A Common Man's Wednesday

Wednesday of the “aam aadmi, bina gutli wala”

“Wednesday” was a movie devoid of “stars” and made on a modest scale by UTV Movies. It did phenomenal business. A “common man” fed up of the constant bomb blasts in the name of religion, decided to strike back. He chose “Wednesday” since most of the attacks on innocent common men were on Fridays, Tuesdays etal! He chose to retaliate, because, he probably felt that the ‘greatest triumph for evil is for good men to do nothing by it ‘! The establishment was doing nothing and instead, seemed to unwittingly abet terrorism, if not aid it, by its impotence and/or incompetence.

Sometimes, real life imitates the reel life, instead of vice-versa. The attack this Wednesday, in Mumbai, is not exactly a replica of the movie. It is different in many ways. For starters, the bad guys are not the ones who get killed. Many law enforcement officers with impeccable and untarnished records, have lost their lives. Salaskar who could put the fear of God into known “Don’s”, and/or “Daddy’s” was shot dead. Hemant Karkare another highly respected officer and head of the ATS, was shot in the chest (in spite of a bullet proof vest?) and lost his life. There are plenty of civilians, whose only fault, is that they choose to travel by rail on Wednesday night from VST, or chose to walk by Leopold, or even Flora Fountain. Never mind, which religion they followed, what their linguistic orientation, they were all “common men and women’, who were in Mumbai that night.

The Government for the “aam admi” or the “common man” seems to resemble an government of the “aam admi” alright, but of the “bina gutliwala” variety, the one that paradoxically, a soft drink company was promoting as being the juiciest! The common man is certainly a juicy proposition for the dispensation. He is open to exploitation without resistance and he is without a voice, or even a soul. ”Bina gutliwala” to be exact!

Tata Tea in its commercial, requests us to wake up and have a cup of tea. Jago re! says an obnoxious little youngster with a “Mr. Know All” air about him, as he goes around smugly exhorting anyone he sees, to cast their vote. In an earlier commercial, they suggested interviewing the local candidate(MLA/MP) and checking his credentials! Knowing the history of political suffrage in this country, one would be tempted to ask the team on Tata Tea, to wake up and smell the coffee!. But one should not throw the baby out with the bathwater. At least there is a recognition that something is wrong, and that it needs to be corrected. After all, ‘the mile long journey has to begin with the first step’! ‘Jago re’ sounds very much like the clarion call of Vivekananda, “awake arise and stop not till the goal is reached”. However ,the solution is NOT simply in VOTING , but finding the right people to STAND FOR ELECTIONS and ensuring that the ones WHO STAND FOR ELECTIONS DO WHAT IS RIGHT. It’s not so much about checking credentials, but using the system to one’s advantage and organizing groups which can be effective in the system. It is about uniting for a common cause and standing by people who need help and raising your voice and might for what is right. Corporate denizens do this in dead earnest, when it comes to petty office politics and gossip, but somehow loose the plot, when it comes to the large canvas!!

There are however, some exceptions. Silver linings, even as the clouds of despair and darkness, seem to be overhead. The agitation against the destruction of the “silent valley” in the 90’s in Kerala, the legislation to introduce “RTI” in recent times, have all been gains for the common man, as also the legal vigilante protests in Jessica Lal and other cases. Terrorism can be rooted out if there is political will and if we ensure that whoever is guilty of it, irrespective of whether he is a film star, or a ganglord, or a celebrity, gets the maximum punishment possible. Importantly, the punishment should be sufficient deterrent for prospective terrorists. I believe this is where we loose out. Public memory is short and we have “human rights activists”, who seem to be unable to define what a “human being” is and how to provide justice to the aggrieved “human beings” , who have lost their innocent kith and kin, who were also “human beings”, till their lives were snatched away!

Our legal system is too slow and very often, even the convicted get reprieves due to red tape. I see no reason for government money being spent, to keep these “creatures” alive. We have seen innocent hostages being taken by terrorists, to secure the release of their convicted colleagues, as in the Air India Kandahar case, when the BJP was in power.

An eye for an eye, does not make the world blind, it ensures that you have at least one eye left! I think Mahatma Gandhi got his arithmetic wrong! If my will goes, it should be both eyes for an eye for strategic reasons and a kneecap for the road!

