Signs of recession

These are days of global recession. I don't think I have witnessed recession before in my life - This may mean two things : either I am quite young or had remained ignorant about economic issues for very long! You can guess yourself.

So, in the spirit of blogging, I thought of letting everyone know how to recognise that recession is setting in. What are the signs and symptoms of recession?

First and foremost, there will be more talk of bears and less of bulls. No, no, not in the National Geographic channel, but in all the business TV channels. The vocabulary in business circles will undergo some change. "Government should take their hands off from trade" will change to "Government should intervene". Flamboyant statements like "It is not Government's business to run business" will change to "It is Government's responsibility to bail out the sick units".

Words like "Morality of bonuses" will be discussed over and over again - but it is a different matter that the companies will continue to pay high bonuses even from the bail-out money given by the government. Frugality, cost cutting measures, caution, bench strength, extra work force, inefficienty will be acknolwedged as important issues to talk about.

The line dividing management and labour will also become unclear, I think. Even quite well-paid employees whom you would have considered normally as 'rich management guys' will claim themselves as poor employees and resort to strikes and protest demonstrations.

Another thing I noticed in the newspapers. There will be an Opportunities section in the print media, which gives details of job availability. There will be articles around career guidance and about work place situations. The focus of these articles will change from 'how to pick up bright employees' to 'how to lay off your staff humanely'. Or, from the days of 'multi tasking or doing two jobs efficiently at the same time', you will see more articles on 'how to protect your job in the face of competition' etc.

I wish these important issues continue to dominate our conversations even during boom times! Read this joke about a sarcastic dad recently.

Having landed a new job away from home, a young man wrote to his dad: "I have been made assistant manager, a feather in my cap."

Soon after came another piece of good news: "I am now general manager, another feather in my cap."

And, then the recession hit. "Have been laid off. Send money for train fare," read the telegram. The father wired back: "Use the feathers - fly home."

There are predictions that we have turned the corner and the recession is about to be overcome. But, again, history shows that the slowdown normally slows down very slowly. Wow!

Vegetable Ganapathi

I am ever fascinated by the Lord Ganapathi and the various forms he takes. More importantly, he seems to give an opportunity for his devotees to be creative too! Here is a nice photograph sent by Nambi. A Ganapthi made of only vegetables. Isn't He wonderful?


If you like this, probably, you may like my earlier post on Ganapathi also. Click here to read that.

Manoharan, the Bacteria

In the last post, I had written about the very tender and delicate nature of the Government servants. They seem to be very sensitive and can exist only in peculiar climates - almost like some exotic plants. So, am I.


Sometimes, people in Gudalur and even some friends outside appreciate me very much and are quite happy about what I am doing or not doing. The only thing I want to tell all these people is that I am also like those Government servants. Very tender and sensitive and all that. I can also exist only in certain environment. I am quite effective only in certain organisations, in the company of certain people.


I had been a miserable failure in certain commercial enterprises of my family, which I was duty bound to get involved. Being aggressive, demanding things from others and pushing hard for your personal benefits are important characteristics in most of the organisations, especially business oriented ones. Inspite of being a Management graduate, I will be a terrible failure if I have to get involved in some such organisations.

Thanks to the orientation to the NGO sector in Andhra, I ended up in this field where I fit in properly. Things which would have been handicaps in other organisations are indeed strengths here. So, with a little bit of hardwork, I could manage to cover up the handicaps and voila, you are a reasonably good, effective manager. So, give me the right environment, I flourish. If the surroundings get murkier, I am at a loss.


Though I would prefer to compare myself with an exotic archid or some such precious plant or flower, Abirami differed. Given her medical background, she said, "something like a bacteria. Only in certain temperatures it will survive..."

Fine, Manoharan the bacteria...

Make an Allowance...

Recently, I had the opportunity of getting involved in a nationwide survey done on Government health professionals and various hospitals in our country. The questionnaire covering the salary and incentive package available for our government doctors was a very amusing one.

