Can "Slumdog" be a Millionaire?

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I recently watched this movie called “Slumdog Millionaire” directed by Danny Boyle. The music for the film was composed by our own “Mozart of Madras” A R Rehman. The cast includes British born Dev Patel (Jamal Malik), Indian born Freida Pinto (Lathika), Anil kapoor and others. The plot of the movie was very interesting and tight. The protagonist Jamal Malik is a slum boy from Mumbai and his ladylove is Lathika. He participates in “Who wants to be a Millionaire” because his ladylove loves that show. He makes it to the final question of the show to win 20 million rupees. He is arrested before the final show to interrogate him to understand how could he make it to the final? The movie says it is his coincidence in his life to the questions asked in the show. It is his destiny to win the show.

This movie has poignant screenplay, brilliant acting, soothing music and real India to watch. I started introspecting after watching the movie. Why shouldn’t a slum boy become millionaire by answering those questions? I think the answer is yes, anyone can become millionaire if he/she possesses that knowledge. So what is that stopping slum boy to be a millionaire? I think it is the apparent lack of knowledge. When there is compulsory free education till the age of 14 or so in India. Why don’t these slum boys and girls get their share of needs? The problems are many from the lack of basic amenities in the slum from schools to hospital. Why does such kind of things happening to the slum young people? I think it may be due to orphaned or parents don’t usually care about their children.

What can the government actually do to educate or make these slum kids knowledgeable? I think government should create good basic infrastructure facilities in the slum ranging from schools to hospitals. If state government or central government doesn’t have any money to fund those schools, why not give it to the hands of private? Private can start charter schools to admit these kids to educate the underprivileged sections of our society. Government can issue bonds to charter schools’ management to fund the education of only slum kids. I don’t know whether it will bear fruits but it is the working model of New Orleans schools after devastating Hurricane Katrina.

Good parentage is very important in life of any successful Indian whether he/she is rich or poor. I read an inspiring story a few years back. A story of a slum backward caste dude from Chennai made it to IIM- Ahmadabad. Eventually he became an entrepreneur by starting his own food centre at Ahmadabad. He was all praise for his mother who sacrificed her whole life to spend money on this guy education by selling idlis and washing plates in others’ house. We need this kind of parents to inspire their children and make them realize their responsibility to his/her family and India. Lastly, watch this movie it’s worth the time.

Tumultuous year is gonna end!

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Year 2008 is unforgettable for numerous reasons. It might be remembered for the collapse of capitalism in US, selection of “Black American “president, Mumbai terror attacks in India. Many people in the world considered year 2008 to be tumultuous. According to me, this year 2008 taught lessons to the global leaders around the world. The supremacy of American policies is collapsed and USA is brought into knees. I was following “The Financial Times” newspaper’s editorial closely to understand the complexities of this “Global Financial crisis”. To be very frank, I didn’t understand much of it. In this blog, I’d like to share some of my thought process regarding this global economic crisis.

I think almost every person on the planet “Earth” might have read something about the financial crisis. The causes of this crisis must be left to academics to analysis and understand to come up with credible answers to be the unanswered questions of this crisis. One of my friends working in sector related to Banking remarked to me, financial world works on two phenomena i.e. Credit and Debt. Developed World such as USA and UK has left a huge hole in the credit by spending a lot and they also borrowed a huge sum of money from so called Sea of foreign reserve country “China”. In process, USA and UK markets are left with limited credit to finance their business operations. This failure was also accompanied by the apparent bust of housing market in USA and UK. Then everything else is history, the collapse of Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers and near bankruptcy of American International Group (AIG) and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

All these lack of credit and too much of debt problems caused banks not to finance to other banks and other business. This has now led to the global recession accompanied by severe loss of employment. It is estimated over 3 million people have lost jobs in US and about somewhere in UK and Europe. Almost all the developed world is right now in severe recession. I am a resident of Singapore. Singapore doesn’t have a market of its own. It was very successful in creating hinterlands in USA markets. So when USA market was hit badly by recession and low consumer spending, Singapore acknowledged that it will contract its economy. The job losses in Singapore is also severe and Government is doing all it can do to prevent it. This is what all the Governments around the world are doing like bailing out its banks and companies.

What is really fascinating to me is the end of free market economy in the land which staunchly supported and campaigned for it i.e. USA. The people who work or manage Banks are considered to be high IQ people. Only selective people can go to Investment Banks and its one of the highly financially rewarding jobs. Ironically, it’s these high IQ people who screwed the system and got swayed by the money. Every common man on the street asks why should I pay my tax money to save those greedy bankers? We should also understand that Banks are epicenter of any recession because all the business activities depends on the financing of banks. Hence it may be rational to bail out banks.

