Unmuddlings!!

The first question is - what went wrong? Only then can we address the other questions better. The trigger of the poor quality was the huge hungry demand back-log for education because of pre-independence regime’s regulatory inertia had starved supply of education. So when de-regulation started in mid-90s in many states [who followed the 4 states of AP, TN, Karnataka and Maharashtra], any capacity was good capacity. The colour was glee. There was no other CSF for success. Just get started. So while one CSF [resourcefulness] became pre-dominant in, two other critical dimensions – i.e domain capabilities and industry orientation took a serious back seat. Outside the 4 states mentioned above, most entrepreneurs [or edupreneurs as I like to call] who got into were under / unemployed graduates looking for a career or small time businessmen looking for low payback period businesses and who had expertise in running unorganized businesses and who thrived in an environment that required rent se...

For most countries, primary education is the priority sector. This is the long term regenerative investment in the education sector. In India too, since the early 90s, higher education has gotten lower down in invest priority and understandably so. Large investments go [and should go] to SSAs with the IITs / IIMS and other premium higher education institutes are more and more asked to seek less budgetary support. But Indian certainly needs more and more higher education institutes, that are global powerhouses. When one reads that we have single digit numbers of institutes that are counted in the global rankings – it doesn’t just hurt, to me it scares. Unless we get this act together, coupled with the brain drain, we will in another 50 years be another vegetable case. Probably, the big wigs understand this, therefore in the last 5-7 years [after this long lull for decades] we keep hearing of these big bang higher education projects – more IITs, IIMs, NLS, CUs, NITs, IISERs/NISERs e...

Long back - almost 16 years from now - when I first read [to understand] micro-economics, the concept of first degree differentiation appealed to me quite a bit. A stated price for a product – is actually restrictive. Necessarily puts in the cost plus category. The key is to go for value pricing, that is have an individual customer pay as much he or she can pay. To make it graphic – the price of a soap is not bar-coded to the soap, but the to PAN No or any other unique no [ooops!!] of the customer. Different companies do it differently. Hotels have different categories of room. With a wee bit extra feature thrown they charge a good deal extra for a different room. Or an ERP co [;)] can thrown in lot more services to live up to the jingling budgets. Or our local trinket shops owners or auto drivers will wear an infra red glass and try to gauge the threshold limit of the prospective customer; some other smart alec – would start pricing from the roof and start coming down in small steps...

This is a topic to which reams of paper and terabytes of storage space must have been already devoted. Probably the pain barrier would have been discussed, in a wide dispersion of paradigms [incl. medicine, sports, emotional growth, self evolution, societal moulding, organizational growth etc] and contexts. Even though there is nothing new to share, let me share it still. Well, hopefully from a fresh window [looking glass!!] – if not anything else. The more I am fortunate to experience pain, the more I am enamoured of its self annihilating and life giving [re-generative] capacities. Experiencing pain and the expression ‘fortunate’ is a queer association - aint it? Well, what I mean by this – looking at pain [physical, emotional whatever] as it is in its intrinsic form and not the manifestation of pain [consciously or sub-consciously]. Sub-consciously every pain [physical / emotional] in its root is a fear of decimation. Often times, the inability to look at it intrinsically and connect...

………Or the Olympic motto of Fast, Higher, Stronger has manifested in some astounding moments of human endurance, precision and perfection. These three words have been the hallmarks of human determination, since 1896 in Athens – the year and the venue of the first modern Olympic Games, - to continuously evolve to something hitherto ‘superior’. To continuously extend the frontiers of excellence. They were [probably] an ambrosia for the era encompassing the late nineteenth century and the pre-world war years, where inadequacies of life and living were stark [at least in terms of base/average levels]. Ill health and hunger were imminent for a much larger proportion of mankind. These words seemed even more meaningful and appropriate ambassadors, by the Emil Zatopeks, the Jesse Owens, the Dhyanchands and somewhat later Nadia Elena Comaneci or for that matter Mark Spitz. Yes, three words have played a huge part in having millions and many more people to aspire for and achieve dreams that other...