Why Congress of RaGa and Cattle herd Politicians fear Land Acquisition ?

India worships poverty is not a new thing. This comes from the father of the nation M K Gandhi  who had a deep belief in minimal living. In fact he advocated and embraced poverty culture.  Not to be out done, voices across politicians , artists and litterateurs glorified the poor Indian.  This discussion is not about the virtues of poverty but a question  to cattle herd politicians and  the Congress of the Gandhi’s.  It is annoying to hear the collusion of Indian media and these politicians who magnify issues without any realism.  These so called representatives of the farmers are now  shedding crocodile tears  on their legacy of systemic  destruction  of Indian Agriculture. They fear economic development as a threat to their flow of unexplained income from  cattle fodder and land.

Don’t believe me .  read the facts below to judge for yourself about the so called custodians of Indian farmers and their hollow noise on land acquisition.

India’s  arable land ( fit for cultivation) is 157 Million hectares . Over the past 30 years , 3.5 million hectares (2%) was moved out of arable land category.  Most of  this land went toward urbanisation of semi urban  satellite towns around the major metros.

So How much land does an average farmer hold ?

	Small and Marginal	Medium and large	Remarks
Land Holding  Pattern* Agriculture Census Govt of India  in Hectares.	Less than 2 Ha ^	More than  2 Ha	^ Substantial number hold <  0.5 hectares
% age of land holdings	85%	15%	Small Size holdings control less than 50% of  total land. These people are dying while politicians are screaming for freebies for the rich. Now you know who the cattle herd politicians represent – the large farmer.
% age of area holdings	44%	56%	Few big farmers dominate farming in India small population with large holdings

What percentage of Indian workforce is engaged in Indian Agriculture ?

% Age  of workforce in Agriculture*source NSSO	1991	2001	2011	Remark
India – roughly 26.  crore Indians are employed	59.1	58.2	54.6	10% decline is visible

Are the number of Cultivators same or has this reduced ?

Agriculture workforce* source ICAR	1991	2001	2011
Number of cultivators In Millions	110.7	127.3	118	Many are giving up farming, unviable and sustainable
Number of Farm Labourers	74.5	106.8	144.3	Labourers  show dramatic rise Many are slaves to big farmers

Most of the rich farmers who owned large tracts of land came out of agriculture and hence the decline in population of cultivators. The small and marginal farmers had to give up and sell out due to unviable farming . Hence the increase in farm labours . The  rapid growth in labour force got accentuated  due to reverse migration of industrial and urban labour due to stagnating industrial development and lure of MNREGA wages . This escalated   the labour wage rates beyond marginal farmers affordability.. 10 years of hostile attitude on manufacturing and reluctance to  develop infrastructure by these cattle herd politicians , unimaginative activists and green terrorists  destroyed economic progress.

So why has farming become unviable  for the small farmers ?

Small land size and lack of automation , coupled with low farm productivity and high labour wages is killing these farmers. 

Agriculture Inputs	1971	2013	Data source ICAR study
Farm Automation	5%	45%	Automation has not reached  the majority
Input Power for agriculture
Cattle and Human Power	61%	10%	80 million bullocks and 20 million labourers used
Tractor and Electric Power	21%	72%	This is what most small farmers still use and maximum farm labour is deployed . 85% farmers  depend upon cattle and human labour to cultivate small land holdings. Is Cattle fodder cheap and has MNREGA increased the woes of small farmer or are the rich farmers using free cash ? The diesel and fertiliser subsidy reaches the rich only.
Area Sown per tractor	> 487 Ha	30 Ha	Most Tractors are deployed in large land holdings – mostly the domain of rich 15% farmers.

  

Availability of Water

Water availability		Some Questions we want the Cattle Herd and Congress to answer?
Through Irrigation	46%
Monsoon Dependent	54%	Why did the Govt  not push for interlinking rivers – 70 years of inaction ? Can the Congress explain why no action ?
		Why did the cattle herd politicians not take up water linking when they were fighting caste wars and religious votes ?
Ground water wells	71%	Water table is depleting is known – can this sustain ? What have the previous Govt done beside giving doles to fill their own pockets
Irrigated Canals	13%	Who benefitted from MREGA dole of Rs 40000 crores spent on labour ?  In the name of digging canals, not 1 new canal or permanent asset has been created.  Who got the major share ?
		What work is excess labour doing in last 10 years ? No where in the world has farms generated productive employment yet the cattle  herd politicians resist reforms and progress.

So how much agriculture output  are Indian farmers generating ?

