MGNREGS may cause lower agriculture outputs..!!

Rural Employment, Rural consumerism, aam admi, National Advisory Committee ect have become buzz words after the NREGS (presently MGNREGS) scheme was conceived and implemented by UPA in the first term. 

It was conceived as a medicine for dwindling income of rural people when compared to the rocketing rise in income of urban Indians. Unlike the salaried people whose salaries are linked to inflation rate (labour laws) and there is a commission to take care of their salary hikes and compensations, farmer’s income doesn’t have that guarantee in income increase. If we see the income in farming communities, the tomatoes and potatoes have the same price fluctuations (Rs.1 per kg to Rs.25 per kg or even greater) as it was years before. When everyone harvests the same vegetable, the gate price is almost like buying free of cost. Also, unlike in business scenario where people can always take care of their product price at least in terms of cost plus pricing, in case of farm produce this is not possible.

There are lots of problems in rural structure which are quite important to be tackled to improve the income levels of rural people. A quick and effective balm for this is providing them with guaranteed employment which the UPA has identified. As always with a medication there come its side effects. But here the side effect is not a minnow. 

Because of the NREGS scheme crowding out the rural employment market during the time of agricultural activities, both small scale and large scale farmers are not getting enough farm workers for their activities. It happens in lot of places where during the initial plantation time or end harvest time the NREGS working days overlaps and the rural workers choose the NREGS work because the work is less demanding compared to farm work and the fear of losing the card if they don’t go to NREGS work. As a result famers find it difficult to get worker for their farm activities even though they are ready to offer more wages than NREGS wage (Rs. 100 per day). This leads to increase in cost for the farmers even though they don’t have power to pass on this cost to consumers. 

The major issue is, because of this farmers have stopped or at least reduced their cultivation capacity. This has lead to heavy reduction in production of agricultural products in many areas especially where vegetables are produced. The recent rise in vegetable prices (basically due to supply constrains) is partly due to this issue.

One solution for this problem could be bring in a system where the local panjayaths can play a crucial role in allocating the rural workers to farm works and NREGS works. Local farmers can go and register their work force requirement in the local panjayaths. The Panjayath can allocate the required number of workers to different farmers (who have registered their requirement) based on first come first serve basis. The NREGS work can be taken up only when there is no farm works available to allocate. 

This would beneficial in following ways:

1.    It would resolve the labor problem faced by the farmers

2.    It would increase the number of employment days the available for the rural workers.

3.    Presently, NREGS provides employment in areas where generally good amount of farm or farm related employment is available. This results in deployment of this scheme where it is not required. By using the above said approach government can increase the efficiency of the scheme with much lower budget.

4.    During the years of good monsoon, there are more farm works available and there will be more number of farm works which would reduce the number of NREGS work days effectively reducing the government expenditure.

Everything said, like any other scheme implementation holds the key. Hope government soon realizes the above said issue and bring in the necessary change.

Who moved my Cheese?

It is happening and happening here and there. Happens with almost all the living creatures. It is the habit of teaching. This habit as like other habits, has taken a extensive form with human beings. 

A lot said through word of mouth, cave carvings, leaf writings, books and electronic devices. The topic ranged from religion, culture, death etc. etc. 

Books or for that matter any piece of information become accepted if they are more relevant to the period they are published. There are some books that remained vivid and relevant throughout the changing life style and culture of people. Books like Mahabarath, Upanishads, and teachings of Socrates etc. These books touched the basic core of life i.e. they taught how to live and adapt to the changing nature of life on earth. 

This basic subject ‘Change’ has interested many modern authors and there are lots of books have been published in recent times and one such book is ‘Who moved my cheese?’ by Dr. John Spencer.

The book tries to portray how life turns out in a different way than one normally thinks and how changing with life is beneficial and makes us happy. The message of change is conveyed through a store discussed by a group of high school classmates during their get together. The story discussed by them has four characters – Sniff, Scurry, Hem and Haw. Sniff and Scurry are little mice and doesn’t possess great reasoning powers. Hem & Haw are small little beings who are like people today. All four lived near a maze and depended up the cheese in the maze for their food. For them having cheese is what life is about. They daily get up in the morning and start searching for cheese in the maze. They finally found cheese in their own way. 

The author tries to compare the story with the real world as below -

Maze – World (more specifically the materialistic world)

Cheese – Prosperity, wealth, power, fame etc.

Hem, Haw – Ordinary people in this materialistic world

Sniff, Scurry – the author wants people to learn from these characters (no comparison to the real world)

Once they found cheese Hem and Haw are lethargic and stopped working hard. They become lazy. Through this the author says people normally work hard to be prosperous and once they got into a good position, people become lethargic and start enjoying their position.

All of a sudden one day the cheese was not there in the regular place and all four of them are surprised and worried. Sniff & Scurry realized that they need to find new cheese instead worrying. Hem and Haw were not able to believe that their cheese was moved. They were deeply attached to the cheese that they couldn’t able to digest the fact that their cheese was moved. 

Here the author draws analogy how changing circumstances erodes people’s prosperity and how people were not able to moved ahead because of emotional sufferings.

