Women: The power of pink

Synopsis: Advertisement campaigns disperse through widespread media networks what every politician or individual seeking fame fears – public ridicule.


The incidents of male political activists assaulting young women in Mangalore’s pubs and public transport vehicles has outraged progressive women’s groups around the country.

Pink campaign

The “Consortium of Pubgoing, Loose and Forward Women” formed spontaneously on 5 February 2009, ballooned its random membership since to close to fifty thousand women and men. The Consortium launched a campaign for an “imaginative” fight back.

The campaign agenda is to:

• Send the Sri Ram Sena some love – in the form of pink chaddis (briefs/panties).
• Photograph and post online pictures of the underwear.
• Do a Pub Bharo (fill the pubs) on Valentine’s Day.
  

The Sena leader initially said he would gift saris in return, but perhaps the sheer numbers required to do so would probably have proved overwhelming!

‘Gandhigiri’

The campaign is reminiscent of the ‘gandhigiri’ (Gandhism) portrayed in the blockbuster Hindi comedy film Lage Raho Munnabhai. Munnabhai is a don of the underworld. But Mahatma Gandhi inspires him. He envisions conversations with ‘Bapu’, as the Father of the Nation is affectionately addressed.

The interactions influence his behaviour profoundly, and his ‘Gandhi’ alter ego convinces him that coercive tactics are ineffective in the long-term. Munna vows to do whatever Gandhi would have done in conflict situations, however hard it may be. Eventually he abandons his natural proclivity to fix problems with fists, following instead the paths of truth and non-violence.

Thence when confronted with the intransigence of corruption in office, Munna resorts to sending flowers to the incumbents until they have a change of heart and mind!

Votes more treasured

The BJP is in power currently in the state of Karnataka. At the national level, this party had lost their mandate to governance earlier, when a single no-confidence vote in Parliament brought down their coalition government before the end of term. Subsequently, they were replaced at the Centre by the present Congress-led union government.

With general elections right around the corner, political parties focus on cleaning up their image. Votes are now far more treasured. They realize that supporting such attempts to impose ‘tradition’ on women in a democracy could hurt electoral chances.

The BJP high command and its state Chief Minister have condemned the attacks and distanced from the local outfit. Severely criticized around the country for their inaction, the state police arrested about 27 activists for the pub attacks, and just before Valentine’s Day, took many more, including the group’s leader, Pramod Mutalik, into preventive custody.

Networking power

Reactions to the assault on women are snowballing. The dairy products company, Amul, has picked up on the issue in its posters, with the telling caption “pink chaddi, yellow buddy”. These advertisement campaigns disperse through widespread media networks what every politician or individual seeking fame fears – public ridicule.

The Consortium has a longer-term goal of getting the message through to political leaders that “beating up women” is not at all an Indian cultural tradition. If oppressed women in corners of the country should realize consequently that they are neither alone nor defenceless in the age of connectivity, such campaigns will have served effective purpose.

Comments/opinions, anyone??

Reference:
Consortium of Pubgoing, Loose and Forward Women

Women: The moral policing

Synopsis: The question the assaulted women ask is “whom do we turn to?”


Asian women have been chained to tradition over centuries. Subservience to male influences and monogamous marriages is the accepted practice.

Increasing domination

Education and employment, that many women choose today, alter gender equations of the past. But, the trend in male responses to women’s progressiveness in the 21st century appears to be in increasing their domination and control.

In many communities, men assume moral policing of women’s behaviour, their clothing, and their freedoms of choice. Elsewhere they are the targets of war.

Fate of femaleness

In Afghanistan, young girls and women studying or teaching in schools, or appearing in public without the veil, are being subjected to acid attacks. In Pakistan’s Swat region, governance agreements are forged with the Taliban. In war-torn African countries, eighty percent of refugees are women and children, many of them the products of rape.

Governments and world leaders issue condemnations. But in nations challenged on many fronts, the social development of women doesn’t get high priority.

Immigrant women are hardly better off. The founder of a ‘positive’ Muslim TV channel in USA beheaded his wife for lodging complaints of domestic violence. The man has been charged with second-degree murder, perhaps only because of the location of the crime.

Indian culture?

In democratic India, the trend of forcing subservience seems to be catching on. In January 2009, a few dozen activists of Sri Ram Sena, a little known right-wing outfit, barged into a pub in Mangalore a city in the southern state of Karnataka and physically assaulted the patrons, young women and men, for behaviours anti ‘Indian culture’.