Food Grain Production	1971	2011	Remarks
Total Food Grain Production in Mill tons	108	257	The farm productivity per hectare has remained same at 1.60 mill tons per hectare for last 40 years ? You can see how inefficient the Government has been

Economic value of Agriculture Produce in India

Total Value  of Agri Produce	740000 lac cr	This represents about 22% of economy
Total Value of wastage * DIFR report	100000 lac cr	A humongous 14% is wasted. More than 20 million tons of wheat and more than 40% wastage in food and vegetables.

You want to know why this wastage is so high ?

Total Storage available	Mill tons	Remarks
Food Grains	79.5
Open Storage	48	More than 60% of storage is Open and subject to weather vagaries. No wonder wheat and rice rots
% Age Availability of total	33%	The middlemen  make pots of money by black marketing. Now you know where Congress and Cattle herd get their political and personal funding.
Cold Storage	31	95% of cold storages are with private entrepreneurs . More than 65% are in Bihar and West Bengal
% Age Availability of total	10%	Are you surprised that 40% of food and vegetables  is wasted ? People do not get nutrition. Is this a joke on food security ?

You now know why food inflation exists in India. You also know how middleman hoard as the storage facility are not uniformly distributed all over India, and these politicians survive with their patronage and funding. So onions rot in open roads and potatoes are  sent to the west where storage is insufficient .The farmer lobby is the rich farmer lobby represented by all and sundry as they wield the  power to mobilize rural vote back.

So where does this leave the Poor Indian  farmer

Debt per farmer* NSSO data	Rs 47000	Is this surprising that farmers are committing suicide
Marginal farmers lose	Rs 18000/- per year	The cattle herd politicians and the Congress has reduced them to tatters.

The rich farmer makes at least Rs 3 lacs a year and tax free , coupled  with high input subsidies.  Does it surprise 27% of the MP’s are from Agriculture and all of them are rich so whose interest are they protecting?

So what do the farmers want now ?

Research by Centre of development studies  says

·         62% farmers willing to leave farming

·         37% don’t  want their children to take farming

·         86% are willing to end their dependence on agriculture

You decide, is the land acquisition being blown out of proportion by politicians who drove India to despair and poverty. All that these parties have succeeded  is  filling in their personal coffers and ensured that health , education and agriculture is neglected to perpetuate poverty . By their stated position on adversarial relationship with Industry they are ensuring  that jobs do not get created . Till we do not get professional and expert led governance, India is well poised  to become a democracy of doomed demographics.

So fight the cattle herd politicians tooth and nail if you want to see a reversal in fortune.

Be the change you want to see –CBSE board a living example of MK Gandhi’s advice .

With change of Government comes change in education thinking. Two successive Governments tinkered with the lives of students. So who gains ?

The UPA Government decided to do away  with  class X  Board Exams for CBSE students  in 2012.  Students studying  in this stream ,woke up to find out that  post class X , the number of seats available  to pursue subjects and streams of their choice were not available . Intentionally , some schools were indulging in weeding out average students and creating  opportunities for bright students from other boards  who aspired to pursue engineering courses in future.  This was attractive for bright students from other boards, as the Joint Entrance Examination for IIT’s or other engineering colleges  is  mapped to CBSE syllabus.  The School could brag and market it’s academic performance to gullible parents  and earn  higher tuition  fees  by doing nothing extra and students had a syllabus closer to their success requirement.

The  CBSE students who opted out of CBSE stream, post class X had to overcome hurdles such as marks and grade parity with other boards , domicile status  and  all of this added to a students nightmare for getting admission in a Junior college of choice, just to complete high school. Of course each of these students and their parents had to pay a price to seek  back channel favours for admission.

In the recent past, there has been a rethink in this and the system is likely to roll back to earlier system of conducting  board exams for class X and Class XII.  So this is likely strategic change once more, but how has all of this worked on ground so far ?

The adequacy of delivery platform

Teaching

The syllabus by design had  appraisal system  based on formative and summative  evaluation system, with weightage built in. The formative system was based on classroom interaction, some quizzes, project work, periodic assessment  while normative system was examination based on syllabus completion over a term. Much of the formative evaluation assumed teachers skills and randomness of assessment . Biased grading became a reality. Students started taking private tuitions – sometimes from their underpaid subject teachers at school , who saw additional earning opportunity for extra  tax free cash. 

Syllabus change

The syllabus changed it’s pattern. Some higher order thinking skills were built in each subject. Most teachers follow broadcast lecture based methodology  - read aloud, preach or write on the blackboard. Class interaction is limited to confirmatory questions. So how was higher order thinking going to be triggered when instruction methodology is on paper only and class teachers are ill equipped in these skills ? So here was one more business opportunity – emergence of Publishing industry that published model questions and answers guide books.

