SUCCESS, DROP BY DROP!!!

“Failures are the pillars

Success is the byproduct

Dreams and hopes, the rejuvenating fillers

Coupled with a global moral conduct! “

An age-old adage holds that winners never quit and quitters never win!  But, history keeps on retelling that whosoever called it quits had envisioned the whole world to a new discovery. Right from Christopher Columbus and Benjamin Franklin to the near recent Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg , we could embark on to an unending list of people who adopted that unconventional path to finally taste success buds.  So, yes, winners never quit but quitters can win a lot more!

“For those who could not make it to the finish line, started up with a new beginning”

Today, as youngsters we don’t pay much heed to our studies because nowadays the general mass mentality is such that if you act cool, do scrape things, you are smart. However, one who can unscramble the problems with all his wits and knowledge is the real ‘cool’ genius. The most fascinating thing these days is ONE BIG IDEA, and a correct strategy to implement it. These successful dropouts had the same notion to reach to acme and do well for the society. Rightly quoted by Sir Winston Churchill,“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”

Truly, failures are the stepping stones to success. Not that it is being propagated to stop studying, drop out from your learning institute and win success! We are just proclaiming that people who left midway are not losers but they did so to comeback and camouflage in a renewed, evolved and a worthwhile facet.

“Heights by great men, reached and kept,

Were not attained by sudden flight

For they while their companions slept,

Kept toiling upwards in the night!”

These drop-outs were those drops of ocean that would have desiccated the ocean itself in their absence! There would have been no science today if Sir Albert Einstein wouldn’t have changed his life’s track towards his will. Abraham Lincoln became a self-educated lawyer before him abolishing slavery, strengthening the federal government and modernizing the economy as the U.S. President in 1861. Edison dropped out at 12 to enlighten the world with his bulb while Walt Disney abandoned schooling at 12 and eventually leaped onto the renowned Walt Disney Company that entertains people of all ages till date.  Henry Ford did not even attend college to establish one of the world’s largest automobile companies. Billionaire Michael Dell dropped out of the University of Texas at just 19. Instead of studying biology, he spent most of his time in his dorm room, building computers and selling them through local newspapers. By the end of freshman year, he was raking in over $80,000 a month, so he dropped out of college to start the company that eventually became Dell computers. Rightly said, “Discouragement is often the last key that opens the bunch of success”

Russell Simmons, George Clooney, Woody Allen, Tom Hanks, James Cameron, John Mackey, Sandra Bullock and John Mackey all followed the trait to emerge as successful billionaires in their own genres.

“Patience and perseverance can overcome mountains”.

Let’s also concrete this fact with some surveyed figures. Some of the world's most famous and richest billionaires are college dropouts. The combined net worth of these dropouts is USD 246 billion. This list is not exhaustive. The average net worth of billionaires who dropped out of college, $9.4 billion, is approximately triple that of billionaires with Ph.D.s, $3.2 billion. Even if one removes Bill Gates, who left Harvard University and is now worth $66.0 billion, college dropouts are worth $5.3 billion on average, compared to those who finished only bachelor's degrees, who are worth $2.9 billion. According to a recent report from Cambridge-based Forrester Research, 20% of America's millionaires never attended college. This one from the king and spider’s tale surely follows:

“ ‘Tis a lesson you should heed,

Try, try again

Till at last you succeed,

Try, try again!”

Sir George Bernard Shaw rightly puts in, “The golden rule is that there is no golden rule-No shortcuts to success!” But, definitely there’s always that one path that breaks you from your comfortable zone and retorts you on this unusual and unconventional track driven by your idea and creativity, if not for that shortcut!  We Indians are no way behind. Azim Premji, Mukesh Ambani, Gautam Adani, Micky Jagtiani, SubhashChandra Goel and P.N.C. Menon all made it big after successfully crossing the crossroads.  Besides, those who have kept the whole world’s eyeballs rolling including everyone from Aamir Khan, Mahesh Bhatt, Salman Khan, Ranbir Kapoor, Akshay Kumar, Deepika Padukone, Kareena Kapoor Khan, Katrina Kaif, Kajol, Karisma Kapoor, Sridevi, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan all top this list.  In words of Shakespeare, all this is “hoping against hope”. For achieving success in life, one has to strive and struggle like a busy bee not caring about the pitfalls and predicaments. We must learn how to surmount all the odds and evens in life and come out successful. After all, “Fruits of success grow only on the branches of hard work.”   So, let’s skim through some of such inspiring success stories.