This Global economic crisis will teach every individual some form of lesson. It will make some countries more competitive, some may embrace protectionist policies. Human mind constantly thinks to innovate. It is always said only at crisis time, the true potential of a human is tested. I think, we will innovate some model which will be resilient to this scale of crisis in the future. This crisis has once again reinstated those old Buddha’s words. The root cause of all evils is money. I think we should invent something else apart from money to differ each one of us. I am kidding anyway. I seriously don’t know what will happen to the world in 2009. I pray to God like everyone to be pleasant and enchanting.

Broken Dreams- Part2- Wonder girl Kalpana

Ezhil was grappling with superstition after his sister’s end and started contemplating incidents which may occur. He even had scuffles with his friends for saying this incident will occur. He once went to the extent of telling his friends that his mathematics teacher will die soon otherwise he will tonsure. Of course mathematics teacher did not die and he was beaten by his classmates. Years passed as usual and he got promoted to 5th standard. It was a norm in his village to celebrate every promotion of class because only a few students from his village used to get promoted. His village was gifted to have a river which used to taste salty and sometimes good. The river was used for washing clothes, sometimes children used to swim. Ezhil was fond of swimming but he was not able to learn swimming because no one was willing to teach him. Hence, he dropped the plan to learn it for now.

Some of his village friends who didn’t get promoted usually take up farming or other traditional occupations. Sometimes, Ezhil thinks he shouldn’t follow the path of others in his village. He thought of becoming professional and a unique person from his villagers. His semi town school was co education. His association with a girl called Kalpana who is one year elder than him brought happiness to life. It was his first association with a girl and she used to share a lot of things with him. The stories of Kalpana were interesting to Ezhil because it was coming out from the mouth of Kalpana. He could not understand what relationship between him and her is in that tender age. He thoroughly enjoyed her company during their tour to mahabalipuram. He also understood what all girls used to discuss among themselves. He was amazed when he saw these girls talk about love and marriage at 6th class.

One day at school, Kalpana run to Ezhil to discuss something very important. It was a shock even to Ezhil because what she said to Ezhil was something he could not handle at that age. Some guy from neighboring school was ogling at her all the time she goes to home and he follows her all the way to home. She also said, one time he even tired talking to her but she ran off from that place. Ezhil was puzzled and could not understand the situation clearly. He asked her to chuck it. She also consulted with her friends and decided to go in some other route to her house.

The school was suddenly buzzing with the talk of school pupil leader and assistant school pupil leader. The school has only class till 6th standard so traditionally only 6th and 5th standard students can become school pupil and assistant pupil leaders respectively. Kalpana approached Ezhil to cast in the election as assistant school pupil leader since she was close to the person who was standing as school pupil leader. Ezhil also heeded the request of Kalpana and campaigned along with that person. Ezhil won the election by vast majority to become assistant school pupil leader. He sincerely thanked Kalpana for her efforts and support. The relationship of Kalpana was ended when he shifted his school to some town English Medium matriculation board.
(cont........)

Broken Dreams-part one- Village Boy

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This is a story of a man who wants to be one of those rags to riches story but it was shattered due to the hypocrisy of the people surrounding him and his unlucky life. He was born in the helmet of some unknown shanty village in the southern cone of India. His name was Ezhil. His parents were uneducated, poor and naïve. They were suppressed by the so called elite upper caste and doesn’t enjoy the freedom of education in their times. His mother badly wanted her children to get education. She cannot meet the ends because of inappropriate spending of his father.

He had three siblings, two sisters and one brother. One of his siblings died when he was at the age of eight. Unfortunately, other two of his siblings were enrolled in the regional language school of that southern state. This state is known for rhetoric speeches or demagogues by the politicians about the native language but they failed to protect or live up to their linguist chauvinism. The compulsory state language policies were totally failed and can’t stand against the charm of English language. Everyone in the cities and towns enrolled their children in English medium schools but ezhil’s parents’ were ignorant and forced them to enroll his siblings in native language. Ezhil’s sister savitha was known for her eloquence in her mother tongue. She used to win any oratorical or essay writing competition conducted in her school.

Ezhil’s brother Kalaignar was considered to one of the best muggers in his school days. He used to top his class until 8^th standard. Since he was enrolled in a state board school, he can top any subjects just by memorizing without understanding it. The state board system in this state is best known to be obsolete and purely based on rote learning. The academicians have criticized the state Government for not looking into the curriculum and change it to meet the real needs of education. Kalaignar was scared of filthy relatives who come to house and gossip about others. He is also famous among his friends for grand mom or father stories. His friends used to love him because of his innocence and harmless behaviour.