The chaotic Class XII Board examination 2015

The CBSE XII examinations this year is mired with controversy.  Newspapers have carried reports that this year the exams were held with a difference. Most  question papers were difficult , lengthy and pattern shift. More of higher order thinking questions . As a system, most of the students have prepared based on pattern of past 10 years examinations. All of them have been caught with a shock and surprise. Shock because of their inadequate performance and surprise because of sudden change. Even the board website has indicative question papers  based on past pattern.  Are the teachers equipped to  correct these answers  with lateral thoughts and  unscripted answers. What happens to the score parity issue for low scoring board performance overall ?  A class CBSE girl school  student committed suicide in apprehension of a bleak future. Many students are on the edge. Why does change get initiated without systemic execution  in ground ? So the students lose once more

Now a new direction is brewing.

With the new Government , lots of thoughts about making Sanskrit a preferred language and underplaying foreign languages  is doing the rounds. As it stands , the principal vote bank of the ruling largest party is Hindi heartland with Hindu heart, saffronisation  of  CBSE is a real possibility. That is future and is definitely visible. Such contrarian view on education has potential to send students in a vortex of doom.

Results on Ground

• Mass copying during exams . An eco system has got developed in which copying to clear exams is the rule. Even the lawmakers see the futility in changing this.
• No Indian university in Top 200 listing.
• More than 80% of Indian graduates are not employable after they pass colleges. This number has not changed since the last 10 years.
• Education Industry – of private tuitions, prepatory coaching classes, online tutors, is valued at more than Rs 600000 crores.  So you know, who is gaining at whose cost.
• Most private education institutions  operate under minority trusts or not for profit trusts. Majority  of not for profit trusts have leading politicians and their family members as trustees.

How is this being viewed by others

Singaporean Thomas Ong, a director at a local private equity firm, recently got invited as a guest lecturer at a private college in Jaipur, India. "I had heard stories about India's young people with 'excellent academic and English speaking skills' but what I encountered was the complete opposite," he said.Not one student in a class of 100 has ever heard of Bill Gates or Warren Buffet. Most students could not understand, let alone speak fluent English. "The only question they had at the end the lecture was how to find a job at home or abroad," Ong said.

Frequent changes , reluctance to  build systemic education, and high political interference, senile and regressive educationists are leading India to a doom  and a visible demographic Tsunami of unemployed youth. In a sense, this is paradoxically in line with Gandhi’s thinking of minimal living in rural environment. 

What is making business leaders lose sleep about the new graduates coming in 2015

A few days ago, I was talking to a industry professional about how Infosys  business transformation.
My question to him was "Can Infosys succeed in it's objective to partner clients for providing creative solutions that yield business outcome ?. The response  he gave was quite alarming -" where are those creative people ?  We cant even get collaboration going internally right , how do you expect that these guys will make such a change and be successful in doing it". But is this issue only about internal leadership of change or something more fundamental. Most of the execution happens at lowest client facing levels. So how well are these graduate  equipped to deliver on the promise. ?

Hay Group survey indicates that 89% of leaders in India are worried about the quality of future leaders. Young professionals, products of rote learning and consumed by social media are joining workforce at a time when collaborative working to address the challenges of a volatile, uncertain , complex and ambiguous business environment is the name of the game.

The survey indicates a scary reality .

• 74% of the respondents believe that they have hired graduates with deficient people skills due to lack of choice.
• 71% of these respondents believe that less than 25% of these graduates have people skills that matter, for success.
• 80% of these respondents believe that graduates  lacking people skills are toxic for workplace.

What do the Indian graduates think ?

• 77% of the graduates don’t value people skills – and believe they will succeed without it
• 57% do not think feelings about people are important
• 77% of these graduates say that people get in the way of getting a job done.

If this is the outcome of our education  it is matter of time that we will have inefficient workforce with a crab mindset , pulling each other down. The companies will be forced to  rely on powerful robots with artificial intelligence doing regular jobs so as to ensure that human ebola does not strike them.

What companies must do immediately ?

• Invest more in induction of new intake. 
• Push these graduates into team based outdoor survival adventure for at least 2 weeks duration or get the armed forces to conduct a 2 week intensive team program.
• Post induction, push the graduates into very small teams demanding high collaboration projects for at least 2 weeks.
• Design Performance Management KPI’s that discriminate in favour of teamwork

How can mid level managers enhance their effectiveness ?

Did you know

In India, 70 per cent of business managers created a demotivating climate for their employees. The world average was 55 per cent.( Source Hay Group Research -reported in BS 5th April 2013)

Good bosses are teachers. In fact their teachings accounts for 67% of  boss's effect on employees productivity - Kathryn L Shaw Stanford Professor of Economics - co -author of Value of Bosses.