William Henry Bill Gates III, the pioneer of Microsoft, dropped out of the Harvard University to emerge as the top American business magnate, philanthropist, investor, computer programmer, and inventor and of course the world’s richest person then in 2007 and again in April 2014. Gates did not have a definite study plan while a student at Harvard and spent a lot of time using the school's computers. Gates remained in contact with Paul Allen, and he joined him at Honeywell during the summer of 1974. The following year saw the release of the MITS Altair 8800 based on the Intel 8080 CPU, and Gates and Allen saw this as the opportunity to start their own computer software company. Gates dropped out of Harvard at this time. Gates stepped down as chief executive officer of Microsoft in January 2000. He remained as chairman and created the position of chief software architect for himself until very recently when he stepped down as chairman of Microsoft in February 2014, taking on a new post as technology advisor to support newly appointed CEO Satya Nadella.  It is not for nothing that he quotes,

“Its fine to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.”

Let’s march on to one another person who recent untimely death shattered the globe- Steven Paul, more renowned as Steve Jobs. His adoptive father Paul Jobs and taught his son rudimentary electronics and how to work with his hands  in the family garage, demonstrating to his son how to take apart and rebuild electronics such as radios and televisions. As a result, he became interested in and developed a hobby of technical tinkering.   Jobs’ youth was riddled with frustrations over formal schooling. At Monta Loma Elementary school in Mountain View, he frequently played pranks on others. Though school officials recommended that he skip two grades on account of his test scores, his parents elected for him only to skip one grade. Following high school graduation in 1972, Jobs enrolled at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. Reed was an expensive college which Paul and Clara could ill afford. Jobs dropped out of college after six months and spent the next 18 months dropping in on creative classes, including a course on calligraphy. He continued auditing classes at Reed while sleeping on the floor in friends' dorm rooms, returning Coke bottles for food money, and getting weekly free meals at the local Hare Krishna temple. Jobs later said, "If I had never dropped in on that single calligraphy course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts."  Jobs founded NeXT Inc. in 1985 after his resignation. He also worked as the joint director at Pixar and Disney in the interim to generate a horde of successful films. In 1996, Apple announced that it would buy NeXT bringing Jobs back to the company he co-founded. He was formally named interim chief executive in September only to gift Mac OS X, iMax, iPod, iPhone. In August 2011, Jobs resigned as CEO of Apple, but remained with the company as chairman of its board. A man of marvels, Steve Jobs, quoted,

“Because the people are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do!”

Yes, these success stories are truly amazing and inspirational. So let’s just check this fantastic quote, “I have had all of the disadvantages required for success.” This was echoed in by Larry Ellison. He went ahead to say “When you innovate, you've got to be prepared for everyone telling you you're nuts.” So, was he also a drop-out and what is his success tale? This co-founder and chief executive officer of Oracle Corporation, was a bright but an inattentive student. He left the University Of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign after his second year, after not taking his final exams because his adoptive mother had just died. After spending a summer in northern California, Ellison attended the University of Chicago for one term, where he first encountered computer design. In 1966, aged 22, he left it midway and he moved to northern California. Also in 1997, Ellison was made a director of Apple Computer after Steve Jobs returned to the company. Ellison resigned in 2002, saying "my schedule does not currently allow me to attend enough of the formal board meetings to warrant a role as a director". With the defeat of Informix and of Sybase, Oracle enjoyed years of industry dominance until the rise of Microsoft SQL Server. Eventually, Ellison is still the third richest American, with a net worth of about $36.5 billion. Indeed, “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step!”

Who doesn’t like tweeting or following blogs?  Apparently, we all are completely into it. So now it’s time to meet the man behind strangling everyone in this crazy circle-Evan Williams. Two of the internet's top ten websites have been created by Williams's companies: Blogger and Twitter. Williams grew up on a farm in Clarks, Nebraska, where he assisted with crop irrigation in summers. He attended the University of Nebraska–Lincoln for a year-and-a-half, but eventually left to pursue his career. Evan Williams and Meg Hourihan co-founded Pyra Labs to make project management software. A note-taking feature spun off as Blogger, one of the first web applications for creating and managing weblogs.  Williams invented the term "blogger" and was instrumental in the popularization of the term "blog". Pyra survived the departure of Hourihan and other employees, and was eventually acquired by Google on February 13, 2003. Williams left Google in October 2004 to co-found Odeo, a podcasting company. In late 2006, Williams co-founded Obvious Corp. with Biz Stone. Among Obvious Corp.'s projects was Twitter, a popular, free social networking and micro-blogging service. Twitter itself was spun out into a new company in April 2007, with Williams as co-founder, board member, and investor. In October 2008, Williams became CEO of Twitter. Eventually, this college drop-out is worth $1.48 Billion (November 2013) and hence today, we cherish his quote, “My life has been a series of well-orchestrated accidents; I've always suffered from hallucinogenic optimism.”
                                                         

