blog@Yantrajaal

I know that Social Media is the toast of the town but boy, am I getting tired of it ! You may say that I am being a hypocrite, since I post regularly on Twitter (hence automatically by  passthrough on Facebook ) and Linkedin, but I will be frank and admit that I do so more out of habit and perhaps out of a misplaced sense of necessity. Habit is understandable. At Level 4 of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, one needs esteem, the acceptance by one's peers and it does give you a kick if your post is liked and commented upon by a small band of people who form a mutual appreciation society. Of course, the key word in the last sentence is mutual -- if you want your posts to be liked and commented upon, then you have to return the favour as well and this is where the habit part kicks in. But other than casual chit-chat or  twitter (the guys who created this phenomenon, could not have named it any better) I doubt if social media has any purpose other than to keep an idle mind busy ! ...

Today, on Facebook, I came across another wisecrack comment on the dim prospects of the Indian software industry. Someone was taking another cheap potshot at Infosys ( and similar IT companies for that matter ) for working at the low end of the value chain. Coding, cyber coolies and what not. Why can the Indian software companies not "move up the value chain" and develop products that leverage intellectual property and not merely cost arbitrage ? Good question. And it is not that this question is being asked for the first time and so it is unlikely that the issue is not known to the management of the IT companies. Having been at a reasonable senior position in the IT industry I know for sure that many of my colleagues and contemporaries were seized of the matter. But being seized of the matter is different from being able to do something about it and unfortunately most attempts to do anything different ended up in failure. Why ? Because we as a nation suffer from an unbe...