Moderates Versus Extremists

The Mint paper's Saturday supplement (Lounge) on 15 January 2011 had an article on a play titled Dara, being performed by the Ajoka theatre group from Lahore. This play is based on the life of Dara Shikoh, who was Shah Jahan's eldest son and his favourite; Dara was imprisoned and executed by his brother Aurangzeb.

Dara was a poet, painter and a Sufi and his conflict with Aurangzeb mirrors the ongoing conflict between extremist and moderate forces everywhere, especially within Islam.

I have often wondered about what attracts people to extremist ideals and leaders. I would think that in the battle for hearts and minds, the extremists would be starting with a significant disadvantage as they are often oppose so many things that bring pleasure and enjoyment - music, dance, arts, cinema, wine & spirits, a relaxed approach to life with fewer rules / restrictions.

I suppose that in societies where people are struggling to obtain basic necessities of life (food, clothing, shelter, security), the ability of extremists to oppose corrupt governments that have failed in delivering these basics makes them popular with the people. It is also likely that only the rich/ruling classes may be enjoying these "better things in life" and the extremists can therefore position these may also be positioning these pleasures as being associated with the corrupt rulers (and therefore guilty by association).

In some respects this is similar to the willingness of people to accept dictatorships as long as they deliver the basic necessities in life and continue to deliver on the promise of material development.

In well-to-do societies (for e.g. in the middle east, as opposed to Afghanistan), extremists may be appealing to a person's desire to live up to some ideals or to be part of something larger than themselves. Also the desire to preserve and project their identities as being distinct from the rest of society would lead them to embrace the more extreme form of religion that accentuates their differences and glosses over the commonalities.

My guess is that Islam in India too is seeing a struggle between the tolerant forms which assimilated with the majority Indian culture (for e.g. Sufi Islam) and the extreme versions that develop under the middle eastern influence (for e.g. Wahabi Islam). It is easy to take sides (or form opinions) in some cases - for e.g. there was the story some months ago of a Muslim girl and her family in a village in Kerala having to withstand pressure from the religious community in order for her to take up a job. Most of us would support the girl and her family in this situation.

However there are other situations where there is more grey instead of just black and white. Which side do we take when we see more and more overt signs of religious conservatism? For e.g. based on my limited observations from a few visits in the past couple of years and based on whatever I read and heard, it appears that more and more Muslim women in Kerala, even from middle-class families are opting to wear burqas, hijabs etc as compared to earlier. Should we be worried by this trend, assuming that it indeed exists? Or should this be interpreted as a positive development in that the community no longer thinks it necessary to fit in and instead are confident/comfortable in asserting their identity? And shouldn't the rest of us respect the community's freedom to dress as they choose?

On a related note, I had attended a lecture by M.J. Akbar at IIMB some months ago, where among other things, he talked about the French law that bans veils covering the face (loosely referred to as the burqa ban). M.J Akbar was critical of this law and argued that the ban was ridiculous for various reasons - covering the head as a sign of modesty is a cultural tradition (even all the pictures of Mother Mary show her with her head covered), the hijab is very similar to the habit worn by nuns etc.

While I agreed with a lot of what he said, I wasn't so sure about this point. While the government may have had other intentions, my understanding is that the ban was also to prevent communities from pressurizing muslim girls/women into wearing such clothing; in other words, once it is declared illegal, the community leaders cannot insist that women folk adopt this form of dressing. However it is also possible that women (and their families) who may have felt comfortable moving in public or taking up jobs when dressed in such attire, may opt to remain at home when the comfort of donning such attire is taken away from them.

"Ideas Don't Matter"..... and other nuggets of 'wisdom'

An interesting take on the "ideas versus execution" debate is available at http://blog.assetmap.com/2011/01/social-web/lets-end-the-ideas-are-worthless-myth/

The author (Nathaniel Whittemore) states that the conventional wisdom in Silicon Valley that "ideas don't matter and everything comes down to execution" is the result of the reductionist thinking that is common nowadays.

Reading this article brought to mind some of the peeves that I have been carrying around for a while now. In our desire for sound-bites, pithy one-liners and smart sentences that fit within 140 characters, a lot of the nuances and complexities that are associated with each of these issues are lost. The folks who originally coin the sentences may well be aware of all sides of the issue, and may often choose a one-sided (controversial?) headline to pique interest and attract readers.

However the issue is that their followers and others just see the tweet or the headline or first few lines of the blog post. A number of them are unwilling (unable?) to spend time to understand different aspects of the issue and instead choose to repeat this sentence as the gospel truth. And given our fascination with being connected or up-to-speed with all that is happening, a person who can string together a few catchy lines picked up from various popular sites can pass himself off as being knowledgable.