Last but not the least, we have grown up and so has our dear Facebook who is continuously stringed to the hearts of the multitude. So, we just cannot abstain from mentioning the man himself-Mark Zuckerberg. Together with his college roommates and fellow Harvard University students, Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes, Zuckerberg launched Facebook from Harvard's dormitory rooms. The group then introduced Facebook onto other campuses nationwide and moved to Palo Alto, California shortly afterwards. In 2007, at the age of 23, Zuckerberg became a billionaire as a result of Facebook's success. Zuckerberg dropped out of Harvard in his sophomore year to complete his project and today after engulfing Twitter, this man is an asset worth US $25.3 billion (April 2014). This quote by Mark Zuckerberg now can be well referenced,

“The biggest risk is not taking any risk... In a world that is changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks.”

“Each morning sees a task begun,

Each evening sees it close

Something attempted, something done

Has earned a night’s repose!”

College isn't for everyone. But that doesn't mean you can't be a genius without it. Though graduates are proven more likely to be hired than someone without higher education, many of the technology companies we rely so heavily upon were started by dropouts. With the increasingly high cost of a college education, and a job market that appears anything but reassuring, there are plenty of reasons for young entrepreneurs to replace the expensive textbooks and cinder-block dorms for a business of their own. Of course, starting your own company doesn't come without its own heavy costs. Though we certainly don't discourage students from pursuing any form of education, it's hard to imagine a life without Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Twitter or Tumblr. Quite simply, great ideas don’t belong in one simple category. Innovators can be any age, come from any background, with any level of education. What they share in common isn’t a prestigious degree but a passion for innovation, a great idea, and the strength of purpose and business savvy to make people listen!

So, there we are. No, this is not the end but just a new beginning for all of us! Nonetheless, failures may hit you hard on your face, it’s you who decide how much to take it and move ahead! This focus on talent over pedigree is what helps one stand out and achieve!  It’s time we create that drop in ourselves defragmenting us to that path which is mobilized by our ideas, passion, dreams, technology, soul ,mind and lastly heart!

“Talent, creativity and wisdom,

With a great idea as the chief prop

In every accomplished system,

Ladder of success is never crowded at the top

When fear of failure is less than seldom

When perseverance knows no halting stop

Out of the world, in freedom,

Flows this excellence and SUCCESS-DROP BY DROP!”    ----- HAPPY SUCCESS TO ALL!

                                                                                                                        Meet Gidwani

Future Technology-Plant parts to generate electricity

A decade from now, a recorder powered by plant parts and stashed in the woods may answer the age-old question: If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

That's one potential application for an energy conversion technology inspired by photosynthesis, the process plants use to convert sunlight into food.

Plants convert nearly 100 percent of the photons they capture from sunlight into electrons, which go through a series of reactions on the pathway to generating sugars, the team behind the technology explained.

"What we are trying to do is interrupt the pathway of natural photosynthesis and then trying to deal with those electrons," Ramaraja Ramasay, an electrochemist at the University of Georgia, told.

He and his colleagues do this by extracting the plant machinery that drives the photosynthetic reaction called thylakoids and immobilizing them on a bed of carbon nano tubes, which act as an electrical conductor, capturing the electrons and sending them along a wire.

"That way, you have a continuous flow of electrons when the light is falling on the photosynthetic machinery from the plant," Ramasamy said, adding that the energy conversion technology is similar to a fuel cell, only in this case the fuel is sunlight.

The efficiency of the system has the potential to be much greater than solar panels, which convert between 12 and 17 percent of the sunlight that hits them into electricity. First, though, more work needs to be done to improve the stability of the system.

Currently, taking the thylakoids out of a plant is akin to taking the heart out of a human — it is not stable for very long, Ramasamy noted. But plants have a mechanism to replenish their photosynthetic machinery. It may be possible, he said, to genetically engineer this machinery for long-term stability.

"That's the direction this has to be explored in much more detail," he said.

