Happy Diwali.

Hi,

Wishing you a Very Happy and Safe Diwali.

-Amol Nakve.

The Sense of An Ending.

The Sense of An Ending.

  

The English author Julian Barnes deserved the title of Man Booker(2011), another feather on his cap  for his splendid novel ‘The Sense of Ending’.

The novel is revolving around the four characters. Tony Webster and his clique vis Alex, Adrian, Colin and his girl Veronica. The novel is mainly put into two parts. Part one tells the story of collage days with friends. The days of juvenile mind, who always perceived to get control over the wins and fancies of their perception. The life is about to start and walk till the sense of ending.

In Second part Tony has started to solve the equations of life after receiving the letter from solicitor of his ex-girl friend Veronica’s mother. After reading letter he went back to forty years ago to dig into the relationships with Veronica and what went wrong and how did she went out with his close friend Adrian and at last he admitted and apologies for the mess. The main characteristics of the 'remorse' is nothing can be about it and the major feature of apology is that you can express it at any point of time. We should not feel regretted while  making any amend. This is what I learnt from the reading and Tony learnt smallest pain and pleasure will teach the time’s malleability.

It was the journey from postcards to emails. Readers will have the flavors of 1960 and 2000.  The book is highly rated for the reading and it will keep you spellbound.          

-Amol Nakve

Performance:

Organizational Performance:

The organizational performance is the intersection of Individual competence, Job demand and Organizational Culture.

1. Individual Competence:                                                                                                                                    Individual competence is the set of knowledge, skills and attitude which leads to effective and efficient performance. Above mention parameters can be enhanced with requisite attitude at any point of time. The only crucial factor of consideration is the only attitude. Attitude is the underlying and inheritance characteristics of high performer which set out for the desirable result. Knowledge and skills are the only catalyst.  Leadership of the person is the key to success of team whereas his role becomes transformational when he plays a role of leader to manage the resources. 
2. Job Demand:                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      Where the Job/work demand complementary matched the only flow will be created and that flow will always ensure the sustainability of the business to deliver its values to the stakeholders.  Creating the demand document will be a critical factor to get the success from the position. Job demand has to have three parts viz your job description, job specification and SMART- KRA where things can become measurable.  Requirement has to be specific which only is resulted from a lot of work fragmentation and defragmentation of mission and vision.  The goal is to reach thousands miles and people of the institution are sharing their few miles in the journey towards reaching the destination and that shared/required distance has to be clear. 
3. Organizational Culture:
   Culture is the differentiating factor, which distinguished one institute from other.  It would be not right to only consider the political definition of the culture.  When culture is nurturing the performance then it became its performance driven culture where people are well appreciated and their role is recognized. The economic term incentive would help to create a new mile stone in setting out the performance culture.   Many issues are sorted out when organization setting right culture for their people and the values have to be inculcated in belief of the institution and there by the people. The good time to set culture is when organizations evolved from formal or informal groups i.e. the process of institutionalization.  I firmly believe the onus of HR is playing catalyst role to set the culture of high performance. Being the custodian of the HRM we are playing very important role  in defining and structuring the factors which are mention this blog. And surely and dearly we can set the culture of performance.    

                                  - Amol Nakve.

India doesn't need FDI in retail to grow: Joseph Stiglitz

India doesn't need FDI in retail to grow: Joseph Stiglitz

(One of the few economists who predicted the financial crisis of 2008, Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz is also credited with starting the "1% versus 99%" debate. TheColumbia University professor talks to Shobhan Saxena about his latest book, "The Price of Inequality", in which he argues that economic inequality leads to instability.)

In your book, you argue that an equal society is more efficient and productive. How does inequality destroy productivity and create instability?
The title of the book reflects a view that counters the right-wing argument that inequality may be a bad thing but to do anything about inequality is to kill the goose that lays golden eggs. Inequality is bad for economy, democracy and society. Much of the inequality in the US arises out of rent-seeking -monopoly, exploitive practices by banks and corporate exploitation of public resources. In the Indian context, you will call it corruption but we call it corruption American-style, where you give away natural resources below market prices. India is doing it now but America has a long history of doing this.

