face book fast & twitter holiday May 21, 2011
Posted by aglakadam in Social Casue, Twitter.Tags: aglakadam, children, connection, contact, facebook, fb, friends, google, impact of, like, linkedIn, networking, social, Twitter
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Recently I came across an anecdote which goes like this: When the house maid reported for her duty at home after being absent for 4 days in a row, the house lady went furious on the maid. She demanded an explanation as to how could she disappear from her duty without any information. What the maid replied was interesting “Madam I had updated my status on face book and I expected you to have read it!” Internet age has arrived in India! Sounds incredibly true – isn’t it!
My friend who works with a media company recently changed his job. He got an excellent opportunity to work with one of the best companies in media segment in Mumbai. He got this break through twitter. He spread a tweet stating “Looking for a media job in Mumbai, commitment to deliver results” His tweet got re-tweeted by many and ultimately it reached the eyes of one HR manager. Less than 140 characters on twitter made him get a job worth more than 14 lac rupees!
From media to maid, networking on internet has impacted each one of us. LinkedIn, Buzz, Orkut and much more – this is the age of social network. One in every 3 professional in India is on either one or the other social network and this trend is catching up like a wild fire. Professionally these platforms are helpful for an individual to develop a wide reach. On the individual’s personal front these networks are being used to identify lost friends and to share recent status update. Some people use these networks for productive purposes like : to identify a suitable place to stay in a new city, to reach to the prospective blood donor when in urgency, to connect with an overseas consultant etc.
While there are various positive uses of these professional sites, I have experienced that there is a huge dark side to these networks. One of the biggest challenges in the new age socially networked generation is that they are connected but have no personal connect. A hand shake and a smile is very effective in enriching any relation but this is found missing in relationships of today’s generation. It is always easy to speak when no one is watching you. The internet network has encouraged people to speak out but only when they are behind the screen. This reduces the individuals confidence to speak out in public.
I have also observed that there is a mad rush to expand one’s social network on internet. Most of the users want to be connected to as many “contacts” as possible. There is very less or no discretion in making friends. These social networks defy Dale Carnegie’s theorems on how to win friends and develop relations. Anybody can invite, connect or follow almost anybody today. Especially when this tool gets into the access of naïve children it becomes all the more destructive. I see children less on sports grounds and more on computer screens now a days. If this trend continues, in the future generation it will be very tough for us to identify Tendulkar’s and Nadal’s and Beckham’s to represent the world of sports.
I recall my school days when my parent’s used to inspire me to develop a good social network. We had a “friends club” in the vicinity of our residential colony. Children from neighborhood were members of this club. Entry to this club was restricted, our parents would keep a close watch on the quality of club members and also encourage us to organize events and activities which would include participation from people of various age groups. Festival season of holi, deepawali, durga puja, summer vacations, Christmas holidays etc were days of jam packed social activities. This actually is the essence of social networking for me.
According to GoodMobilePhones survey the average user doesn’t know 20% of his Facebook friends. The remaining three-fifths are acquaintances, folks we don’t really talk to. We are in general touch with at best one in five of our contact list in the network. I am myself present on a few social network sites and I try to use the networks in the most optimum and fruitful manner.
After reading the above survey I studied my social network statistics and realized that more than 70% of the friends on my network are connected just for the sake of being recognized as a network friend, either of us is just adding up the numbers to the friend list! In fact I observed that there is absolute no communication with more than 60% of people connected on my network, at best if there is any interaction, it is restricted to one click “like”. The sincerity and genuineness of being acknowledged with a “like” on facebook or linkedin is always a question mark for me.
To check the strength of my social friendship on these networks, once I decided to be on a fast – social network fast. This meant no post on facebook, twitter or linkedin for a period of seven days. It was like a twitter holiday for me. I observed my fast with complete honesty only to find that on eighth day life on the network was as usual. No one realized that I was absent for a few days, no one missed me, no one wanted to know any more about me! Unlike my school days social network when if I was absent even for a day there used to be so many knocks on my door, just to enquire the reason behind my absence!. When I made some new status updates / posts on the networks, the likes, the re-tweets and the comments started coming in as usual.
Lessons for Excellence :
1. Social Network should be used with a definite purpose, not just to add friends and kill productive time.
2. Learn to use your discretion to make friends on social networks, It is not just to add friends, we should also know to “UNFRIEND” unknown connections.
3. If children have to be exposed to social network it should be a controlled, monitored and restricted use.
2. Proper virus protection should be used while operating on such internet sites.
1. Network sites may be the new age buzz but we should not miss on spending time with friends & relatives & being physically present with them.