If successful, potential applications for the technology, at least in the near to medium term, include use as a power source for sensors used in remote locations, eliminating the need for batteries.

Ramasamy and colleagues recently described a proof-of-concept device in the journal Energy and Environmental Science.

"It is green energy, 100 percent clean, it has the potential to operate at really high efficiency, if we can continue to improve on this," Ramasamy said. "Besides, I think it is a really cool concept."

Frequently asked Technical Questions

Greetings people!
It looks like the onset of Placement Season yet again. With the placement week behind us, we already have a basic idea of the placements scenario of our college. And we are grateful to all the BE's who could take out time and acquaint us with the placement process.

Below is the link for Technical Questions that have been frequently asked in the Technical Interview put by Suraj Brijwani. Kudos to him for doing that!

DOWNLOAD FILE

Do watch out this space for more.

Of Autumnal Dreams.

 “That we don’t remember the beginning or the ending of dreams is our unconscious reminding us that it’s all about the process.”

There’s a brothel in your mind, perhaps there might be a temple, even.

A temple you secretly go to, a haven for your dreams. You either cherish your dream or asphyxiate it. That is to say, you either live or you die.

You dream, with your eyes wide open or otherwise, not that it matters. It is something that keeps you in a state of sanguineness, something to hold on to. It lets you be, in a world of your own.  That latent feeling of happiness or a buzz sort of stays in you even after you are pulled back to this uncannily fictitious world of reality.

What do you do when a realization of sort awaits you, like a person standing outside your door, knocking. You either let it in or you let it go.

And if you let it go, so life would be pleasant without any troublesome shenanigans, with nothing to risk, and everything gained. Almost, everything gained. But, that something will keep you unquenchable for your entire life.

And then there will never be a requiem for that dream, simply because it will destroy you before you have the opportunity to mourn its passing.

It’s not the goal or the desire; it is the journey to your dream that makes all the conflicts – internal or external, worth it.

We at ISTE believe in the power of Imagination, the power of dreams. Come; let’s walk together towards that awaited journey.

The Green Tiger.

From  the  title,  I‘m  sure  that  the  instinctive  reaction  that  most  of  you‘ll  would  have  is  that  this  article  might  just  be  a  metaphor  or  spoof  of  the  Booker  win-ning  ‗The  White  Tiger‘  by  Aravind  Adiga.  However,  what  I‘m  referring  to  here  is  one  of  the  biggest  hurdles  in  India‘s  development-  CORRUPTION.

Corruption  has  spread  its  evil  wings  to  every  strata  of  society-  be  it  at  the  grass  root  level,  or  at  the  Government  level.  By  corruption,  I  mean  political  corrup-tion,  which  is  the  dysfunction  of  a  political  system  or  institution  in  which  govern-ment  officials,  political  officials  or  employees  seek  illegitimate  personal  gain  through  actions  such  as  bribery,  extortion,  etc.

Its  many  ill  effects  in  various  fields  are:

1.  On  politics,  administration  &  institutions:

Corruption  erodes  the  institutional  capacity  of  government  as  procedures  are  disre-garded,  resources  are  siphoned  off,  and  public  offices  are  bought  and  sold.  In  elec-tions,  it  reduces  accountability.  People  lose  their  trust  in  the  ruling  bodies,  which  affects  representation.  Corruption  in  the  judiciary  compromises  the  rule  of  law.

2.  On  Economics:

In  the  private  sector,  corruption  increases  the  cost  of  business  through  the  price  of  illicit  payments  themselves,  the  management  cost  of  negotiating  with  officials,  and  the  risk  of  breached  agreements  or  detection.  Corruption  also  lowers  compliance  with  construction,  environmental,  or  other  regulations,  reduces  the  quality  of  gov-ernment  services  and  infrastructure,  and  increases  budgetary  pressures  on  govern-ment  .

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3.  On  Environment  &  Society:

More  often  than  not,  a  lot  of  projects  and  factories  are  audited  without  any  Government  objection,  despite  them  having  flouted  several  laws.  On  the  other  hand,  the  one  who  refuses  to  pay  under  the  table  is  unfortunately  the  one  who‘s  at  loss.  Officials  often  steal  state  property.  In  Bihar,  more  than  80%  of  the  subsidized  food  aid  to  poor  is  stolen  by  corrupt  officials.  Simi-larly,  food  aid  is  often  robbed  at  gunpoint  by  governments  and  criminals  and  sold  for  a  profit.

