Eaglezview

Tethering on the edge of philosophy, I wonder, ” why do we do all the things we do – business, education, entertainment, etc…?” At the end of the day, it boils down to one thing, we do all this to earn money so that we can fulfill our basic needs and sustain a decent lifestyle within our peer group/community. So, if there was no money, would we not be as productive and active as we are today? In today’s scenario of credit crunch and almost nil liquidity in the market, money and its movement affect us and our activities more than ever. People today are talking about the world paying the price for being over greedy in an open market; in other words people are saying that capitalist penchant for profits and greed will always eventually lead to such asset bubbles like the present one. Honestly, I am not yet inclined towards any economic paradigm to speak out in so definitive terms – I am as much a socialist as a capitalist. I have my reasons for that. I believe that the capitalist world breeds exploitation of one class by the other while socialism encourages equality amongst the classes in terms of economic power. On the other hand, it is predominantly the capitalist world that has taken mankind to this level of advancement in all spheres of life – medicine, science, technology etc. As I am still sitting over the wall, on my allegiance, I would rather think about a more fundamental thing than these philosophies – the thing these philosophies revolve around – money. What would happen if we were to abolish money one fine day? Can we ever do that? Or am I being just one crackpot with no knowledge of economics? Well, I concede that I have not much skill in economics but still the question fascinates me. Even before I set out to explore the pros and cons of such an action, a question nags me. Will we still transact, if there is no money? Well, I believe we will stop transacting, to be honest. The reason being this – let us look at money in another perspective – as an indicator of some skill that I have which satisfies somebody else’s need. So let’s say that if I am a cobbler, I have a skill to make shoes and people who need shoes will come to me and get their need for a shoe fulfilled. Will I make shoes for someone who doesn’t pay me? I will not, because what the money he pays me does is that it helps me fulfill my other needs for which I do not have skill sets, like say buy rice; I don’t know how to grow and process rice; the money which I get from selling shoes help me get rice. So, the basic tenet is that money gives everybody the assurance that they can sell something and buy other things. It helps by being ‘tool of trust’ , a guarantor. What if I just substitute the guarantor? What if the government acts as a guarantor for every transaction that everybody does. So in effect, it would mean this – I just make shoes and give away shoes from my shop without worrying about customers, price, marketing, bank loans, over head costs and a whole host of other things. The point being, I am good at making shoes and that’s what I will do. My other needs will be met and guaranteed by the government. So lets say that I go on a holiday, I wouldn’t pay anything to the hotel because the hotel guy knows that his other needs are not effected by how many rooms he is able to keep occupied. He will still have food on his plate irrespective of whether I make that holiday trip to his hotel or not. I can here you saying, “Nah! There is something amiss here! How can that be possible? This guys has gone nuts!” . I know that it all sounds so Utopian, may be it really is. But, I am just trying to figure out why government guarantee will not work or rather why it hasn’t till now. The question seems really saucier to me now when the world over governments are bailing out banks by nationalizing them – in effect acting as a guarantor! Okie, peace – I concede; this is naïve on my part! Just couldn’t help the thought train….:-)

The issue that I want to discuss here is prevalent across all spheres of life in India and is encountered by all – young, old, urban, rural, rich, poor, educated, illiterate. It is the endemic lack of design in India. When I say, “design”, I speak of it in an all encompassing aspect – design of products, services, policies, laws, infrastructure and institutions. Surely, I can’t and shouldn’t paint the whole lot with a single brush; there are a few terrific light posts of elegant and enduring designs in the form of institutions, policies, products etc.; but, they are few and far in between this mass of old, archaic, unusable, irrelevant, middlemen fostering, corruption inducing design. I argue that if only we opened our eyes a little wider, changed our perspectives a little to add a bit of color to our thinking and execution we could solve many of our problems with simple, elegant, durable and cost efficient means. 

Let us look at the fallouts of this present state of affairs. The effects of a  lack of design are enormous in terms of

•  Discomfort in our daily lives
•  Ineffectiveness in preventing injuries, disease &  suffering
•  Loss of time, money and productivity 
•  Ineffective disaster management

These are only a  few pertinent points but surely there are many more. Let me try and deconstruct the above for a more closer look.

Discomfort in our daily lives - Right from the moment I get up in the morning till the time I hit the bed, I have to live with mediocre products and services.  The house I live in can be better designed with probably only a marginal effect on its affordability; the bus I get into can be better designed for me, leave alone the physically challenged, the  bus drivers’ training can be better designed to incorporate a sense of empathy in them – so that they don’t shout and herd me into the bus , the foot paths can be better designed – I remember once walking towards the airport terminal in Hyderabad’s old airport from the adjoining main road. I had to get down from the foot path after every two steps! The reason being that some planner had this idea that the access road from the main road to the airport had to be an avenue; consequence -  I would come face to face with a huge tree trunk every two steps and the only way to go beyond it was to step down from the kerb, on to the road and thus circumvent the tree. What a lack of empathy in design! What a waste of money to make something superficially good looking but wholistically dysfunctional.  I could go on and on with examples, the point is that we need to understand that our very approach to engineering, policy making or rather problem solving needs a tectonic shift.