Amen

The Indian Coffee Houses

“THE INDIAN COFFEE HOUSES”

By Madhukar of XLRI

Long time since, I added to the trivia... so here goes! ...Long beforeSemco became a corporate benchmark for "Managing Without Managers - aparticipatory industrial democracy... and Ricardo Semler's bookMaverick became a runaway bestseller.. . ....And long before the
Argentinian Workers' Cooperatives started taking over the abandoned workplaces - (this phenomenon requires a separate post.. will do that in time to come...) - something similar happened in India in 1957. But some more trivia before that... Long long time back, in the 17th
century, Baba Budan smuggled the seven coffee bean seeds ("strapped to his chest" the legend tells us) from Yemen in the 16th century and planted them on the Chandragiri hills of Mysore State. Over the next couple of centuries, coffee had gradually become the 'drink' of the
elites ( Mughals and later, British) as well as of the ordinary families in southern India. The first coffee house opened in Kolkata after the Battle of Plassy in 1780, soon to be followed by the Madras Coffee House. Soon coffee drinking became a "tradition" in India, and even became a staple drink for many families in southern India. The IndianCoffee House(s) were promoted by the Indian Coffee Board during the British Rule during the 40s. Soon these became the meeting place for the poets, artistes, literati and people from the world of art and culture. ICHs Kolkata (erstwhile Calcutta) was frequented by figures ranging from Rabindranath Tagore to Subhash Chandra Bose... and later, from Manna Dey to Amartya Sen. In the 1950s, however, the business was not doing well, and the Indian Coffee Board decided to close down the Coffee Houses. And that marked the beginning of a unique cooperative venture.... The Indian Coffee House. Under the leadership of the communist leader AK Gopalan, the dismissed workers took over the place
to run without any management. The first Indian Coffee Workers Co-Operative Society was founded in Bangalore on August 19, 1957. The first Indian Coffee House was opened in New Delhi on October 27, 1957... The self-managed India Coffee Houses proliferated. Today, there are around 50 of them across India, managed by 13 cooperative societies. These societies are governed by managing committees elected from the employees. There is also a federation of the co-operative societies as the national umbrella organisation to lead these socities. But times have changed, and so have the Indian Coffee Houses. Some have got replaced by Caffe Coffee Days and Baristas, some have just gone plain bankrupt, and some have lost their old clientele and
aura...Some tributes to this vanishing institution: A Mutiner reflects on the old nostalgia:"It would be a lie to say that I don’t miss that coffee house. An old dingy place with ceiling like a dome. The cheap wooden tables that were colored to give an impression of mahogany.
Those two big glass jars at the managers desk. The waiters with the long pagdis. The manager who would return even fifty paise of your change but would never smile. The orders that would take exactly three hundred seconds to appear on your tables. The always present group of
oldies, all of whom looked like communist poets or war veterans or editors of some old and forgotten local newspapers and their tables filled with three tea-cups (rather glasses) per person with the occasional one or two plates of egg pakodas. The fact that they were always there made me think that they owned the place, but now I realizethat they were there because that was the only place that had not grown younger as they grew older. The Indian coffee house had grown older with them, with time it had become a little outdated, lost a little of its old shine and was stripped of most or all of its utility, just like them. Its all changed now with the Coffee Day standing in its place. Not that this change isn’t good or anything, its just that I want to
know what happened to that group of oldies, those waiters, that manager and those tables."In another article - Flavour of Another Era - in The Hindu, Kasturi Basu ruminated about the changing hues of the place, where one would discuss and converse: "....for hours over a cup of
coffee, smoke from the endless number of cigarettes spiraling up to the ceiling high enough to contain at least three stories of present multi-storied buildings and a floor area to match its majestic columns, waiters in traditional uniform of spotless white and red and high,
stiff hats, mixed aroma of coffee, fish fry and mutton Afghani and animated conversation between people whose ages are removed from each other by a decade... Except if you went close, the snatches of conversation revealed that over the years, politics, literature and music had acquired a subtle flavour of the next management entrance examination and IT units in the city. Old sweepers, who once preserved bills scattered on the floors because they contained complex
mathematical calculations or poems on the reverse, hardly find anything of note. Waiters say they do not have to stop working now to listen to an interesting discussion." Travel writer, Colin Todhunter wrote this touching tribute to the vanishing magic of Indian Coffee House in
2005:"After having sampled the delights of coffee around the globe, I have come to conclude that there is only one place to drink it: India. And there is only one establishment to drink it in – the Indian Coffee House. There are around 160 branches throughout the country. I’ve
visited branches in Shimla, Allahabad, Pondicherry, Calcutta,Trivandrum and many places beside and have never been disappointed.Whenever I visit a new place, one of the first things I do is find out whether there is an ICH in town. Black and white framed photographs of
Nehru, Gandhi, and Indira Gandhi usually adorn the walls of each ICH and the waiters are dressed in shabby, white (well, whitish) uniforms. They are pretty basic places where the decor generally takes a back seat to the low prices and delicious dosas and masala dishes on offer.
Things are cheap and simple in the ICH. Unlike the new, trendy coffee bars now in India, there is no long and winding menu of coffee types to choose from. There is no need to confuse your latte with your cappuccinos or your macchiato with your mocha. Coffee comes as coffee, no frills, no fancy names. And it’s absolutely delicious. For four or five rupees per cup, you can't complain. Each ICH seems to have its own clientele. Depending on which branch you happen to be in you may be rubbing shoulders with vacationing families, lawyers, students or men who sit at wobbly tables on wobbly chairs, hiding behind newspapers and discussing the issues of the day. And each ICH has its own distinct character. For example, the one in Trivandrum, near the train station
has good food served in a strange leaning-tower- of-Pisa-like spiral building. Others however can be a bit dingy and don’t have most of the items on the menu. The elaborate head-dress on the waiters is a usually a metaphor for the type of service on offer: clean, starched and upright or limp and ill-fitting. But one thing is always guaranteed: the fare will be excellent. ... Unlike the trendy Starbucks, Café Nero or Costa coffee bars in the West, traditional coffee houses possess a
certain authenticity. That's what I like about the ICH. It operates as a worker’s co-operative and is unmolested by the cynicism of the corporate world. And for better or worse, it shows. Maybe it’s a place trapped in time. But it’s a place in time that I prefer." Amen!

