In the moment of success

In the World Athletic Championships of 2017 which was held in London, in the finals of 100 meters sprint for men, the reigning world champion Usain Bolt was running his last race before retiring. From 2008 on wards, almost close to a decade, he has not lost a single 100 meter finals in any majors. He was the winner of the last 3 Olympics and last 3 world championships in 100 meters for men. This occasion was supposed to be a fairy tale end to a great career, probably the greatest among the all-time great sprinters.

 In lane 8, 35 year old Justin Gatlin of USA was the runner. As soon as Gatlin stepped into the arena, the crowd started booing. He was booed every time he was introduced to the crowd at the London Stadium before in the 100m heats and semifinals. Justin Gatlin is a former Olympics champion of 2004 and World champion of 2005. Gatlin is also, the sport's most controversial drugs cheat. He was banned twice early in his career for doping offences. Gatlin, meanwhile was stoic and focused in the face of sustained booing, on that day inside the London stadium. 

At the sound of the gun, when the sprinters came off the starting block, it was Justin Gatlin who blazed past the other sprinters to capture the gold. Usain Bolt didn't make it to even silver. He had to settle for Bronze. The great man's last race didn't follow a perfect script.  

Gatlin, who at age 35 has long raced in Bolt’s shadow, reacted emotionally to the victory, letting loose a guttural roar as he saw the result flash on the scoreboard inside London Stadium. 

Justin Gatlin reacts after he wins the race in front of the crowd who continuously booed him for his drug tainted past

  

Despite clinching gold Justin Gatlin bows at the feet of
Usain Bolt

Amid his celebration, Gatlin took a moment to pay a tribute to Bolt who ran his final 100m race of his glittering career. Gatlin bowed to the Jamaican runner and then the pair hugged and congratulated each other. 

2 great athletes showed to the world how to handle their moments of success, in their own way. 

Usain Bolt, after an illustrious career, didn't get a sent off as expected, but he displayed his greatness by congratulating and supporting the winner while celebrating the end of his successful career. 

Justin Gatlin, served his time, exorcised his dark past and delivered one of his best performances to upstage the crowd's favourite. In that moment of success against all odds, he never forgot to respect his opponent and displayed a humility which elevated him from a drugs cheat to a respectable sportsman. 

Gig economy - Times to come?

Article by Ramesh Jude Thomas How people in the 'gig economy' will mint a fortune

Praveen has been a driver in Bengaluru for over a decade. 

Dedicated and polite to a fault, he spent the better part of that time with a well-known hospitality flag.

In a really good month, with overtime and tips, he would take home Rs 25,000. On average that figure would even out at around Rs 21,000.

Timings were unpredictable. And the better the month, the later the nights. Today he clears close to Rs 75,000 for the same effort.

As you might have guessed he is with a big cab aggregator. The car he drives is his own, he decides when he will open and close the app, and pretty much controls his ‘business’.

Simran (name changed) used to work with one of the big 4 MNC agencies as a creative group head.

Her story is not very different, except that her monthly take home was a lot healthier than Praveen’s.

She absolutely detested the job and dragged herself to work every day.

Right now she has a little studio of her own. Works long hours for sure, but decides and plans her trekking breaks at will, and earns a lot more.

Both Praveen and Simran are not exceptions.

They are part of an exploding global phenomenon which an associate recently termed the ‘gig economy’.

Apt metaphor I thought. Freelancer doesn’t quite cut it. These are not low priced, on-call vendor options.

These people could cost you top dollar for top drawer work, like a surgeon or a performer.

Are these then the primary building blocks of the new economy?

If you recall what EF Schumacher had said over three decades ago, it will be the small guy who drives the economy.

He keeps the big guys in business. What we are experiencing today is a distilled version of the same thing. This will only get more pervasive. 

So then will the big guys disappear altogether? Will there be no large, global brands anymore?

To answer that: Yes there will be, but not as we know it. Here’s why: Uber, Lyft and Ola are large brands, and subject to operating efficiency, they will continue to be significant players in the economy.

What will change is that they will increasingly own less and less capital assets and hence hire less and less people to man them.

In an increasingly disaggregated, economic environment, with high levels of stress, both companies and individuals seek greater flexibility and freedom. But not necessarily lower standards.

Consequently, a large band of high quality ‘giggers’ like Praveen and Simran will not only thrive but contribute significantly to the efficiency and reputation of global entities.

By the way, this is not a new phenomenon. The shipping firm Wallams owns no ships.

McDonald’s has very few restaurants. Many hotel chains manage other people’s properties under their flag.

All of this works well only for one reason. The fact that the brand owners viz. Uber, McDonald’s, the ad agencies or the hotel chains are very clear about what they are promising to customers, and pass on that expectation to the army of contracted hires.

This ensures that quality flows down the chain. They ensure that standards are met.

In the micro rating environment that we live in, this can be a brutal reality for brands that don’t stand up to scrutiny.

When was the last time you used a restaurant or a new hotel without checking the ratings on Zomato or Trip Advisor.

This implies that financial statements as we know them will become irrelevant.

Soon book value could become a meaningless investor metric.

‘Reputations’ and ‘recipes’ will drive the value of a businesses rather than size and location of the restaurant. Think about it.

Ramesh Jude Thomas is President & chief knowledge officer, Equitor Value Advisory.

