Poverty Amid Plenty in America

An Economic Issue or One of Attitude?

Despite the affluence that has permeated vast sections of its people and the reputation of America as a land of opportunity, you can hardly escape people approaching you for alms. Some may spin those age-old tales of being a quarter (25 cents) or two down for them to catch a bus back home. Some may just ask you for some change without any pretences.

When you just walk away without dropping a penny into the hat they hold, they may give you a cold stare but they will still hold their composure to say “no problem, God bless you my friend.”

But some do appear deliberately in need of help, sporting a haggard look with untrimmed beard and tattered clothes. I encountered a few, sitting in street corners holding placards with such wording as “Ever been unlucky?” and “Just trying to survive.”

One of the harshest things that people can be faced with is poverty amid plenty. It really saddens me to see people driven to this plight. Why should it happen in the U.S. where there is no dearth of jobs with guaranteed minimum wages? Is their plight genuine or are they just the Tennysonian lotus eaters who have become too indolent to earn their living?

There is poverty in affluent Singapore, too. But the self-respect of the people there generally keeps those whose chips are down from seeking help. Life can be hard in Singapore when you don’t have a job. And jobs for the unskilled are hardly available there unlike in the U.S.

Life is hardly fair, whatever the reason for where individuals find themselves in. I wish I could write more on this, but have been too busy with meetings at Cisco here in San Francisco. But then I also wish I didn’t have to write about it at all. In an ideal world, after all, we wouldn’t expect anyone to be trapped in any such predicament, would we? 

–G Joslin Vethakumar

Charismatic Leadership

Almost a decade ago, when I was the Deputy Editor of Microsoft Magazine in Singapore, I often got to write about the prescriptions of Chairman Bill Gates for a digital future, delivered through keynote addresses or otherwise. Though not an eloquent orator, he was a visionary who was able to engage the attention of his audiences for the sheer depth of input.

These days, however, thanks to technology, his speeches can be heard from the comfort of your room as every keynote address is generally available online.

Beyond Hyperbole: For the last two days in a row at a company meeting in San Francisco, I have had the opportunity to listen to the exhortations and projections of John Chambers, CEO of Cisco Systems, who falls in the league of Gates and Apple’s Steve Jobs in terms of charismatic leadership, evoking close Wall Street scrutiny.

While most CEOs merely rely on hyperboles in delivering clichéd sermons at periodical Town Hall meetings (with such predictably boring and fake pronouncements as “you are the best, guys” and “we have a great future ahead”), these are among those who can go out of the ordinary. No meaningless diatribes, just forceful airing of thoughts that can drive the future!

Chambers displayed energy as he straddled the auditorium, stepping down from the stage and walking down the aisle, looking into the eyes of each of the attendees, asking quick questions and delivering an encore speech.

Chess Analogy: The chess analogy figured, too, as was to be expected as just as strategy is key to winning in this game so it is in business. To Mr Chambers, customer loyalty and market transitions were vital pieces on the chessboard.

Competition was cleverly dismissed to just a few insignificant pieces on the board, with Cisco holding all the vital ones and looking well set to win with a checkmate. A powerful presentation by all means, laced with engaging videos and solid demos.

No Q&A: My only disappointment was that there was no Q&A. So, one opportunity to get answers to questions on some touchy subjects was lost. Though there were Q&A sessions with the rest of the top management, one with Mr Chambers could have been a more fitting way to round off a great sales meeting.

With most such presentations, it is inevitable that there will be some hype as well, though none gets swayed by it. A pseudo culture where people pat each other on the back even for routine wins is annoyingly palpable everywhere. Blowing your own trumpet is even a key ingredient of corporate success. Perhaps I am also guilty of that since I talk about myself so much here. Enough said!!

Nah, I have something more to bore you with! In the end, while businesses may be powered by the technology we provide them with, what helps individuals go beyond the boundaries they set for themselves are recognition, self-motivation and a stress-free environment that encourages lateral thinking. An environment where everyone across all levels of the hierarchy is provided an opportunity to be seriously heard!   

–G Joslin Vethakumar

Chess in San Francisco, Fun in Egmore

What is Life Without Sweet Nostalgia!

Other than producing arguably the greatest chess player ever, the U.S. has not been traditionally strong in the game. But maverick genius Bobby Fischer hates America, made public his intention to renounce American citizenship and recently migrated to Iceland, the country where he defeated Boris Spassky in 1971 to win the world chess championship.