We can also find similar tone in the teaching of Buddha and Mahabharath, for that matter entire Indian philosophy, which tells that the suffering of human beings come from the fact that they are emotional beings. They say the humans are mired in the pool of worldly attachments and this is the only hurdle in the path toward enlightenment. The emotional darkness instills fear in the mortal beings.

Coming back to the story, Sniff and Scurry didn’t give much thought to who, how or where the cheese was moved? Their concentration was on finding new cheese and finally they got new one. On the other hand, Hem and Haw were still worried about the old cheese and started thinking about how, who and where the cheese was moved. They thought their life become terrible because someone has moved their cheese.

This actually brings to the analogy of how people react to the changes in their life. There was a saying “Life is driven not by what happens to you rather by how you react to life’s happenings”. The perfect example to this would be when Steve Job was fired by Apple Computer’s board, initially he was worried but later he realized that the weight of success that he had in Apple was gone. He became light headed and started thinking about his core strength & what he loved to do. He then started a company called Next and then Pixar animations. 

Coming to the story, earlier Sniff and Scurry enjoyed the cheese but at the same time they are conscious about the changes in the size of the cheese. So, when cheese was moved, they are not surprised. The author wants readers to learn this nature of Sniff & Scurry and look for changes and opportunities in the environment around us.  Most of the companies nowadays have separate team for Change Management and also, they look continuously for opportunities in their environment. 

Mean while, Hem understood that simply wasting time worrying about the old cheese was not correct. So, he moved on to find new cheese while Haw still trying to find the reason for the loss of old cheese. Hem was afraid about whether there would be any cheese left in the maze. He learnt throughout the entire path of finding new cheese. Today most people may be classified as Hem. There was this line quoted in the book –“The quicker you let go off he old cheese the sooner you can enjoy the new one”. Finally he arrived at the new cheese factory, where he found Sniff and Scurry. But this time he became cautious of changes in the cheese size.

There is another parallel saying “The ship has to leave the shore to find new lands”.  In Buddha’s teaching, he says sorrow and happiness are like day and night. One should know to live aloof of these two things. In the story of Mahabarath, Krishna tells Arjun to leave the fear of extinction and fight for good cause. 

Some examples for Changing along with the change: 

    1.    Ambassador was in good position until Maruthi came into the industry. Maruthi kept changing with the customer needs while Ambassador remained with their old design. 

    2.    The Indian PSUs faced stiff competition from private sector in the post liberalization era, which they never faced earlier. The PSUs that have changed their attitude and competed have survived but the once remained unchanged have become a NPA for the Government.

    3.    Life of Lance Armstrong would stand as a best example of this. 

    4.    The character showed by the Mumbaikars after the November 26 Mumbai attacks was another show of moving with the change. They got back to normal life so soon that the whole world was stunned by this character.

Example for smelling the cheese often to realize the change –

   1.    The FED in US has not realized the bubble in the mortgage industry and didn’t regulate the industry well which caused the Global economic turmoil.

   2.    In India, ULIPs become very famous not only because of its product returns but also, it was pushed by the agents because it gave them higher commissions. Seeing the misspelling of ULIPs, SEBI brought strict regulation in selling ULIPs.

If you see a regular school going kid, if he misses the bus, he would talk about it throughout the day – this is change from a normal routine.

We look forward for Festivals. They make us happy. They make a change in the regular life.

We drop in for a coffee as soon as we saw a new coffee shop in our area. This is a change from older one.

In a way change is required for all to refresh ourselves. But only thing is we are not ready to change or come out of comfort zone. The evolution theory says those that changes with the environment lives and others perish. Change is an integral part of life on earth.

Nokia – Leader’s riddle

The mobile OS platform is emerging in the same way as the desktop OS emergence in 1990’s, but in 1.5X or 2X speed of the desktop OS evolution. Looking at this growth, beckons one to draw nice analogy in the evolution path of mobile OS with that of desktop OS development.

If we see the late 90’s, Windows emerged as the favorite OS platform for non-Mac users. The contemporaries at that time are UNIX, Sun Solaris etc. but they couldn’t able to chain the legs of Windows. 

In the current mobile OS market, Google’s Android seems well on its path of taking the position what Windows has attained. Most handset makers on the planet have started to make designs that are proficient to speak the language of Android. The number of these scholars seems to be increasing exponentially. The applications and its developers for Android OS are also increasing to a myriad. 

As interesting thing to note is, the ever premium Apple products (both Mac and iPhone) runs on home grown Apple OS. Going forward, the Apple OS for their phones would retain their market share as did the Mac OS.

The trouble is in Nokia’s house as it is facing what is called slow death. Ho!! Too hot word!! It may not die but surly going to lose its majority of market share. The act of marring Windows Mobile OS platform for their handsets can delay the inevitable. It has clearly laid the path for the grave of Symbian OS. Leave the OS, what about the handsets? Currently held by more number of hands than any other phones made so far.

Nokia believes that they can win back their lost market share (majority to Android phones in the touch phone category and to new entrants in the lower category) by marring Windows OS. Their thoughts are in the same lines as a man on the fire. 

Like Dell and HP, Nokia should convert their handsets compatible with any mobile OS i.e they should make handsets with any of the three OS – Android, Windows and Symbian. They can price it accordingly. They should rather concentrate on the hardware, designs and various models that can be priced across price bands. This would help them gain the market share in the handset indeed it would put them formidable in number Uno postion.