To start with, one has to dispel the myth that good products and services cost money. Yes, they do, but in the process of creating a better product and service the whole economy itself is uplifted as a consequence of the value creation. Hence, in the end, the growth in prosperity compensates for the cost of a good product or service – meaning – you have a better life but surely you are no more richer than you were before. Isn’t that what an egalitarian society should be like?

There is another myth, one which I think I have induced inadvertently in the above paragraphs,  that poor people don’t understand, demand, expect, or deserve  better designs. Wrong. They deserve and demand better designs in as strong a way as any rich person. Look at the success of robust, low cost models of sales of mobile phones like the Nokia 1100 and you will understand what I mean.  When it comes to expecting and demanding better design in public amenities, they settle for what is dished out to them because they don’t have a platform to exert their distress.  Hence, although they dislike poorly maintained stinking public toilets, poor service at the Government hospital, they settle for it. Why can’t we design better amenities?

Ineffectiveness in preventing injuries, disease  & suffering - When we look at household & industrial injuries, endemic diseases originating from lack of hygiene, etc. from a  perspective of design, we get a lot of possibilities to prevent these in the first place. When I look at say a construction site in India, the scene today is different from what it was a few years ago. It is encouraging to see that in projects run by large construction companies the workers are mandatorily asked to wear hard hats, straps and reflective jacket of some sort. In addition to these, metal scaffoldings have replaced age old bamboo frames; nets are used to prevent a fatal fall. These are absolutely encouraging signs. Isn’t it obvious how these simple devices help in industrial safety. So is the case with appliances at home.

If we could come up with better designs for products, appliances  and mechanism for use within and outside the house, like in garbage management, we will have cleaner homes, cleaner roads, cleaner neighbourhoods and better health figures. 

Loss of time, money and productivity and by extension the loss of GDP. Let me ask, “Can better design boost GDP?”. The ominous answer is – yes; and this is universally known. Better design helps in streamlining processes, reducing time spent on a process, reducing cost, enhancing  productivity. Focus on design as a driver of revenue and profitability is the key to all this; this is closely linked of course to affordability of products, which I think isn’t a big hurdle to overcome.

Ineffective disaster management - Better equipment, policies, processes and training can help us deal effectively with disasters of large magnitudes. We don’t need to look beyond the current state of security and the mood in the nation to bring this point out emphatically.

Neither is all of what I have said is in the realm of unknown nor does it potray a dismal and irreversible situation. What is needed is the change in outlook. No facet of human activity can be precluded when it comes to design.  Better designs is one of the cogs in the wheel of progress. Better designs lead to better lives. A lot of ground needs to be covered here.

An ever elusive question in life is,” what is success?” It has different forms and is interpreted in different terms by different people. A general opinion would rate position, power, money and respect as a few parameters to judge success on. Besides this, there is an even more intriguing question – what is the formula for success, if at all there is? Beyond doubt, there is no definite answer to this.
Nevertheless, there are certain traits which characterize a successful person. Many researchers have tried over the years to pin down on a few qualities that ensure ‘success’. Alas, none of them can claim to be comprehensive, neither will I. With this caveat, I would introduce three factors/traits which I think are paramount to success. My understanding and observations are indeed coloured by my own experiences in the world and my understanding of them.

These are the three cornerstones of success. Other skills of planning, execution and monitoring are necessary of course, but without the above 3 in the same order starting with desire, no one can achieve much.One should have a burning desire to do something; he/she should be able to picturise the same in a crystal clear fashion. The desire should be backed by conviction and courage to take the necessary decisions to drive action on the ground. The decisions and actions should be harnessed by discipline to hold course!
This forms the crux of hitting gold. Of course, the ability to take the right decision is of utmost importance here and the trained mind is more often in a position to take a better decision. However, the three key traits of desire, decision and discipline still form the backbone of the success framework. I call these as the key factors since we can analyze any aspect of our lives by fitting these to it, to understand why someone managed to excel at it while others could not. For that matter, we could look at different undertakings in our own lives, why were we successful in a particular endeavour and yet unsuccessful in others.

“Did I have the desire in the first place? Was the final goal clear to me? Did I want it badly enough? Did I decide to act when it was needed? Did I have the conviction and courage to go ahead? Did I do what had to be done? Did I complete the tasks on time without compromising on quality? Did I compromise on a planned activity? If the answer for any one of the above questions except the last one is a no, we would have definitely squandered away a chance to achieve success.”

(c) Suresh Damodaran,2007