Gray Smoke

On May 29th, our esteemed opposition leader attacked the govt and particularly PM Modi for the failed demonetization. [ India Today ] They were based on widely circulated report that the fake notes of 2000 and 500 had increase 50% and 100% respectively. Some of the headlines were eye catching ·        Cash you hold could be fake. ·        Banking Central | Counterfeit notes are back in full swing and that’s worrying ·        This denomination saw the highest increase in counterfeit notes in FY22 This could be bad news for the Indian economy and as I am interested in numbers, I decided to dig deeper.  One thing which struck me as I looked at other new reports was none of them reported about the magnitude of the problem. For example during demonetization in Nov 8 th 2016, the estimated amount of notes in circulation was Rs 15,44,000 Crs. [ PTI news ]. The top 5 pages of google...

Arvind Kejriwal and the AAP have been in 'Dharna' outside the Home minister’s house. The reason is that they want 3 police officers suspended. They have quoted various reasons such as suspend 3 and the rest will come to senses.  Also in the mind of the general public (Aam Admi),  I have no doubt the police is corrupt, they let unlawful activities occur, they are rude, without bride nothing works, harass local vendors etc. I agree with AAP that the Delhi Police should be under the local elected state government. The Law and Order is under the state jurisdiction across the country and so it should be in Delhi. I completely support Arvind on this. What I do not support is a) Asking for suspension of 3 police officers who did not go arrest and barge into the homes just because the law minster verbally told them to. I think the police should and have to follow the law. Just because you have got a complaint, without a warrant they cannot enter someone’s house....

I saw this great talk on Delusion of Positive Thinking Proponents. In the corporate world, everyone is expected to rally around the leader and buy in to the leader's vision.. This is supposed to make the person/company successful. Even though most successful solutions come from the ground where they get executed, the leader often pushes not just their vision but also their solution. No one can voice dissent against this solution however impractical it may be. Early in my career, I thought my dissenting note was not heard because I was a junior engineer. However, over the years I have realized that the leader's deafness to a dissenting voice is because leaders needs to keep justifying that their worth. They surround themselves with many YES-men who are willing to accommodate every whim and fancy of the boss. These people do not take ownership when things fail, as they were only following the boss' orders. Instead, they end up getting rewarded for their efforts, even ...

I always get amazed at the stupidity of folks I meet on a daily basis. The latest starts of while trying to find a payment gateway in India for my new venture. The local representative of an upcoming PG gave me a fairly good deal but I knew they could improve as they were lacking a lot of features. So his VP of Business Development from Mumbai calls me up to try and convince me that netbanking is a dying trend in India. To top it she tells me that a leading portal was using their service for 4 years where as I knew they had only recently switched. When I pointed out these fallacies in her argument, she gets very defensive in her shrill high pitched voice. She not only withdrew the offer given by her local representative but also made the terms worse with no justifiable reason. So I did some research on her profile on LinkedIn and to my surprise she seemed have 'Dr' prefixed to her name as she had done her doctorate in Management from National Institute of Management . It se...