There is a clear association between inequality and instability. People at the top don't spend too much, they save a lot but people at the bottom spend everything. So you redistribute income from the bottom to the top and demand goes down. That makes an economy weak. That is what happened in the US. We would have had a weaker economy, but the Feds stepped in by creating a bubble that created more demand to offset the demand that was going down. Of course, creating a bubble was creating instability.

The financial crisis that started in 2008 is still continuing but it seems nothing is being done to check inequality...
Both the IMF and the UN commission that I chaired came to the conclusion that inequality was one of the major causes for the crisis. It is not the direct, precipitating cause that bad lending was, but bad lending was a result of deregulation and the interest rates that were itself a result of inequality. If we don't improve inequality and don't do something else, it is going to be hard to get back to robust growth and prosperity. We are likely to have another housing bubble.

In the US, there is a lot of anger against Wall Street but in the presidential debates none of the candidates have mentioned the word 'inequality'.
American politics is money-intensive and money-driven. Each of the candidates is expected to spend a billion dollars. When you spend so much, you have to go where the money is, and money in America is at the top. Therefore it is not a surprise that in the campaign you don't hear a lot of discussion about inequality and the 1%. You don't bite the hand that is feeding you in the middle of an election.

Will the debate over '1% versus 99%' last or is it just a phase?
It will be a part of America unless we address inequality. It is just not that the top 1% get three to four times more that what they got in the 1980s, but the middle class today is worse off. When you have this degree of stagnation in the middle, there will be an expression through the political process.


You say that GDP is not the right way to measure a country's real strength. In India, we talk too much about our growing GDP. Is that a mistake?
I haven't looked at India exactly, but it has strong implication for every country. In the case of China, if you take into account the environmental degradation and resource depletion, growth is much less than what it seems. You need that debate in India. Your GDP is going up, you have per capita highest number of billionaires but at the same time you have many people in poverty. So the GDP per capita doesn't capture what is happening. In India, the progress in the middle and at the bottom has been less than what GDP in itself would like you to believe.

What impact will FDI in retail have on the Indian economy?
The advocates of FDI have probably put too much emphasis on it. India is in a different position than a small, developing country. You have a large pool of entrepreneurs. They are globally savvy, have access to global technology and they have a lot of wealth. So, if there were large returns to large-scale supermarkets, the domestic industry would have supplied it. Not having access to FDI is not an impediment in India. Wal-Mart is able to procure many goods at lower prices than others because of the huge buying power they have and will use that power to bring Chinese goods to India to displace Indian production. So the worry is not so much about the displacement of the small retail store but displacement further down the supply chain.

But big chains may create more jobs.
Some of the profits of companies like Wal-Mart come from free riding on our society. They don't provide healthcare benefits and assume that the spouses of the workers get healthcare benefits from their other employees or through some other mechanism. They might not be a good employer.



(Source Economics Times Sunday 21st Oct. 2012.)

The Man Booker Prize.

The Man Booker Prize.

'The Man Booker Prize' award (Booker Prize) is considered ‘Oscars for Novels’. First time ‘The Man Booker prize’ was awarded in 1969 to P.H. Newby’s novel ‘Something to Answer For’.  The Man Booker Prize is given to fiction work/novel in English every year by the citizen of Commonwealth Nations and Ireland. The award originally known as Booker –McConnell Prize, after the company Booker McConnell started sponsoring the prize way back in the year 1968. In 2002 administration of the prize transfer to Booker Prize Foundation and sponsor became the investment company ‘Man Group’ and chosen to retain ‘Booker’ as part of official title of the prize.

                This year ‘The Man Booker Prize-2012’ award will be declared today in short while among six shortlisted Novels. Among these six shortlisted we have nomination from Indian writer Jeet Thyil for his debut novel ‘Narcopolis’. Other shortlist authors are Tan Twan Eng for 'The garden of Evening Mists', Deborah Levy for 'Swimming Home', Hilary Mantel for 'Bring Up the Bodies', Alison Moore for 'The Lighthouse' and Will Self for 'Umbrella'.

Salman Rushdie- 'Midnights Children', Arundhati Roy-'God of Small Things', Kiran Desai-'The Inheritance of Loss' and Arvind Adiga- 'The White Tiger' of India who have won the prestigious award in past.