The salary being paid to the doctors by the Government seems to be low compared to the money they can make by private practice. So, this survey tries to find out what are the incentives they get and what should be done to discourage private practice. I was totally tickled to read the kind of incentives Government is offering in some States for the Government doctors.

Apart from the salary, they get something called Dearness Allowance, which is supposed to take care of increased cost of living. Then, we have travel allowance, tour allowance and daily allowance. Some of the health staff get shoe allowance and some other people get only a coat allowance. Yet others get a Gloves Allowance and some lucky people get a Soap Allowance. Why soap allowance? Just to wash their hands off their patients?




Doctors are not willing to go and work in villages. So, the Government offers them Rural Area Allowance when they decide to work in small places. But, they are not too keen to work in big cities also. So, they are paid City Compensation Allowance. While normal people may be spending huge amounts of money to visit hilly regions, our government servants want some compensation to work in such places and so, they get Hill Area Allowance (This HRA is not to be confused with the House Rent Allowance, which they will get wherever they are!) Some States prefer to keep the door open by generally giving something called Difficult Area Allowance, without, of course, defining what is a difficult area. If rural areas are not possible and cities are difficult, hills are problematic and difficult areas are out of the question, where will these people work, I wonder.

Then, we have other interesting family allowances. For children's education, you have education allowance. (To improve your own knowledge, you can get Medical Journal Allowance). There isn't anything for getting married, but there is a Small Family Allowance, if you have only two children.

After going through this questionnaire, I thought our government doctors are really an exotic creatures - like some kind of archids - who can work only in a very small band of climatic conditions and social settings.



Given a chance, the only allowance I would like to ask will be something like:

Only Men Allowance : If certain days, I am surrounded only by men, then I would like a compensation for that.

Terrible Noise Allowance : If there is a visitor to the office who has a very high decibal level of speech, then an extra Rs.100 as an allowance will be fine.

Anger and Cry Special Allowance : One thing I can't stand is people shouting at someone else in anger, and worse, crying. So, if I am forced to attend one such session, probably, the thought that I will get this special allowance can be soothing.

Terrible Dress Allowance, Sick Joke Allowance ... I can go on like this.

Budgeting

Before I started working for NDDB some years ago, the idea of Budgeting was a fascinating one for me. The only budget I had known till then was the National Budget presented by the Finance Minister in Delhi. Those were the days of total Government control over economy and hence, many policy decisions were announced in the budget. I used to wonder how can one person or a small group of people plan the incomes and expenditures for the entire country's economy.

But, during the last 10 years, hardly a month passes by without me getting involved in budgeting for something. And, things have gone past lakhs and are frequently reaching the crore mark. Gone are the days of indecisiveness, 'how can we plan what will happen tomorrow?'. Why tomorrow, these days, I am involved in making plans for the next five years also!

Recently, made a plan on how many meetings will be held during August 2012 and in which village. Not only that, how many people will participate in that meeting, how many men and how many women, what will be travel cost to reach Gudalur that time (assuming a diesel charge and fuel efficiency of the Government vehicles), and the cost of one vada and three idlis (inherently assuming the cost of rice and dhal and oil). It is just child's play. The only thing to worry is whether we will get the money or not.


Budgeting is not at all a problem now. If, by chance, this budget gets sanctioned, then the actual problem starts. How to spend that money. More importantly, how to explain why it was not spent and what creative explanations can be given to convince the donors.

The donors are also becoming totally crazy. From six monthly reports, we have come down to even monthly reports. This leaves very little elbow room to manoeuvre and hence the explanations also need to be extra creative. "We budgeted to spend Rs.10000 on this meeting, but suddenly floods came and all the participants were swept away. So, we could not spend the money". Or, sometimes, "the children camp could not be held, as most of the children suddenly became adults and participated in a youth camp instead".

Churchill seems to have remarked once, "A good strategist is a person who takes into account all the eventualities, but more importantly, s/he should be able to explain why something did not happen the way it was planned". We need such strategists these days to run our organisations and answer the donors!

