vel...

मनाचा एका अंधार-कोपर्‍यात तर बरंच काही आहे,

काए काए सांगू अरे मित्रा मी तुला,

लहान मोठी तर गोष्टी बर्‍याच असतात सांगायला...

पण खरं तर... मला वेळ नाही मिळत... आयुष्यच जगायला !

Krishi Manthan : The Second Green Revolution

In the 2nd semester at S P Jain, I am mostly having specialisation courses - that makes it all the more interesting [thx to no-Finance subjects!!! :) ] One of them was Business Process Re-engineering (BPR) which is a management approach that examines aspects of a business and its interactions, and attempts to improve the efficiency of the underlying processes. It is a fundamental and radical approach by either modifying or eliminating non-value adding activities. BPR - an absolute buzzword for an MBA grad - but not sure how much it is relevant and practical in today's world; rather how many instances will i find ahead where this will be applicable!!! In our course, each project group had to take up a case of BPR and give a presentation on it.

So there we were racking our brains thinking about the topics and justifying it to be a BPR and not just a small tweaking process. Also the results had to be dramatic and change should be fundamental - the 2 basic necessities for a process to be called as being re-engineered. One of my group mates, Siddharth who is an avid lover of the ITC eChaupal came up with the idea to do somewhat similar to this. We started developing the concept and the whole thing came out to be something very novel and appealing!

Here are the excerpts of our experience from Sid's blog who has worded it very well...
"As a project for this subject we took traditional Mandi model for trading of farmers grain. Mandi which was set up government to help farmers in selling their produce; is now controlled by moneylenders, agents and is not giving farmers the full benefit of their produce. There are initiatives by private companies, which claim to increase the living standards and income of farmers to certain extent, however the benefit of this system is yet not percolated to the smallest of the farmer in remotest of village.

Moreover these companies are not helping farmers to move up the value chain. Private players reap the maximum benefit of commodities trading and food processing. They are not pumping back the benefit to the farmer community. We have re- engineered the process to a cooperative of farmers, which would increase their income and setting up of a grameen innovation center. Now as a cooperative decision making lies in the hands of farmers; They can deicide if they wish to keep their produce to sell it later in future, how much of produce is to be sent to the community processing zone to add value to wheat and convert it to flour or other products. We call this change mechanism as Mandi Manthan. you can read about mandimanthan presentation which we presented.

We call it the second green revolution. Focus of first green revolution was on quantity to meet the immediate demands; focus of second green revolution is quality and equality of farmers.
This project was actually a group work, my group consist of 7 ignited minds. You can see the pics representing blue print and thinking process of our model a night before the day we were supposed to present.

By the way it was not all work and no play ….

p.s. This presentation is inspired by the ideas from C.K. Prahlad’s Fortune at the bottom of the pyramid and Dr Kalam’s India Vision 2020. Some slides are
adapted from their work."

Our sincere thanks to Prof Prem Puri who showed faith in our project and motivated us to go ahead with this!

Btw, Sid is a prolific blogger and an 'early adopter' for writing reviews/opinions about any new technology product launched! Also he is a lover of open source and a big fan of Mozilla and all its products. You can read his blogs at http://siddharths.wordpress.com/

Moved to a new world...

It has been almost a month that I am in Singapore now. Yes, Singapore is indeed a new world which is very different than Dubai. A place which has its own charm. A small island, this was a tropical forest (...more apt will be a rainforest!!!) which has been able to retain much of its greenery. Right now its the monsoons here, and I am being well compensated for all the rains I missed, while staying in the desert land... See the change for yourself, which happens to the landscape here almost everyday (thats Gillman Heights Condominium visible from my window)


The sessions have started with full bang and now am nearing the end of this term too! I know it won't be far before this term gets over and next thing will be this whole course! :) The fortnight's break in India was like...kab aaya, kab gayaa...kuch pata hi nahi chala. Spent most of the time with friends, hogging Indian food (though not maa-ke-haath-ka-khanaa,as mommy dear was in US), and just chilling myself. I had a big surprise in store for me...Ravi, my school friend was getting married!!! This was an absolute news to me. And we kinda celebrated this on my birthday morning with a coffee, at the usual katta...Checkers @ VCA! Damn! I had to get up so early on my birthday morning, but then who cares!!! Nothing like spending time with old pals...anytime of the day

Being here in this new world, it will be novel to learn about a new part of the earth, which is so much talked about. Be it the money-minting business here or the tourism, it is an overwhelming feeling as am getting an opportunity to meet people forming a major part of this continent.

Don't know what all is there in store for me. A decision to walk on a path not walked before brings so many new challenges and experiences. Absorbing them over a period of time and becoming one with them is just another way of living life! As of now just want to enjoy the remaining days of the paathshala and make the most of it...before the ball sets to roll again!

Adios.