Thus, it was a surprise for me when on my first day in San Francisco I noticed a bunch of people engrossed in the game of wits in a busy sidewalk along the plush Market Street in the city. It was a busy evening and there were around 20 boards with most of them taken up.

It was serious chess on display, with clocks/timers dictating the pace of the game in a spirit of tournament professionalism. While some were playing for the sheer love of the game, I also sensed that bets were encouraged too. One guy even invited me for a game, but I reluctantly declined since I was short of time. Some serious enthusiast brings the chess tables every evening and painstakingly organizes the whole thing. A few boards are arranged in the morning as well.

My Days at Egmore Stadium: I spent some time watching people play even while reminiscing about my own days chasing chess. I spent the first 25 years of my life in Egmore. It is now one chaotic place, with tourist bus operators having converted what was once a quiet neighbourhood, even in the midst of the busy railway station there, into a cacophonic, auto jungle.

I lived close to the Egmore Stadium, which is now in a state of total neglect. But then, during the late 70s, it was always abuzz with exciting sporting activity. It was there that I have watched several national and international-level tournaments in hockey, volleyball, basketball and tennis.

It hosted the national basketball championship where I got to see two of the country’s tallest men in action – who were seven feet four inches tall and were playing for Bihar (if I remember the names right, they were Srivastava and Panda). It was there I also got to watch former Wimbledon champion John Newcombe, Jaideep Mukherjee, Premjit Lal and Vijay Amritraj play.

Those Were the Days! I was a daily visitor to the Egmore Stadium in the evenings where an elderly person used to bring a few chess boards, helping promote the game. I was spending a few hours there on the lawns playing the game and generally having a fabulous time with friends almost every evening. Even recollecting those lovely days makes me slip into fond nostalgia.  

Having lived that life, I feel sorry for present-day children who have no opportunity to savour that kind of pure joy, what with the needless stress they undergo even in kindergarten schools now.

Perhaps 20 years from now, when the world will have become even more chaotic, the kids of today may be nurturing the same kind of sentiment in what is certain to be a never-ending story. What is life, after all, without sweet nostalgia!

–G Joslin Vethakumar

It Is All About Winning

In a dog-eats-dog world, what matters is winning. Bad as it may sound, the end appears to always justify the means, at least in business that is dangerously trapped in an intensely competitive milieu. Winning deals are all that count, whether the sparring is with the gloves on or off.

As for me, however aggressive I may be professionally, I abhor anything that transcends ethical standards. An old-generation attitude that perhaps does not fit in an environment involving the pursuit of next-generation business! I like anything fair with a strong and passionate push. I do believe this can yield positive results, too.

Beyond corporate strategies, the lust for lucre among individuals at times exceeds all norms of acceptable human behaviour. This may even show itself in petty ways.

An iPod, by Hook or Crook: Just the other day, I was reading a newspaper report about how stores throwing in an iPod as a gift are making people flock to their outlets, given the phenomenal success of the mp3 player from Apple. I experienced it at the Cisco conference I was attending in Santa Clara. The only difference was that here an iPod Shuffle was dangled at staff to motivate them to attend the training sessions. Every session had an iPod to be given away through a lucky draw.

Nothing wrong with that! Except that I began to see people grabbing several coupons, filling them up and dropping them into the basket to enhance their chances of winning. I saw one Indian guy from Chennai fill up at least 10 coupons at a session that had only around 10 people in. So, while there were 10 legitimate coupons, this guy had 10 more coupons for himself.

This was stretching things and human greed a bit too far, with the only saving grace being he did it openly, not surreptitiously, to the knowledge of all. And naturally he won the iPod for that session! 

To end this post on a positive note, I won an iPod, too, at one of the sessions. But it was won the proper way with just a single coupon, without me having to resort to any foul play. You can, after all, win even through legitimate means!

–G Joslin Vethakumar

Telecommuting Gaining Ground

The trouble with Silicon Valley is there are just a handful of Indian restaurants and this can be a challenge for people like me who are not adventurous in their food habits. In fact, I could hardly find even a KFC or a McDonalds within the business localities.  This could possibly be because the place looks so forlorn even on a weekday that America’s IT nerve centre could hardly generate any business for them.  Most IT companies there, however, have their own canteens.

Also, as I have generally been in groups I have had to go with consensus. Only once since Sunday last have I been able to dine at an Indian restaurant in San Jose, offering a lip-smacking mix of north and south Indian cuisine. Need I say then that I gorged myself on a wide variety of delicious food!