France's brush with ISIS has lessons for India

There is profound alienation among the Muslims in France and the ISIS attracts followers in such a milieu.

Today’s India, in the Narendra Modi era, has a great deal to learn from France. Alienation exists in many regions of India in many forms.

The tragic happenings in Jammu and Kashmir should be an eye-opener.

When people revolt against State coercion, the nadir is reached.

Intolerance toward the minority communities or attempts to humiliate them or the refusal to go the extra league to build an inclusive society -- these are all evident today in our society. Much of it is happening in broad daylight, too.

If the lessons from the tragedy unfolding in France are properly understood, we have no reason to get sleepless nights over ISIS 'modules' and 'sleepers' in our neighborhood and the authorities can firmly and with transparency deal with its traces in India whenever or wherever they show up, if at all, as a freak phenomenon.

Read the complete article by M. K. Bhadrakumar, Former Ambassador to Uzbekistan and Turkey
http://www.rediff.com/news/column/france-brush-with-isis-has-lessons-for-india/20160715.htm

About M.K.Bhadrakumar
M.K.Bhadrakumar served in the Indian Foreign Service for three decades and served as ambassador to Uzbekistan and Turkey. Apart from two postings in the former Soviet Union, his assignments abroad included South Korea, Sri Lanka, West Germany, Kuwait, Pakistan and Afghanistan. He served thrice in the Iran-Pakistan-Afghanistan Division in the Ministry of External Affairs, including as the Head of the Division in 1992-95. Mr. Bhadrakumar sought voluntary retirement from the IFS in 2002 and has since devoted himself to writing. He contributes to various publications in India and abroad and is a regular columnist for Asia Times and The Hindu. He has written extensively on Russia, China, Central Asia, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan and on the geopolitics of energy security. He normally resides at Delhi, when not travelling and lecturing abroad.

Negotiating slow internet speeds, the Facebook way

As can be seen from the comparative graph, internet speeds in India are not great. In fact, India lags behind most of the developing Asian countries in terms of average internet speeds offered to their citizens.

Nevertheless, there are few companies who has leveraged this adversity of slow internet speeds and converted this into an opportunity. Facebook is one of those.

Facebook has over 142 million users in India, of which about 133 million access the social media platform through their mobile phones.
Also, about 69 million people in India use Facebook daily, of which 64 million access the platform through their mobile devices.
India is the largest market for Facebook outside of the US. At the end of December 2015, the US-based firm had 1.59 billion monthly active users.

Facebook launched Facebook Lite in June last year. This application was built to use less data and work well despite constrained telecom networks, specially in developing countries. Consuming less than 1 MB space, Facebook Lite supports over 50 languages.

Facebook Lite crossed the 100-million-user base mark globally within nine months of launch.
The growth was led by strong uptake in markets like India where internet speeds are traditionally poor.

Reference:

1) http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/tech-news/Facebook-userbase-crosses-142-million-in-India/articleshow/51330777.cms

2) http://qz.com/725999/facebook-has-a-workaround-for-indias-frustratingly-slow-internet/

George Everest Who?

Sir George Everest was born on July 4, 1770 in Wales and came to India as a cadet in the Bengal artillery in 1806.

In December 1834, he bought an estate called the Park near Hathipaon in Mussoorie, Uttarakhand, India, where he built his office and residence. The house is known today as Sir George Everest's House and Laboratory, or Park House. The house is situated in Park Estate about 6 kilometres (4 mi) west of Gandhi Chowk / Library Bazaar, (the west end of Mall Road in Mussoorie).

He was largely responsible for completing the section of the Great Trigonometrical Survey of India. In other words, he drew the map from South India extending north all the way to Nepal, a distance of 2,400 km.

Mount Everest is named after Sir George.

Everest retired in 1843 and he returned to the UK, where he became a Fellow of the Royal Society. He was dubbed a knight in 1861, and in 1862 he was elected as the vice-president of the Royal Geographical Society. Everest died in London in 1866 and is buried in St Andrew's Church, Hove, near Brighton.

Trial post for Adi

Trial post for Adi

Kunjunni Maash

Latest from Common Floor

Since their inception, Common floor-Apna Complex combo has witnessed and staged quite a good number of nasty wars.
It has been mostly between individuals and individual driven. In a few situations when it became utterly difficult to accomplish the governance of this complex, the community has come forward, united to defeat the defaulting individuals involved so that they were unable to push their agenda.
But this latest of its kind is different, in the sense, it is the first time a small group of individuals as a part of implementing their agenda has resorted to the sophisticated techniques like

1. Infiltrate the decision making body and positions of power. In this case, management committee.
2. Resort to a planned coordinated propaganda campaign in the media(read as email forum) by twisting historical facts and publish it in a manner which is favorable to their agenda.
3. From the positions of power, indulge is subversive acts so that all the opposing elements to their single point agenda is removed from the equation.
4. Run covert campaigns and willful publish of data corrupted to suit their needs.

Leave the individuals or set of individuals who held the forum for ransom to push their agenda, in most cases the agenda being just the pacification of their ego, this new group of sophisticated manipulators are the people whom we should actually be worried about.

Why?

Because what is happening here is a true reflection in a microscopic manner of, what is happening in our country in general. Small groups with agenda and ideology has been making rapid progress in using new age media successfully in propagating their ideology in the garb of progress and development. The infiltration of these groups in all the walks of life is almost complete.

(To be continued........)