My feelings exactly

Dilemma

I want to be
famous
so I can be
humble
about being
famous.

What good is my
humility
when I am
stuck
in this
obscurity?

-- David Budbill

Just comb your hair

'Excerpts from a Father's Wisdom'

Do not worry about Despair
Just comb
your hair
Despair is a strange disease
I think it even happens to
trees.
-- A. K. Ramanujan

might I add that ARKS sir has been insisting on that for a long time now.
comb your hair, shave everyday and all that stuff moms talk about

gaya

After muzzafarpur 'Gaya' is a shocker
I cant believe the attitude of the people out here, esp. the hotel staff
but this is not very uncommon in tourist places where ppl are generally not friendly.
its just 2 days and then finally bihar is done with
it was one hell of an experience
I really cant figure out my personal life though.
Inspite of me being away from everyone and so involved, its so much on the rocks
I think I need a dose of calcutta ...and all my friends there.
As for my project,I am totally confused as to how I am supposed to arrive at any conclusion :(
with such a cursory view of things.
I discovered this quote in a newspaper the other day.

Judge not that ye not be judged
For with what judgement ye judge, ye shall be judged:
and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.

The Bible

I rest my case.

that gap is the grave ...where the tall return

'O Where Are You Going?'

"O where are you going?" said reader to rider,
"That valley is fatal when furnaces burn,
Yonder's the midden whose odours will madden,
That gap is the grave where the tall return."

"O do you imagine," said fearer to farer,
"That dusk will delay on your path to the pass,
Your diligent looking discover the lacking
Your footsteps feel from granite to grass?"

"O what was that bird," said horror to hearer,
"Did you see that shape in the twisted trees?
Behind you swiftly the figure comes softly,
The spot on your skin is a shocking disease."

"Out of this house," said rider to reader,
"Yours never will,"said farer to fearer,
"They're looking for you," said hearer to horror,
As he left them there, as he left them there.

W. H. Auden

Yes...he left them there
thats me
every step listen to your heart
sometimes you will regret it
but in the end as oscar wilde says

The only thing you will not regret at the end of your life will be your mistakes

Can we fly?

It has been an interesting 3 days …feels more like 3 months. The project brief that I have been given is more like 3 years work. A similar project was made with dozens of people in a timeframe of one and half years for the state of Jharkhand, my project entails two states, Bihar and Bengal.
In a conversation I had with my guide yesterday morning I tried to rationalize his expectations. It was alas to little avail. When I gently told him “Sir, don’t you think this project is too big” he even more gently reminded me “well, we thought an IIM grad….” When he trailed off I could imagine the later part could have been ‘can fly’ or ‘can do miracles’ or some such like, because the impossibility of the project is self evident.

The feasibility of doing a feasibility study aside, life has been quite interesting over the last 3 days. I had my first experience of a field visit in rural India. Tagging along with 3 executives on 2 bikes we made our way to 2 tribal villages about 50 kilometers from Ranchi. We finally landed up under the cool shade of a tree with ‘chattai’ underneath facing about 20 tribal farmers. The agenda of the day was to help them form a self help group which would enable them to have some kind of bargaining power and accelerate social development. The most striking aspect was their diffidence in our presence, with a tendency to look for everything from the executives. It was a sucessful day and after some egging they decided they are going to put 10 rupees per week as savings in the SHG fund. The group was named Kisan Vikas Grameen Manch. The womenfolk sitting on the side seemed to be more vociferous especially when deciding the amount of saving with a general consensus among them that the only reason their men want to save less is to spend it on booze. The village incidently already had 3 sucessfully running women’s self help groups a surer example of womens empowerment than all the Lakme and L’oreal advertisements.

Microfinance in general has been a powerful driver in reducing global poverty, 2005 was named the year of ‘microcredit’. It involves forming intitutions among the poor which will help making lending to them viable. The next step is to design suitable financial products for them so that they are financially viable and also helpful in solving the credit gap for the borrowers. The entire focus is on productive loans and the structure is designed to be profit making so as to be sustainable in the long run. The key question is at which point of the value chain you are making your intervention, if this is not properly planned the credit intervention might not be able to break the vicious cycle which plagues most rural populace. My job will be to get atleast a basic outline of the 2 states and try and form a rudimentary plan regarding where the organisation can intervene.

It has been interesting work and the sense of satisfaction when seeing those three groups being formed in the villages and their general gratitude towards us (being current clients in credit) did dissolve a lot of my doubts regarding what I am doing here. The only hurdle now is the ambiguity surrounding my project and the lack of support I am getting considering the size of the project. I can only hope this does not go the normal MBA way…cut, copy and paste.