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CONTENTS
EDITOR Gp Capt R Vijayakumar ﴾Retd﴿, VSM
READERSHIP OUTREACH Gp Capt Dr R Venkataraman ﴾Retd﴿
Sundar R Vakeeswari M DESIGN D Rajaram, Tayub Refai MADRAS MANAGEMENT ASSOCIATION Management Center, New No.240 Pathari Road, ﴾Off Anna Salai﴿, Chennai 600 006 Ph:044‐2829 1133 / Email:mma@mmachennai.org | mandate@mmachennai.org | www.facebook.com/mmachennai
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EDITORIAL
Gp Capt R Vijayakumar (Retd), VSM
A good year despite the times
F
Y2021-22 was an eventful one with a flurry of
other adversaries. We are all uncertain how this war
activities and conventions organised by us. A
will take shape in the coming days. We should hedge
good number of people attended these events
our risks. India’s abstentions at the UN on the Ukraine
in person, and these events were graced by a galaxy of
issue are not based on nostalgia but on facts and reality
reputed speakers. Organizing these events wouldn’t
of protecting its own national interest. As far as the US
have been possible without the support of our
is concerned, it needs India in Indo-Pacific to counter
members. A recently organised event still lingers in our
the rise of China; US’ strategic interests lie more in
memory. It was about the war in Ukraine. The Ukraine war is spilling over and is seriously impacting poor countries. It has spurred the biggest price shock in decades and choked the imports of basic
With the stock prices of new
commodities in many countries. Some 50 or more poor
age start‐ups significantly
nations import 30% or more of their wheat supply from
lower, is it a good time for
Russia and Ukraine. The two countries together provide
invest? New age stocks have
a third of global cereal exports.
been badly beaten down.
The Ukraine war: We should hedge our risks The west is up against not only Russia but also BUSINESS MANDATE
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Indo-Pacific than in Europe. In the emerging geopolitical
is equal for all. We need to find a framework or support
world order, irrespective of the outcome of the Ukraine
system for MSME and other sectors as well.
war, it is important to have a multi-aligned foreign policy. As we found after 1991, the Western model is a
The IPO celebration is over!
good assurer of prosperity, but we live in Asia and the
With the stock prices of new age start-ups
dictates of security means we must hedge our best.
significantly lower, is it a good time for invest? New age
Let’s stay non-aligned!
stocks have been badly beaten down. Investors who
In this context, MMA with the support of KAS organised a national conclave on the theme “Ukraine Crisis: Is Global Focus Moving Back to Europe? on 22 March 2022. A galaxy of eminent speakers including Mr Kanwal Sibal, former Foreign Secretary, shared their thought-provoking insights. I am delighted to present an article on the event with embedded videos.
would have bought stocks in these companies at their highest price post the listing would have lost close to 55% as on date. Consistent returns may be achievable only thorough competitive advantage. Investors need to be cautious in their approach. Entrepreneurs of Indian great tech wave should build products for the globe, as they might find it difficult to sustain the wave with only India as their market. A few start-ups
Click to view.
specialize in making Do-It-Yourself (DIY) toys using concepts from Science, Technology Engineering and
Indian economy, oil & inflation
Mathematics (STEM, also STEAM with an ‘A’ for Arts!).
Emerging data offers some comfort on the health
Such toys keep children away from the screen,
of our economy. The numbers suggest there was only
improving their motor and cognitive skills. They also
a limited damage due to the third Covid wave. Exports
enhance the kids’ problem-solving skills. MMA through
have bounced back smartly. We must ensure that tariff
its CSR initiative ensures that poor children are not
barriers do not get in the way of greater global trade
deprived of these opportunities; courses on Robotics
integration. However, the threat of inflation is also
and other advanced topics relating to STEM are made
always at hand. Crude oil prices have gone past $110
available through this initiative.
per barrel; a tough policy decision is expected soon. With too many economic variables up in the air, there
A governance body for startups?
is a nagging sense of uncertainty. To contain inflation
India now hosts the third largest startup ecosystem
and stagflation, it is imperative that the Government
in the world. Startups in India have grown remarkably
—for the time being at least—absorbs higher oil
over the past six years. The numbers have increased to
subsidies and passes on the oil price increase to
over 14,000 in 2021 -22 from a mere 733 in 2016 – 17.
consumers gradually. There should be no compromise
A record 45+ startups have achieved the unicorn status
in fiscal consolidation over the medium-term in
in 2021, taking overall tally of unicorns in India to 83.
following this policy option. It is also important that we
However, unicorns are facing hurdles after a successful
manufacture what we consume; our current account
run. The booming India startup ecosystem is set to face
deficit is also very high. Policy makers also need to
some head winds after two straights years of runaway
ensure that our journey towards a $5 trillion economy
success. Entrepreneurs must find a way of balancing
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spends and resources. Cash-guzzling startups may not
positive. You can change how you look without
be able to raise as much equity in 2022 as in 2021. The
changing how you feel, and you can change how you
need for governance in startups is coming to the fore.
feel without changing how you look! In this context, the
The solution is to set up structures for better corporate
talk organized by MMA on the theme “Toolbox for
governance with robust processing, internal audit
Emotional Coping” by Dr Prithika Chary is very relevant
committees, and meaningful and qualitative boards.
and informative. We present you on the article with embedded video. Read on and get emotionally fit!
Sustainability & environmental concern IPCC’S latest report offers a grim scenario for
Celebrating Women’s Day
Indian city dwellers if the world fails to arrest climate
MMA Women Managers Convention on the theme
change. The Prime Minister’s Net Zero pledge for India
“Marching Ahead – Inspire Change in Humankind” was
announced at COP–26 in November shifted the context
held on 26th March 202 at MMA Management Centre.
for Indian businesses. It means that businesses must
Through this annual event, we present women achievers
set out sustainability plans of their own. Companies
from different fields to inspire a large number of
that take a long-term view of both opportunities and
women professionals. We are excited to note how
risks and begin preparing for the Net Zero transition
women are tackling their problems and changing the
stand a better chance of thriving amid major changes
world. We interacted with the founders of the first
in the years ahead. In this context, the discussion
women-led unicorn from India. If you have missed
organised during the MMA Annual Convention 2022 on
watching the convention live, here is the link for the
the Future of Sustainability was thought provoking.
recording.
Experts shared their insights on the important issue. You can watch the entire interaction by clicking the link
Covid, covid, covid!
below.
With Covid cases in India down to their lowest level
Click to view.
in about two years, it is not a surprise to see public
Mental well‐being
spaces get crowded and masks slip. The world is going
For years, it is strongly believed that talent attraction
Click to view.
and
retention
is
a
top
priority
back to work! But Covid isn’t gone yet. The virus has
for
lost virulence in 2022, but that is not a reason to believe
organizations. Post-Covid 19, it has become crucial for
that we are in the clear. There is no need to panic, but
corporates to understand that mental well-being is more
let’s be realistic.
than just an issue faced by individuals. Organizational culture and practices impact the mental well-being of employees. Management teams at work need to be a
Stay safe, stay healthy! Happy reading!
little more understanding and supportive of their employees at the workplace. I strongly believe that managing physical health, emotional health, social connections, and spiritual practices would help to stay BUSINESS MANDATE
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Bhaskar Bhat, Director, Tata Sons Ltd., delivered the keynote address at the MMA Annual Convention 2022. He spoke on the theme: "How India Can Make This Decade Its Own."
T
he theme for the convention is about how India
perhaps more than doubled, except for the last three
can make this decade its own. I believe it's not
weeks, thanks to the war in Eastern Europe. Why I refer
India's decade but it is India’s Century. It's only
to the stock market is because it is real money chasing
a question of the ‘how.’ I don't profess to know too
ideas or investments or performance. It has put money
much about the ‘how’ but I do believe, as most of us in
into the hands of many middle-class Indians, apart
the Tata Group have betted on and believed, in this
from investors themselves. But more than that, it
economic engine called India. It's a very unique engine.
signifies the potential of the economy.
It has been on a growth path, irrespective of governments and global ups and downs for the last 31 years, starting from 91-92. We have had years of slow growth and years of extraordinary growth. But like the proverbial Indian elephant, it is growth and it continues to grow. One extraordinary indicator has been the
As we come out of the pandemic, we have to be careful but let us not be fearful. One important indicator of the Indian response is the recent
performance of the Indian stock markets. I did not
The demand on companies has increased because of attrition.
really believe, through my career, that companies'
But this is not like the great
market caps represent their performance but the reality
resignation that is happening in
is that hard money is put into the markets.
the western world, triggered by soul searching by young people
The great bull run
on what they do at work and
The performance of Indian stock markets during the Covid period is now legendary. The index has 10
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why they work.
announcement of opening up of the scheduled
investments by industry after they have covered the
international flights. It indicates the confidence that
capacity utilization shortfall, which is of the order of
the Indian government has placed in the so-called
about 35 percent on average. It is going to be a very
reduction of the danger of the pandemic. Through these
steady but positive and continuous growth in
two years, starting from 23rd of March 2020, the
consumption
Ministry of Health has been working with the aviation
accumulated savings over the last two years are going
sector, which has very rightly regulated flying
to be available to households.
—stopping flights for some time, regulating the capacity utilisation compared to pre-Covid levels, and then reviewing the pricing by each airline.
The
government is confident of handling even any minor, local outbreaks or if there is any recurrence in a new form or a new variant of the Sars-Covid virus.
and
consumer
expenditure.
The
The second is the performance of our rural sector. Overarching on all that has been the fact that three fourth of our population—700 plus million people —have been vaccinated. For consumer confidence to come back, it has to start at the level of the individual consumer. The actions of the government lead to
Consumption‐driven economy
confidence among consumers to go out and spend. The
For the current year, in Tata view, it is going to be an 8.8 percent GDP growth. It varies depending on who has done the projection but it is still a growth and which is one of the highest in the world. It will be driven, as usual, by consumption to begin with and
high physical touch sectors like restaurants, retailing and travel, which were significantly impacted, are going to come back with a bang. We are already witnessing this in some of our companies and it'll only improve.
Stressed labour market
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Our per capita GDP is so much lower than many other
desire to make a significant impact in a selected sector
countries, which are as large as
of the economy. Not everyone succeeds but great and
us or larger, and some smaller
good ideas have found money and success. There are
than us. But our journey is only
many lessons to be learned but these youngsters are
upward.
not just young by age. They are young at heart as well, big risk takers, very hardworking and willing to get tripped at one hurdle and yet, rise and run again. That
The labour market is on fire. The demand on
undercurrent in the economy bodes great news for
companies has increased because of attrition. But this
everyone. It is very competitive. But India is such a huge
is not like the great resignation that is happening in the
market. Our per capita GDP is so much lower than
western world, triggered by soul searching by young
many other countries, which are as large as us or larger,
people on what they do at work and why they work. In
and some smaller than us. But our journey is only
India, it is due to the red-hot economy of startups and
upward. In every sector—whether you take airlines or
technology companies who want new-age talent and
FMCG or fintech—the opportunities for transformation,
young talents. It is a good time to be in the job market
change and improved consumer experience are only
today. Of course, the skills have to be quite different
going to make it better and better.
from what they were earlier.
