Our Core Competence - Bargaining!

Remembering the days when I had just passed out of the primary school, I was staying at my grand mother's place. Looking back, they were amazing days of life but had it been a fulfillment of just about the daily needs it would  have been a lot better. Anyway, it was a small town, the district headquarters named Vizianagaram in Andhra Pradesh where my grand parents used to stay. It was very small a place that everyone staying in the colony would know one another well & have time to ask about the whereabouts while passing by one another's homes. I saw the development in & around the colony in terms of numerous apartments coming up & the lanes in between not even spacious enough to let even a Maruti 800 to pass by, let alone bigger vehicles. I hate this part! Otherwise the houses were so spread out that we could see the television in the drawing room of a house at 50 mts distance from ours. The game then between we all kids was to guess the movie being played on that television. I was pretty good at that I must say! (Especially when it was like Akshay Kumar's song 'churaake dil mera, goriya chali' from Main Khiladi Tu Anari :-))

Like in the smaller towns now, there used to be men & women selling different types of vegetables holding that typical basket (actually टोकरी)on their heads usually. Every such woman would stop by our home, just wanting to chat with my grand mother & forcing her to buy something even if she said she didn't want to buy, don't know what pleasure they got when talking to my grand mother. One such woman came & she had about 2.5 kgs of mangoes (it was peak summer & mango season) in her टोकरी. My grand mother called her & asked her for the price. The woman replied about Rs. 35 per kg or so. My grand mother said, 'give me the entire basket for Rs. 30'. The woman started cribbing & yelling saying, 'what amma, blah blah blah blah, do you know how many kgs are there in this basket? You are asking all this for a meaningless price blah blah blah'. My grand mother refused to listen to anything. The woman kept cribbing for a while & finally, helplessly went away when my grand mother didn't accept anything other than the Rs. 30 figure that she arrived at, God only knows what was in that figure! The woman went away, only to come back after 30 minutes. Don't know what guilt they had if they were unable to give anything to my grand mother. She came back & offered a price of Rs. 40 for whatever was there in the entire basket, the quantity was the same as it was earlier. My grand mother still was stuck at Rs. 30. Finally, after 30 minutes of cribbing & so on, she gave everything for Rs. 30 & went away. I didn't see any guilt on my grand mother's face & that woman was having mixed feelings which were very evident :-) I couldn't help!

Bargaining, is our core competence. I always thought it existing in older generation, that of my grand mother's, especially in the lower middle class people. But I see almost everybody around me wanting to bargain, could be for any minimal amount. We feel as if it is a point to put up on our resume? When we go out on vacation with our friends & head for shopping, I see people wanting to bargain for just about any amount they can. Somehow, my father never had this quality & we could never inherit it, but it can be very contagious at times. Apparently, we have to give the shopkeeper lesser than what he quotes as price, for sure. If we give what he asks for, we start feeling that the shopkeeper made a fool out of us! What if he actually has made a fool too? Say for a suit-piece, he quotes Rs. 2000, we don't bargain & give him Rs. 2000. Fine, what's wrong? Are we feeling bad that he has made some money? Don't we make enough money for our living? And it that Rs. 2000 was not affordable, could we have even bought it? Now, we bargain a bit & he gives it for Rs. 1800. If he feels comfortable giving it for Rs. 1800, we still feel guilty that since he has comfortably given it for Rs. 1800, he definitely has made some money & the entire trip, we keep thinking 'had we only bargained a bit more!'. We further bargain, & bargain, & bargain to get the price down to Rs. 1400 where he himself is forced to reveal that he is not making any money. We feel so good at this point when he further reveals that at less than Rs. 1600, he wouldn't make any money. We are then fine with giving Rs. 1400 (mind you, not more than this), knowing that he isn't making any money, he feels depressed, he is probably thinking of the sweets that he had planned to take for his kids in the evening, or the gift that he thought would buy for his daughter! What fun do we have creating such unhappy moments in someone's lives, I don't know! And this gesture is not only in middle class families, where it is still understood. People who earn enough to waste at least 1 kg food everyday, people who earn enough to be able to buy at least 5 things worth Rs. 2000 each day, people whose daily income with no uncertainty is more than that shopkeeper's monthly income which is filled with uncertainties & seasonalities.

I agree, once in a while we are fooled by such shopkeepers & others, but in most cases, we are just trying to show our superiority & being cheap in the process of anticipating cheapness. God help us become wiser, don't know how but wisdom is in a big scarcity in our country!