Ezhil was the second last child in his family. He was fortunate in the whole family to go to an English medium school because his father was enlightened by his cousin that only English medium schools return you with lot of money. His father got wooed by the money part since he was poor and enrolled Ezhil in English medium school. In his childhood days, Ezhil doesn’t like to go to his schools because he was literally helpless in his school. Though his mother was a housewife and had good formal knowledge on their mother tongue, he never learnt his native language from her. He always used to be very poor in his mother tongue subject. When he was at 3^rd standard his younger sister died, he was very upset and depressed. Though he couldn’t grasp the happenings of the event well enough but he cried a lot because he can’t feel the life of his sister who was lying on the table. The pain of the moment made him mouth struck in his class for a long time and he got relieved only after a month.

Story will continue………..

The Spirit of Entrepreneurship

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Entrepreneurship is a new buzz word not only in India but also around the globe. This might be attributed to the fact that now “The world is flat”. I think, most of you may be amused because I say “The world is flat”. Seriously I’m not the one who discovered the world is flat but the famous journalist Thomas L Friedman rediscovered that the world is flat. What provoked Friedman to say that world is flat, He argues that everyone anywhere in the planet now has the opportunities and resources to compete in the globe. The person who taps those opportunities and turns into viable and sustainable business venture is called “The Entrepreneur”.

There exist thin line of difference between an entrepreneur and a business person. The business person runs or owns business entity through inheritance or he might have started with group of friends like a brick and mortar company. The entrepreneur is a person who starts a new business venture and turns into great money spinning viable business organization. Most of the Hawker or food restaurant owners are business people but the person who converts those restaurants into chain of restaurants like McDonalds or KFC are entrepreneur. The subject of entrepreneurship is very intriguing for research at prestigious management institutions like Stanford, Harvard, Wharton, etc. These institutions are rigorously analyzing what are the skills sets needed to become an entrepreneur and they also coined some of the programs for entrepreneurship education. Here, comes the question, Will these programs definitely make an entrepreneur?

I also had gone for a minor in Entrepreneurship at my university, NTU Singapore. My personnel opinion and feeling about these programs is molded on the basis of virtual business platform and makes you understand whether you have those skills to become an entrepreneur and it may acts as a platform for budding entrepreneurs to hone their skills too. The certainty of becoming an entrepreneur after these kinds of program is only meager. The next big alluring question is what personality traits entrepreneur must possess if he/she wants to be entrepreneurs. I learn it from some of the books on entrepreneurship; person has to be conscientious, extrovert, gregarious, loquacious (sometimes may help), shrewd, perseverance. The entrepreneur need not necessarily must have all these skills but must at least have some of the skills. Most of the entrepreneurs in the real world had conscientiousness which is considered to be one of the pivotal skill in the success of new business venture. The real world problems are many and sudden; entrepreneur must know how to tackle it, for that he/she must be conscientious.

The personality trait can be sometimes shaped by the environment but what about business acumen. The entrepreneurship is all about starting a new business venture, if they don’t possess business acumen in the beginning “Is it possible to start a viable business venture? Certainly, the epitome of the answer to this question is “Larry page and Sergey Bin”, the founders of the search giant “Google". Larry and Sergey doesn’t have a business idea when they started Google in Stanford university campus. They had strong passion for technology which searches the information in web rather making money. They are tech savvy and don’t want to be nouveau riche but strongly believed in the technology which will sometime revolutionize the world. They even approached the venture capitalist without having at least a business plan, VCs funded based on the positive attitude rather on business acumen; but now without Google obviously implausible for anyone to survive in this information rich world. Even though the CEO of Google is a business graduate but behind scenes operations are controlled by Larry and Sergey only.

I shared this example with you because entrepreneurship is not about making big money but it’s about conceiving some great ideas and turning the ordinary stone into beautiful statue. Starbucks founders realized that ordinary coffee beans can be converted into incredible business venture. They gave perceived value to those cheap coffee beans. Entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs converted delusive fruit “Apple” into real fruit which can employ more than thousands of employees. There are lot many entrepreneurs like these people who actually shaped the modern age of capitalism and amassed wealth not only for them but also for the whole country where they hail from. All these people really cherished true success because success is defined by how many people are well off because of you. So, entrepreneurship not only makes a person successful in life but also remembered.