3Cs – The key areas
Formalisation of economy
Therefore, where should big investments need to
The third theme is the confidence that we all have
be made? Based on what online and digital has shown
in our elephant trudging along—maybe we'll make the
us, I would drill down to three focus areas, namely:
elephant even dance—is the formalisation of the Indian
Convenience,
economy. That journey started several years back and
convenience, Covid has showed us what we could do
it is a very determined and well-planned move.
online comfortably sitting at home. You don't have to
Comfort
and
Cost.
When
I
say
We have had our problems with demonetisation
venture out in a car and go to a retail outlet, park your
and GST. But GST collections have been rising month
car far away, walk to the retail outlet and purchase
on month. Even during some months of Covid,
goods. Also, the cost of transactions has come down
collections crossed 100,000 crores.
significantly, thanks to online.
Now we are
crossing 130,000 crores. Formalisation of the economy is a very good sign as global investors look at investing
Experience economy All these are captured in 'Experience.' Globally,
in India as well.
investments are going big time in experience economy.
Young at heart
Consumers are willing to pay a multiple of what they
The fourth theme that holds out great hope for
were paying for a product, for the experience of
India is the young population raring to go, not just to
acquiring that product. Nobody knows how it splits.
spend but to create new business models in this digital
But we know that premiums on brands and product
age. It's an extraordinary change in India, which is the
categories are based on the functionality of a product.
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Sitting on top of that is the experience of the product, as well as the experience of transacting with a company in the purchase process; in the use process and in the after-sales service process both for a physical product or a service. If you take restaurants, it's not the food alone. It is the experience of eating—sitting and getting served—that people pay for. The list goes on.
thoughtful about networks, bilaterals and so on. The DGCA and the Ministry of Health have made air travel safer, faster and comfortable and helped create the perception amongst Indians that air travel is not luxury travel anymore but the sensible way to travel. Of course, we have a great train network in India and also, our roads are improving.
In experience economy, India has still not witnessed the kind of growth that we are going to see. The big fat
Agility in uncertain times
Indian weddings where billions of dollars were flowing
But the point I want to credit the airlines with, is
were on a back foot for two years. Now, it's going to
for their agility. Despite incurring 25,000 crores of
explode. The event itself at best or at worst, would be
losses year-on-year for the last two years, the aviation
for two hours. But today, weddings last for four days.
industry has delivered to the consumers’ requirement.
Each of them is sliced with a different experience,
Many of us had our own problems of refunds and flight
different theme, different dress, different jewellery and
cancellations. But the service has been on, throughout
different food. So, we have to think in an innovative
the pandemic despite the tough regulations. Industries
manner about the experience economy.
like aviation, hospitality or retail have learnt to be agile, people-centered and to manage with the everyday
The emotional mix
uncertainty. People across industries, cities and nations
In India, the Experience economy is mixed with what Indians are known for: Emotion. The number of movies made in India is not just about entertainment but emotions. So, when you mix experience with emotion, you get a bang for the buck, which is the product functionality, experience and emotion. All these combined gives India a unique position and
The formalisation of economy, digitisation, globalization, atma nirbhar and the PLI scheme are all aligned towards making India stronger. There are debates about what is working and what is not working. But directionally, we are on the right path. I say this despite being involved in one of the most challenged sectors, which is aviation, where there is serious attempt by the government in trying to make structural changes through rationalisation of taxes and being 14
The harshness of our lockdown in 2020 created unprecedented pain to the migrant labour but we lived through that and the country came together to once again gather pace of growth. So it is a very India story. As we look at India, it is no longer only limited to Chennai, Bombay, Bangalore, Hyderabad or Delhi. Thirty
economics for the companies.
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across the globe had to face this uncertainty.
years ago, people in tier 2 and tier 3 towns had a much lower quality of life and lived with lower prices without demanding more. The people in towns have now proven that they are no less than their so-called city cousins, in aspiring for a better life. extraordinarily
to
They have responded
availability
of
products,
premiumization and quality. All these bode very well for the future and that is not going to last for only one decade. In my blue book, this is the India Century.
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The panel included Shivansu Gupta, Sr Partner, McKinsey & Co., K Anantha Krishnan, CTO, TCS, and Dr Kamakoti, Director, IIT Madras.
Mr Shivansu Gupta, Sr Partner, McKinsey & Co
to make their supply chains resilient. Not only do they
G
want to make them efficient and get the lowest possible
lobally, if we look at what is happening in the last couple of years and what it means for India, we can see three major trends that will
affect the way companies operate: •
A fundamental shift in supply chains, which will lead to a very different future of global
•
Value
one and diversify the supply chain. The supply chains that can take some level of fluctuation are now having to fulfill anywhere between 15 to 17 percent of demand growth; they are not used to this. Also, the value chains themselves are shifting. In
trade. •
cost, but they also want to be resilient, like China plus
migration
towards
digital
native
the automotive sector, for instance, due to the shortage
businesses.
of semiconductors, a lot of the OEMs are thinking about
The shift in consumer preferences which have
how to bypass the Tier 1 semiconductor suppliers. This
evolved quite significantly.
is a massive shift and it continues to grow. This will
Our research shows that anywhere between three and five trillion dollars of trade flows every year will shift locations or shift countries in the next half decade. For instance, in the automotive sector, of the 1.7 trillion dollars of trade flows that happen globally, we expect anywhere between 260 to 350 billion dollars of trade flows to shift. This continues to grow because of the Covid shock and a lot of countries and companies want
have a lot of implications for all of us.
Value migration Value
migration
towards
digital
natives
is
happening. Over all, market capitalization has grown from 2019 to 2021. We saw that more than 40% of capitalization growth was captured by only 25 digital native companies—the Apples, Amazons and Microsofts of the world. A lot of them are electric vehicle suppliers
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The pandemic has triggered and
smaller size companies and grow bigger and
accelerated it significantly but it
bigger, which will also help drive value
has been building up over the
creation.
last 5 or 10 years.
Six imperatives There are six imperatives for most companies in India. These are:
~ K Anantha Krishnan, CTO, TCS
or producers like Tesla and other e-commerce companies.
•
Investing in innovation.
•
Focussing on growth, which will be driven in large part by Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities.
•
Building
cost
leadership
as
a
key
differentiator.
As people work from home, they prefer ordering
•
Improving engagement with consumers and connectedness.
things from home. This will be a big driver of growth. Also, this is something that we need to be careful
•
Driving partnerships and building asset light
about. In the Indian context, two aspects need to be
systems as opposed to investing in capex
considered:
based assets.
In the next seven to eight years, there will be
•
•
Investing in sustainability and focussing on ESG.
about 90 million job seekers in India. For that to happen, we need to drive a GDP growth of 8 to 8.5%. That is not going to be easy. Because,
K Anantha Krishnan, CTO, TCS
this means that both net employment and
W
productivity growth will have to be the best. We have to continue to grow the economy at a very high rate to be able to absorb them. A lot of value creation happens with large
•
firms that do anything more than 500 MN USD of turnover. 40% of India's exports are driven by these firms. Almost half of the revenue contribution to nominal GDP happens from these firms and the productivity they drive is more than 10X of other smaller firms. If we compare ourselves to even our Southeast Asian peers, we are much smaller in terms of the number of such firms of this size that we have in India as opposed to any other country. So to drive growth, we have to migrate from 18
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hat you have illustrated is not just an India opportunity or India specific analysis, but I hear very similar messages from many parts
of the world.
Secondly, the expectations of the
consumers are also surprisingly uniform across the world. People have got used to digital intermediated consumption. The pandemic has triggered and accelerated it significantly but it has been building up over the last 5 or 10 years. This is a trend which will drive change in multiple industries and in multiple contexts, because the consumer finally drives your products or services, designs supply chain and everything else. Though unglamorous, the production and supply chains are very necessary at the back end. Sustainability is also changing things dramatically.
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•
The second bucket is what I call the AI-driven
Dr Kamakoti, Director, IIT Madras:
mania. AI technically has blossomed in the
C
last 15 years.
When I graduated from IIT
ovid has actually normalized things. We now
Delhi in the mid-80s, AI was not a field
compare India versus Europe as an apple
anybody would go to.
versus apple. The needs and trends seem to be
about 2006 or 2007, it shot up, predominantly
the same everywhere. We have our own strengths and
because of processor improvement, data
weaknesses. The game is all about exploiting the
capacity to handle large amounts of data and
weaknesses of others and leveraging our strengths to
so on.
grow. That's what we see in the semiconductors chip
industries, in the supply chain, in production
shortage. For example, the price of network switches
and even agriculture. Let's call this the
has increased from 15,000 to 36,000 rupees today.
Intelligent
Overall, I think, we are in a very good situation. We
continue.
should fight this battle. Being a Director of a premium
•
The
But suddenly after
Now it has become mainstream in
third
Enterprise. is
This
is
‘Ecosystem
going
to
Connecting
technology institution in the country, I am very excited
Technologies.’ In the last 100 years of
to make this better.
industries, supply chains essentially meant
Shivansu: Ananth, you have a unique vantage point
there is a well-defined outcome. There is
of being at the center of technology and innovation in
usually a set of players close to the outcome
one of the largest firms not only in India, but in the
and then there will a set of two, three or four
world. What do you think about the role that technology
tiers of suppliers—from the raw material all
will pay play across industries in the next decade?
the way to the end product. Everybody
Ananth: If you look at the global trend, there are four horizons or buckets of activity across industries. They are: •
expects value along the way. This way of thinking got established, perhaps in early industrial revolution. Now there is a slightly different twist because of the consumer’s
Leveraging digital technologies in any shape
changing behaviour.
With paths to the
or form as fast as possible. I've heard banks,
consumer
heavily
airlines and hospitals saying that we are a
intermediated, the supply chain is becoming
technology company with a banking license or
more and more dynamic. The data generated
airline license and so on. So aspiration is for
from the transactions has become fuel for
free but execution is hard. In the last 20 to 30
additional industries or additional players to
years, all technologists have become very
buy and sell that data and make something
good marketers. You said that the world's top
out of it. This results in very dynamic value
companies are all digital natives. It is fuelled
chains. We haven't yet found a good word for
by consumer demand and it will be a secular
it. Web 3.0 and Blockchain Technologies are
trend for the next 20 to 30 years. Some of us
coming up. Even 5G is jumping onto the
are involved in the India 2047 initiative.
bandwagon.
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•
Data, of course, is a well-established platform.
I feel that we have not tapped
So let us watch this space. The experience of it
real intelligence. I believe that
will be real. It could be virtual, like education
we need to set up some rural
online. Entertainment is served up virtually on
Technology Centres.
