Diaspora Literature - In Search of a Room of One's Own

The Home as a Seat of Longing and Desire in Diaspora

What is a Home? On the one hand 'home' is a mythic place of desire in the diasporic imagination. In this sense it is a place of return, even if it is possible to visit the geographical territory that is seen as a place of 'origin'. On the other hand home is also a lived experience of a locality.Its sounds and smells,its heat and dust, balmy summer evenings, sombre grey skies in the middle of the day.... all this as mediated by the historically specific of every day social relations. In other words, the varying experience of pains and pleasures, the terrors and contentment or the higher and humdrums of everyday lived cultures that mark the how, "there is no place like home"

"Sometimes the house of the future is better built, lighter and larger than all the homes of the past, so that the image of the dream home is opposed to that of the childhood home... Maybe it is a good thing for us to keep a few dreams of the dream home  that we shall live in... later, always later,... so much later in fact, that we shall not have time to achieve it. For a home that was final, one that stood in symmetrical relation to the home we were born in would lead to thoughts _ serious sad thoughts_ and not in dreams. It is better to live in a state of impermanence than in one of finality.

"Within the frame of contemporary diaspora the notion of 'home' and when a location becomes home are therefore linked when the issues related to inclusion or exclusion which tend to be subjectively experienced depending on circumstances. When does a location become home? How can one distinguish between "feeling at home" and taking a claim to a place as one's own?

The notion of the home is therefore very complex and is related to the subjective emotion of nostalgia The concept of home in the diaspora is intricate, complex and multifaceted characterising plurality of homes and plurality of belongings. The notion of diaspora can represent multiple, plurilocal thus avoiding the  ideas of fixity, boundedness and nostalgic exclusivity traditionally implied with the term 'home' i.e, a constant apprehension arises between where you are from and where you are at which leads the diasporic subjects to form their own space.

Sandhya Raga | Kannadathi Thaye Baa song

Competitive Intelligence

Competitive Intelligence – ‘Millennium Intelligence for Winning Businesses’

A Book from Himalaya Publishing House

 ISBN 978-93-5202-987-7      PCG 665

Author(s) : Amit Johri    Akshai Aggarwal

Why Engage in Intelligence?

‘Every morning, a Gazelle awakens in Africa.

She knows she will have to run faster than the fastest Lion that day

Or she will die.

Every morning, the Lion awakens

He knows he will have to catch the slowest Gazelle

Or he will die of hunger.

It does not matter if you are the Gazelle or the Lion

When the Sun rises, you should start running’.

                                      (Muhammad Ibn Raschid Al Maktum)

A company’s environment is no longer what it used to be. It is deeply affected by a much higher flow of information and a fast pace of technological change. Also the pressure to innovate and to innovate fast is higher than ever before.

Increasing globalization of markets makes monitoring and analysis of the competitive landscape important. No company, regardless of size, can afford not be informed about its market environment, competitor’s products, prices, sales channels, and communication activities.

Competitive pressure is on the rise because of new market entrants, technological progress, and increasing globalization.

Governments are also getting more involved in business affairs, showing clear signs of protectionism and preferential treatment towards state-owned companies.

The reaction of competitors to a company’s strategy and the recognition of early warning signs in the market needs to be incorporated into an evolving corporate strategy. Without actual (market) information, product development, product adjustment, market development are based on mere assumptions and is similar to driving a car in fog.

Intelligence is therefore of utmost strategic importance for every company.

Even the German Gods Engaged in Intelligence      

German God Odin had two agents called Hugin (Thought) and Munin (Memory). Disguised as ravens, they both flew out in the world each day to gather information for Odin. Nothing could hide from their discerning gaze, and when they returned to Odin, they would land on his shoulder and whisper their thoughts and memories into his ear.

Intelligence is a systematic management method.

Competitive Intelligence is an approach to study and monitor the competitors and market environment in a continuous, systematic and a thorough manner whilst transforming this information into useful decision support to achieve strategic competitive advantage.