2) Article by Sudhir Rao on Coffee Houses in Madhya Pradesh and Kerala.

I cannot help feeling nostalgic when I read about India Coffee House. My first
memory of Coffee House is the one on MG Road in Bangalore.(edited)

During 2001-2005 when I was again at Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh), I rediscovered the Coffee House. The menu was as varied as in the past and the prices still reasonable. The one in MP Nagar was the most popular. Bhopal is the headquarters of a number of N.G.O’s and one bumped into NGO workers during the visits to the Coffee House. I once saw a board meeting held there. The Madhya Pradesh coffee houses are a part of a society registered at Jabalpur

There are branches in Raipur, Bhopal and Gwalior. The unique aspect of Coffee Houses in MP is that they also run hotels – the Hotel India located at Raipur, Bhopal and Gwalior. I remember staying in Hotel India at Raipur in 1988. (edited). It was enjoyable to get room service - a hot cup of genuine filter coffee first thing in the morning. The pakka vegetarians could get “dosas” and “idlys” and the “nonies” (non –vegetarians) could get chicken cutlets.

The Coffee House lovers may like to visit the site of the Kerala coffee houses.

http://www.indiancoffeehouse.com .

The wikipedia feature on Coffee Houses may interest some of you.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Coffee_House

The photo of the TrivandrumCoffee House building has been used in the wikipedia article. People havecompared it to the leaning tower of Pisa!

Ends…

A related link

.http://corpgypsy.blogspot.com/2011/09/indian-coffee-house-bbc-news-story.html

HOW CREDIBLE ARE EFFIE AWARDS?

HOW CREDIBLE ARE AD CLUB EFFIE AWARDS?

11^th November Effies 2008

Afaqs! met with a few jury members during the judging round to find out what they thought of the entries that they'd already been through.

Dhunji Wadia, branch head, Mumbai, JWT, expressed his disappointment: "There has been repetition in some cases. Since the brands were present last year as well, some of them don't really hit you as a great idea."

Exchange 4 media on 25^th Nov08. Effie 2008 awards to be announced.

On his expectations, Dhunji Wadia, Managing Partner, JWT India, commented, “This year saw a keen competition from some defining case studies that have raised the bar for the Indian advertising and communication industry. JWT has eight finalists and we are hoping for the best.”

However, when asked about his personal favourite campaign from the finalist, all Wadia said was, “All the eight finalists from JWT are my favourites. Some have already shown results in other global and local competitions, and as for the others, their time will come.”

These are two quotations in the space of 14 days, from a judge of the Effies 2008, who is also a senior manager in one of the agencies which is participating in the competition. While peer group approval is a great motivator and can be a good indicator of talent and skill, IT WOULD SEEM THAT there is also the risk of subjectivity and personal agendas clouding the judgment and selection of the most deserving work.

An Ad Club Member

POEM IN PENURY?

Christmas Carol For 2008

You'd better watch out

You'd better not cry

You'd better keep cash

I'm telling you why:

Recession is coming to town.

It's hitting you once,It's hitting you twice

It doesn't care if you've been careful and wise

Recession is coming to town....

It's worthless if you've got shares

It's worthless if you've got bonds

It's safe when you've got cash in hand

So keep cash for goodness sake,

HEY You'd better watch out

You'd better not cry

You'd better keep cash. I'm telling you why:

Recession is coming to town!

Finance products are confusing. Finance products are so vague

The banks make you bear the cost of risk.

So keep out for goodness sake, OH You'd better watch out

You'd better not cry.