Whereas Man Booker International Prize is international literary award given to living author of any nationality for book published in English or available in English form after translation.  The Man Booker International Prize first time held in 2005 and awarded to Albanian novelist Ismail Kadare.   

Sl No	Year	Author	Title	Genre	Country
1	1969	P. H. Newby	Something to Answer For	Novel	United Kingdom
2	1970	Bernice Rubens	The Elected Member	Novel	United Kingdom
3	1970[a]	J. G. Farrell	Troubles	Novel	United Kingdom
					Ireland
4	1971	V. S. Naipaul	In a Free State	Short story	United Kingdom
					Trinidad and Tobago
5	1972	John Berger	G.	Experimental novel	United Kingdom
6	1973	J. G. Farrell	The Siege of Krishnapur	Novel	United Kingdom
					Ireland
7	1974	Nadine Gordimer	The Conservationist	Novel	South Africa
8		Stanley Middleton	Holiday	Novel	United Kingdom
$	1975	Ruth Prawer Jhabvala	Heat and Dust	Historical novel	United Kingdom
					Germany
10	1976	David Storey	Saville	Novel	United Kingdom
11	1977	Paul Scott	Staying On	Novel	United Kingdom
12	1978	Iris Murdoch	The Sea, the Sea	Philosophical novel	Ireland
					United Kingdom
13	1979	Penelope Fitzgerald	Offshore	Novel	United Kingdom
14	1980	William Golding	Rites of Passage	Novel	United Kingdom
15	1981	Salman Rushdie	Midnight's Children	Magical realism	India
					United Kingdom
16	1982	Thomas Keneally	Schindler's Ark	Biographical novel	Australia
17	1983	J. M. Coetzee	Life & Times of Michael K	Novel	South Africa
18	1984	Anita Brookner	Hotel du Lac	Novel	United Kingdom
19	1985	Keri Hulme	The Bone People	Mystery novel	New Zealand
20	1986	Kingsley Amis	The Old Devils	Comic novel	United Kingdom
21	1987	Penelope Lively	Moon Tiger	Novel	United Kingdom
22	1988	Peter Carey	Oscar and Lucinda	Novel	Australia
23	1989	Kazuo Ishiguro	The Remains of the Day	Historical novel	United Kingdom
					Japan
24	1990	A. S. Byatt	Possession	Novel	United Kingdom
25	1991	Ben Okri	The Famished Road	Magic realism	Nigeria
26	1992	Michael Ondaatje	The English Patient	Historiographic metafiction	Canada
					Sri Lanka
27		Barry Unsworth	Sacred Hunger	Historical novel	United Kingdom
28	1993	Roddy Doyle	Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha	Novel	Ireland
29	1994	James Kelman	How Late It Was, How Late	Stream of consciousness	United Kingdom
30	1995	Pat Barker	The Ghost Road	War novel	United Kingdom
31	1996	Graham Swift	Last Orders	Novel	United Kingdom
32	1997	Arundhati Roy	The God of Small Things	Novel	India
33	1998	Ian McEwan	Amsterdam	Novel	United Kingdom
34	1999	J. M. Coetzee	Disgrace	Novel	South Africa
35	2000	Margaret Atwood	The Blind Assassin	Novel	Canada
36	2001	Peter Carey	True History of the Kelly Gang	Historical novel	Australia
37	2002	Yann Martel	Life of Pi	Fantasy novel	Canada
38	2003	DBC Pierre	Vernon God Little	Novel	Australia
39	2004	Alan Hollinghurst	The Line of Beauty	Historical novel	United Kingdom
40	2005	John Banville	The Sea	Novel	Ireland
41	2006	Kiran Desai	The Inheritance of Loss	Novel	India
42	2007	Anne Enright	The Gathering	Novel	Ireland
43	2008	Aravind Adiga	The White Tiger	Novel	India
44	2009	Hilary Mantel	Wolf Hall	Historical novel	United Kingdom
45	2010	Howard Jacobson	The Finkler Question	Novel	United Kingdom
46	2011	Julian Barnes	The Sense of an Ending	Novel	United Kingdom
47	2012	Hilary Mantel	Bring Up the Bodies	Novel	UK

 (Novel's Title linked will be activated  (for Novel)with review details as and when I complete the reading of the novel)   

 Thanks and Regards

Amol Pralhad Nakve.