OTT and Metaverse. What else will be served virtually will be interesting to see. The bad guy industries like gambling and illicit trade
~ Prof. Kamakoti, IIT‐M
will be the first ones to adopt the new trend. So
we
have
to
watch
that
ecosystem
technology space quite closely. •
Finally, we have the science-led future. It is about grand challenges. Sustainability by itself is a huge one and there are many hard to abide by problems in sustainability. People talk that IT Industry is 2 percent of the world's emissions. But we have 30% problems.
the value chain of what goes into a test kit. There is a very efficient data marketplace which are stronger and which connects the demand and supply. It's a case study in itself. It's a very low-key kind of an achievement but it is important in the context of supply chains and new value chains.
processor
Shivansu: Prof Kamakoti, you are at the centre of
improvements, science and engineering in
training all our future leaders of the country. What is
healthcare, etc will play a big role. All these,
the foundation that is required in these leaders, so they
we will see in better context in India.
help capture this opportunity that we see in the next
Here,
I
think
computing,
The same experience story we have seen will unfold in two or three much unheralded ways. One is health. Take, for instance, CoWin app. The vaccination surge
decade, whether it's skill, infrastructure, talent or regulations? Prof Kamakoti:
I'll share my experience. Three
has, of course, now reached a plateau. If you go for
months before, we needed a bunch of Java coders to
vaccination today, you can get a certificate within five
develop some simple software for our process
minutes, which is outstanding. This kind of expectation
workflow. After six months of struggle, we got one
is there now in every industry. Every service product
person whom we offered Rs 80,000 as salary, which by
will become digitally intermediate in India.
IIT standards is a good pay. Two days later, he left
Every
industry must worry about this.
saying he got a job for Rs 1 lakh. This is the reality.
Lastly, let us look at the supply chain shifts, in
The point is we need to make them employable.
automotive, pharmaceuticals and chemicals. Covid test
There's no question about it. I always draw parallels
kit manufacturing in India was zero at the beginning
between banking system. I was on the board of one of
of the pandemic. Today, we are not just self-sufficient,
the oldest banks and I went through the records of how
but we export it. This has happened not because large
promotions were done. I noted that the person who
companies stepped in. It is a very large number of small
could count thousand notes in half an hour was given
and mid-sized companies, which have really dissected
promotion. Today, of course, we have counting
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Covid test kits, many industries from semi-urban areas
We have AI in every
pitched in. Some of them approached us for evaluation.
Department‐ chemical, chemistry, engineering design, applied mechanics and
I feel that we have not tapped real intelligence. I believe that we need to set up some rural Technology Centres. CAMS has helped to set up two centres where we keep
computer science. Therefore,
some 3D printers and computers. We train people. We
reskilling is very important and
can reach out to kids for their online education from
we have to make it more
these centres. We see some good improvement in the
inclusive.
rural colleges and we need to address this, if we really want to scale. Shivansu: We talked about digital natives and value
~ Prof. Kamakoti, IIT‐M
creation.
machine. Not just because of technology, jobs have been
cut
down.
Reskilling
becomes
extremely
What is the role that digital natives or
startups will play? Ananth: A mindset shift has happened in India in the last 10 or 15 years. Earlier, it was not respectable
important. From IIT, we are trying to bring a lot more of reskilling opportunities. Our online BSc in Programming and Data Science is a first of its kind, probably in Asia. We have 12,000 online students. We also have 12,000 offline students who joined earlier. So, in one year, we doubled the intake. Every year, 15 lakh students write the JEE for IIT admission but only 15,000 get selected. What happens to the remaining students who are not
for a person to say that he/she works for a startup after graduating from any institution. We would all try to join either an academic institution or go abroad or join a big company. Today, people join startups, not just at entry level, but at mid carrier level and even senior levels. So the talent pool is coming into the startup world. The quality and quantity has jumped up dramatically. It is a very positive shift.
selected? Online education is the answer. We can
Across sectors, there are low hanging fruits
definitely scale it up and if all IITs chip in, we can reach
available to all startups. Startups involved in SaaS are
out to many students.
doing B2B business and there are enough examples in
Though we teach online, there is live interaction and proctored examination. We conduct labs. We have started with AI and Data Science. Everyone today wants
Chennai. However, there is a lot of opportunities for core engineering or deep tech engineering companies and there are not many of them.
to attend the Deep Learning course. We have AI in every
Not much of Indian venture capital has gone into
Department- chemical, chemistry, engineering design,
this. A lot of work is done in this area in premier
applied mechanics and computer science. Therefore,
educational institutions but this is not getting
reskilling is very important and we have to make it
exploited. This is where the role of big companies in
more inclusive.
supporting the startups becomes very important.
During the lockdown, when we had shortages of 22
APR 2022
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23 APR 2022
The panel: Prashanth Vasu, Head of Strategy, Ramco Group moderated the discussions. The panelists were B Ashok, Former Chairman, IOCL; Muthukumar Thanu, Group Chief HR Officer, TAFE and Sathya Narayanan Mehta, Sr GM‐ HR and Global Head Policies & Talent Transformation, TCS. Prashant Vasu: What has the last two years been for your company?
The attrition in our company is less than 1%. We call our oil and
Ashok: At IOCL, we found there was a huge demand destruction. Petrol and diesel consumption came to
gas industry a cradle‐to‐grave
near zero. But LPG consumption increased 120% as
company. If a person joins us,
people were locked indoors and domestic demand
he/she stays till retirement.
increased. But all our products come out at the same
~ B Ashok, Former Chairman, IOCL
time. From a manufacturing perspective, it created a huge shock. As an energy industry, we cannot stop production. Even if a few aircrafts operate, we have to provide the fuel. We had to deliver the LPG cylinders
points. First, there was large scale adoption of remote
at home even during the pandemic. People took personal risk to reach their household, though they were equally fearful as the rest of the people. The petrol pumps could not close down. People were there at the operations side too. Enormous credit should be given to the oil and gas industry for keeping the supply chain of petroleum products alive during the pandemic. We never thought hybrid working would be possible in an oil industry. We innovated and found ways and means to connect with each other. 24
APR 2022
Sathya: I can summarise our response at TCS in four working. Second, there was mindset change in where all people can do remote working. We came out with something called as SBWS—Secure and Borderless Work Spaces. It was not easy to shift 1500 people who were in the office to work and deliver from their homes in less than two weeks. From our industry standpoint, it was an opportunity. Three, there was participative management. People could be heard even when they worked remote. If you don't have the high touch, hybrid
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will turn out to be just another model. Fourth, we saw
went through problems. But we took care of them. We
increased focus on the mental well-being of our
produced oxygen and supplied it to hospitals.
employees. We had higher productivity with hybrid model of working. The number of innovative thought patterns that came up increased during the pandemic. Muthu: I come from the farming industry. Our sales and service personnel had to go closer to the customer during the pandemic. They could not operate from the regional or branch offices. The retail outlets in various states opened at 5 am and closed at 8 am to comply with the regulations. The entire sales, marketing and service team had to integrate with the reality of the work place. Please remember, the human organisation is quite amoebic and fungible. We can't assemble our tractors remotely. At one point, we blocked marriage halls and rooms in hotels to accommodate our entire workforce. We provided whatever was needed to be provided, following all Covid norms. In spite of all
Many of our plants got converted to Covid centres. We accommodated even our extended family members like a petrol pump boy or a LPG delivery boy. During the pandemic, we did not have any attrition. Sathya: Ours is an industry which led to great resignation trends worldwide. In India, resignations did spike. We looked at the 'why?' and the reasons went beyond the clichéd reasons. We always ensure that the organisational purpose and the individual employees are aligned. That is why TCS has the best employee retention rate in the industry. While ours is still high at 15%, the industry average is another 12 or 13% on top of that. We changed our mode of engagement. We moved away from employee experience to employee engagement with purpose.
these, our productivity was good. As trucks were not
We walked our talk. We were the first corporate in
available, we coordinated with the ministry of railways
India to launch an employee vaccination program for
and used the rail wagons for delivery of tractors.
our employees. We backed it up in spirit. We ran
95% of our components are bought from our vendors. So they became very critical during the pandemic. We closely worked with them. A woman representing one of the vendors, cycled 6 kilometres to our factory to deliver a component. This is just an
vaccination camps for our employees and their dependents and contractual employees. 1.2 million benefitted out of that. We put up camps even in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities. We built a connect with employees by showing action on the ground.
example of the cooperation we got from vendors and
Muthu: Attrition is a lag indicator. Has the company
how a system can adapt to a challenge. We supported
made itself an attractive place to work? This is a lead
thousands of farmers in five states by providing them
indicator and we have to work on this. Once every year,
with free tractors for use for certain hours.
we call the high performers—about 200 employees; and
Prashant Vasu: Did you experience attrition in your companies?
their family members to the company and I introduce
Ashok: The attrition in our company is less than 1%. We call our oil and gas industry a cradle-to-grave company. If a person joins us, he/she stays till retirement. During the pandemic, our employees also
them to the boss. This time, we also did a poll giving ten reasons on what makes them high performers. 55% of the people had chosen 'organisational culture' as the top most factor. The second was 'inspirational leadership.' In the last year, our retention was 90%.
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25 APR 2022
MADRAS MANAGEMENT ASSOCIATION ANNUAL CONVENTION 2022
BETTING ON THE
FUTURE
DIALOG UE
THE FUTURE OF TECHNOLOGY
HOW INDIA CAN MAKE THIS DECADE ITS OWN
T T RAMGOPAL
GL. HEAD - ANDROID GOOGLE
KANIAPPAN P MD WABCO INDIA
R VELUSAMY
AUTOMOTIVE DIV MAHINDRA RES. VALLEY
DR RADHA RANGARAJAN CTO HEALTHCUBE
MAHESH PANCHAGNULA DEAN, AL & CORP RELATIONS IIT MADRAS
The panel discussion was moderated by Mr Magesh Panchagnula, Dean, Alumni and Corporate Relations, IIT Madras. The other panellists were TT Ramgopal‐Global Head, Android Partner Engineering, Google; P Kanniappan, Managing Director, WABCO Limited; R Velusamy, Sr Vice President, Head‐Automotive Product Development, MRV, Mahindra; Dr Radha Rangarajan, Chief Technology Officer, Health Cube.
