Corporate India and Changing Face of Terrorism KPMG in India conducted a survey with over 60 companies in India, with the objective of assessing their level of preparedness in the wake of this emerging threat of terrorism. These organizations were from various sectors and the majority of them had an annual turnover of over USD 150 million. You can check out many other Thought Leadership publications by KPMG-India on our website http://in.kpmg.com/archives/archives.asp In case you need any other inputs or have feedback, feel free to leave a comment on my blog and I will get back to you. Download Report (946 KB) Privacy & Disclaimer © 2009 KPMG, an Indian Partnership and a member firm of the KPMG network of independent member firms affiliated with KPMG International, a Swiss cooperative. All rights reserved.

After I bought my car, one of the first things which was fixed in the interior of my car as a decorative was a Ganesh Idol - that was gifted to me by my dealer itself. The next thing which I wanted to buy was the Indian flag - I finally bought it when we visited the Wagah border. After I had put up the flag in my car, I started noticing the interiors of other cars on the road, and found that almost 80% of cars had similar Indian flags in their cars. Then yesterday (which was Republic Day), I found that even auto-rickshaws had flags pinned up inside. This led me into thinking as to whether this "flag thing" indicates that we Indians are a patriotic lot and whether after 60 years of independence, we have shrugged our apathy towards the nation and started taking pride in being Indians. Well ... I really can't say. To the skeptic, this could as well be because car accessory stores have flags as a decorative or say hawkers coax you into buying these at traffic signals, and fin...

Link to Part I of this series    The character of an undivided India was a weak one - the leadership composed of Gandhi-Nehru-Jinnah took a decision to divide the country on religious lines [ 1 ][ 2 ][ 3 ]: On 3 June 1947, he (Lord Moutbatten) presented his plan [to partition India into India and Pakistan] to Nehru and Jinnah. They both accepted it. Gandhi, was fearful about partition but even more fearful of civil war. The AICC adopted the resolution in June, 1947. Nehru served on the Partition Council that finalized the separation of government institutions and provincial resources between the two new dominions. However, the leadership of Independent India composed of Nehru - Menon - Patel had a different character. When faced by a situation similar to partition because of reluctance of princely states to integrate their domains into independent India - the trio adopted a cunning, pragmatic yet bold and steadfast stance.  In July 1946, Nehru pointedly observed that no princely state...

The world has just witnessed a celebration of sorts on Obama's swearing in as the 44th President of America. What needs to be seen is how fast Obama delivers on the promise that - " the chalenges will be met ". Whether the United States of America meets the current challenges is to be seen, but this nation has always shown a character of unity and resoluteness. One realizes this on comparing how this nation faced situations against similar situations faced by other nations. The point in case I take here is the situation of imminent partition .  In 1860s, the United States found itself divided into two halves on the issue of salvery. Just as president Abraham Lincoln was being sworn in as the 16th president - seven Deep South cotton states South Carolina, Mississippi,Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas announced secession from the US to form the  Confederate States of America . America had two choices to make at this point of time - allow America to be divided ...

I wrote this text circa January 2003, when I had read the book - " Who Moved My Cheese ". The text compared the Gita to the principles set in the book. I recently read a book – ‘Who moved my cheese?’ by Dr. John Spencer. It is basically a story of 4 characters -2 mice and 2 ‘little-people’. All four are fond of cheese. Once they discover a large store of cheese but after some time the store exhausts. The mice driven by living instinct move in search of new cheese while ‘little-people’ , unable to accept change were reluctant to move from the old cheese store. Finally one of them moves out in search of cheese and finds a new store of cheese and in the process of finding new cheese he discloses some rules which are Golden rules for managers to deal with change. What startled to me was the close the resemblance these rules have with the message of the Gita. I present here a brief description of those rules and there equivalent verses from the Gita. 1. Having Cheese makes you ha...

An event happened with me a couple of days back which left me wondering about the levels to which value of human life has fallen in India.  I, Somnath and Anoop were returning from a walk at about 8.30 PM last Saturday. Two people passed us riding on a bike - but when we were right in front of Hiranandani Hosptial , the person riding pillion suddenly started falling down.  The other guy stopped the bike, some other passersby helped the pillion get down only to realise that he was undergoing an Epileptic Seizure . All passerby stopped and as usual started giving their suggestions - usko chamde ki chappal sunghao ... Pyaaz le ke aao (Give him a leather footwear to smell, find a onion). But no one was volunteering to even pick the poor guy lying on the road. We feeling a little responsible, decided that the best course was to seek professional help and since we were right in front of HN hospital - we went in and informed the staff on duty about the incident. We were expecting a stretcher ...

I was testing Photobucket's slide show functionality .. I used photos which I have been posting to this blog to create a slide show ... just a crancky kind of slide show trying to describe my life in general. 

Written Circa June, 2003 - inspired by a chapter in Alvin Toffler' s ' The Third Wave '  In the past permanence was ideal. Whether in handcrafting a pair of Boots or in constructing a cathedral all man’s creative and productive energies went towards maximizing the durability of the product. Man built to last. He had to. As long as the society around him was relatively unchanging each object had clearly defined functions and the economic logic dictated the policy of permanence. Even if they had to be repaired now and then, the boots that costed $50.00 and lasted ten years were less expensive than those that cost $10.00 and lasted only a year. As the general rate of change in society accelerates, however, the economics of permanence are - and must be - replaced by economics of transience. First, advancing technology tends to lower the costs of manufacture much more rapidly than the costs of repair work. The one is automated the other remains largely handcrafted operation. Thi...

Written circa January 2003 Wars for long have been thought to be as bad omen. And every time somebody mentions War, pictures of mass destruction hover in front of our eyes. But history tells us that wars have traditionally been the powerhouse of technological revolution. The recent most world war, that is the Second World War, is the most flamboyant example of the above fact. Robert B. Young at the Stanford research institute studied the span of time between the first commercial appearance of a new electrical appliance and at the time the industry manufacturing it reaches a peak production of the item. Young found that for a group appliances introduced in the United States before 1920, including the vacuum cleaner, the electric range and the refrigerator, the average Span between introduction and peak production was 34 years.  But for the group that appeared in 1939-59 period, including the electric frying pan, television and washer and dryer combination, the Span was only eight year...

Just glance through the songs of RNBDJ and you can get a reasonable whiff of what lays inside the movie. Many hailed SRK as lucky when Yash Raj movies gave him his big break in Dar and subsequent super-stardom in DDLJ. But this time round, I must say Yash Raj is lucky to have SRK on their side to end their failed year at a successful note. If RNBDJ has pulled crowds to multiplexes, it’s only because of SRK - whether it is his performance in this movie or his overall aura which keeps audiences glued to screens across the globe - but SRK definitely is the only good thing which happened to RNBDJ [ Most reviews also say so]. The story is not a believable one, especially because of the speed with which the plot setting is breezed through (the bus crash and subsequent marriage). While the script is good, the scriptingstyle is too clichéd (well is it the first time someone has created a song parodying old bollywood cinema?) I didn’t expect Aditya Chopra would copy so blatantly and not even ...