Further incidents have occurred of school or college-going boys and girls being hauled off public transport buses and harassed for talking or being together – especially if they belong to different communities.


No complaints

The young groups being beaten in public are intimidated. A teenaged girl reportedly committed suicide over such a humiliation.

None of the girls molested in Mangalore’s pubs filed police complaints against their attackers. They say policemen in the vicinity of the pubs had simply looked on during the incidents. Their question is “whom do we turn to?”

Initially, there was little reaction by the state’s police and administrative authorities. Media attention also encouraged the group’s leader to dismiss the episode as a "small thing" on national TV. He warned the public that unmarried couples caught celebrating Valentine’s Day would be forcibly wed.

Formal protests

But elsewhere in India, there have been sharp reactions from men and women, prominently carried in print, channel and electronic media. Public protests have mobilized.

The pub incidents even sparked rows between Centre and state. Fiery Union Minister for Women and Child Development, Renuka Chowdhury decried the (Hindu) “Talibanization”. The remarks irked the Mayor of the city, who decided to move court against her for inflammatory statements.

More diplomatically, Shabnam Hashmi, a member of the National Integration Council, Ministry of Home Affairs, submitted a memorandum to the state’s Governor, and met the state’s Police Commissioner to express her anguish and distress.

Cont’d 2...The power of pink

Accidents: The human factors

Synopsis: Contributing factors exist not just in the person but also in the dynamic, sometimes unknown surroundings.


Both novices and experienced personnel contribute to the human error causing 70 percent of accidents.

Levels of failure

Reporting systems are usually ineffective in identifying these human failures. Hence, while engineering or mechanical failures have significantly been reduced, human error ratios over four decades remain the same.

Researchers say that they actually occurs at four different levels that need appropriate analysis:

• Unsafe acts of operators, like errors or violations by aircrew.
• Preconditions for unsafe acts like physical, mental or psychological health of operators or crew resource mismanagement.
• Unsafe supervision, like inadequacy or violations of supervision, poorly planned operations, and failure to correct known problems.
• Organizational influences like resources management, organizational climate or operational processes.
  

Personality?

A study in 2001 held that a quarter of ‘human error’ accidents are attributable to personality. High or low scores on certain traits correlate with the ability to avoid accidents or be prone to them:

• Dependability – conscientious and socially responsible
• Agreeableness – not aggressive or self-centred
• Openness – learning from experience and accepting suggestions from others.
  

High scores on the first two and low scores on the last decrease the likelihood of accidents. Low scores on first two causes competitiveness, and non-compliance with safety regulations. High score on the last leaves people dreamy and increases accident risk.

Profiles

Studies on pilot profiles however, failed to find a typical personality type. Important traits are intelligence, self-confidence, emotional maturity, adaptability, extraversion, and action orientation with desire for challenge and success. Combat pilots score highly on abstract thinking, stress tolerance, decisiveness and resilience.

Essentially operators in hazardous jobs need to be practical, sober and dependable. But a point with jet pilots appears to be a close relationship with their fathers. Also of the first 23 US astronauts in space flight, 21 were ‘first-born’.

Regarding gender, men in aviation score higher in competitiveness but lower in expressivity and striving for achievements. Women pilots appear to be more extraverted, agreeable and conscientious, having less openness and neuroticism than their male counterparts.

The surroundings

But some say labels merely enable people to blame their mistakes on their personality type. The point is factors exist not just in the person but also in the dynamic, sometimes unknown surroundings represented by:

• Technology
• Procedures
• Physical and non-physical environment
• Other people
  

People generally don’t go out with intention of causing accidents, but how they react to situations is important. That means interactions between the individual and objects or people around them are just as important.

The dynamics

Researchers believe that tests homogenize groups and the resulting average obtained becomes the ‘right stuff’. This obscures variability, and actual motivations for the job, because training and operational performances tend to differ.

Operations brings into focus adaptability, coping with stress, and a more crucial aspect to success – teamwork. Rising environmental pressures can cause personality conflicts, with operators either internalizing negativity or projecting it on others. This interferes with interpersonal relationships and individual contributions to team effort.

Comments/opinions, anyone??

References for “Accidents” blogposts:

All 155 Survive as Pilot Ditches Plane in Hudson

A human error analysis

Are you accident prone? (twmacademy.com)

Identifying the accident prone

Personality studies in air crew

Accidents: Deviations from plan

Synopsis: A combination of random factors contributes to disaster happening - or being averted.


