In order to savour the taste of the outer world and prepare for the coveted institution called ‘school’, my little daughter was lately inducted into a ‘play school’, as they name it these days. Play schools were not heard of, a decade or two back and now they have mushroomed all over the place. You might find one in your friendly neighborhood. With dreamy eyes and expectations  no less than a Harvard student, you set out to get your child to embrace the new world.

Hallucination meets reality once the child frequents the ‘school’ for a couple of days, and makes you ponder if it was a desirable decision. The school, where majority of the times children are left alone to play with little or no attention. If at all you get to hear some music in the school, it’s the latest Bollywood number, and the teacher with their wannabe students dancing away to it’s tune. Talk about Nursery rhymes, any.

Fewer schools have play grounds and fewer still extra curricular activities and sports. You may squabble and contend, “Why not knock the door of the next big school, offering quality education and development of a child”. Differ, I claim, as my right, for the mass doesn’t have the might to chose the right, instead a change in these foothills of education is the need.

I introspect my days in school, where not analytical and reasoning but test of memory was the Caesar. Memory enrichment skills was the prime, be it the pristine Kindergarten or the High school. Pupil with higher memory staked claim to all the accolades and were the chart busters of sorts. Stronger does my belief gets when I recall my yesteryear classmates, now orthopaedic surgeon in Gangaram hospital and another a barrister in Delhi’s High Court, who never saw a mention in the toppers list through out.

Cut to recent and the trend is not worthy of a praise, if not lambaste. Ever growing need for specialized coaching to conquer the epitome of Indian education, vis-a-vis the IIMs, RECs & IITs, are adequate attestation of the education, the young students are being doled out. Ranking system and not the much needed grading system still in use. It’s disheartening to know India’s expenditure on education, is a meagre 4.1% of GDP, 82^nd of 132 nations. India produces 2.5 million graduates each year -of which 350,000 are engineers, twice the number produced by the US. Contrast this with the success rate of these graduates. Depressing are the number of these graduates who pursue higher education and PhDs, contributing to only 2% of the world’s research.

Our education system is dated, and need for an immediate overhaul would be to say the insignificant. The impending revolution in education can be brought about, when corporates and individuals join hands with the government and establish Universities which can rise to meet the talent, ambition and intelligence of Indians. Until then the brain drain may continue and the west will bear our fruits of labour.

With the progression of time,as my daughter inches closer to mainstream education, my soul prepares and warns me to the imminent risk of type casting her in the age old mould of our education system and produce, may be, just another housewife or money minting machine!

Image Credit: Alon Laudon

Popularity: 15%

Satyam! A name that needs no introduction and a name that is in the news for all the wrong reasons!!!

While what has happened is a horrific, isolated and hopefully a standalone incident, the real repercussions are felt by the people who work there. As someone who started his career in Satyam many years ago, my heart goes out to all of them.

Satyam’s business was all about people. To their credit, they did a terrific job in terms of attracting a lot of top talent – Satyam’s talent database is a treasure trove with folks with the dream IIT & IIM combination, Engineers from the brightest and best institutes around the country who chose to make a career in IT. They have them all.

Leadership (while being associated with the chairman who fell) across functions is pretty solid too. Some of the best people managers that I have met in the business were in my early days there. Learnings from there have been invaluable for me personally and I think I was extremely privileged to get campus picked and work with some fabulous peers and leaders.

Not for the skeptic, they have a few people who are a waste of office space and furniture too! Let me not deny that. These are folks who were “loyal” to the “Raju” and moved from being Executive Assistants and Front Office Executives to Project Managers – They were a disaster. They were where they were for the loyalty factor.

I am not surprised one bit to see the Raju community still backing the actions of their ex-chairman and Bhimavaram going ga ga to buy shares of Satyam which is heading to become another General Motors- Worthless!

There’s also a website in his name where people STILL sing praises…now this is simple sycophancy!

It’s unfortunate that the actions of one man and his greed have led a bunch of really talented people to doldrums. I sincerely hope and pray that these talented people get picked up somewhere / somehow.

Good clients have led the way making offers to some of the stars that work on their assignments. While the talent market is stale, there is always a space for niche and I am pretty hopeful that some of these really good folks there get picked up in due course of time.

Signing off, did we see something similar to this and Lehman – GREED!! Isn’t it an age old saying that greed kills… How true!

There are some things that are a legacy and these never change!

Image Credit: Swami Stream

Popularity: 11%

In an unexpected move, the Indian government has appointed its Finance Secretary Duvvuri Subbarao as the Governor of Reserve Bank of India. Rao will succeed YV Reddy, who is retiring on September 5. Street has it that this move has made some heart burns including that of the Deputy Governor Rakesh Mohan who was the hot favourite for the governor’s job.

Subbaro, 59, will hold office of the RBI governor for the next three years.

Reddy who became the RBI governor in July 2003, succeeding Bimal Jalan, expressed unwillingness for an extension of his term, forcing the government to look for a replacement. Chidambaram has been candid in his support towards the incumbent governor.

D Subbarao is a an alumnus of IIT Kanpur and a 1972 batch officer of the Indian Administrative Service belonging to the Andhra cadre. Subbarao was secretary to Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council. He has also done stints as an economist in World Bank between 1999 and 2004 in Africa and East Asia.

An alumnus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where he was a Humphrey Fellow, Subbarao also holds a doctorate from Andhra University. Subbarao joined the civil services after earning Masters in Economics from the Ohio State university.

Subbarao is taking over the top job when India’s inflation is at a very high level and also when the interest rates have gone through the roof. It’s likely Subbarao will continue with the strict policy for sometime now especially since it’s an election year. 

I also think, given his credentials, this is the right move for India from a global strategy view point as Subbarao brings with him a combination of experience in high ranks.

Will definitely be worth watching what Subbarao has in store for the country.

On a different note, Andhra Pradesh seems to be on a high in the RBI agenda – First YV Reddy and now D Subbarao. Phew !!!

Popularity: 39%