TT Ramgopal: I had the opportunity to come to India
trying to solve a problem for India, which would solve
and work for Google in India, setting up some of the
the problem for the world. Can we hear your thoughts
operations and development in 2006-2007. I was very
on that?
much focused on supporting the global ad operations. That was the first foray we had. Similar to many other international companies, we had back office operations based out of India and that eventually graduated or morphed into customizing products for India. One example was Google Maps. We had Google Maps for most of the world. But developing maps for India was a challenge. So we started investing a lot of time, developing a unique technology and I am proud to say
Radha: I will talk about the healthcare space. I'm a physician. After almost 15 years in the US, getting all my higher education degrees -PhD, Post Doctorate, etc.I came back to India to put my training to work in the Indian context, on problems that matter to India. I initially worked at Dr Reddy's in the drug discovery division where we were developing new drugs to treat cardiovascular disease, diabetes and so on.
that Google's approach is not taking products and
I eventually left and started my own drug discovery
customizing it for India but our philosophy is: ‘Build
company. This was very much like swimming against
for India and you will be building for the rest of the
the tide, because in India, we were not traditionally
world.’ So India has become a first class citizen and a
focused on R&D. After running that company for almost
priority market, where we invest a lot of resources.
eight years, developing very, very novel compounds,
Mahesh: Radha, you are in a space where you are
securing multiple patents, grants and recognition for
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We are turning the corner and a lot of innovation is happening
led to an acceleration of innovation in India in the
in the technology space. We are
medical field, in the healthcare space, allowing
moving away from hardware
investors also to gain confidence in investing in Indian companies. Rather than working on import substitutes
per se to algorithms, software and connectedness. That's really where this entire field is now
alone, we're now working on products which also address problems that affect Indians more specifically. Products similar to what we do at Health Cube are not
moving.
available anywhere in the world. But our products do not fit European or American markets. We are turning the corner and a lot of innovation is happening in the
~ Dr Radha Rangarajan, Health Cube
technology space. We are moving away from hardware per se to algorithms, software and connectedness.
our work, we sold the company in 2019. I now work for a medical devices company called Health Cube where we are developing devices to deliver diagnostics across India, particularly in rural and remote areas. So the problem we're solving is how to get even simple tests like blood glucose and blood pressure test done in India’s rural communities, where it takes a very long trip to get to a center where such a service is available. Instead of solving the problem through a completely hardware approach, we have developed digitized devices and also devices which are multi parametric. You can do many tests with one box. It weighs less than 2 kgs and the data are on an app. You can track and understand trends on an individual basis or on a community basis.
That's really where this entire field is now moving. Mahesh: Almost every sector in India, in the early 50s, had a public sector company. The auto sector, for some weird reason, did not have a public sector parent. So, how did we start off on technology development back then? How far have we come? Velusamy: We had a customer problem and we wanted a solution. It could be through an empirical model or a theoretical model. Empirical model means you do some lab work, find a correlation and a solution and you establish that. But you don't know how it happens, like Newton found out the gravity. He wrote the gravity equation and it worked. That allowed us to take off and land the plane. That's one kind of innovation. Einstein found the general theory of
In the 2000s, especially in the medical devices
relativity. The theoretical background predicted black
space, we had a large dependence on imports. We saw
holes and many things. The equipment was built to
a small number of companies starting up and trying to
identify black holes. That is called the true innovation.
establish products and build products in India, entering
Both empirical and theoretical formulae lead to
the space in a relative vacuum. They developed
innovation.
products like PCR machines and molecular diagnostics. They developed fundus cameras for examining the eye. Around 2012, the department of biotechnology took a very proactive approach to support innovation. This 28
APR 2022
At the end, some top-notch innovator comes with an idea. You need to perfect it, to make it into a product. That's called technology. That takes hardship. As much as Einstein took 10 years to write the
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equation, it took a century to build telescopes to find the black holes. A technology sometimes can take so
many years and you have to put in billions of dollars
Our core modes of technology development are seeing a
into it. A product is a culmination of a powerful idea
revolution. That cuts across all
that is coming out of these innovations and technology.
sectors of technology.
Product development must happen at affordable cost to the customer. A product uses multiple pieces of technology.
~ Magesh Panchagnula, IIT ‐ M
We started in 1991 to look into the technology development from productionisation to technology development and from technology development to innovation. We are working backwards. Today, we are probably taking a fast copy of what is happening in China, Japan, Europe, and the US, but in the next ten years, innovation will happen in India. We can see those seeds. I'm the chief engineer of Mahindra 700 program and we have been on this program for four years. It took us tremendous amount of courage to bring such a highly futuristic product but we have to depend lot for doing the innovation on Korea, China and Europe. So to overcome those dependencies, we need to work on atmanirbhar. Mahesh: Kanniappan, you have also been in the auto industry for a long time. Can you add your views to this?
manufacturing excellence and quality management. In the 90s, the auto industry had some influence of the Japanese manufacturing practices, because by then Maruti set up its production in India. Many of the two wheeler companies had JV with Japanese companies. TVS also launched the TQM practices. Till 2000, we were more like a manufacturing company. When we got the Deming prize in 98, we decided we should move to a product development company. We drafted our own new product development process. Phase 2: From 2002 to 2012, the focus was to build a robust product development process and focusing on the robustness of the design, design quality and developing products in India for India market. The
Kanniappan: I represent the commercial vehicle
challenge in Indian companies in the commercial
industry. I worked most part of my career in TVS. I
vehicle segment was to deal with the ecosystem.
would like to explain the evolution of the product
Technology was not a big differentiator till probably
development in the industry and categorize into three
2010.
stages:
There was a strong pressure in the market to bring in
Then some global companies came to India.
• Upto 2002
new technologies, then the pressure to develop, adopt
• 2002 to 2012
and manufacture those products in India to suit the
• 2012 to now
market demands. We had even invested in a test track
Phase 1: Upto 2,002, we got the technology from a joint venture partner and focussed mostly on
in Chennai, developing some 200 acres of land with all the capabilities to certify ABS, etc. It was a huge investment and it had strong focus on development.
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Apart from developing a
We had to upgrade and develop the products to India
technology, you need to have
market.
the ability to deliver the
We are in a position today to develop products for
product to Indian market
global markets from here. It maybe mechanical
requirements at reasonable
products, as in our case. We have emerged as a Centre
cost.
of Excellence for mechanical products, from where we produce and release products for global markets. We are also a very key element of the global development
~ P Kanniappan, WABCO Limited
through software development, as Indians have become leaders in writing software, for even the most advanced Apart from developing a technology, you need to
global products. Now, we are moving to digital. India
have the ability to deliver the product to Indian market
can become a hero. There are huge opportunities. That
requirements at reasonable cost. We had to work on
has been the evolution.
frugal engineering design to see that technologies were implemented at price points, which the market would accept.
Mahesh:
Our
core
modes
of
technology
development are seeing a revolution. That cuts across all sectors of technology. Today, we talk of startups,
Phase 3: In the third phase from 2012, the
much more than having our own captive R&D. Even
commercial vehicle industry in India became more
many large industries want to interface with startups.
global. By then, many global people set up shops here
What sort of modes of engagement are we looking at,
and the focus was to align with the global technologies
looking into the future? What technologies are on the
and trends in terms of regulations, etc. ABS and
horizon that will cut across different technology
emission standards like Euro 4, Euro 6 were mandated.
spaces?
30
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Velusamy: In automobiles, there is a migration of internal combustion engines to electric vehicle. So there
We have in Google a lot of the
is a Battery Technology. Within the Battery Technology,
‘not invented here.’ But
there is a forward movement from nickel, manganese,
everything we build early on.
cobalt batteries to lithium ion battery, sodium ion batteries and solid-state batteries. So one team needs to constantly focus on battery. The government is
~ TT Ramgopal, Goolge
helping you to jumpstart the battery electric vehicle with reduced GST. Safety: The second focus in on safety. We have radars and cameras; the fusion of information that is
to watches to automobiles. The development cycle
coming from radar and camera is the need of the hour.
across all these is different. It takes 4 to 5 years to plan
For instance, during night time and foggy weather, the
a car and launch it with safety in place, whereas with
camera alone does not work. So the fusion system is
software, we push out updates every week. The
being developed at a fast rate. We also need to monitor
development methodology is so different.
the vehicle 360 degrees. That also helps autonomous driving and you are able to monitor the vehicle.
Google methodology is default to open. Android is a completely open source platform and we get
Infotainment: The third technology that's coming
tremendous contribution from the entire development
up in a big way is in the infotainment area- music
ecosystem, which gets integrated back into the Android.
systems, entertainment, gaming, bringing connectivity
Also since its open, we have people who are white hat
into the system, voice assistant, gesture control, text
hackers and who look at all the vulnerabilities and
conversion -you speak and it is converted to text and
point out what is broken, so we can continuously keep
the messages are sent to your relatives- vehicle-to-
fixing them.
vehicle
connectivity
and
vehicle-to-infrastructure
network connectivity.
The second thing is, we have in Google a lot of the ‘not invented here.’ But everything we build early on.
It is impossible for an OEM to develop all these
We had our own mail system and our own databases.
technologies simultaneously and you do not have the
The top 5 tech companies including Google have
bandwidth of R&D people to do this development. What
invested heavily in startups in India.
is more important is you need to know what the customer wants. There is no point in developing something that customer does not like. Then we can integrate with a network of Apps. Like what Google does, you can source the technology development from the public.
I was in India recently and impressed by concepts like Dunzo-getting things shipped from anywhere to anywhere, because people are mobile and there are hundreds of scooters. Such innovations are coming from markets like India. So, listening to your customer, figuring out their unique needs and being open are the
TTR: I have seen Android move from phones to TV
best ways to move forward.
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31 APR 2022
32
APR 2022
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Kanwal Sibal, India's former Ambassador to Russia, focuses on where the West went wrong, Putin's calculations, and how the world is shaping up to the new realities.
T
he global focus is moving back to Europe, but
of the Soviet Union, Russia actually wanted to become
in my view, in a negative way. The West failed
part of NATO. Even President Putin in his earlier years
to construct an inclusive, security architecture
of the presidency wanted that. He thought of himself
in Europe after the demise of the Soviet Union. There
as a European and Russia as a European country. But
were many promises made to former Soviet President
this was spurned by Europe. The Western and American
Gorbachev by a host of Western leaders that NATO will
point of view was that there was an opportunity to
not go an inch beyond East Germany. That was one of
permanently weaken Russia geopolitically. They
the political basis for the unification of Germany. This
thought it must not be missed when Russia was weak
narrative is sometimes contested because this promise
and is incapable of any response. They wanted to
was not written down. But Matlock, the former US
isolate it from Europe.
ambassador to Russia has confirmed that this promise was given by various leaders including the British. Eminent American scholars who dealt with Russia and the issues of NATO enlargement over the years, like George Kennan, Robert Gates and William Burns —today the CIA director—have been emphatically speaking against the East-West expansion of Europe and have characterized it as a grave error by the West, which would inevitably invite a Russian response. It also needs to be mentioned that after the demise
Interference and expansions They have been five expansions of NATO, in phases, since the demise of the Soviet Union. I was the Indian Ambassador in Russia when Putin at the Munich Security Conference in 2007 gave a very impassioned speech against the expansion of NATO. This was not heeded. In 2008, Georgia and Ukraine were offered membership of NATO. The Georgian President at that time, Saakashvili, thought he had some encouragement because of the offer of membership. So he tested the
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33 APR 2022
waters. The result was that Russia took military action
the General Secretary, to commemorate the 300th
and two separate Republics, which were historically not
anniversary of the treaty between the Czars and the
part
republics
Crimean Tatars, this territory was made part of Ukraine.
—Abkhazia and South Ossetia. These were recognized
But it was one country. It's like a reorganization of our
by Russia. So Russia had very clearly drawn a red line,
own states in 1956.
of
Georgia
became
independent
but this was ignored.
Then there is this issue between the Eastern
In 2014, Ukraine witnessed the Maidan protests,
Ukraine and Western Ukraine. The fact is that parts of
which resulted in the overthrow of Yanukovych, a
Western Ukraine, historically, have never been part of
legitimately elected president. The protest was openly
either Soviet Union or Russia. They've been part of the
supported by United States. The Assistant Secretary in the State Department at that time, Victoria Nuland, who is now the US under-secretary and is visiting India, distributed cookies to the Maidan protesters. That was gross interference in the internal affairs of another
linguistic divisions between
country.