We tend to believe that forces beyond us control disasters. They happen following Murphy’s Law that everything that can go wrong, does. And, the people affected survive only by luck or chance.

Unexpected events

Disasters grow out of unexpected events interrupting or interfering with routine proceedings. They precipitate deviations from planned behaviour that invoke risks.

For example, the now-famous American Airways airliner 15(4)9 took off on a routine flight from La Guardia Airport, with about 156 people on board.

The flight path, however, crossed that of migratory birds. The plane collided with a flock of geese, within minutes of take off. Bird-hits are said to cost the American aviation industry up to 600 million USD annually.


Water rescue

The event caused both engines of the plane cut out, preventing its return to land. Using the icy waters as the only accessible runway, the captain ditched the plane into the Hudson River.

The most impact passengers suffered were being thrown against the seat ahead. The plane also stayed intact and level in the water, so they could clamber out onto the wings and floating door.

But experts say even five minutes’ exposure in those freezing temperatures would still have caused severe hypothermia if not fatalities.

Responders speeded up the rescue process, even driving an inflatable boat onto the plane’s wing. Paramedics found one passenger had broken legs and others with less serious injuries. Everybody, including an infant, survived the ordeal.

Random factors

The bird-hit damage raised the potential of disaster. But the skill and presence of mind of the aircrew and first responders on the ground made it a miraculous escape instead.

Not one isolated event, but a combination of random error factors contributes to disaster happening - or being averted. These include:

• Situational factors like atmospheric conditions
• Individual factors like perception, cognition and physiological responses of people
• Specific personal factors like vision, age, experience, perceptual style and perceptual-motor relationships
• Psychological qualities of the people involved

The Hudson miracle wasn’t all due to providence. While situational factors were the driving forces for disaster, the human factors - individual, personal and psychological - of key people withstood their power.

Processing state

The pilot, an airways safety consultant, former fighter pilot and commercial pilot for nearly three decades, also had extensive glider experience. He glided the plane onto water so it didn’t break up on impact. Since 9/11, ground rescue workers have trained long and hard at disaster management in different scenarios. Their combined competencies ensured that all aboard the ill-fated liner disembarked safely.

Every industry invests in safety, putting precautionary barriers especially in hazardous job situations. But the mere presence of procedures doesn’t guarantee safety. Each procedure also has inherent weaknesses or ‘blind spots’ whereby it only works under certain conditions, or up to a point.

Bridging the gap between the plan and reality needs creative thinking. It also depends upon individual ‘processing state’ – functioning at full alert to expect the unexpected, or multitasking on autopilot with attention divided.

Cont’d 2…The human factors

Satyam: The promoter’s control

Synopsis: The promoter's power goes beyond the numbers.


In 2004, Ramalinga Raju was the most “feared” man in USA.

Outsourcing

His was the face identified with the rising Indian outsourcing industry, causing job losses in many Western countries.



The National Australian Bank (NAB) is one of the largest individual clients. In offshoring key IT functions to Satyam, the company’s investing heavily in training, transition costs and redundancy exposed them to the risk a service shutdown down with Satyam’s demise.

Satyam’s 85 major clients including Fortune 500 listers have, in similar fashion, suddenly become aware of their own vulnerability. World Bank, Australia’s Telstra and US-based State Farm Insurance have severed their ties. Others like NAB, UN, FIFA, and GE are currently reviewing options.

Regulatory control

India Inc’s credibility is now questioned. The system is new to such issues of corporate governance. In the West, the Boards are perceived as the connecting link between ownership and management of concerns. Corporate reforms focus on empowering them for managerial checks and balances.

Problems in India have generally rooted in conflicts between major and minor shareholders in public service units or in multinational corporations. Hence regulator agencies, like SEBI, are set up to protect minority shareholders from the power abuse by the majors.

The narrow mandate creates regulatory dilemmas over “shareholder democracy” and “micromanaging” company’s internal affairs. In Indian business groups, the promoters tend to hold this minority stake. The Rajus directly controlled only 8.61 percent through family holdings.

In a company managed by the minority group, the process sidelines the regulators. SEBI now waits its turn to grill the Rajus on their corporate malpractices. Clearly Indian regulatory systems have so far lacked teeth.