Otherwise, it has been steaks, pizzas, meat, meat and more meat for me. Thus, I have been constantly reminded of what George Bernadshaw, who was a vegetarian, had to say on why he chose to be one: "I didn’t want my stomach to be a graveyard for animals."

Cisco Ubiquitous: In San Jose, a five-minute drive from Westin Santa Clara, it is Cisco Systems all the way. There are more than 50 identical Cisco buildings spread all over. They are so ubiquitous you can hardly miss them. In fact, the place itself is called Cisco Way. Then, there is also a Morgridge Way nearby, named after the Chairman of Cisco.

Access to the buildings is simple for Cisco employees from any part of the world. My access card for the Singapore office of Cisco, for instance, allows me into all company premises in any part of the world. That is real synchronized smart card convenience.

Home Office for Greater Productivity: The bulk of Cisco’s 35,000 employees are in the U.S. but inside the buildings empty cubicles abound. This is because Cisco is one of the big companies actively promoting telecommuting to foster greater productivity.

Even I was told that I can enjoy the flexibility of telecommuting when I need to, but I find that working from home can be distracting. But if you are disciplined enough there can be nothing like it as VPN connections to access the office network are getting better and better.

But there is no question from a wider perspective that telecommuting is rapidly gaining ground.

–G Joslin Vethakumar

Bloggers Rally Against ‘Racist” U.S. Media Coverage

Racism is back in focus in the U.S. Only this time both broadcast and print media are drawing flak for it. What is more, bloggers are calling the shots and making the media to re-examine their priorities. The gripe of the bloggers is that the media are obsessed with issues concerning whites.

This by itself may not make them racist but the fact that they focused less on issues affecting minorities such as blacks and Hispanics is tantamount to a violation of the basic tenets of journalism where writing without fear, favour or prejudice is sacrosanct.

Blogger Richard Blair (http://www.allspinzone.com/blog/) brought the issue up when a pregnant minority woman went missing and the news was almost blacked out by the media. Other bloggers entered the fray in a ferocious blogswarm, forcing the traditional media to heed their call and step up coverage.

With the issue drawing increasing media attention, search efforts were intensified but unfortunately she could not be traced alive as only the remains of her body were found. Her boyfriend has been detained. For more information on the case check out http://www.allspinzone.com/blog and http://mediachannel.org/blog/node/673?PHPSESSID=f0ac958c123c8620de9fdaa175dd50b5

–G Joslin Vethakumar

Pandit Ravishankar’s Anger at Irreverent Audiences

The weekend edition (August 21-22) of London’s respected Financial Times offers some very interesting perspectives on Pandit Ravishankar. From his liking for Tetleys British tea to his abhorrence of irreverence among the audience at his shows, the newspaper succinctly captures the multiple hues inherent in the personality of the sitar maestro.

“Most politicians are not musical (with some exceptions like late Israeli prime minister Ritzhak Rabin). They would make better leaders if they were,” says Pandit Ravishankar who, at 85, still mesmerises audiences around the world. He has just completed a tour that took him to many places from the U.S. to St Petersburg, London and the Vienna State Opera.

He minces no words in revealing his bitterness about how audiences had distracted him in the past. Using strong words, he says: “They were masturbating here, copulating there… Would they have behaved like that if they were listening to Bach or Beethoven?”

It is obvious that he was using the strong expression only as a hyperbole to convey his disgust at the lack of serious interest among his audiences then and that it is not to be viewed in a literal sense. But, it does appear to me that he may have gone a bit overboard with his rancour.

After all, anyone who takes the effort to go for a classical performance and listen to masterpieces from a virtuoso performer will not have done so playfully or, worse, foolishly expecting something akin to a Donna Sommer dishing out musical pornography.

But then geniuses can be intolerant of imperfections and erratic behaviour.

In the Heart of Silicon Valley: I read the piece in FT on my flight to San Francisco (SFO), where I arrived earlier today after a tedious 18-hour headache from Singapore. Immigration clearance was faster than expected, given that every visitor had to have his fingerprint and photograph taken right from the counter. This was something I didn’t have to go through the last time I visited the U.S. in March 2000. But then, 9/11 happened and some extra security hassles have come in. Not without reason as safety is paramount.

From the SFO airport took a shuttle to Santa Clara, the heart of Silicon Valley, where my accommodation had been arranged to keep me close to the San Jose office of Cisco Systems. Will stay here for the next five days before moving back to SFO for Cisco’s global sales meeting there.