Tactical/Strategic Intelligence Instruments and Methods

‘If you know yourself and you know your enemy, you will win each battle

If you know yourself but not know your enemy, you will lose one battle for each battle you win

But if you know neither yourself nor your enemy, you are a fool and you will lose every battle’

                                                                                                          (Sun Tzu, Art of War)

Intelligence deals with a long-term strategic method as well as a short-term tactical instrument. Ideally, Intelligence deals with both.

The Value

Intelligence is of strategic importance for every company. In addition, by providing relevant past, present and future information of the competitive landscape, intelligence serves not only strategic but also operational and tactical decision-making and helps to identify emerging opportunities and risks early on. In practice, Intelligence and reaching the related goals and targets give companies a diverse range of benefits.

Competing for Business

To know your enemy, you must become your enemy said Sun Tzu in The Art of War. Sometimes competing for business can seem like a battle, where the odds are stacked against you and the odds of success are insurmountable.

All is not lost however Competitive Intelligence is the key weapon in leveling the battlefield and allowing you to compete with the advantage of knowledge on your side.

Competitive Intelligence is the ethical gathering and analysis of competitor, customer and market information from open sources. This analysis is used by organizations to make better strategic decisions. It is the difference between Competing and Winning.

Embedding Competitive Intelligence as a core management process is increasingly essential towards survival and growth in the 21^st century.

Best Practices for Managing Competitive Intelligence: Qualify Your Tenders

Tendering is expensive; Compete only where it makes good sense; Learn as much from loosing as from winning.

Each time you participate in the tendering process, you learn a little more about what it takes to win. As Sun Tzu noted ‘Opportunities multiply as they are seized’.

Competitive Intelligence   What you don’t know Will Hurt You

In today’s complex and fast-moving world, what we need even more than foresight and hindsight is insight – Napoleon Bonaparte

Start with the Customers Not the Competitors

Management Guru Peter Drucker said “the purpose of business is to create and keep a customer”. Obviously, right? Companies that provide prospects with what they want are rewarded with sales, customers and market share. Simple!

How Industry forces Influence Profitability?

In “Business @ the Speed of Thought : Using a Digital Nervous System”, Bill Gates wrote : “The most meaningful way to differentiate your company from your competition, the best way to put distance between you and the crowd, is to do an outstanding job with information. How you gather, manage and use information will determine whether you win or lose”.

Staying Hyper Competitive

There is a Chinese saying:

Know thy-self, know thy competition, and get it right almost every time.

Know thy-self, not know thy competition, and get it right about half the time.

Not know thy self, not know thy competition, and get it wrong almost every time.

We live in a world driven by hyper competition. The knowledge base for managing in this hyper competitive environment is called Competitive Intelligence.

“Strategy without Tactics is the slowest route to Victory. Tactics without Strategy is the noise before the defeat”. Sun Tzu “The Art of War”

Commitment of Teachers towards Effective Education by Dr. Saramma Chandy

1.Contextual Competencies: Teachers need to acquire a near total understanding  of the socio-economic, cultural, linguistic and religious contexts of the specific family milieu and the community profile. They have to understand the heterogenities and diversities of the society while working out unifying factors for building a cohesive society that believes in national integration and provides every citizen a sense of belonging to the nation with dignity and equality

2. Conceptual Competancies: The educational implication of mental, social and cultural needs are to be ascertained to the different age groups and slowly integrate them to the understanding of Universal enrolment, Universal retention and Universal quality education with specific reference to the minimal levels of learning approach translated into competency based teaching-learning process.

3. Content Competancies: Distinct structure of concepts further inter-related to rules, principles or laws. To comprehend relationships between facts and concepts, principles and theories and identify new developments in the subject to classify them into the structure of the subject in terms of improving competency.

4.Transactional Competencies: To engage the pupil in group learning, peer learning and individual learning and monitor the progress of children towards mastery through continuous evaluation, provide assistance to overcome hurdles and provide challenging  practices and achieve competencies among individuals in  a group.