The sources of power

Theorists say that the promoters have an “amorphous” power that goes beyond the numbers. Other corporate investor groups like the financial institutions that have significant numbers contribute to it by not exercising their clout.

The Indian government-owned financial groups are traditionally passive. Satyam’s foreign investors may have similarly been non-interfering. This facilitated the Rajus’ say in Board nominations as well. It put them effectively in control on all fronts.

Hence they could “structure the business, transfer assets and run a parallel black economy” (Varma). They enriched themselves without opposition or questioning, cheating on taxes and on the legitimate dues of both employees and investors.

Protecting the collective

Bureaucratic institutions in India are generally accused of being ponderous, and slow to react on general issues. The government’s social outlook is pro-poor. The systemic response is far quicker with regard to large-scale disasters, like earthquakes or floods.

But here, the government has moved swiftly to protect the nation from economic disaster created by the face now feared within the country. Satyam’s erstwhile Board was dissolved, its members sacked. Directors nominated from outside the company took charge to salvage credibility for the company and the collective industry.

The government however, won’t provide an economic bailout for the company. Under the new independent Board’s direction, Satyam must rebuild from within to swim the tide - or sink to oblivion.

Comments/opinions, anyone??

References for “Satyam” blogposts:

1. Americans dreaded Raju more than Osama: Experts
2. Satyam assures timely salary payments in January, continuance of contracts
3. Satyam fraud hits National Australia Bank
4. Corporate Governance in India: Disciplining the Dominant Shareholder

Satyam: Addiction to power

Synopsis: Power and its trappings can become an addiction. The habit grows unmanageable because the individual just can’t stop feeding it – off others, employees and investors alike.


New Year turned upside down for thousands of employees at India’s fourth largest IT company. Over 6,000 campus recruits were also stranded jobless. The bitter truth at Satyam Computer Services was that company books were cooked. Ironically, the word ‘satyam’ means truth.

The bogey

Returning from USA in December last year, founder-chairman B Ramalinga Raju raised the bogey of takeover by IBM and others attracted by the company’s large cash reserves of INR 8,000 crores (about 1.649 billion USD). And unless Satyam diversified into various unrelated industry like properties, the outsiders would boost their own profits downsizing it.

Thus the stage was set for the acquisitions of Maytas Properties and Maytas Infrastructure for that same monetary amount. But, unconvinced by the story, irate shareholders blocked the move.

“Satyam is gone”, Raju told his wife as he prepared his resignation letter to the Board of directors. His conscience was too burdened by guilt, he wrote. Not by the imminence of IBM, but his own corporate fraud to the tune of INR 7,800 crores!

The worms

He, his brother Rama Raju, the MD and CEO, and CFO Vadlamani Srinivas quit the company, and were arrested. Investigators uncovered ‘worms’ in plenty:

• Profits had been inflated for years to drive up the share prices.
• The diversification was a cover for the ongoing fraud. Raju’s sons run Maytas - really just ‘satyam’ spelt backwards.
• Before the confession, other Satyam directors sold off company shares.
• Satyam’s foreign placements have based on fabricated profiles.
• Amongst the 53,000 listed employees, about 10, 000 names may be false.
• There may have been complicity in the scam by external auditors PriceWaterhouseCoopers, beside about 45 banks effecting various deal transactions.

The power fulfilment

Fact is the much-touted cash reserves didn’t exist. In years of ongoing fraud, millions were diverted into real estate. Investigations revealed about 10,000 acres of benami property - held in the names of various members of the Raju extended family.

Power corrupts, said Hobbs, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The Raju coterie occupied all the top spots of company management, and operated by 'groupthink'. Corporate governance meant the Chairman-CEO made decisions, and others acquiesced. Those who could have questioned the fund diversions - accountants, auditors, banks and Board – were perhaps intimidated by their sense of power, or simply chose not to sour deals for their own concerns.

Power and its trappings can also become an addiction. It leads to compulsive behaviour, which is generally associated with the more identifiable types like eating, drinking, smoking, shopping or gambling. The lack of adequate dopamine in brain’s reward centres leaves them unsatisfied and hence the repetitiveness in behaviour.

The habit grows unmanageable because the individual just can’t stop feeding it off others – like employees and investors for the Satyam top brass. Fulfilment through exercises of power takes command. Despite their burdened conscience, the Rajus have retained a battery of 25 lawyers to defend them. In prison, they object to being lodged with ordinary criminals and demand special treatment!

Cont’d…2