Of Godmen & GUIs June 5, 2011
Posted by Sunil Malhotra in Business, Design, Politics.Tags: Brand India, Culture, Ethics, Fasting, frogdesign, Gautama Buddha, Godmen, Government, Hindustan Times, India, Leadership, Mahatma Gandhi, media responsibility, Social change, swami
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The ‘Fast-unto-death’ theatrics of the past few weeks, allegedly (sic.) in a fight against corruption in India, have urged me to finally bring this article out of my closet. I wrote it fifteen years ago, almost to the day, for frogdesign‘s rana#3, a brilliant in-house publication that they shelved inexplicably.
Godmen were around those days too, (their business model hasn’t changed) snaring people into their spiritual concoctions and exploiting India’s superstitious side. GUI was a term almost nobody had heard then. We in India still speak out the letters, not ‘gooey’ like the rest of the world does. Read it, like it, hate it, keep it, share it. Here goes …
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India, at the end of History …
… is mystical and hi-tech. Impoverished and affluent. A billion-strong society in a pulsating state of chaotic equilibrium. Cows and cars share city streets. Superstitions abound and Godmen flourish. We will show our palms to people who promise a peek at our destiny, or say they can chant away a terminal disease. We have much to learn, but the world can learn a great deal from us … (more…)
Innovation 101 – The Jugaad phenomenon May 11, 2010
Posted by Sunil Malhotra in Business, Culture, Design Thinking, Industrial Design, Industrial Design, Innovation, Innovation 101, Jugaad, Management, predictions 2010, Thought leadership.Tags: Brand India, Business Week, Car ke side effects, cheap, Corporate social responsibility, Culture of India, Ethical issues, frugal innovation, India, Innovation 101, Innovation and Idea Management, Jugaad, Jugaad innovation, Kachra Innovation, Keith Sawyer, Nano, Next Practices, Tata, wisdom
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This post is meant for those of you who have set up automated alerts for the new magic word ‘Jugaad’, the most fashionable innovation thread about India these days. Several innovation ‘gurus’, management experts, authors have latched on. The common thread – they’re mostly based in the US and are of Indian origin. The more equal of us. Keith Sawyer calls it a ‘fad from India’ and that’s exactly what it is.
Business Week* reports on a management fad from India, that goes by a Hindi slang word, jugaad (say joo-gaardh). It means “an improvisational style of innovation”. It’s “inexpensive invention on the fly”. It sometimes has negative connotations, like cutting corners. The idea is that it doesn’t have to be perfect or fancy; it’s just good enough to satisfy immediate needs.
>>*See the comments at the end of the article.
Don’t be fooled – Jugaad is jugaad and innovation is innovation. Jugaad is a dangerous mindset – you heard right, a mindset. You ‘fix’ things by simply putting together bits and pieces, never mind that they don’t fit or that the final product is unreliable, unsafe, whatever. When something goes wrong, you can always use the excuse of not having time, resources, skills, etc. After all you did achieve ‘cheap’, didn’t you.
Maruti Gypsy 2020?
Climate Change Bollywood ishtyle August 7, 2009
Posted by Sunil Malhotra in climate change, Culture, Design, Everything 2.0, Globalisation, Innovation, kleptocracy, Leadership Innovation, Nature, Politics, Sustainability.Tags: An Inconvenient Truth, Brand India, Capitalism, climate change, demise of capitalism, Ethics, Greed, India, India and China, Kyoto Protocol, Materialism, Sustainable retreat, Thought leadership, United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, United States, Western Thought
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Image via Wikipedia
Let’s use the standard Hindi movie formula of circa 1980 to script our earth’s climate story. Enter Superstar US. The virtuous, street smart, Robin Hood inspired protagonist of our story, replete with his coterie of jazz dancers. And then there’s the poor guy, India. Always trying to emulate the “hero” and competing with him for the “herione’s” attention in college settings. Let’s throw in some masala – subplots, love triangles and the very popular song and dance sequences – with the extras doing their own thing while they dance in the third row.
Quick Gun Murugan
Now compare this with whatever we’ve been seeing in the Climate Change discussions. See the script accurately playing itself out? (Nobody seems to want to ask mother Earth for her point of view). Call it clairvoyance or just plain sensitivity, some of us have been seeing it coming since the mid nineties. Even we couldn’t have guessed the speed of deterioration, although fully knowing the bounty hunter tendencies of the US, we should have been able to. Easily. Shame on us!
Some simple facts from Prem Shankar Jha’s Tehelka article, An Earth On Edge.
1. Till as recently as five years ago, abrupt climate change was on the unthinkable fringe of possibilities predicted by climate scientists. In March 2009, 2,500 scientists from 80 countries assembled at the International Scientific Congress on Climate Change in Copenhagen. The congress concluded that the findings of the IPCC were out of date. The evidence collected since its fourth report was compiled showed that global warming was ceasing to be human-induced and was becoming self-reinforcing. (more…)
Sunil Malhotra
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