India is going to use internet without knowing it!

Today, while I was coming back from my office in my cab, my cab driver's phone rang & he pressed some button on his audio unit in the cab & he started the conversation. I wondered how that happened.
I asked him, "भैया, यह फ़ोन connected है इस से?".
The cab driver proudly said, "हाँ".
I asked him, ""लेकिन कोई wire तो नहीं है connected".
He again proudly said, "Bulootooth (bluetooth)". I was shocked!!! Super cool cab driver man!

But did this cab driver knew about the bluetooth technology per se. Definitely, definitely not!

The thought I had in mind for a couple of months now got answered. Yes, India is going to use internet without knowing it! And more & more on the phone, not the computer - computer is much more complicated since it needs to be 'understood' much more than a phone - how to put it on, which key to press when & where, logging in, opening a browser & what not!

Coming back to the point about latent demand in India for just about anything, internet is no different. There is a need, & everybody might know that there is a concept called internet existing, it is fancy to be a part of the revolution & there are means to have it at our disposal.

We are all reading research about how internet is shifting towards the smaller cities & how the internet activity is being spread across the rural areas. Everybody owns a phone, there is an internet provider, this is growing & moving much faster than people are able to think of. Even before they know & think of internet, their phone comes with a connection, just at a cost which they are able to afford. All they need to know is how to press a couple of buttons & I am sure in every community there would be some who know pressing buttons & they would teach others or do it for them, and, that's it!

Now, one would have phone with internet connection, even that they get all information on Google (press of a button again), they have regional languages which they can use to search, phones might come with google in that default language, & they might have credit cards - also without knowing the concept entirely but that they can use this as a credit form, which is quite prevalent in rural India in other forms.

So, all in all, every need is being satisfied in the way they can afford. That's it! Internet usage & even online purchase at their door step - without a bit of 'knowledge' of it. It works!!!

The concept called "God"

God helps those who help themselves - but if I am able to anyway help myself, why would I need 'God' to help me? Is it some kind of an add-on offer?

I need some external help which is not in my control only when I am not able to help myself, right? I don't know about others but at no point in my life have I seen any extra-ordinary help by a non-explainable source extended to me in any of the situations when I thought I needed one. I do believe in a power which is above all the human powers, but I believe very strongly that this power is a form of energy & it dwells within us. The closer we are to that power or the more we are able to strengthen that energy, the more extra-ordinary support we are able to get, but that is nothing unexplainable, I feel. The strength of this energy of course is very much directly proportional to the efforts that we put in. At least, in my case, nothing ever had worked out without me putting in immense efforts. I might have a wish, a dream - but I know my wishes, my dreams would come true only when I work towards them. (Or may be I don't have dreams that don't require me working!?!?!) I admit I put in 1000% efforts & don't leave any stone unturned as per my knowledge, (if there is a stone not in my knowledge I can't do anything about it though) & this energy falls for me. This is the only way I realize I can win, because I know if I don't put in efforts, there is nothing that would help me just like that. Sometimes I feel compassionate about myself - something that takes me mammoth sized efforts works for someone else very easily. That is mostly due to 'human' powers though as per my analysis :-)

There were days when I used to go to temple every single day (those were pretty bad days), & actually my belief in some 'power' existing within started from those amateurish attempts to answer the questions on why things were so bad & was there anyone or anything that could improve them! The only answer I could derive was, 'yes there is one who could improve & that is we ourselves, who is dealing with them.'

I do believe in past lives, the soul connections and so on & so forth. There are questions for which I do have answers to, basing all my beliefs on these concepts. But there are still questions for which I don't have answers to & I very strongly feel if there existed someone called or known as 'God', these questions would not have been there in the first place! I would definitely want to 'feel', if not 'see' this concept named 'God'.

I have seen people arguing if ghosts exist. My argument would be, at least about 'ghosts', we know cases where they have been felt, we know they are the souls of someone who existed sometime around us in this world itself & so there is more logic in believing that the soul is still around. But 'God' - I don't know what to say! Still more alarming for me is when someone says they believe 'God' & not ghosts.

Learning with Understanding?

A kid sees and notices a laptop before anything else these days (actually I saw this in 2006 when a 2.5 year old kid was learning alphabets on a laptop).