Another reflection of this problem is commonly seen in software companies; every now and then you run into a senior person who portrays himself as a rebel by making statements such as "documentation is useless", "CMM is stupid" or "there were too many issues so I rewrote the whole program a day before the release". Many of these senior people are often passionate about their work and good at what they do. However the juniors who work with them, pick up the attitude and not the skills or knowledge that are part of the package. These juniors then grow up and turn into insufferable loud-mouths without any of the mitigating qualities that their idols possessed.

I suspect I am beginning to echo the arguments made by Nicholas Carr in his article "Is Google Making Us Stupid"; the article does make interesting reading and I suppose the author can be forgiven for using an attention-grabbing headline to get us to read his work.

Push Email

One of my colleagues requested me to explain push email. I wrote up a brief description and was rather pleased with it (I guess my expectations/standards aren't that high these days..) so thought I'd post it on my blog. So here it is..

1. There are two options with respect to informing the handset about the presence of new messages at the server:
- Using IP
- Using SMS

2. If the SMS method is used all the issues of keeping the IP connection up and knowing the IP address go away. WAP Push can be used in conjunction with SMS. There is also an OMA standard on the format to be used when sending email notifications over WAP Push. Microsoft used to use SMS in one of their earlier solutions. However SMS involves additional cost/integration so is not preferred. 

3. If the new message notification has to be sent using IP:
- the phone needs to maintain IP connectivity.
- the server needs a protocol to send the information to the handset.
- the server also needs to know the IP address of the phone if it is initiating the data   transfer (as opposed to responding to a request from  the handset).

4. In GPRS (and I think 3G) networks, the IP address is assigned by the GGSN. The phone will have the same IP address as long as the same PDP context is retained. In other words, even if it moves to a different area (under a different SGSN), it will have the same IP address.

5. The client and server will exchange some kind of keep-alive messages in order to prevent timeouts that will close the connection. The timeouts could happen on the server (TCP connection timeout or application protocol timeout) or in the NAT gateway. The keep-alive interval needs to be configured appropriately based on the network.

6. The notification of new messages can be sent to the handset in response to a request from the handset. For e.g. Microsoft Exchange informs the handset of new messages as a response to a long lived HTTPS request. I guess some other solutions may be sending this information in response to an IMAP IDLE command. As the information is being sent in response to a client request, the server knows the IP address associated with the client

7. It is possible that some solutions allow the server to inform the client of new messages without a request from the client. For e.g. a number of Push email solutions involve a NOC (Network Operations Center) which may have some sort of integration with the operator network. Such an NOC will be able to know the device IP address even if the client has not initiated a request to it; for e.g. it may be able to do a phone number to IP address lookup with some box in the operator network. Such solutions may also involve some non-standard protocols for informing the client about new messages; for e.g. it could send a message using a proprietary format to a designated UDP port on the handset.

References:
The following websites contain additional information:
- GPRS Core Network (including IP address mgmt): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPRS_Core_Network. 
- Using NOCs for Wireless Email: http://www.blackberry.com/select/get_the_facts/pdfs/infrastructure/gartner_pros_and_cons_of_using_NOCs_for_wireless_email.pdf
- Difference between Windows Mobile and Blackberry Email: http://www.techatplay.com/?p=482
- Understanding Microsoft Direct Push: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa997252(EXCHG.80).aspx
- LEMONADE for Mobiles: http://www.lemonadeformobiles.com/quick.html
- IMAP IDLE: http://www.isode.com/whitepapers/imap-idle.html

Mani Shankar Aiyar vs. Suresh Kalmadi

Mani Shankar Aiyar (MSA) was in the news last week on account of his comments on the Commonwealth Games - that he would be happy of the Delhi edition was a flop as it would discourage us from hosting more games and we would instead spend the money more usefully (on sports facilities in villages etc). This led to Suresh Kalmadi, the president of the Indian Olympic Association and one of the main organizers, labeling him as anti-national.

NDTV interviewed MSA as part of their evening news program. He said that he had been against the idea of hosting the games even when he was sports minister in the last government and quoted a line from T.S. Eliot's "The Wasteland":

"I Tiresias, old man with wrinkled dugs, Perceived the scene and foretold the rest"

He prefixed his quote with a statement that Prannoy Roy (the interviewer) would need to explain this to Kalmadi since he probably would not understand the meaning :-)

I wonder how many of the current generation of politicians (Rahul Gandhi, Joytiraditya Scindia, Sachin Pilot, Akhilesh Yadav..) are interested in (or capable of?) quoting poetry. The only person who comes to mind is Sashi Tharoor. (I confess that my statements are based on the little I have seen of them in a few TV interviews so I may have misjudged their interest/abilities). Maybe this a skill that is no longer valued and holds no attraction for the "younger" lot. Does the inability or lack of interest in such areas reflect the fact that a well-rounded education (where people read for the love of reading) is not as common as it used to be?