Ajit Varwandkar
Email : info@fsindia.in
Corporate Social Dabawalas! November 10, 2010
Posted by aglakadam in Fun Reading, Jara hut ke, Life and all, National Issues, Social Casue.Tags: bribe, corporate, corruption, csr, dabbawala, google, responsibility, sigma, social, sweet
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Dabbawala’s are very famous, not just in Mumbai & India but across the world. When I say Dabbawala, I am sure you immediately start thinking of the dabbawala’s of Mumbai who have an impeccable record of delivering more than 200000 lunch (tiffin) boxes to the respective users everyday within a time frame of 3 hours from 11.30 am till 1.30 pm. Day on day for the last few decades the dabbawala’s have been demonstrating zero error in their services to an extent that they have been recognized as Six Sigma Performance! For those who are still not aware about all this I encourage you to just Google dabbawala and see the 29400 results!
As per Wikipedia the definition of dabbawala goes like this : A dabewala, also spelled as dabbawalla or dabbawallah, literally meaning person with a box, is a person in the Indian subcontinent, most commonly found in the cities of Mumbai and Karachi, who is employed in a unique service industry whose primary business is collecting the freshly cooked food in lunch boxes from the residences of the office workers (mostly in the suburbs), delivering it to their respective workplaces and returning back the empty boxes by using various modes of transport.
Friends, here in this writeup, I am not intending to poke my nose in the business of the dabbawala’s who every day crisscross Mumbai by about 60 kms in the locals trains. I however refer to those dabbawala’s who haven’t yet found space in the treasury of Google though they are rife almost in every city in India! Yes I have discovered a new breed of dabbawala’s in the corporate world. A breed with a variety so unique and hi profile that it may take Google years to get an insight into these dabbas. I take this opportunity to share my observations on these dabbawala’s in this write-up. This is a post deepawali discovery.
These real dabbawala’s are actually found only in the festive season of deepawali. These are people with sweet boxes trying to reach and please their respective business beneficiaries prior to the festival day. This is a typical syndrome in the PP (public private) mode of “life – business – governance cycle of operations” in the corporate world in almost every city in India.
The nature and truth behind these dabbas (boxes) and the corporate dabbawals has though evolved over time. The journey of the dabbas started as a good will gesture when friends & relatives used to exchange sweets on the auspicious festive occasion. This was a well intended exchange of wishes and had nothing quid-pro-co hidden inside. Over ages now the tradition of dabbas on deepawali has evolved to deliver different motives.
You can find various kinds of contents floating in these dabbas today. I met one such gentle man who is a typical babu and a proud receiver of dabbas every deepawali. He received more than 35 Dabbas this deepawali. I was enlightened with academic information that these days not all the dabbas have sweets inside, in fact most of the dabba’s do not have sweets inside. Many other kind of items are also found in these sweet boxes like latest mobile handsets, video camera’s of small sizes, biscuits & coins (of course made of gold), diamond rings (to please madam), different variety of gift /travel vouchers etc. Stretch your imagination and you will still fall short of thereality… these sweet boxes have hi fi dimension products inside… They say that majority of the dabba’s in deepawali are used to guise the exchange of hard cash! As per one guesstimate the exchange of ‘green’ can accumulate to the tune of a few thousand crore rupees on a pan India basis. All these transactions just over a couple of days!
Once upon a time the burnt cracker debris in front of your house was an indication of how well you celebrated the festival. Today it is the count, variety & size of the used dabba’s thrown in the dustbin indicates how “wealthy” festival time had been for you. Hopefully now the IT sleuths will have a special drive from the upcoming festival season to take a count of the empty dabbas in front of houses in the streets.
Festival time dabbas are increasingly becoming an integral part of our corporate culture today. If a business unit does not indulge in dabba’s the happiness quotient in times to come is likely to come down, the payment lead time is likely to increase, the discounts or giveaways will be forced to be hiked and worst the future business prospects are at stake! Considering all this it makes sense for a business unit to distribute dabbas in advance of the festival. This is very much important the dabbas have to come in advance, if it is delayed the boss might not be pleased enough!
It was a surprise for me to know that most of the corporate’s in India spends at least two weeks time in advance to fulfill this corporate special responsibility! At times even an especially dedicated taskforce is set in action to work out the logistics and allocation of dabbas. The CSR administration machinery works round the clock to work out the dabba inventory. Which dabba to be handed over to which babu /
beneficiary and by whom at which place is a critical decision.
The best part is one cannot apparently identify these sweet boxes as bribes yet those hand’s who deliver the business checks gets greased. The giver and receiver of the dabba’s as well are much relieved from the pseudo sense of sin involved in the exchange of bribe. After all deepawali symbolizes the victory of good over evil and hence one need to be careful & safe!
Ajit Varwandkar
Managing Director
http://www.aglakadam.com