On  health,  public  safety,  education,  trade  unions  etc.:

Bribes  made  by  suppliers  of  safety  equipment,  etc  are  hardly  uncommon.  To-day,  corruption  has  become  widespread  in  the  field  of  education,  where  in,  parents  literally  PURCHASE  seats  for  their  children.  Corruption  can  also  affect  the  various  components  of  sports  activities  (referees,  players,  medical  and  laboratory  staff  involved  in  anti-doping  controls,  members  of  national  sport  federation  and  international  committees  deciding  about  the  allocation  of  contracts  and  competition  places).  Match  fixing  is  yet  another  form  of  cor-ruption.

The  most  glaring  of  all  corruption  related  offences,  however,  is  compromise  in  secu-rity  related  matters.  All  of  us  are  aware  that  no  terrorist  attack  can  succeed  without  an  inside  hand.  Take  for  instance  the  1993  Bombay  bomb  blasts.  The  perpetrators  could  not  have  even  got  the  weapons  through  to  the  Indian  shores  had  they  not  been  assisted  by  the  Naval  commandos  and  small  time  henchmen,  who  for  a  paltry  sum,  risked  a  nation  as  a  whole.  Not  once  did  they  flinch  at  the  thought  of  selling  their  country  for  the  sake  of  money.

Citizens  do  not  report  crimes  to  the  police,  fearing  action  against  them  for  having  charged  powerful/well  to  do  individuals.

Cash  for  vote  is  another  scandal,  which  has  become  quite  prominent  of  late.  Several  politicians,  actors  and  businessmen  bribe  Income  Tax  officials  for  tax  eva-sion.

Contractors  bribe  employees  of  companies  in  order  to  receive  lucrative  con-tracts  without  having  the  merit  to  serve  with  honesty  and  efficiency.

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It  is  thus  not  wrong  to  say  that  the  system  itself  is  corrupted.

Examples  are  endless  and  occurrences-  infinite!!

So  why  am  I  calling  Corruption,  The  Green  Tiger??

Just  as  a  tiger  waits  to  pounce  on  his  prey,  corruption  is  laying  its  hands  on  everything  that  it  can  possibly  find.  It  is  a  hungry  animal  which  can  attack  anything  it  can  sight,  and  if  not  curbed,  can  lead  to  the  complete  failure  of  democracy.

Corruption  is  worse  than  prostitution.  The  latter  might  endanger  the  morals  of  an  individual;  the  former  invariably  endangers  the  morals  of  the  entire  country.

SAY  NO  TO  CORRUPTION;  SAVE  YOURSELF  FROM  THE  GREEN  TIGER!!

-Kavitha  G  T.e.  etrx

India Inc.

India Inc.

The promenade of sanguineness

Talk about our nation and we find a can of worms; worms of corruption, illiteracy, unemployment, higher prices, weak infrastructure and a bunch of social problems- worries, botheration and glitches everywhere! Moreover, external threats merely ex-tend the list of challenges confronting India (Let‘s not get started on terrorism!). En-ter the various arenas of agriculture, business, technology – the box of worriment keeps expanding in volume, thus making the future, ultra-mosaic! Amidst such sinis-ter clouds, India has a zealous set of young work force and a resourceful population too! With an astute cluster of B-schools like the IIMs, XLRI and MDI, and their B-dexters, our business is surely going to boom! Commingle this ingenious and avid youth class and you find a spark, the one which aims at reinventing models for India, radically! These very ‗business creators‘ not only ascend the country‘s opulence but also place India competitively in the global marketplace. Thanks to such Einsteins, the business design principles in India have undergone a reform- a shape for the good of the common man, and they have been ameliorating day by day. Today, inde-pendent of the special market conditions, India exhibits the Westerners a pivotal source of inspiration; the design principles which everyone should consider…. (At least, once!)

The 10% Rule:

India has been good at revamping constraints into creativity and adroitness. The 10% rule states that the goods and services are delivered to the market at a price which is 10% of the western world‘s average price. This could raise competitiveness to altogether a new level. Take an instance of Seva Foundation‟s Clinton Global Initiative Commitment whose sole vision is to eliminate blindness in spite of the bar-riers of indigence, remoteness and ignorance. The motive is simple: one million more eyes will see again every year by 2015. In the past year alone, it has performed over 500,000 eye surgeries and screened over three million people for eye health. So, it is necessary to lower the costs instead of assuming big budgets so that every common man has access to such awe-inspiring goods and services.