I guess being impressed by such skills can be viewed as being a bit of a snob, but I am willing to plead guilty on that count. And MAS may score debating points but I suspect Kalmadi will still be there, holding onto his posts, long after MAS is gone.

Coming back to MAS - I narrated this interview story to a friend of mine and he told me another incident involving MAS and Natwar Singh, both alumni of St. Stephen's College, Delhi. Natwar Singh once remarked that "everything he was, was because of the college" to which MAS retorted "why blame the college?"

Kalmadi was part of Sharad Pawar's NCP for some time before returning to the Congress party. One story I have heard is that when asked whether Kalmadi's exit was a loss, Sharad Pawar replied to the effect that "Yes... even when you throw out cow dung from your courtyard, you also end up throwing out some mud.. and Kalmadi is more than cow dung".

So acerbic wit is not the sole preserve of the Doon / Stephen's / Oxford brigade..

Clayton Christensen on measuring your life

A friend of mine pointed me to an article by Clayton Christensen this morning. Christensen is best known for his work on innovation (his book "The Innovator's Dilemma" is a classic) so I was intrigued to see him writing about a "soft" topic such as guidelines for finding meaning in life. The article is available at http://hbr.org/2010/07/how-will-you-measure-your-life/ar/1.

Christensen cites Frederick Herzberg's insight that the most powerful motivator in our lives is not money; instead it is the need to learn, contribute and to be recognized. He then shows how management principles can be applied to our personal lives: individuals need to find their purpose in life (just as companies need to find their mission and strategy), and  allocate resources (time, energy, talent, money) in line with their stated purpose. 

Christensen also talks about the importance of creating the right culture within the family (similar to creating a culture within a company). If we have a 2x2 matrix where the two dimensions depict the extent of agreement on goals and the extent of agreement on the steps towards attaining the goals, organizations/families need to use "power tools" (force, threats) when in the bottom left whereas having the right culture would enable them to operate in the top right quadrant.

When reading this article it struck me that I could not articulate a purpose statement for my life. I was reminded of the fact that I have been drifting along for quite some time now. Although I had made some half-baked plans some time ago I had not acted on any of it. 

I ended up spending quite a bit of time in office doing some web searches and reading some of the material I found; one website that was quite useful was  http://www.theonequestion.com. I have also been toying with the idea of working with a personal/life coach and found a few of them in Bangalore. I plan to follow up with them in the second week of August.

Describing strategies in 2x2 matrices

The McKinsey Quarterly mail showcased an interesting article titled "Capturing the World's Emerging Middle Class" earlier this month. One of the key takeaways is a 2x2 matrix splitting the possible strategies based on the consumer's ability to buy (high vs. low) and the nature of the consumer need (global vs. local). The full article is available at  https://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Retail_Consumer_Goods/Strategy_Analysis/Capturing_the_worlds_emerging_middle_class_2639 (free registration required).

I suppose 2x2 matrices are an unavoidable part of any strategy discussion :-) I remember seeing lots of them during the Corporate Strategy course at IIMB.  While they do look obvious once we see them, coming up with our own matrices to summarize a discussion is not very easy. 

Philip Thekkekara

Philip Thekkekara (known as Thomachen) - my mother's second cousin passed away on Friday afternoon. He was around sixty years old. I went to attend his funeral this morning. 

I cannot claim to be close to Thomachen uncle - he used to come home once in a while when I was staying with my parents in Bangalore. After they moved to Kerala, I used to meet him rarely: at a lunch or dinner at someone's home or after the evening mass at the Holy Ghost Church on some Sundays. He was always warm, fun to talk to and a great raconteur. He would narrate stories from his days in college and his twenties. I still remember him talking about the a lady who he knew when in college and was the Managing Director's secretary at Motorola (where I worked). "She was a hot number", Thomachen uncle would say, with a twinkle in his eye.  Another story was about his going to US to study - he ran into kids from homes where he used to deliver milk  and became the center of attention in the college when they told their classmates that their "milkman had come to the US to study". In the eulogy, his sister said, "it was easy to have a coversation with Thomachen because he would talk more than enough for both sides". He would indeed talk non-stop but you enjoyed listening to him. She also quoted the verse from 2 Timothy 4:7 "I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race. I have kept the faith". 

In some ways Thomachen uncle was a link into old Bangalore and into a time when things were simpler, less hectic and most likely more fun. He seemed keen to preserve his style and way of life - a difficult task in the face of all the changes taking part in the city.

This is the second funeral I am attending this year; the earlier one was in January for my mother's sister. I guess that as you grow older, deaths have a deeper impact on you. When you are young most of the deaths in the family are of people from your grandparents generation; I guess we grow up considering them as "old" so it doesn't strike us as much as it does now when you find the hand of death reaching out for people who are closer to you - elder relatives who belong to your parents' generation.