Wise Move: I realized that taking the shuttle, rather than a cab, was a wise move from more than a cost perspective. While a taxi drive could have cost me around US$125, I paid only US$37 for the shuttle.

Then, as there were a few other passengers who had to go to different locations, I got to catch a glimpse of them all without having to fork out an extra penny. Some of the places the shuttle took me to were the revered Stanford University and Palo Alto, home of Hewlett-Packard.

Not a bad start to my journey to California, right?

–G Joslin Vethakumar

Missing the Write Stuff

It is quite uncharacteristic of me that I have turned erratic in my posts here, but the itch to write will never ever disappear. Having just completed my first week at my new job, I can tell you that it was not because of any lack of inclination. Coping with the challenge of familiarising myself with the new environment meant that I hardly had the energy to even visit my blog.

Now that the next two weeks I will be away in California, attending some training and a global sales conference, I am sceptical that I will have the bandwidth for regular entries here. I will nonetheless make an effort to do so.

It is almost 1am here now, so I am wrapping this up here to get a few hours’ sleep before I head to the airport in another three hours. But before I do so, let me encourage you to read singer Chinmayi’s post in her blog (http://chinmayisripada.blogspot.com/) on August 15. In particular, check out the engaging comments posted by her readers, her reactions and the lively debate among them all over who is responsible for the ills facing India. I relished every bit of it.

–G Joslin Vethakumar

MBA Anybody? Everybody!

Everyone I run into these days is doing an MBA, from young professionals in their early 20s to mid-career executives in their 40s jumping into the bandwagon on realizing that lack of the management master’s is impeding their growth.

Even hard-core (not to be confused with “explicit”!!) techies are beginning to realize that programming and coding are not where they want to start and end their careers with. Setting the direction for a company to pursue is after all more critical than merely discharging stuff at the beck and call of those who assume stewardship of powering companies ahead.

It is no wonder then that all the top management universities are rushing to set up campuses worldwide, including in Singapore and India. Even India’s prestigious Indian Institute of Management has set up a campus in Singapore to offer its executive MBA programmes. Even IIT has teamed up with Singapore’s National University of Singapore to offer their Master’s degree courses.

I had written about it for India Today a few months ago. BITS already has a few centres in the Gulf. Thanks to the globalisation of education that has brought many of the world’s top centres of higher learning to the doorstep of students, IIM, IIT and BITS have joined the likes of Harvard, Stanford, MIT and Insead in expanding beyond geographical boundaries.

But clearly management institutes are driving this expansion. It is not just locals who benefit by the overseas ventures of the established education brands. In Singapore, for instance, I have come across many from India who are studying in the management universities here.  Three of my colleagues at Cisco -- consultants on placement – are studying at the Nanyang Technological University Business School.

Two of my friends are doing their accelerated 12-month fast-track MBA programme at Insead in Singapore, paying a whopping S$90,000 in annual fees. Another close friend is wrapping up her MBA from Symbiosis in India.

So, can we survive in this competitive world of business without an MBA? Perhaps we can, provided we are not very ambitious and prefer a stress-free environment without seeking to climb high on the corporate ladder. Professional growth can invariably weigh us down with onerous responsibilities.

–G Joslin Vethakumar

China vs India: Wins and Hurdles

With the industrialized world reaching saturation point in terms of growth potential, all corporate eyes have been converging on the two Asian giants of India and China for quite some time now.

It is no surprise, therefore, that the prestigious English weekly from the McGraw Hill group stable, Business Week, has a cover story devoted to India and China. They are countries with diametrically opposite political cultures. While communist China is open to capitalistic ideologies even as it adamantly remains totally intolerant of dissent, democratic India generally offers unfettered freedom of expression.

Where they are identical is in the sheer size of the two countries, both in geographical expanse and in terms of population, having long crossed the one-billion mark each. While in manufacturing outsourcing China stays on top, India (to state the obvious) dominates the BPO space even as it faces threat from many Eastern European countries.

Eastern Europe and Latin America, incidentally, are also drawing a lot of business interest given that there is room for growth there, just like in India and China. But the huge populations in the two Asian countries tilt the balance in their favour.

For authoritative and well-researched viewpoints, click on the following link: http://businessweek.com/magazine/toc/05_34/B3948chinaindia.htm But far from just presenting the rosy side of things there, it also looks at some of the impediments the two countries face.

–G Joslin Vethakumar