणारच, परंतु, त्या मार्गावरुन 'PMT'ने जाऊ नये अशीच माफक अपेक्षा आहे. 'BRT' साठीचा मार्ग पूर्णपणे सुरक्षित झाल्याशिवाय बस सेवा सुरु करायलाच नको होती. कुठलीही योजना चालू करणे सोपे असते, परंतु त्याची बरोबर आणि योग्य अंमलबजावणीसाठी संयम आणि नियोजन लागते, ते सत्ताधार्‍यांकडे आहे का? Ref: http://esakal.com/esakal/12052006/FA9D2F32D9.htm

How many times you have felt that you are stepping on someone's toes? Any how many times it happens with you? I was thinking about this for a while now. It's not necessary that it happens intentionally, but it definitely hurts the other party. Take a simple example - Let's say you cut the lane from leftmost lane to take a right turn. Other people who are already in the middle or rightmost lane have taken lot of effort to be there in the correct lane so as to take appropriate direction and suddenly you cut them causing lot of inconvinience to all of them. Not just inconvinience but frustration as well. I call this as stepping on their toes. It's real pain. And we observe similar examples every now and then. Reservations based on caste is another example. People do take lot of effort to score good numbers and then to realize that just because they don't belong to certain castes, they can't study further. This is unfair. Tax evasion is also an another example. If e...