5. Co-curricular Activities: Extra-curricular activities such as school assembly, school magazine, picnic, excursion etc, are essential to the development of desirable behavious, values and attitudes among students and brings out the talent edge in the various kinds of competitions viz., games, sports, group activities, drama, music, cultural and social activities.

6. Teaching Aids/ Learning Materials: As and when possible, self made learning materials that are easily available and use of natural resources and encouraging student groups to build models that help in their studies will enable better understanding and build competencies.

7. Evaluation Competencies: The knowledge of various kinds of tests that help evaluate the content and memory. Evaluation should be periodic, continuous and assess competencies based on content, context and behavioural aspects,

8. Management Competencies: To increase their abiliy to assume responsibility of self-management as an individual and as group members, Management cabpabilities of the teacher within the classroom, the institution, the resources management, personnel management, time management will all help build competencies.

9. Working with Parents: Help parents to organize supervised study lessons, remedial teaching, counselling sessions, etc, Proper coordination with parents will help solving classroom problems and better all round development of the child.

10. Working with Community and other Agencies: The school should have a wholesome rapport with the community and other Agencies. Organizing of exhibitions with student activities involving traffic control, Community Health, Cleaner environment, Civic Sense, etc. will help build competencies in the society.

the CALM and the STORM by Moon Moon Jetley

The Delhi Renaissance - The Urdu Poets

Under the agreeable smell of the reign of Bahadur Shah Zafar 
"the drinking vessel of Delhi"
Became filled with the wine of Pleasure

Two factors that stand out in the poetry of Zafar are frustration and gloom

O Zafar, when at last I got a chance to take a walk in the garden
There was no sign of rose left in it
O ye captives in the prison-house of chain
What did ye get by raising a hue and cry?
In the garden of this world I am like the picture of a nightingale
And whether it is spring or autumn makes no difference to me
O captives, your wings have lost the power to fly
What will you get by leaving the net, better stay where you are. 

Momin was primarily a poet of romantic disposition with a lifestyle that matched his nature. He lived the life of a playboy who soaked himself in the vices of his times

Momin, if you have any respect for faith
Jihad means battle; so go there now
Be fair, more than God you loved that life
Which you used to sacrifice for idols

The army of Islam has congregated
Heed the Imam of the times
Sacrifice your life for the sake of God
Oh God, make me worth of martyrdom too
Make me worthy of this highest of all forms of worship

Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib

Generations of my men have been men at arms
Poetry brings no honour to me

"When  I was young, a Perfect guide told me that peity and asceticism did not please him, and he would not forbid gay and sinful living. I could eat and drink and make merry. Only I should remember to be like the fly that sits on crystal sugar, not like the one that sits on honey. I have acted on this advice."

Ghalib believed that one would do well to learn from modern scientific inventions of the British instead of flogging a dead horse of religion and realm. Ghalib's closeness to the British and his repeated criticism of the Mughal house earned him the sobriquet of a 'supercilious sycophant. The poet lauret of the city, Ghalib had great love towards Delhi and he says, 'One should be grateful that such a city exists. where else in the world is the city so refreshing?'

'Delhi in this time, states Percival Spear was an Indian Weimar, with Ghalib for its Goethe.
 

Indra's Net by Rajiv Malhotra

After "Breaking India" and 'Being Different', here's the new title 'INDRA'S NET' by Rajiv Malhotra exploring the dimensions of Hindu identity post the historical references to the Aryan and Dravidian myths and the path-breaking ideologies trying to recoup the Western Interventions and offer insights into the hard core realities of an age old faith and Religion which is highly potent and emanating truths in the all encompassing 'satyam shivam sundaram' i.e, truth, harmony and beauty that has been the Indra's net. Every jewel in its node serve as a microcosm of the entire Universe being a whole in the living entity/ matter in cosmic level.