You'd better keep cash I'm telling you why:

Recession is coming to town.
UNKNOWN AUTHOR - POSTED IN A LIST SERVE OF EX-NDDBIANS

Abraham Lincoln to his son's school teacher

With the 'Teach for India' initiative gaining ground, I thought this piece would be relevant.

Abraham Lincoln, the 16^th President of the United States of America (1861-1865), is one of the world’s greatest leaders of all time. Here is a letter written by him to the headmaster of a school in which his son was studying, a letter so typical of the man who bore malice towards none and had charity for all.

He will have to learn. I know that all men are not just, all men are not true. But teach him also, that for every scoundrel, there is a hero, that for every selfish politician, there is a dedicated leader.

Teach him that for every enemy, there is a friend. It will take time, I know, but teach him, if you can, that a dollar earned, is of far more value than five found. Teach him to learn to loose and also to enjoy winning. Steer him away from envy, if you can. Teach him the secret of quiet laughter. Let him learn early, that the bullies are the easiest to lick. Teach him if you can, the wonder of books, but also give him quiet time, to ponder over the eternal mystery of birds in the sky, bees in the sun and flowers on a green hill side.

In school, teach him that it is far more honorable to fail, than to cheat. Teach him to have faith in his own ideas, even if everyone tells him that they are wrong. Teach him to be gentle with gentle people and tough with the tough. Try to give my son the strength to not follow the crowd, when everyone is getting on the bandwagon. Teach him to listen to all men, but teach him also to filter all that he hears on a screen of truth and take only the truth that comes through.

Teach him if you can, how to find laughter when he is sad. Teach him also, that there is no shame in tears. Teach him to scoff at cynics and to beware of too much sweetness. Teach him to sell his brawn and brain to the highest bidder, but never to put a price tag on his heart and soul. Teach him to close his ears to a howling mob…and to stand and fight if he thinks he is right.

Teach him gently; but do not cuddle him because only the test of fire makes fine steel. Let him have the courage to be impatient, let him have the patience to be brave. Teach him always to have sublime faith in himself because then he will always have sublime faith in mankind.

This is a big order ; but see what you can do… he is such a fine fellow , my son.

TEACH FOR INDIA

‘Veritas Vos Liberagit’ goes the saying and it incidentally is the credo of my alma mater, the Mar Ivanios College, Trivandrum. It means “ knowledge/truth shall liberate”.

When more than 75% of the country are “bachas” as the young leader of one of the “oldest’ political parties claims, then the importance of knowledge cannot be understated. “Teach India” an initiative by TOI, a leading media group in the country has to be applauded for this reason. It is not an original idea, it was tried and tested successfully in the United States of America. In a nutshell, it requires graduates and others who are educationally qualified to volunteer a year or so for educating people who are outside the ambit of the educational system or need additional inputs to acquire it effectively. It certainly has my vote and I would urge anyone I know and care about to take a look at this project carefully.

No, TOI has not asked me to write this and has no business relationship with me other than that of a reader to a publicationJ

A decade back I was encouraged by Mr M.G.Parameswaran, who now heads FCB Ulka, to teach at the Somaiyah Institute of Management Studies and Research, since he felt that I was full of academic concepts and “teaching everyone around, their job” J. Professor Arya at the SIMSR found that I had a knack for it, given the full house I got every weekend, from the youngsters and the working managers. When finally, his Institute started showing up in the final rounds of strategy competitions, the word spread and I ended up teaching at SIES-Nerul, Vivekananda and later on, at N.L.Dalmia.

I must say that the stint helped me immensely in clearing up concepts I had learned and forgotten, at Management School. The initial years in any job/ career is more of taking photocopies, arranging coffee/ tea , making phone calls and running errands which does not require a post- graduation in management. In fact, the only concepts required are those in “Abnormal Psychology” which pertains to ego- defense mechanisms and ‘gang behaviour’, which is referred to in corporate circles as “team work”. (Henri Fayol and his “spirit de corps” is an unknown commodity!) Teaching helped me revisit these concepts and with the benefit of corporate experience, was able to validate and separate the chaff from the grain. Students too can question you and make you THINK about what you do. There is a freshness of perspective and honesty of intent, which is absent in an office. All in all, I learned as much and more, than I taught. The money was inconsequential and it meant weekends spent away from Bachanalian revels and socializing. It was however worth it because these kids have ended up becoming an extended family and after a decade, when I bump into them at corner room offices and in newspaper columns, there is a certain sense of pride which is comforting. Something, which no salary cheque or bonus can match.

I am enclosing a link which has a letter sent by the BMM batch of Vivekananda in 2000, when I was in the Middle East. It almost made me come back. I still read it once in a while to get my self-esteem back when it has taken a beating!!!

http://vnreferences.blogspot.com/2008/04/class-of20012nd-year-bmm-students-at.html