You ask the kid to write A, the kid says "there is no laptop, where & how can I write A?"

The kid then opens a laptop & presses the button 'A' to show the alphabet. Well, now, if I understand & follow a bit of psychology, the kid associates the alphabet 'A' to a key on the laptop/computer. He learns 'pressing' a key but not 'writing', would he learn the curves & will he be able to write the curves, for which purpose the entire cursive writing classes & what not are held!

With such high exposure to computers/laptops in such early years in a kid's life, say you ask the kid to add 2 numbers. He opens up an excel spreadsheet & puts in the 'SUM' formula & adds the two numbers for you.

The kid knows that 'adding' is '=SUM(___,___)'. But would he know the meaning of addition. What it means to 'add' two numbers? There is a very high possibility that he wouldn't know that!

Compare 2 kids - one who grew up burning all the midnight oil to learn each & every concept with complete understanding. And there is another who learns the other way - the 'typing' & the 'SUM' ways. Considering that ultimately the kid has to grow up & go into this corporate world, do the way the corporate world function these days, barring exceptions, need any real 'understanding'? My guess is 99% of the time, not! I am not sure if we have enough corporates who can distinguish between the two - may be in the initial job when freshers join, they may have IQ tests etc. but later on, it is only experience that is seen & this cumulative knowledge of 'SUM' & 'computers' dominates largely (100% of the time almost) :-)

The intellectual who burnt all the midnight oil & can be called a 'geek' in the widely used terminology, forms top 1%(?) of the lot, needed to burn the oil to get into the top 1% of the best schools, colleges, universities, institutions. But has this other kid been denied going to school, college or university or good jobs? In fact, I am afraid this one has many more options than the 'intellectual'. After all, 99% of all this 'geek' fraternity, after his stints in the top 1% of the educational institutions, has to go where? The same world as the other 99%?

So, the BIG question is 'Is there a need for one to know what 'addition' means if he knows 'SUM' function & knows how to compute it? Is there a need to know & understand what alphabets/words/phrases/sentences mean in language if one knows how to type?'

India...and the Internet!!

Out of the world's total population of about 7Bn, about 1.2Bn rests in India. And all the reported stats indicate that currently there are 100 Mn internet users in the country & many forecasts estimate that this number would grow up to thrice this number by 2015. I am one of those 100 Mn & I might also come in the top internet users in terms of the usage & kind of usage too may be. Y'day I found a half portion of a medicine strap at my home & just the last letter of the name was left out. I wanted to check if it is the one I was looking for. I searched on Google Images by the name I was checking the medicine to be, the first image got me there! I have my home expense reports as Google spreadsheets - is it too much of Google & not internet? Synonymous may be?

Last month I went to Jamshedpur, the city of Tatas, the pride & respect of the people there for the Tatas can't be more evident. I love the punch-line in the latest TV ad of Tata steel (Values stronger than steel!). We wanted to buy an LCD TV & we thought of gathering information. The first source had to be of course the internet. We searched for televisions, compared among brands, among models, among various technologies that have launched & are launching, and the prices. The best price we got for the model that we liked was Rs. X from the a very advanced (probably the leading) online seller of electronics. Fine, we trust the price, the brand, the quality, the model & so on.

But, we along with our parents wanted to check out the product in its physical look & shape. We went to the most famous dealer in the town there & I should say, I was very much impressed by the sales people there. I don't believe anyone can leave the store without buying a product, if they have gone with a reasonable purchase intention. We decided on the model & now comes the negotiation part as expected. The sales guy gave us a figure & he said, "once you finalize the model, we will reduce the price a bit more but please don't expect a lot", when we told him we really wanted to buy that product. We came back home, we had decided exactly which product to buy & we saw this online selling website again. The price that the sales guy quoted on which a little more discount was certain, was lesser than Rs. X by a significant amount. Now, if our parents buy the product online - they pay more, they have a 'psychological' fear about the safe delivery of the product, given that our confident use of internet overtakes the fear of the website not being authentic. Here in this deal, they went & physically saw the product, they knew this shop for years now, they had bought good number of electronics products from the store etc. We, being in the top bracket of the internet users in the country couldn't explain this ourselves.

This is the dilemna India lives with, when it comes to the internet. And while there is a 'latent' demand existing for just about everything in the country, there are areas where this distinction remains - but market exists for everyone - one should just be smart enough to be able to define the market correctly!