Five takeaways from Japan's investment into India's Infrastructure

1. JICA (Japanese International Donor Agency) is the largest bilateral donor agency in India - it is part of Japanese government, in-charge of all overseas development assistance (ODA). India is its biggest donee out of 150 countries.

2. JICA has given soft loans to the tune of Rs. 150 thousand crores to India since 2007-08 at 0.1% to 1.4% repayable after 30 to 50 years. They come with a rider that 30% of project value by contract must go to Japanese firms.

3. For capacity-building 7,110 experts have come to India and 7,369 have gone to Japan since loans are backed with wider thrust on holistic change and mindset shifts.

4.  JICA has surpassed World Bank and ADB in executing large infra projects in India.

5. India-Japan to cooperate for $40 billion Asia-Africa Growth Corridor (AAGC) program.

Link of news here.

A talk by Prof. Ramgopal Rao for young researchers and their teachers

A talk was organised by Prof. Rao, Director, IIT Delhi on 7th July at the Department of Management Studies, IIT. It was inspirational in many ways, with anecdotal references of parity between student-teacher relationship. Some of the essential points of the lecture are as follows:

1. Students as partners: In the engineering community, a time has come to leverage the entrepreneurial ecosystem by incentivising students to become partners in commercial ventures  and not treat them as subordinates.

2. Patent-Publish-Flourish: This is the new mantra of research these days. This formula has been propagated by Prof. Mashelkar, which intends that scholars and researchers must first of all aim to protect their ideas, publish it and then flourish by reaping its benefits in the long run. He gave the example of the sensor 'i sense' as to how the idea was more than 10 years ago but it was Apple that copyright "i" due to which it had to be dropped from the sensor technology.

3. Funding ideas in India: He stated how it was 10 times more challenging to fund an idea in India as compared to the US. In the US, ideas got invested for 10 times more. We still do not have an investment ecosystem in India for start-ups.

4. Indians good at only publishing: He cites as to how Indian researchers have the maximum number of publications per head. They even beat China in publication. However, it is not enough as publications lack real world problem solving and relevance.

5. How life of a researcher starts and ends in the library: He mentioned how a researcher starts the academic career by starting reading in the library and ends up with their own work being stacked up in the library.

6. Identifying a problem on which no research has been done earlier: He mentioned how important it was for a researcher to identify and common-sensically look for a problem on which no one has ever worked before - no research paper ever existing.

7. FIIT facilities may be used by non-engineers to protect fresh ideas: He authoritatively mentioned that non-scientist/ engineers must use the help of FIIT to patent their work and get back to him in case they do not cooperate.  

8. Harnessing mobile tech market: He gave many examples of developing apps that can be used in everyday life, for instance one which blocks calls when you are in a classroom etc. Similarly, he mentioned about developing a mechanism by which the life of the battery is extended. He elucidated this by saying that despite advancement in phone models, there is no use as the charge fizzles out within a day!

9. Cardio research: He gave an example of how doctors are unable to identify the fatality in case of chest pain. They requested a way to identify chest pain due to heart problem versus chest pain due to other reasons. He even mentioned that in the coming time, Indians would be more prone to heart problems due their their sedentary lifestyles which they are not genetically made for as they are an "agrarian race" by profession - which now eats the same traditional food but does not do the commensurate physical activity.

10. India, case for low Agricultural Productivity: He shared statistics of how only 0.8 percent of population in the US is engaged in agriculture, yet contributes 1.2% to GDP. In India close to 45 percent of population is engaged in agriculture yet contributes only 14% to the GDP. This implies how low the agricultural productivity is in India and there is a need for more innovative ways of farming.     

11. Standardising Indian food: At a time when McDonald's has been widely wound up from India, Dr. Rao mentioned why has Indian food not been able to work on a similar global food chain franchisee. A major challenge was to standardise Indian food, which varies in taste every time. Is that such big a challenge? Haldiram's has been able to do this within India, then why not outside the country? 

UP politics, Hinduism and Women!

Yogi Adityanath has remained in constant limelight after he was appointed as the next CM of Uttar Pradesh (UP). While I had not heard of him earlier, his political presence has been quite prominent in UP as he has won Lok Sabha seats from Gorakhpur constituency 5 consecutive times. In his recent appearance in Aap ki Adalat, an Indian interview-TV programme, Yogi's previous rallies on contentious religious remarks on tit-for-tat on Muslim-Hindu extremism were questioned by the TV anchor. His responses were defensive towards protecting Hinduism, especially Hindu men when he was questioned about 'Love Jihad'.