Western Ukraine and Eastern
Ukraine: The eastern & western parts As a result, Russia annexed Crimea. Objectively speaking, Crimea has always been thought of as an integral part of Russia. In 1954, when former Soviet Union Premier Khrushchev, who was a Ukrainian, was 34
APR 2022
There are ethnic, religious and
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Ukraine. This is a fact of life.
Austro-Hungarian Empire or the Lithuanian Empire or part of Poland. They are Catholics. So there are ethnic,
After the Afghan fiasco, Biden
religious and linguistic divisions between Western
simply cannot accept another
Ukraine and Eastern Ukraine. This is a fact of life.
political and strategic defeat in Europe.
The Eastern Ukrainians are ethnically Russian or Russian-speaking. They identify themselves with Russia. That is the origin of the conflict in Donbas. The Ukrainian nationalists have been absolutely adamant not to yield an inch in terms of the constitutional amendment to respect the rights of the people of Donbas and recognise Russian language as a national language.
tried to deal with this peacefully for seven years. We've not been able to move forward on Donbas. Now, I will have to use force to make you listen to me." He made some draft proposals to the Americans. He didn't want
After 2014, after the annexation of Crimea, there were the Minsk agreements 1 and 2 which were brokered by France and Germany and which were ratified by the UN Security Council. For seven years,
to talk to the Europeans because his view is that the Europeans have no say in the matter. Putin’s proposals to be United States are:
these have not been implemented because the
•
No further enlargement of NATO
Ukrainian nationalist government is dead set against
•
No NATO deployment of forces or weapons in countries that joined NATO after 1997
it. One can understand them. Perhaps, they want to retain the entire territory as their Sovereign national
•
Consultative mechanism should be set up.
territory.
•
A hotline should be set up between the United States and Russia.
Stopping NATO
•
There
be
no
deployment
of
intermediate nuclear forces. (Incidentally, this
After that, in 2019, despite all this background, the
treaty has been reneged by the United States)
Ukrainian Parliament decided to make a constitutional amendment and apply for membership of NATO and
should
•
No NATO military activity in Ukraine or
EU as part of their Constitution. Because of the
Eastern Europe in the Caucasus and Central
annexation of Crimea, the West decided to start arming
Asia
Ukraine
and
training
their
army.
The
British
•
Nuclear weapons should be only on the
Ambassador said on television that their special forces
national territory of countries. In other words.
have trained 16,000 Ukrainian military personnel. Lots
The United States should move out their
of arms have gone into Ukraine. In fact, without Ukraine
nuclear weapons from Europe.
being a de-facto NATO member, it is being treated as a member of NATO.
We can understand that the United States would have never accepted the totality of these demands or
Putin said, "I have been opposing the expansion of NATO over the years. You never listened to me. I have
even the core of these demands. So United States said, , 'Well, in terms of strategic stability, which means
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35 APR 2022
Putin dreams of creating a Slavic empire.
Peter Rimmele Resident representative to India Konrad‐Adenauer‐Stiftung
R
ussia’s invasion of Ukraine is a
opportunity to a ack India.
The
crea ng a Slavic empire on the scale of
clear breach of interna onal
possibility of Ukraine becoming a NATO
the former Soviet Union. If Pu n
laws. I can compare the
member one day and threatening
succeeds in this coup, the inhabitants of
present stand taken by Russia to that of
Russia’s naval base at Sebastopol in the
the Bal c countries of Estonia, Latvia,
the US in the Cuban missile crisis, when
Black Sea was Russia’s concern; but their
and Lithuania and also Moldova fear
it threatened other na ons not to play
ac on is totally unacceptable. The end
that they will be the next in line. NATO
in the US courtyard. During the 1962
does not jus fy the means. First, they
has always acted with prudence and
Cuban missile crisis when the world’s
invaded Crimea and now they have
there will be no direct interven on by
a en on was diverted, China used the
a acked Ukraine. Pu n dreams of
NATO in the present crisis.
positioning of strike weapons in Eastern Europe and all
Slovakia would have never accepted this kind of a
that,
fresh
compromise. On both sides, for whatever reasons,
disarmament agreements but there is no question of
inevitably, it was leading to an inexorable conflict on
denying NATO membership to Ukraine because NATO
the ground.
we
can
negotiate
and
have
some
will continue to follow an open-door policy.'
Making Putin a villain
Also, after the Afghan fiasco, Biden simply cannot accept another political and strategic defeat in Europe. The transatlantic alliance is vital for the Americans and Europeans. If Biden demonstrated his helplessness in yielding to Russia's demands, his presidency will be virtually finished. So one can understand the reasons of US refusing to accept Russia’s proposals. Leave alone the United States, even the Baltic states, Poland and 36
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The US-Russia relations have been full of tensions for a long time. It's nothing new. Obama was extremely dismissive of Russia. He said the US was facing three problems: terrorism, Ebola and Russia. He demeaned Russia and a host of sanctions were imposed on Russia. Trump followed suit despite his efforts to find some kind of a position of dialogue with Russia. But because
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Putin had been demonised for long. All sorts of things are
dealing with someone of Putin's stature. Now there is much more supply of arms. There's a
being said about him. The
lot of encouragement being given to the Zelensky, who's
Russian leadership is convinced
a comedian-turned-President. He is now demonstrating
that the West wants regime
how successful he is in theatrics on the international
change in Russia.
stage. He keeps changing his mind every day. The West is building him up as a hero. He speaks to the US Senate, European Parliament, German Bundestag and British Parliament. They all encourage him.
of many toxic issues in US domestically, he couldn't do that. Also, in order to prove that Russia had not helped
This is not the way to find a negotiated solution;
him anything in the elections, he also imposed
you are encouraging a man who's a puppet in the hands
sanctions on Russia, on the ground that there have been
of forces he can't control. But since he is a damn good
Russian interference in US elections. The Democrats
actor and he won the election on the basis of his
think that they lost four years of governance because
theatrics, he has been able to mobilize a lot of
of Russia's interference in US elections. Especially
sympathy and support as a man who stands against
Blinken and Nuland will not forget this.
Russia.
Putin had been demonised for long. All sorts of
As a result of this, Germany has shut down for the
things are being said about him. The Russian leadership
time being the Nord Stream after resisting initially,
is convinced that the West wants regime change in
which I thought was very honourable. They have now
Russia. It is very clear to my mind that though not
been compelled and pressured to supply even arms to
necessarily realizable, this is the ambition of the West,
Ukraine. I think with the increased defence budget,
just as they brought about regime change in Ukraine.
they'll buy F35 from United States. The US Defence
They thought that if Ukraine became a very successful
Industry, of course, will be delighted.
democratic experiment, then the Liberals and the
The question of refugees is very legitimate and
Europeans in Russia would get encouraged. That is the
unfortunate. There is a lot of sympathy, not only in
reason why Navalny, who is a nobody, is lionised as if
Europe but elsewhere because already 3.5 million
he is the core of opposition in Russia that can
refugees have entered Poland and other countries and
destabilize the regime. The matter has been taken to
if the Germans receive 8 million as they expect, that
the United Nations Security Council, the UN General
will really be a disaster for the European economy.
Assembly and the UN Human Rights Commission.
One‐sided coverage on media
Hitting a low in diplomacy
The other point I want to mention is that what we
It is unfortunate that diplomatic norms have been
see is real NATO standard information war that is being
breached. You can't call a Head of State—like President
conducted. It is totally one-sided. It is so unfortunate
Biden did—a war criminal. You're closing the doors of
that our own TV channels and mainstream press have
any dialogue if you descend to this level, in terms of BUSINESS MANDATE
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fallen prey to it. There is simply no balance in
reporting. This is a lesson for us, in the future.
The UNGA doesn't reflect global opinion. There is pressure on countries to say 'yes' to
A lot of the fault lies on the Russian side. Everything they say is in Russian language. Nobody
sanctions. But most of the
understands the Russian language. They don't have any
world is not behind these
agencies which set out well-crafted English-language
sanctions.
reports, which can be reproduced. So all the news that we get is from western agencies, western leadership and social media. It is very easy to cut and paste these things into our mainstream national press and all of us begin to believe them, because there is a reality on the ground of bombing or infrastructure being destroyed.
situation where potentially, there could be a Third World War and rest of the world will suffer. The damage to the world economy will be immense. Already, a lot of pressure is being built up. The
Will the Russians succeed?
sanctions have been really unprecedented. The oil
I don't believe that the Russian military has got
prices shot up to $140 at one time. Every single dollar
stalled or they overestimated themselves. Their aim is
increase in oil price adds half a billion dollars to our
to secure the Donbas region, secure the Black Sea Coast,
oil bill. This is true of all the oil importing countries.
make
Ukraine
landlocked
and
bring
Ukraine
economically down on its knees. Ukraine is the biggest country in Europe with 200,000 troops. You cannot control the whole of Ukraine and Russia is very careful. They don't want to go to the Western Ukraine. Besides overstretching themselves, they don't want to go close to NATO because some mistake can be committed somewhere in the heat of the battle and then the whole thing can become conflagrated into something bigger. Russia is achieving their objectives. Maybe, it is slower than what they thought. Maybe they've suffered casualties. But to say that they will not prevail is more wishful thinking than anything else.
There is now great fear about potential famine in West Asia and especially in Africa, because both Russia and Ukraine are major exporters of wheat. Now wheat trade will get disrupted.
"The UNGA doesn't reflect global opinion" We talked about the rule of law but how can the sanctions, which are not approved by the United Nations, come into effect? They talk of pursuing international law or rules-based order. On what rules are these sanctions based? If it was UN approved, it is fine. India will abide by them because it's our obligation under the UN Charter. Otherwise, what obligation do
The global impact
we have, especially as the sanctions hurt us?
The world has suffered already a great deal because
The UNGA doesn't reflect global opinion. There is
of the urges for war in Europe. We've had two World
pressure on countries to say 'yes' to sanctions. But most
Wars, both of which are essentially European wars. They
of the world is not behind these sanctions. I would also
call it World War because of their colonies everywhere
say that the arguments that are given by the West are
but they're European Wars. Now you are creating a
contestable.
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Ukraine Crisis: Is Global Focus Moving back to Europe?”: The conclave was followed by a discussion on the topic by experts such as Dr.Stanly Johny (The Hindu), Peter Rimmele (KAS), Kanwal Sibal (former Ambassador to Russia), Lt. Gen. SL Narasimhan (Member, National Security Advisory Board‐India), Ms. Tara Kartha (Distinguished Fellow, IPCS), Nandan Unnikrishnan (ORF), and Pankaj Madan (KAS).
They say that Ukraine cannot be denied the choice of becoming a NATO member as if when Ukraine makes a decision, all other countries are bound by that choice. The other countries also have a choice. They have to judge the entirety of the situation before they accept the choice made by X, Y or Z. We also know from realpolitik that the choice can be engineered.