Mass Mobilization:

This principle draws out a model to ‗employ‘ the unemployed rather than ‗pay‘ the unemployed. India has cogently tapped human networks to deliver both, marketing and social services. (A bizarre, yet a blooming combination!) Rings a bell? 9

The Mumbai Dabbawallas! Having delivered over 200,000 lunches to people in offices and schools from their home every day for decades, they have set up a gilt-edged paradigm to this principle. This delivery system is zappy yet simple-

You employ a swarm of scantily literate delivery men to manage deliveries in a cost efficient manner! So, while we can recurrently talk about the perils of nesting a huge population, mass mobilization can be the tour de force behind serving a large consumer base.

Technology as infrastructure:

An effective use of technology instead of physical infrastructure can improve the delivery of social and commercial services efficiently and effectively. ITC‘s ‗E-choupal‟ system depicts how efficiently technology can be used to establish a spread-out infrastructure. The E-choupal is designed to tackle the problems faced by Indian agriculture characterized by weak infrastructure and involvement of nu-merous intermediaries. ‗E-choupal‘ services today reach out to over 4 million farm-ers in over 40,000 villages across ten states in India. It solves the problems of infra-structural inadequacies by deploying several innovative solutions like power back-up through solar batteries, upgrading BSNL exchanges with RNS kits, 24 x 7 help-desk, etc. Through internet kiosks, it provides the farmers with information on weather, and access to wider markets. This not only generates economic value but also transmits a flow of links from the business to the social world!

Broader Platforms for collaboration :

It is necessary to pursue more cross institutional collaborations and joint ventures; collaboration is an efficient means of enhancing the delivery of development pro-grammes. The Andhra Pradesh Government has introduced an online citizen ser-vice portal, APOnline Limited, a tie-up with the Tata Consultancy Services Limited. It provides services in the areas of agriculture, health, education, business and gov-ernment services which have helped the government in improving transparency and reducing delivery cycles, thus reducing the cost of compliance with governmental regulations. Such examples shake the roots of the naïve belief that cross institu-tional collaboration is an unwanted means of extending the reach and capacities of any given institution.

Retracing the model:

Sketching new models requires the status information about the current model, the cream activities of the current one and the novel ideas that would match up the old ones. Besides, rethinking on ideas that would bring values and redesigning errors (may be, faults!) in the earlier model, form an unavoidable part. And this is not like making a duck soup!! 10

With a lagging education system on one hand and a whopping emerging man-power on the other, India has completely rethought the ways in which it can re-cruit and train its workforce. These will handout India to capitalize on its re-source and become a major global R&D hub. (By 2020, India will have the larg-est labour surplus in the world—45 million people.)

Imagine an ad interim educational system that considers workers with wobbly educational backgrounds and turn them into R&D specialists- sounds filmy? Well, it isn‘t! The Indian industry has worked out a codified industry-based skill development program draping rigorous training programs. With this resourceful new model, offshore R&D has become a booming business in India, and is ex-pected to grow over 20% a year, to a $21 billion industry in India by 2012. So, now, it need not count on a multitude of PhDs to make way through an educa-tional system to serve the commercial agenda!

The above designs canvas new models of enterprising brushed from the princi-ples of a blossoming business! Such examples are worth challenging the status quo and asking ‗What if?‘ One never knows- more radical possibilities indeed stimulate a nimble reality; these models might give rise to a few aristocratic Mom and Pop and spawn a country full of Biz pundits!!!

Abhishek Manian, TE EXTC

Roma Kalani, TE CMPN

HOW TO BE A RICH PERSON?

HOW TO BE A RICH PERSON?

If anyone asked my brother, when he was small, what he wanted to be when he was big, he would say in clear, unhesitant, fierce and assured tone , ―mujhe ameer banna hai !‖ I want to be rich. The old relatives would then laugh hysteri-cally unaware that my (dare I say it!) intelligent brother chose the easiest profes-sion on earth: to be rich.

Experienced men and wealthy people themselves claim that to be rich one must have qualities of hard work, sincerity, virtue, determination, persistence and blah blah. That‘s good enough as an advice…good enough only as an advice.

I have done a great deal of research observing quite a few wealthy chaps and being a very benevolent person I will tell you the real secrets of becoming rich.