I was curious to know about his views on women as well, given majority of seat won by BJP in UP are by women candidates. This article today elaborates some of his views. He says the energies of women needs to be controlled and channelised - rightly so; and in most of the cases it is as she has to play the role of Goddess Durga with eight hands. To elucidate, let us find out the statistics of accidents caused by women drivers on Indian roads and we will get a better picture of how productive they are!

That being said, I appreciate his thoughts on how women need to be protected and provided for by men. However, at this point in time, Yogiji must not presume, but realise that all Hindu men are not saints like him! They are full of flaws due to freedom of choice - the same choices he says women need to control. These choices, which men have enjoyed without restraint have brought about much perils in the society: they have made men lazy, unproductive, jealous of their women counterparts, take up intoxication, make wasteful expenditure and beat their wives. It is centuries of this oppression that made women take up jobs in which men excelled as men failed to provide for their women and made them feel less. In Indian society, how many sisters, wives or mothers are made to feel like old Indian 'Queens or Princesses'. Yogiji talks about the times that have gone behind and in the present generation, women have to fight harder, even more hard than men to get basic education - to reach their respective schools and workplaces as their fathers and brothers are either not supportive nor willing to provide for their well-being and happiness.

When Yogiji talks about Hindu men with so much confidence, he must look at the overall scenario of the nation, including that of UP! For instance, if any of us goes towards the North East - Arunachal Pradesh for instance, you will find the men of the State intoxicated with alcohol. It is the women of the state who brave themselves up, tying infants on their back to earn their daily wages by breaking mountain rocks for construction of highways. Mind you this state is one of the most challenging geographical parts of the world for building roads and it is women who are laying down the foundation for it not men! If this kind of hard labour not get the worst out of a women and make her a Rakshasa, what will!

Hinduism may be the most liberal religions but certainly Hindu men need to learn a lot from the positive quadrants of the religion as many more of them are drawn to westernisation than women being being influenced by western Feminism. Hinduism talks about Karma, about institution of marriage, non-alcoholism and respecting women. How many men follow these principles? Let us not even get started on the crime statistics on women in India - but this would be a blockbuster starting point on the debate on success of Hinduism on gender front!         

#SheMeansBusiness

Facebook is running the #SheMeansBusiness campaign that was organised at Hotel Lalit on March 1, 2017. The opening session made me feel like it was perhaps a publicity stint for launching FbStart. The event was attended by several women entrepreneurs from Delhi, who were mostly sole proprietors doing well in the offline platform. The event threw importance of using tech for business by women, importance of collaboration and co-learning by women in start-ups. The scale at which the event was organised brought about much hope of steering women's business through the internet.

The story of three women entrepreneur was encouraging - Durga, Naiyya and the beautiful tennis player - they gave bold replies to the session organised by Tanvi Dubey or HerStory editor. Some of the interesting exchanges are as follows:

1. Cold calling: Yes, it is good to cold call as it shows your passion. But do your homework - prepare a protocol before approaching someone - it would reflect your seriousness.

2. Using network: use your immediate network of institutions. They will share experience and insights that will help. It will also help in giving a perspective about what has been done so that you will not repeat mistakes or duplicate.

3. Testing the product: It is important to test the product on YouTube before launching it officially. Also, do not go directly for making an app.

4. Importance of women leading: It was shared that although few men are great 'feminist' mentors, they are still unable to leading women as they do not understand the problems with the ecosystem.

5. Problem-solving approach: There is a need to define the problem clearly and building a team to ask questions.

6. Building a team: It is important to build a team and find co-founders who do not have the same skillsets as yours. Small input with high RoI is the way to go. You must focus on your own skills and you do not have to be good at everything.

7.  Gender bias: The forum discussed prevalent issues about gender bias in the start-up ecosystem, starting from dominance of male-run start-ups, lack of work-life balance and appropriate support system for women and investors asking questions about marriage and having a baby to women entrepreneurs. These questions need deep routed academic responses not blanket responses.

8. Key challenges: To conclude, main bottlenecks that women face in start-ups are as follows:

• lack of investor confidence
• lack of strong network
• lack of tools and technical mentorship 
• lack of visibility and early traction
• multi-year commitment

9. Policy for women: There is a need for big digital initiatives like literacy model, venture funds with separate rounds for women, partnering with platforms like FB, CISCO, Intel, Google under the Digital India campaign.

10. Women's day comes in March as it represents bloom.  

11. Some suggestions to succeed:

• Amplification strategy
• Women must support each other, not be detractors (as whatever women do, they do it with force)
• Women must not be diffident of themselves and talk unapologetically (not prefixing sentences with If I may, To the best of my knowledge etc.)
• Women must get out there and influence each other
• Women must curtail the desire to please everyone - feel guilty even when they are right. Conveying a point of view is essential not necessarily accommodating everyone.
• Women entrepreneurs must use majority of open source platforms to curtail costs.