Washington Post, The Economist or the Independent are not biased against us. There is talk of borders in Europe getting changed, quite forgetting that Yugoslavia doesn't cease to exist. It has been broken up into several states. Most of them have become members of NATO. It happened in Europe.
The double standards are very clear. After all, it's not the first time that another country has intervened against the sovereign country. We've had Iraq, Libya, Syria and Afghanistan. We have seen destruction of infrastructure and civilian casualties and refugees in much larger numbers. Freedom of expression is a core value of the West.
Another concern is what if Russia wants to create a sphere of influence? The counter to that is what if the extension of NATO or EU happens? Doesn't that create a sphere of influence for the Europeans and the United States? So all these arguments are very debatable.
Two decades of Putin
But they have banned Russia Today and Sputnik news.
Putin has been in power for 22 years. He acted in
Why? Let the people have access to other views. If you
2008 in Georgia, in 2014 in Ukraine and once again in
say it is state-controlled media, so is BBC. If you think
2022 in Ukraine. He intervened in Syria to prevent a
that state-controlled media gives you biased news, I
regime change, intervened in Belarus, again to prevent
don't know if you think that BBC, New York Times,
the regime change, rightly or wrongly. He intervened
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in Kazakhstan recently at the request of its President. He intervened in Armenia in the conflict between
India's position on this has been
Azerbaijan and Armenia, but other than these, he has
criticized, that we are being
not intervened in areas, thousands of miles away, which
neutral; that we have abstained
pose no direct security threat to them.
in the UN Security Council and UN General Assembly. If you
India’s stand and our national interests
look carefully, our statements
India's position on this has been criticized, that we
are muted, no doubt.
are being neutral; that we have abstained in the UN Security Council and UN General Assembly. If you look carefully, our statements are muted, no doubt. They are understated but they're all critical of what Russia has done.
brownie points. Our abstention causes no harm to the security of the United States, but our condemnation of
We talked about the UN Charter, respect for sovereignty and respect for territorial integrity, but the focus is on abstention. Why did we abstain now? Our position is very difficult because our ties with the
Russia will directly cause threats to our security. Therefore, we have to weigh these two options.
India‐Russia‐China: The triangular balance
United States are very close. And they will, in course of
In the context of the ties between Russians and
time even become closer. In fact, US is the most vital
Chinese becoming closer and closer, there is a big
partner in terms of India's technology modernization,
problem for us because the triangular balance between
management best practices and investment. They also
India, Russia and China is getting destabilized in favour
supply us high-end weapons, which are very necessary
of China. Russia still values its relationship with us. It's
for maritime security. So there's a whole range of
important for them to have us on their side. But if we
domains in which India is now dependent on the United
go against them, then our ability to maintain some kind
States. But there are also some critical domains in
of Russian stakes in this triangular equation will
which we are dependent on Russia. About 60 to 70
become weaker and weaker and that will add to our
percent of our defence platforms are Russian.
security threats. In fact it will weaken our security. We
In the UN Security Council or in other forums, if we keep voting against Russia and keep condemning it, it
are not fence-sitting. We are only protecting our national interests.
will mean a breakdown of our relations with Russia.
As a result of this crisis, US, Europe and Russia will
With the 15,000 Chinese troops sitting at the border
become weakened and China will emerge stronger. The
and if Russia starts slowing down spares or servicing
US arms companies have benefitted from the war. That
or ammunition, what will be the state of our defence
US is now counting on China to isolate Russia and it
preparedness? Any responsible government has to
shows its weakness. Nuclear weapons do not give a
weigh this and not simply satisfy the Americans or
nation security but atmanirbhar can.
anybody else, by voting with them and score some 40
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41 APR 2022
Dr Suresh Ramanathan, Dean & Principal, Great Lakes Institute of Management, in conversation with Mr T T Ramgopal ‐ Global Head, Android Partner Engi‐ neering, Google.
Dr Suresh Ramanathan: Companies like RCA, Kodak and RadioShack were behemoths in their own right, at one point in time. Yet they seem to have lost their way and some have even receded into the annals of history. What gives Google the longevity that it enjoys right now? TTR: The companies that you mentioned were around for 100 years. They have been through World Wars, multiple depressions and so on. Google is 22 or 23 years old and it is just a young adult. So I cannot compare Google with those companies. However, if you look at Google in the technology timeframe, I would say it has done really well. We have an approach of launch and iterate.
the creation of a tech centric product. When we launched it, it had a lot of errors and bugs in it and over the years, we constantly reiterated and made it a much better product. Similarly Chrome. The world didn't need another browser. This is something that Sundar Pitchai had actively worked on and we have over a billion users today for Gmail and Chrome.
The strength of analytics The other aspect is our analytics. We look at data very closely and see how products are performing and where the issues are. We have built a very robust analytics background into it. We had a product called
Why did we create Gmail, when it was just another
Google video. It was a very early version, where people
email product? A few engineers said they found it
could load some videos and share them but it was very
difficult to understand conversations and how they tied
clunky and there was not much adoption at all.
to each other and that it would be nice if they were clustered together. The second issue was storage. We built this big cloud with a lot of storage, so you don’t have to constantly delete emails because you run out of space on your local machine. Some of these led to 42
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We found a start-up ‘YouTube’ did well in this. We paid what seemed then a huge price to pay to acquire YouTube and now we have billions of views every day, with thousands of hours of videos being uploaded every minute. The analytics informed us that our own
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product was not working. So we had no fear in acquiring and replacing that.
Fail well
We bet on technical insights. Google's overarching mission is,
The third, we fail well and fail fast. When we sunset
to organize the world's
a product, there is this sunk cost fallacy. Teams and
information and make it
users get disrupted, yet we haven't shied away from doing it. Picasa, the photo sharing app is no longer
universally accessible and
there but Google photos is there. It took a lot of efforts
useful.
to transition users from one to the other. We put a lot of time and effort to make sure we don't hurt the end users but we are not afraid of making some of the bold changes.
From our side, it was a very risky move because most
If you don't cannibalize yourself, somebody else will. When I first came to head the Google ads business in India, we noticed there were a lot of advertisers who were not logging into their ads account for a year but were spending every month. This was not giving them any returns at all. So I thought why we should be taking money from them. We contacted them and told them they were spending this money without any benefit.
companies would not even touch their holy cow revenues coming in. Many of our advertisers were very happy that we told them about it and shut the accounts down. Others were very happy that they learned about it and spent more time, optimizing their ads campaign. So we ended up at the same level or better.
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Think 10X The last one, we encourage everybody to think 10X. Think big, think of big problems, think of radical
solutions and think about breakthrough technology.
The DNA of the company is very much engineering driven. A lot of our investments go into
We have a self-driving car. Google is not a car
R&D.
company but there are millions of people who are unable to drive because they are either physically challenged or really old and very constrained. We wanted to solve this problem. We have machine learning and we have a great vision. We asked: can we do this in a scale? Now, the Google cars have driven millions of miles. We have solved some of the hard problems through technology and some of it through analytics. We studied and found out that 53% accidents happen when people make a left turn (in India, when you make a right turn). We had to spend a lot of time on how to optimize that user journey. So we constantly
Computing. We invest heavily in them. However, there are companies like Amazon that are highly customer focussed. For a company like Google to work, we have a few fundamental things. We invest in building scalable platforms. We bet on technical insights. Google's overarching mission is, to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and
cannibalise, check, iterate and launch.
useful. It's a fairly straightforward mission. But that means a lot of things to a lot of people. Companies like Netflix, for example, were prepared to disrupt themselves before someone else came in and disrupted them. What is Google's approach about innovation? Large companies typically tend to innovate by listening to its existing customers or potential customers. Invariably, the type of innovation that happens tends to be sustaining or incremental, trying to improve an existing product to such a point that it exceeds customer needs. In Google, do you listen to your customers or to your engineers? Google is first and foremost an engineering driven company. It has a highly engineering culture. The first several hundred hires at Google were all engineers. The DNA of the company is very much engineering driven. A lot of our investments go into R&D. Fundamental engineering work takes up a lot of the investment—be it in the cloud, building the open-source Android platform or creating text-to-speech or speech-to-text technology 44
APR 2022
or
AI/ML
technology
or
Quantum
The user-led innovation can come from anywhere. There are 400 million people who are hearing impaired. It is a very big disadvantage for them. Not more than about 20% of them can afford to have training, go to a university, learn sign language and get hearing aids. Among the rest of the population, very few people know how to use the sign language and communicate with them.
User‐led innovation We have an engineer by name Dmitri who went deaf at an early age. He worked in the speech research team. We have the Android phone which is available all over the world. We have speech-to-text engine and multilanguage support. A group of folks figured out how they can build a product that can help Dmitri. It was
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not a top-down. We don't have an innovation officer. A
Android ecosystem that has 3.5 billion users. We had
bunch of people organically created and built a
amazing phones from Palm and Nokia. The Symbian
prototype. Once it was validated, that team got
Nokia phone was well ahead of an Android phone. By
investments to make this a legitimate product. It's
the way, iOS produces some amazing products. I also
called Live Transcribe and it's freely available in 50
use an iPhone though I'm an Android Developer. So I
languages. It gives deaf people an opportunity to be
am well aware of both the products.
more empowered.
The fundamental thing we have in Android is we want to make it easy for developers who can write one
Now there is a battle for standards; in other words, one who drives the dominant standard in the whole technology ecosystem matters a lot. For example, Blu‐ray versus HD DVD—Blu‐ray became the dominant player. We have Q‐ LED from Samsung vs. OLED from LG. Over time, one standard becomes the dominant standard around the world. Yet we see this very interesting divide in the world, where in the rest of the world Android probably dominates 72% and iOS has 28%. In the US, it has flipped around with iOS being 59% and Android about 41%. How does Android manage to fight this battle of standards? The question isn't so much about standards because iOS / Apple is a closed ecosystem. Everything is vertically integrated from the chips that they make, all the way to the iOS software. Then we have the
application and it will run on any phone from any manufacturer, whether it's a 35$ phone or 1300$ phone. Of course, the performance may be different across those devices. We had the Symbian and Microsoft Office, and each platform was different. The developers had to build an app for each of those platforms and maintain them. They had to pay for the license. With Android, we have it as open source. Anyone who wants to use it can use it. We have also put Google applications on it. The developers follow API compatibility. This also allows innovation to happen. Many OEMs are developing
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products based on Android. Thus, Android became
really big.
The cell phone market is highly commoditised. The margins are
Supporting the OEMs
very low. So to distinguish their
There is also a healthy competition between all
products, the phone makers
these OEMs because each of them wants to have a
have a better camera, better
better camera or a better screen. Android supports that.
user experience or better
The OEMs add their own secret sauce on top of it. So
sharing.
that's how Android has succeeded. There's a lot more of work that goes behind it. My team has to work with over 400 OEMs building devices and also chip makers like Qualcomm and Mediatek. It's a huge ecosystem and it is very complicated trying to get everybody to move in one direction. iPhone has it easy compared to us because of their one unified approach in one thing alone. Every year, we try to corral this ecosystem and make it move forward. It has been a very challenging but interesting journey.
framework and to the UI in order to smoothly transition the home screen as it expanded. It was very difficult and they have big demands on the Android engineering team to support them. Chinese OEMs came out with different demands. You use the three-button navigation on your Android phone. But a Chinese OEM had the gesture navigation.