The first secret, the one that can never fail, the easiest, most convenient, abso-lutely full proof plan to richness is inheritance. Be born in a rich family. Simple. When the angel of child-allocation in heaven sits with his notebook and pen in hand, assigning babies to human couples (obviously human! What‘s the use be-ing a rich poodle! All you would get is a fancy hair cut and pink chain. What a waste!) make sure you flatter the angel enough to assign you to a rich man‘s house. If you are a prodigy sweet talker it would be an icing to the cake to be able to convince the child-allocating angel to make you the only child. Then you are all set for life. No need to even read this text. No worries…no issues just get up in the morning spend some money… sleep at night spending more money and keep doing this till you die after which it does not really matter how is left or gone. All you would have to think is how to convince that child-allocating angel again (Ha! Good luck with that now!)

If you aren‘t born rich then be sure you are born poor. (Biting the child-allocating angel‘s wings should do the trick). All the rich people of today, were at some juncture poverty stricken, loony chaps with scraps of money in their pockets. Am serious. Really. Look at any millionaire‘s interview. He was born in a financially wobbly household and by the age of 15-16 runs away with a few hundreds to spare. So on an urgent basis, be poor. If you aren‘t, start pretending to be one. Having adequate money now will not make you rich in the future. Be sure to take the train by the time you finish school (we are already late for that now! So hurry…! Kurla station is 10minutes from college)

To be rich embrace the richness, be a part of the culture and imbibe its qualities. The early sleepers and risers can kiss money goodbye. All that funny business of turning down the lights at 10:30pm and hauling yourself out of bed at 6:30 like the lark needs to be stopped right away. Sleep with the owl & rise at a decent 10:00am enjoying the lurid warmth of your cozy blanket. Have you ever heard any rich bees barging their work places before noon? Huh? Tell me! Call at their bally offices and you will be greeted with an absurdly sweet voiced lady, slowly

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10:00am enjoying the lurid warmth of your cozy blanket. Have you ever heard any rich bees barging their work places before noon? Huh? Tell me! Call at their bally offices and you will be greeted with an absurdly sweet voiced lady, slowly lowering the axe on your plans by callously announcing that Mr. Richie Rich won‘t be checking in before lunch time.

You have to be apt at understanding semi-funny, meagerly-funny, not-at-all-funny and that-was-sad-enough-for-me-to-kill-you-so-help-me-I-will business jokes and laugh at them in a controlled but booming bear-like sound.

At least five cups of expensive coffee must be consumed everyday each- half drunk and half thrown on account of it being nasty.

By law, the phone should never be answered by you and even when received by your absurdly-sweet-voiced lady it must be transferred only at the third attempt of the caller. Exceptions however can be made to this rule (I mean if your mother/spouse/mother-in-law throw you out of the house for making them wait an hour on the phone, then don‘t coming whining to me!)

This is as far as social norms are concerned.

In matters of business too, there are certain things that are worth replicating.

While placing proposals sport the stern no-dilly-dally expression on your face; keeping the statement- „1000 bucks a piece; take it or leave it‟ at the tip of your tongue. It‘s not the sentence really. It‘s how you say it. It must sound like you wouldn‘t give a joker‘s hat for the money even though your insides are screech-ing otherwise because in reality you would probably have to be recruited as a pirate‘s ship sweeper if your client left the ‗take it or leave it‘ deal.

My father is a business man and this has enabled me to catch enough interesting conversations of rich blokes to safely conclude that theses richies care about lit-tle money as much as they do about their big money. A penny saved is a penny earned.

I once witnessed two men sitting in a café, sipping coffee and muttering in hushed voices. (God knows why they have to ‗mutter‘ in public places. It‘s not like a family eating donuts on the next table would take a sprint to their broker, with open mouths & donut still hanging in air, the moment they eavesdrop on your conservation. Tchah! What vanity! But I guess that must be another es-sence to richness or most of them wouldn‘t be croaking like they have almonds stuck in their throats every time they discuss business in cafes. )

First man asked second man: ―How was the meeting with Mahindra?‖

They do this all the time- call people by the name of the company they work in. Absolutely ridiculous, if you ask me. Just imagine how many Microsofts and Walt Disneys there are in this world!

Second man to first man: ―It was alright. I put forth my budget for the proposal- One million. Not a penny more, not a penny less‖

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See…! They are very sensitive about one penny. Doesn‘t matter where the One million go, the penny is the nub of the situation. So I think it would be prudent potatoes for 50rs a kilo, not a rupee more, not a rupee less‘. Oh and please call me when you do this. I'd like to bear witness to the priceless expression on the vendor‘s face who was most probably about to offer you 30 for a kilo. (Haha…!)

