Elections'09 and the youth

Almost all of us have witnessed the charisma of Obama on various news channels, and how he just sweeped the youth of their feet by his inspiring speeches, which finally became the prime reason of his historic victory.

And now it's election time in India. Seeing the results by courting the youth in America, the political parties here have already set their eyes on how to gather more public attention especially of youth. If the 2004 general elections was fought on the platform of the aam admi, then the forthcoming 2009 Lok Sabha elections is going to be all about luring the young voters.

Rahul Gandhi nowadays is going full throttle campaigning Gujrat. Even back here in Delhi, and at many other metropolitan cities, like Bombay and Lucknow huge banners of Rahul Gandhi have been put up alongside bridges or at crossroads. I have also seen some of the other ministers posters like that of Kapil Sibal & Pranab Mukherjee in markets, and other public places.

But the one that has both shocked and impressed me most is the "Advani for PM "campaign. Consider this, Mr. LK Advani, even at 81 years of age is running for the post of prime minister. Now that's something commendable. I doubt if any country had an older prime minister or president than this. He has started trying out weights at a gymnasium :P, launched a personal website(on his 81st bday), chats online to reach out to students.

I usually get these ads on Orkut. And on some digging I found that advertisements similar to these goes to approximately 2000 websites mostly visited by Indians via google adsense. That's quite a lot of easy bucks for google.

Actually, all this is a positive sign. Hopefully political parties will now start taking youth more seriously and won't just play pitiable vote-bank politics after all we comprise approx. 30% of India's population. what's your say?? Cheers!!!.

Recession -- Past, Present and Future

Now now.. I can not feel more sad hearing news from my friends fearing Job cuts, and I myself is a part of this whole state of affairs. A global recession means lower earnings for most businesses and industrial sectors. Many of the businesses, especially those that are dependent on exports, may even suffer losses just as it happened during the last recession, which began in 2000 (after the “tech bubble” burst) and ended around May 2003. Today, we’re seeing a replay. Now a days we are also seeing salary and job cuts, and even if someone is securely employed, chances are that one’s next increment may not be as good as last year’s. :(



The chart above compares the job loss so far in this recession in USA, to job losses in the 1990 recession and the 2001 recession. This clearly shows how unprecedented the job losses over the last 13 months have been.
On comparing we see, US lost a total of 1.6 million jobs in the 1990-1991 recession, before the economy began turning around and jobs began increasing; and it lost a total of 2.7 million jobs in the 2001 recession. Over the last 13 months, US economy has already lost a total of 3.6 million jobs and more losses in the next few months are predicted. Shit!!!

Although the facts talk of US economy, but they aren’t different for Indian scenario. It is rightly said "When the Wall Street sneezes, the rest of the world catches a cold ". The US comprises of 30% of the world GDP and if there is a slowdown in that 30%, surely other markets are directly or indirectly affected.
Just 8 months back, some people in India thought that the country will be free from the negative impact of ongoing global economic recession. However, it is now clear that India is suffering from the same problem too. So, many fresh graduates and even highly skilled and experienced educated workers are worried about their future prospects.
But, as an Expert Analyst working in MCkinsey said “I’ve seen several slowdowns, and there’s nothing abnormal about these ups and downs. The reports surely scare everone. Pick up old newspapers from 2001 and you’ll read the same kind of doomsday stories. Yet we saw the best of times after that. Without downturns like these, you can’t make really great profits.”

Taking out the Positives

Our Indian banking system is overall very good. So we didn't face any mortgage related issues. Imagine a similar situation that happened in USA happening in India, say ICICI, or Standard Charted going bankrupt would trigger huge losses in many corporates, and the Markets would have gone crashing to rock bottom levels. But that didn’t happen for good. :)
Even our IT companies are changing their focus to European countries to reduce their exposure to the US markets. I heard few days back that TCS bagged a major project in European Market. Similarly with Wipro.. Well that's great.
Indian Govt is also trying to negotiate with other countries and increase our exports. Even US Govt and Fed reserve are trying their best to avoid recession and control the inflation in US. But this all will take some time to settle. Till then we have to bear the brunt.

Things where we should Improve

One of the things that is absent among most students and educated people in India is lack of entrepreneurship mentality. They are too obsessed with doing jobs rather than taking a risk and setting up a venture. I think that this is a very good time for Indian government to address this issue (ofcourse the Govt. won’t do so as it’s already quite busy in the forging alliances and chalking out campaigning strategies). Indian Mentality will not change overnight but there should be a concerted effort among the government, universities and the media to motivate fresh graduates about this matter. The students need to have a change in mind set too.

Thus although the situation does seem bleak, we should not lose hope, and should work harder. One should not lose out on any opportunity, and create or grab as many opportunities as one can. Networking, by talking to friends, alumni and even your own relatives may bring even better opportunities. Recessions are by definition temporary, so do not overreact, keep it cool and let God do the rest.
Do write comments on how you found the post.. Tata..

The End of Vacations.

So, finally my last college vacations are ending, and thank God I have lived to see this day again.. which I thought would never be possible as the vacations never seem to end.

So, what did I do in Vacations?? Oh, this is as tough a question as "What are your weaknesses" in an Interview. Ya.. because you have to speakout an answer even if you don't want to answer it.

First of all, My Congratulations to President Obama. He surely has and will pump doses of fresh Oxygen in US Economy. Talking of Obama, I still could not understand why the term Black was being associated with Obama more than his first name on 20th Jan by Aaj Tak, the totally f* up news channel. I don't expect FBI to arrest me for this, like they did in US for some blog articles regarding racism.. Oh no.. not that word again.

I did manage to change the subject but not for long, and a question always has an answer.
I spent quite some time travelling to Punjab, Mathura, and MP in the vacations.. as it's the last time I would be able to meet my old family members before starting with my job with D.E Shaw & Co. at Hyderabad. I also started reading some management articles online and really feel how much more inclined I am towards Management aspects of thing then towards hardcore coding thing. I also developed a taste of reading more Psychology based Novels, and those who have read some, kindly advise me more of same.

I have also started work as GreenHat Ventures Campus Associate and in effect I will be again contributing my part to improve the college placements by boosting inhouse talent and skills, and making my juniors more aware of opportunities and improving their Career Quotients which we engineers usually lack because of our Mind-set. But more on that later. For those who thought "again" was wrongly written above, I am more than pleased to tell that I have written a placement Manual exclusively for NSITians, keeping in mind what are Software companies expecting from NSIT grads, and it has been received with much appreciation.

Also the MBA season has long gone, and my personal congratulations to all friends who received calls from IIM's and especially those who scored a BLACKI. Hail-o-NSIT that recorded 250+ IIM Calls, with 2 100%ilers(last updated in March). Ghosh.. we have outskinned IITians. Cheers.

I also had a little taste of outsourcing this month, just for the sake of it by providing Online Tuition to children in US and also getting a good pay for it. One only needs a mike, decent net-connection and the right opportunity for it.

Thus went my last few weeks at home. Please keep posting comments, so that I am encouraged to write more.. Writing is a good habit, in retrospect, this makes me think why didn't I started writing earlier.. Oh lazy me... Nevertheless Cheers again!!! Tata.