At least four years before the iPad was launched, Microsoft had the technology for a device on which you could write with your fingers and flip pages. I've taught a Harvard case based on that. Microsoft chose to market that device as a laptop plus an additional feature, as they had existing relations with Compaq, Fujitsu and others. Apple was not constrained by any such things. Today your grandmother can play Candy Crush on the iPad. How does Google manage to get the cell phone manufacturers and others to think about innovation at the cutting edge rather than simply doing incremental stuff?
You can the flip it back and forth and up and down. I told the OEM when I met them in Hong Kong that such demands would completely break the developer ecosystem. They didn't listen. They went ahead and launched it in China. We came back with a lot of data that this was working. Now we have adopted this as part of the platform and you have a choice when you set up your phone whether you want to use gesture navigation or the three-button navigation.
In Android ecosystem, innovation has been happening not from within but from outside. The cell phone market is highly commoditised. The margins are very low. So to distinguish their products, the phone makers have a better camera, better user experience or
Does enough innovation reach the bottom of the pyramid? Are underdeveloped worlds and underdeveloped economies getting the benefit of the developments? This is a question that needs to be addressed.
better sharing. It is either hardware or software
We have Android phones with a low cost to a very
improvement. A year before, there was a company that
high cost. We have 2 GB RAM phone or a 16 GB RAM.
had a rollable product. It wasn't a foldable one. You can
The performance differs. We have invested a lot to
roll it in and out. We had to do a lot of changes to the
make sure the operating system works well in the low
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several immersive weeks with the users of the phones
If you build for India, you can
to observe and understand how they used them. One
build for the rest of the world.
of them went to a family who was a daily wage earner.
Though data is cheap in India,
The children were sent to school. The mother and
we have connectivity issues
father were not literate. They did not know what the
here. So we have eliminated a
teachers wanted their children to do. We created an app
lot of dependency on the cloud and created ‘on device‐AI/ML’
called ‘Bolo.’ When the child reads out the lesson, the app will detect if every word is read out correctly. We also have an app called Google Lens for text
model.
recognition from a camera image.
The phone can
convert the text to voice. With this, a mother can scan the progress card of her child and the app will convert end phones too. The other part is the apps. We have studied the use cases to make useful apps work in lower end phones also. For maps and YouTube, we have light weight apps called Maps Go and YouTube Go. We have done a lot of work to make the apps work in the local market. Like I said earlier, if you build for India, you can build for the rest of the world. Though data is cheap in India, we have connectivity issues here. So we
it to voice, so she can know about the marks scored by her child in every subject. People can use it for a variety of applications like reading a train time table or reading a bus number. We launched a phone called Jio Phone Next. In that, you can launch the camera and walk around the world and experience whatever is written by selecting your preferred language. The phone will read out to you whatever is written.
have eliminated a lot of dependency on the cloud and created ‘on device-AI/ML’ model.
Tell us about the culture at Google. What makes it tick?
Many users have language and literacy problems
I am reminded of a Peter Drucker’s quote that
and they have difficulty in operating the phone and
culture eats strategy for breakfast. I have been with
understanding the messages. If we can use voice to
Google for 15+ years. When I joined, we had 8000
operate, that will be very easier for such people. So we
people. Now we have 160,000. The company has grown
voice-enabled the entire phone. Today, smartphone has
twenty fold. Obviously, culture changes and it evolves.
become a super computer and people use to make
Yet, fundamentally certain things remain the same.
payments and do many other transactions. Security of transaction is therefore very important. So we have
•
We have a fairly unique and democratic hiring
made sure with the OEMs that security updates are available to all the users at least once a quarter, so that privacy and security are not limited only to the rich but to everybody.
process. We don’t look at just deep technical knowledge. We also want to make sure that those who join us are adaptable, have team management and leadership skills. Can I sit with
A bunch of passionate Googlers went out and spent BUSINESS MANDATE
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and
make
an
interesting
conversation?
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We have a panel that looks at these things
Android had created huge problem and my
quite objectively. The recommendation of the
inbox was flooded with emails. 300 million
panel goes to a hiring committee. It slows
users could not use their phones. It was quite
down the process but we take the recruitment
a disaster and we gracefully recovered within
process very seriously.
24 hours. Instead of firing the few people who
•
We also look at D&I.
set the wrong configuration, we had a
•
We set stretch goals to our engineering team
blameless post mortem to figure out what we
also. What is important for us in not what you
learnt from it. We improved the processes.
do but how you do it.
The person who messed it up had, in fact,
•
Team dynamics is very important.
helped us to fix it. We have open hierarchy.
•
By default, we are very open. Our software and
•
•
48
Every week, I have certain non-office hours
promotions are all peer-reviewed. People can
where any employee can discuss anything that
nominate themselves for a promotion. It goes
he/she wants to discuss. We expose people to
through a committee that evaluates their
this culture from the time we hire them. We
performance. We also have peer feedback.
also listen to them as they come with
Take action and beg for forgiveness if
different perspective. We even encourage
something goes wrong. Last year, during
them to tell us what is wrong with us.
Covid, one of the updates we had done to the
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•
All these make Google’s culture a different one.
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How can emotions and emotional coping influence our lives? To understand this, we must know a little bit about what happens in the brain. Excerpts from a talk by Dr Prithika Chary.
W
hen we are faced with our feelings,
important is personal and interpersonal stress. Today,
emotions, thoughts and various bodily
due to increased uncertainty and unpredictability, we
painful conditions, there is something
are not sure if we are doing the right thing and thinking
known as social feeling which is very important for our
the right way about people and situations. This causes
well-being, because man is a social animal. We were not
a lot of interference in our emotional stability.
created to live by ourselves in isolation, though the
Linguistics is also very important. The language of self-
pandemic has actually pushed us into an unreal
talk and the language we use with each other can also
situation like that. Social feelings come from various
influence social feelings tremendously. The body
influences in our life. Affiliation is when we associate
language plays a role and it is just an expression of our
with somebody who is doing something similar to us.
attitude.
When we are children, our parents, teachers and society influence the way we look at society and move with
The sensory‐neural‐emotion connection
others. There are moral sentiments which we learn and
There is a connection between our five senses and
absorb and which gets into our belief system. A lot of
the brain. The brain consists of three distinct portions:
this is influenced by several neurotransmitters, which
the rational brain, emotional brain (limbic system) and
influence our mood. In today's world, our social feelings
survival (reptilian) brain. The rational brain is at the
are being influenced to a great deal by social media.
prefrontal cortex; the limbic system is in the middle.
Social feelings involve emotional communication. When people have psychiatric conditions, these social feelings get altered and run amok. So things change in the way people behave in society. But what is more 50
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The reptilian brain is the earliest brain that we had and it is at the lower portion of the brain called the brain stem.
It performs all the survival and automatic
functions like maintaining BP, pulse and temperature.
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The rational and emotional brains got evolved as humans grew from ancient ages. The limbic system or the emotional brain can influence the survival brain.
When the rational brain doesn't
From the rational brain or neo-cortex come the speech,
get a chance to override the
language, rationalisation and intellectualisation.
amygdala, it is called the
So
when we speak about emotion, it is not an isolated
amygdala hijack. We start
thing happening in one part of the brain.
having unreasonable fears and
All these parts of the brain participate in the
live with those fears, without
sensory-neural-emotion connection. So when I see, hear,
allowing our rational brain to
taste, smell or touch something, it gets connected to
bring in some kind of meaning
my emotional state and it is influenced by my cognition
or sense.
and rational brain as well. Thus, it is a very complex system and we cannot really separate them out. There is a tremendous link between the spirit, mind, brain, body, immune system and the endocrine system, which is the glandular system.
like anger, sadness, elation, disgust, sexual arousal and anxiety. Also, it is responsible for some bodily sensations. There is a close relationship between
The mind‐body puzzle
emotion and our bodily sensations. Visceral sensations
There is a small part of the brain called the insula, which is the feeling side of emotions. It is responsible for our very complex internal sensations or feelings
like pain, temperature, fatigue, itch, pressure and tension are linked to the small area called the insula. Both physical pain and emotional pain are processed
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51 APR 2022
very similarly in the brain. So if you have an emotional
to be afraid of. That stimulates a physiological reaction.
disturbance, you can have a pain in any part of your
When we are faced with a challenge, our first response
body. We all know that sometimes there is no clear
is actually not a response. It's a reaction at the level of
reason for our itching or conditions like psoriasis while
the amygdala. The upper brain called the prefrontal
we may actually be going through emotional stress.
cortex gives a proactive response which will override
The body is a reflection of many of our emotions. For instance, the perception of fear can happen in two ways. There is an emotional stimulus when you see a snake. You are afraid of the snake and the fear can
the reactive response and say, ‘Look, you're only looking at the snake. It is not biting you. So don't be afraid.’ Or, ‘It is only a picture of a snake. It is not going to cause you any harm.’
cause a physiological reaction in your skin where you
When the rational brain doesn't get a chance to
get gooseflesh. Your heart rate and breathing go up.
override the amygdala, it is called the amygdala hijack.
The sight of the snake works on the rational brain as a
We start having unreasonable fears and live with those
perception of fear.
fears, without allowing our rational brain to bring in some kind of meaning or sense.
Amygdala hijack It can work in another way. It goes first to your emotional brain or the amygdala, which is the fear centre or the rage centre. It is the centre for many emotions. Then you have an implicit memory from some time ago, when you learnt that snakes are dangerous. It processes and says a snake is something 52
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There's a sensory system through which you perceive the threat. There's fear in the amygdala and you have fear responses. You get into fear behaviour and physiological responses. There is also a defensive survival circuit. When you activate that, it also goes to the amygdala and you build up your defences. If there's
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brain, the primitive brain and the limbic system - all of which get activated. They create a lot of responses in
You can emotionally modulate pain and there is a brain circuit for that. That is where the
the brain. Also, when you are very proud of your team’s achievement, different parts of the brain, mainly the rational brain get activated. We have the sensory system, the hearing system and the medial prefrontal
toolbox comes into play.
cortex which is associated with a sense of achievement. Both emotions and cognition can influence pain; and pain in turn can influence fatigue, anxiety, can create psychiatric disorders like anxiety, depression, irritability and relationship difficulties. All these are
a fire in the room suddenly, we don't wait for the
cognitive and emotional effects of pain. The two are
rational brain to say, ‘get up and run.’ The primitive
intimately related in a vice-versa kind of manner.
brain and the amygdala will make you to see the fire,
You can emotionally modulate pain and there is a
get up and run. Then you will see where to run, how to
brain circuit for that. That is where the toolbox comes
run and through which door.
into play. When you put a toolbox into action, you will
All that comes
afterwards.
find that you can increase or decrease the experience
The role of the amygdala - the reactive and
of the pain and the emotion being experienced.
primitive brain - is to keep us safe. That is the primary
Empathy for another person's pain, can increase your
function of the brain. The brain is meant to keep you
own pain. If you can reduce pain by distraction,
comfortable and safe. This is the reason when you want
emotional pain can be more bearable. This is where the
to challenge yourself, they ask you to come out of your
toolbox greatly helps.
comfort zone. Otherwise, you're going to be sitting
Also, if you just anticipate that you're going to feel
there, fearing everything around you and not becoming
better and you're going to get relief, it activates what
your true self.
is called the opioid system in the brain, which is the
The emotional circuit
natural painkiller system of the brain. It can reduce both emotional and physical pain.