Globally , 2 out of 3 employees are disengaged from their work ( Gallup Survey ), this leads to a loss of more than US$ 350 billion per year.

As per Dale Carnegie survey 50% of employees are engaged in India.

Towers Watson Study 2012 indicates that companies with engaged employees achieve 3 times more margins than companies with disengaged employees.

So the Question ?

If the business implication is obvious, why are managers unable to create the magic of engagement ?

Among many other reasons , the ones that stand out are :-

• Managers often do not get specific about role deliverables and expectations from their team members
• Unpredictable responses to situations
• Low interest in the employee 
• Low trust between the employee and the manager

Few simple ways to restore engagement if you are a manager

a. Provide support
b. Communicate by showing interest in the employee - listen more
c. Pay attention to task role and clarify outcomes and expectation
d. Work to build trust - as a sincere partner to your team member's success

Preformance Enablers

For capability to be realized into performance you need support systems. Agreed. So what is the big deal. It is all about performance then do you need temporary capability with support systems or do you need systems that can allow flexibility in capability development. Too much of emphasis has gone into capability development - knowledge growth and skill development, are some aspects that are almost synonymous today.

Think about a movie, the actors perform a part that befits the role. The role exists because of a story . The acting responds to contextual situation. You see the inter-connectivity.So knowledge of the context is married to the situation demanding a particular response from the actor. Props, script, action are detailed out to demonstrate the outcome. The acting skills of the actor ( core capability ) is tailored to the situation as modelled by the director. You get it . The systems and  processes and the eco-system enable the translation of an idea into reality.

Let us shift now to the corporate world. It appears , that we want a movie like outcome from all players. Except , that we want a larger and dynamic canvass ( the story does not end as in a movie), with all players moving in unison and demonstrating flexible capability based on a given situation. The real world does now work this way anymore and hence performance variations are quite drastic. The rate of change externally is at a mismatch with internal rate of change - creating great performance variations.

So what is the way forward . Focus on platform skills of learning agility. Create an eco-system where knowledge repository can exist. Much like the director in a movie , create directors who can teach and if that is not possible , have a repository of skill videos so that temporary skill can be acquired at a short notice , intended just for the purpose. Let's say , your job does not involve vendor negotiation. Yet , a situation demands that you need to lead a negotiation with a vendor for a price agreement.. You are worried about how to present a value. Pause. At this point , you may want to get yourself trained in negotiation skills. Time does not allow it. You can google search and read a few articles on successful value presentation. Or have a library of videos that shows sample presentation of values. If such screened resources are available , you have a good chance of modelling few techniques and being better equipped for your meeting.

You can see, that capability is not necessarily equal to performance , unless a performance system exists to allow that process.

Mobile Learning: The Next Evolution - Chief Learning Officer, Solutions for Enterprise Productivity

Mobile Learning: The Next Evolution - Chief Learning Officer, Solutions for Enterprise Productivity

Performance - What and How

This is the time of the year, when appraisals happen. The news will be out - who performed and who lagged . Rewards, increments, promotions will be awaited by one and all. At the end of it - some would be more happy than others. HR department would tick mark the annual ritual as having been completed with a sigh of relief.

Look at this process closely. What will be used  is the Performance Data. The larger organisations would flaunt their inflallibility - because of Performance Management System infrastructure. The smaller ones would use some measures, scraped from different parts of the organisation. Given this input, the supervising managers are likely to conduct an appraisal based on objective  and irrefutable facts as reflected in the results. The employee would get into this meeting prepared for a  one sided discussion revolving around the What of Performance - the hard facts. He or she, may not have the heart and the courage to highlight the How of the performance. Such discussions would be a matter of one upmanship between the boss and the subordinate resulting in disgruntlement and potential attrition.

The above process has an error bias and hence it is likely that a high performer in one year does not appear to be a consistent performer the next year. One major aspect  is the lack of exploration of the "how" part in a scientific manner. Fortunately tools are available to open this area - e.g PDI Ninth House has a tool called Talent View of Leadership Performance. In addition to the performance data a 360 degree tool digging out the how of the performance can supplement the performance data. Such a tool can reflect the challenges in the role, degree of difficulty, situations faced etc.With these inputs the appraisal process is more scientific and can result in a  better buy-in from the employee on the feedback.

Any performance appraisal must neccessarily focus on the employee and more rigorous and transparent the process, the better is the quality of outcome. Employees would look forward to their own development and the organisation can expect better retention figures. The reward and recognition system will earn  credibility and aspirational value.

When all CEO's are saying that processes and technology can be replicated , and people are the only differentiator, does it make sense to take short cuts in the process ?