P.Sivakami

Recently read an interview with Ms.P.Sivakami in The Hindu. She is one of the pioneers of Dalit writing in Tamil. Has written 3 novels and numerous short stories. She was also a member of the IAS, having held important posts, including Secretary, SC & ST department. Edits a monthly magazine, contested elections as a member of BSP. And, currently an active member of Dalit Rights movement. Really a multi-facted personality.


Couple of things in her interview were really important and thought of sharing it through this blog.

Q : You were a senior bureaucrat, part of the government. Didn't that provide a viable medium for you to bring about changes?

A : "It is quite difficult actually....At first, I didn't want it... I had seen how much the previous Secretaries had struggled. And, if I call for a meeting, the rest of the IAS officers won't turn up. Knowing all these I didn't want the job. But, I still took up the job. I prepared a lot of schemes and when I asked for more funds, I was accused of being communal because I was a Dalit asking for more funds...

In Dalit and tribal areas, the government appoints nurses, teachers but they don't go there because the remote areas don't have the necessary infrastructure. So, I proposed setting up a training school so that at least basic teaching, midwifery and nursing skills could be taught to the tribals themselves and they will stay there and serve the people. But the cabinet turned it down. See, I don't understand, they don't even discuss it and I can guarantee that these issues will never be discussed. So, it is very difficult to bring about changes from within the government."

Imagine, the senior most officer of the Government in-charge of tribal development herself feeling helpless. Is it because she was a Dalit? We see some very energetic IAS officers making a whole lot of difference to tribal areas in terms of both policy and funds. But, Sivakami feels she was not able to do, in spite of her best efforts. Something to worry about.

Q: What was your experience of electoral politics like?

A: "Actually I needed this experience...I also found that working with a party is quite different from working with a movement. I could really understand the difference. With a movement, there is a vision, there are no extraneous expectations, you know that you are going to be invisible, yet you continue to work. But, in electoral party politics, you need visibility, you need victory and you need to be in power, people work with these expectations in mind."

I thought, this is a very good analysis. Even within our own organisation, when people tend to project their individual identities or have ego issues and tend to have problems on interpersonal relationships, it affects us much more seriously, than it would have, if we were just a political party.

Be Optimistic

Always try to be Optimistic ...
not that it will help much!

This is one of the quirky wisdom of Garfield, the cat. I agree. Completely.

It feels good to be optimistic. In fact, you need more optimism to continue to be optimistic even when we know that it may not help much!

Fortunately, I got into this development sector where one of the job requirements is optimism. Constantly, we are expected to look out for problems, make incremental progress, hope for the best and try whatever is possible within our means.

But, we have some ultra-optimists. They always look at the bright side of things and it comes naturally. I am now convinced that it is a habit and possible to be cultivated. I don't trust much in the motivation talks, Landmark forum, Laughing clubs and even in such camps that are being organised by corporates. But, what I do believe is that the atmosphere within the organisation, company of people and the issues which we handle in life can bring a sense of optimism in our general life as well.

And, of course, I am all for watching the 'feel-good' families, even though they may be described as 'chick-flicks' (in derogatory terms?). Some of them are really good and bring the nice side of peoplel; and we aspire like those nice chaps.



But, there is a theory that Optimism is a bit of hiding from reality. Some people argue that it is just day-dreaming and it is nothing to do with reality.That is precisely the point. If we get caught up in the reality, which is not to our liking, can we just accept that? Optimist is the person who feels that reality can be changed and works for it. If all of us are realists, no real positive change would have happened. Scientific inventions would not have happened; personal reforms will not materialise; human spirit would not have survived at the time of adversity etc. So, optimism is actually to work against reality.

It helps a lot in being in a profession where optimism is possible. Unfortunately, there are some professions where we are expected to always consider the worst case scenario and make our moves. Police for example.

But, one thing I agree. There are situations where we can have an opinion only either black or white. We can't stretch the motto of being optimistic too far ...