The authors see three major civilisations competing for global dominance today—the West (especially the US), China and Islam. All three have diabolical designs of splitting India, according to them, and they focus on Western efforts to break India. The problem we have is not in the study of Western intervention, though, curiously, Yankee Hindutva attempts to usurp the language of anti-imperialism.

The Hindu initiate is an active participant in his quest for adhyātma vidya (knowledge of the self). Malhotra aptly points out that none of the Hebrew prophets, Jesus, or Paul allowed for individual freedom. Instead they rejected individuality as something stained by Original Sin and even salvation in Christianity is a collective exercise. This denial of individuality in the religious realm extends to all walks of western life, and contrary to what westerners imagine they are not individualistic but highly institutionalized creatures. On the other hand, dharma frees one from conditioning, celebrates individualism, and leads one to the blissful state called satchitānanda. Unless the west rejects the foundational premises of Christianity as embodied in the Nicene Creed, it is not possible for westerners to pursue internal quest.

In Judeo-Christian traditions, revelation is initiated by God, from above, with the individual being a passive and submissive recipient. This process is highly history-centric, relies upon authority that is frozen in time, and allows for no direct experience. Dogma insists that one is born into Original Sin and human existence is sinful unless one seeks salvation from a historical prophetic tradition. But this salvation does not transform man into something sublime. God always remains an external agency and all that salvation means is that one escapes eternal condemnation to hell. These history-centric beliefs of Judeo-Christian systems also fail scientific scrutiny.

For example, Indian Classical music is non-linear and non-normative, and as a result possesses not only the musical note but also a melodic ecosystem complex called swara which has no equivalent in Western Classical music. Malhotra’s observation brings to mind Yehudi Menuhin’s rueful remark in his famous book Unfinished Journey that the tempered scale in Western Classical music where each note is adjusted up or down from its true center has corrupted western ears whereas the perfect fifth set by the tanpura in Indian Classical music is a criterion for all other intervals and has rendered the Indian ears sensitive to microtonal variations called ghamaka that westerners cannot comprehend. In an echo of Malhotra’s remark about Indian individualism vis-à-vis the lack of individualism in the west, Menuhin too remarks that whereas the Indian musician’s expressions celebrate his individual quest to unite with the infinite the western musician accepts loss of freedom for the sake of collectivism.

Turn Around India (Through Inclusive Governance and Team Spirit) by R P Gupta

The book was released in January 2013 by Sri. Narendra Modi, Chief Minister, Government of Gujarat INDIA.

Need for tax reforms: Total individual tax payers in India is hardly 3.5 crore out of 120 crore population. It means tax compliance is barely 3% as compared to 45-50% in the USA.With such massive non-compliance, it is better to amend the law instead of converting everybody as law violators. It is therefore, recommended to replace 'personal income tax' through expenditure tax and then merge it with GST (Goods and Services tax) which will be revenue neutral. It will not violate legislature intention to tax rich persons and to re-distribute among others.

There is general reluctance from unorganized sector for keeping themselves within the net of indirect taxes like VAT and service tax. This is mainly due to tax hazards, compliance cost and fear arising out of compliance formalities. Introduction of GST will be a good solution, provided it is simplified for SMEs. Merger of multiple taxes will become an incentive for compliance. Some special provision may be incorporated for small enterprises such as self assessment and exemption for maintaining books of account.

High rate of Stamp Duty is a deterrent in land and real estate business for disclosing full value of the transaction which should be slashed down to 2% on uniform basis in the country. Some tax incentive may be extended on long term capital gain arising out of sale of land and real estate. This should convert majority of real estate transactions into its full value. Therefore, deployment of black income on real estate shall also reduce.

If the Government hence, takes a bold step to merge personal income tax into GST, the result could be astonishing on the front of savings and investments without any loss of revenue. In addition, government borrowing cost is likely to reduce by about Rupees one lakh crore. Non tax revenue and capital receipts should be increased with similar innovations.