In the emotional circuit, the stimulus goes to the thalamus, from there to the amygdala and to other
The way we respond
parts of the brain. It goes to the front of the brain and
There are many ways in which we respond when
activates the automatic nervous system. It activates the
we undergo a challenge - emotional or physical. We can
emotional response and also the glandular system. So
be in a problem solving mode; we have the efficiency
you can see that an emotional circuit is so complex.
to solve the problem. Otherwise we get into a coping
When you empathize with an emotional scene from
mode. We are able to emotionally cope, though we still
a movie, there are areas of your brain like the parietal
don't have the solution to the problem. We can get into
cortex, part of the insula, another part in the lower
a hedonic disengagement mode where the problem
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solving thing doesn't exist at all. We just disengage
There are tons of books which tell you about
from it. Or we can pretend the problem is not there at
mastering your emotions.
all.
understand the problem, the answer itself is there and The worst form, which many of us succumb to is,
we don't attempt to solve the problem and we become totally helpless. We have no efficiency or we cope in a negative way. It worsens the situation. The other method is that we get preoccupied with the problem. That becomes our be-all and end-all for all our activities. So these are many ways in which we respond,
But if we can really
it will come out of the problem. It is not separate from the problem.
The 4 element toolbox One of the tool boxes has 4 elements: Resilience, Play, Get it out and Relax. Resilience: Physically move your body when you have an emotional stress and you can change the state
when faced with a challenge. It has been shown with heat or thermal maps that emotions can get trapped in the body. The brighter the colour, the more energetic is that emotion being
of your emotion. Do any form of exercise. Try jumping jacks. Go for a walk, dance, jump rope or go on a bike ride.
trapped in the body. Happiness and love are high-
Play: Play with your emotion by being creative, by
energy emotions. They involve the whole body and
diverting it and applying it in some other activity. You
make you feel really good. Sadness and depression
can play an instrument, paint, do some crafts, sing
cause low energy. This has been established and proven
loudly and work on creating something beautiful.
scientifically, which is why in some mindfulness and meditation exercises, they ask you that if you are thinking about a pain, to see where the pain appears in your body, so you can isolate it.
Get it out: Just give vent to it and let off steam. There are certain places in Japan where they keep posting plates. If you angry with your boss, put a picture of your boss there and throw a plate against it
There are many ways in which we cope emotionally and some of them are: • Walk away • Say, ‘It's okay; I can manage.’ • Have a toolbox • Feel that everything is safe; it doesn't matter.
Relaxation tools are activities to
• Ask for help
calm you down. They help you
• Change the way we talk about it
to slowly release the pent‐up,
• Take deep breaths
high emotional energy.
• Laugh • Spend some quiet time. • Listen to advice from somebody • Distance yourselves from the problem.
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The yellow zone is to slow them down. If they are violent and agitated, they can go to red zone to stop
such behaviour. The child will choose to go to these
For the children, we have physical tools, relaxation tools, thinking tools, social tools and
zones or the parent or teacher can guide the children. We have to mimic this whole thing when we as adults want to cope. There are rooms called Snoezelen
some special tools.
multi-sensory environment rooms. There will be some pleasant smell and music, which you can manipulate. You can watch things slowly move up and down which relaxes you. There will be play of colours and lights. In your own home, find a nook or a small area. Create and break it. You can gather stuff to smash or use a
your own emotional toolbox and keep it there. It could
punching bag. Some people scream and that is scream
be in your veranda or a place which makes you feel
therapy.
really good, comfortable, loved and cherished. You can
Relax:
You can do meditation. Use visualization.
Play with your pet, cuddle your child, take a deep breath.
design it in pastel colours and ensure that it has just the right amount of light and air. This must be an area where you can go to, when you feel emotionally stressed.
It is possible to trap painful emotions in our body. Is there an emotional muscle memory? We don't have
Emotional Toolbox
clear scientific proof of that. But when you undergo a
For the children, we have physical tools, relaxation
massage and osteopathic treatment, you feel better. So,
tools, thinking tools, social tools and some special
it is believed that emotional muscle memory is real.
tools. Inappropriate tools like a knife and scissors should not be kept in a toolbox.
The 4 coloured zones The first thing that we have to do when we want to set up an emotional coping toolbox is to have a safe area where we can give vent to some of the coping mechanisms and take advantage of that. This whole process actually started for special children who are hyperactive, angry and violent. To help the teachers and parents to manage these children, in the kindergarten or classroom, they have four coloured zones- Blue, Green, Yellow and Red. The rest area is blue zone. If the child wants to rest, he or she can go to the blue zone. In the green zone, they can find an activity to do, if they are very agitated and hyperactive.
Physical tools are those that will help you to let off steam, get your blood circulating, get your heart rate higher or release your energy. This is why you feel better when you throw something or break something when you're angry or frustrated. But in our own zone, we do it with intention and without secondary or collateral damage. So you can exercise, dance, run, cycle, do jumping jacks, push-ups, scream therapy, punch a bag, kick a ball or throw a ball. If, for instance, dancing is one of your outlets for a physical tool, then keep some music generating thing inside the tool box so that you can access it straight away. If you like
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playing ball or dancing or exercising, keep whatever you need for doing that in the toolbox itself. We do with children as well. Relaxation tools are activities to calm you down. They help you to slowly release the pent-up, high
There is something called as the 5, 4,3,2,1 sensory activity. When
emotional energy. The simplest and easiest thing is
you're much stressed, sit down
listening to soothing music. You can have a spa experience, a massage or a relaxing bath. You can do
quietly. Look around the room
a repetitive activity like mandala drawing, zen garden
for 5 things which catch your
drawing or do colouring book. You can draw patterns
attention...
on the sand. You can de-clutter your wardrobe. You can play an instrument, take out photos and pictures that activate happy memories. You can put all these things into the toolbox. relative. Keep all their phone numbers in a book inside Don't try to meditate when you are in this high
your toolbox, so you know, whom to call and get their
arousal state. If you really need to try, sit absolutely
number straightaway. Don't keep it somewhere where
quiet in silence, without moving, for just a few minutes.
you have to go and search. If you have a therapist, go
Just that pause itself will help you to calm down. Then
for a therapy session. Invite a friend for a meal. You'll
there are social tools where you use the support of
be so preoccupied in getting the meal ready and
others to manage your feelings. You call a friend or
freshening up the house for the guest, that your own
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The self‐soothing activities are
your attention to do something engaging. This differs for all of us. It may be arts, craft, gardening, knitting,
all related to your sensations.
crochet, embroidery, Sudoku, crossword puzzle or
You can touch a stuffed animal
jigsaw puzzle.
or a stress ball. Listen to nature sounds. Do guided meditation.
5,4,3,2,1 Exercise There is something called as the 5, 4,3,2,1 sensory
Look at pretty pictures and
activity. When you're much stressed, sit down quietly.
videos.
Look around the room for 5 things which catch your attention, listen to 4 sounds that you can hear, identify any 3 smells, touch two that will make you feel comforted and taste one thing. Lemon drop is
emotions will take a back seat.
commonly used for taste as it gives a sharp, tangy taste and it is very soothing.
The art of saying ‘no’
When you experience the sensations, because of
You have to set boundaries and learn to say ‘no’ to anything that does not serve you. This is easier said
the
than done, but you have to learn to practice it and build
automatically start calming down and relaxing. Watch
it into your emotional coping. Surround yourself with
a movie that you like. Go for a walk in nature and along
people who are cheerful, make you laugh and get your
with this, you can do the 54321 exercise. Cuddle your
mind off your stresses.
pet. Take deep breaths. Do some breathing exercises
Thinking tools help to manage and capitalise on your intellectual strength and to deal with the stress. It modifies your thinking into positivity. You can write down your negative feeling, tear it up or burn the paper. That's supposed to be quite therapeutic for many people. Read something inspiring. Watch a video which lifts your spirits. Write a journal and empty your heart out. Do a self-audit. Ask yourself why you are feeling this way and what triggered this emotion. Is it something I can learn to avoid in future? Can I observe the situation as a third party without blaming or complaining? When you sit down, analyse and label the emotion, you'll find it's not such a big deal.
sensory-neural-emotional
connect,
you
will
and creative visualization.
Using the toolbox You have now got the toolbox. From that toolbox, what are the activities that you can do? The selfsoothing activities are all related to your sensations. You can touch a stuffed animal or a stress ball. Listen to nature sounds. Do guided meditation. Look at pretty pictures and videos. Read out self-affirmations. Practise visual imagery. For taste, have something nice to taste. Many enjoy chamomile tea or a sour candy. One of the mindfulness exercises is to take an orange, break it up, take the fleshy part, put just a little in your mouth and savour each of those little fleshy part by pressing,
Then there are special interest tools which are
squeezing and feeling the juice. What mindfulness does
specific things that you enjoy doing. They provide
is that it makes you come to the moment. Whatever is
pleasure, self-satisfaction and relaxation. They divert
happening behind and whatever is going to happen in
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the future is lost. You start centring into the present
Do the opposite action. If you're feeling some
moment. For smell, there are aromatic candles, lotions,
difficulty, do something which is more positive and
perfumes and essential oils.
opposite of what you're feeling. Try affirmations, guided meditation and asking lofty questions.
The art of distracting Distract yourselves. Identify activities that you enjoy doing so that you can take your mind off. Have emotional awareness, mindfulness and a support system. Watching a snow globe is very therapeutic.
Get inspired. Watch something funny, a comedy or read a joke book. Gain emotional awareness. Labelling your emotions is very important. You can journal, make a chart, identify what you're feeling and label it.
There are coloured bottles, which you can prepare by
Start writing your gratitude journal. Try to focus
adding glue and water together and putting lot of little
on all that you already have because it will make you
elements into it. When you shake it, it will come down
realize that you have so much and what you're upset
slowly because the liquid inside is in a gel form and
about is something very small.
that is very relaxing. Aggressive and hyperactive children, when given these sensory bottles, relax completely by just watching them.
counting up to 99 by threes – three, six, nine, twelve and go on up to 999. It seems like a silly thing to do but it's very relaxing. De-clutter your surroundings. Go for a walk. Just get up and do something else.
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grounding, practise yoga, eat mindfully and stay in the moment.
Try puzzles, patterns, crochet or music. Start
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Mindfulness. Pick up tools for centring and
Have a crisis plan. Have the contact information of your support and resources. Have one person in your life whom you can contact at any time. Practice cloud meditation where you imagine sitting on the cloud and landing on your most beautiful place on earth.
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