Bankruptcy has to unavoidably occur in your life. Every rich person has gone bankrupt at least once. It would be a good idea not to pay your income taxes compelling a raid whose consequent would be you behind bars. For instant rich-ness do all of it -- swindle other people‘s money, never pay taxes, go bankrupt when asked to pay anything , get yourself into critical criminal offence then pro-long it for years till every other businessman, employee, secretary, driver, sweeper, chai wala, paan wala know that you‘re an absolute goner. After this, make a miraculous entry into the business world exploiting an old wasted invest-ment you once made, as a mistake, but is now the pinnacle of financial earnings. To mask your self-conceived notoriety image engage uselessly in social endeav-ors. Protest against deforestation, even though you dwell on a land which was once abundant with greenery, strive for the uplifting of poor humans, even though you haven‘t paid your domestic servants 10 months worth salaries, sup-port women‘s progress and education, cleanliness drives, garbage collection, cultural encouragement, gift blankets to orphans, kiss babies, feed sick animals so on & so forth. You won‘t really have to do much. Just say that you‘re doing them, get a few fancy photographs taken with a smug smile and the paparazzi will go crazy! (Oh! that rhymes!)

Above all, there is one thing which if not instigated will force your plans to col-lapse faster than the leaning tower titled a wee bit more. It is wit. You should and must be exceedingly, unimaginably, exceptionally, absurdly and awfully witty. Smartness and intellect must be in your blood corpuscles. You have to be intelligent enough to deal with air headed humans, understand & judge them correctly, know their worth, how true or false they are and how much to rely & believe. You must be able to see right through them in the same manner as you must be able to see right through this article!

Good luck!

May the force of Richie Rich be with you!

— Saanjhi L S.E. ETRX

Realizing your Dream.

REALIZING YOUR DREAM

Love for your country can take on many dimensions. For some, it exists at the superficial level, for the sake of identification, for some a fact of life that is passively present, an identity which is present somewhere around, whereas for some, it is a part of who you are, your family, your blood. Whatever level one is on, the fact that you owe your country for whatever you‘ve achieved cannot be denied. In this era of globalization, the concept of nationhood seems to be dwin-dling in stature. But our country still holds a deep significance to our identity, our existence. India, the name itself brings a varied sense of emotions, a feeling of pride, a sense of belonging to something magnificent. So, why not give some-thing back? Why not pay back our dues in whichever way we can to the country that has given us so much?

With this thought in my mind and an already present admiration for the armed forces, I decided to give a shot in choosing defense as a career. Reaching an important juncture in your life, where the path you choose becomes your identity is a particularly difficult time for many. The balancing of the various factors that account for deciding your career path will rival even some of the complexities of nuclear science. On one side, you would have your life-long dream, the most-cherished ambition that you wanted to achieve and on the other side, the lucrative salaries and the ‗safe bet‘ option chosen by all those around you. The urge and temptation for the latter is too big to overshadow the former, at least for the most of us.

And this is exactly where I found myself, having to choose between the two. The initial opposition from parents and others almost bogged me down and I began having second thoughts over my decision to join the armed forces. It is quite a difficult phase to be in and it tests your determination to the hilt. The ini-tial doubts then turn into anxiety over whether I‘m good enough, dedicated enough for the job. Then comes the ‗What if?‘ scenarios where you begin to go into a spiral of negative thoughts. What if I don‘t get it? What if it was not worth it? After a plethora of questioning and cross-questioning, you tend to get stabi-lized in your thoughts and come out either satisfied and aware, in some cases or still, confused and doubtful, as in most cases.

Still, trudging on in spite of all these thoughts, I went on to give and clear the written examination for armed forces (CDSE) and was called by the Air Force selection Board. After a grueling week of tests and activities, it was a pleasant surprise to hear my name being called out in the recommended list.

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It was a great feeling to move one step closer towards my dream. But, there are more obstacles yet to be crossed, more steps yet to be taken before the final dream gets accomplished. Till that time, one cannot rest but must work on tire-lessly.

I write my experiences because I want everyone to know that your dreams, if not already, are well within your grasp. If you limit your choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is compromise. The struggle that one undertakes in achieving the dream makes the journey a much more memorable experience. So, when the time comes to make a decision, a decision to pursue your dream or let it slip away for the sake of a safe, bankable option, remember this saying ―Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly.‖

―Some choices we live not only once but a thousand times over, remembering them for the rest of our lives.‖

-Suraj nair– B.E. Computers