Eight Tips for dealing with criticism...

The Happiness Project is a blog I read very often, Gretchen Rubin has very interesting things to say and deal with every day life circumstances and remain happy through those experiences.

She has a useful post on how to deal with criticism. I don't handle criticism particularly well, though consciously I've tried to improve myself in this department for last 2-3 years. There are some tips which I've applied on ocassions and it has worked, but discipline and patience is missing during most times.

Please read her post here.

India - Growth and Unemployment

On one hand the world is going ga-ga over India, we read about India's sudden growth in the last 4 years and the India rising story in the media. The outsourcing boom, Software industry and the BPO sector has increased the Purchasing Parity and changed the lifestyle and attitude of the urban population. But on the other hand the rising economy has also increased the inflation and the rising costs of daily domestic goods. This has made the life very expensive for people who live on fixed budgets and whose lives have not been touched by this rising Indian economy (this is a huge percentage of the population).

The situation in rural areas is even worse, high unemployment is not helping either. I think all this will change as the literacy level will increase and the BPO sector and Software industry will open offices and start to operate in these smaller Indian towns and cities. It'll take 2-5 years for this to happen, but more than time it will need commitment and dedication from people living in these towns to prepare and better educate themselves for this new opportunities ahead. This will solve at least couple of other issues:
- Will reduce the migration of rural population to Class I cities like Bombay, Delhi, Chennai, etc in search of work.
- Once people in Class III towns will see their peers prosper because of good education, the next generation in these towns will leverage on the previous generation's success and improve it further.

Another article I came across last week was the article in CNN on India not becoming a superpower till it reduces its poverty. Very nice article, I agree with the contents and the reasons given in the article, BUT I don't think agree with the TITLE of the article. Average Indians have no aims or ambitions of becoming a SUPERPOWER per se, thats the last thing on their mind. What they want and what they are struggling for are meeting their basic daily necessities like food, shelter, clothes, education for their kids. India is a young democratic country and what it has achieved in 60 years is commendable, we still have a long way to go and we will.

Nevertheless, nice article and nice read. Educate yourself.

Fareed Zakaria on the current era of Globalization

Fareed Zakaria is an editor at Newsweek International magazine, he writes on Foreign Affairs. Some time ago I read a very nice article by him on the India Rising story.

He wrote in the article:

India's growth is messy, chaotic and largely unplanned. It is not top-down but bottom-up. It is happening not because of the government, but largely despite it. India does not have Beijing and Shanghai's gleaming infrastructure, and it does not have a government that rolls out the red carpet for foreign investment—no government in democratic India would have those kinds of powers anyway. But it has vast and growing numbers of entrepreneurs who want to make money. And somehow they find a way to do it, overcoming the obstacles, bypassing the bureaucracy. "The government sleeps at night and the economy grows," says Gurcharan Das, former CEO of Procter Gamble in India.

I feel the problem with the government is that there is no competition. Anyways I digress....

The reason for the post is yet another article I read today and this time Fareed talks about how despite of the current wars fought by the US and Israel, the world economy is still growing and how Bush is pre-occupied by Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, North Korea, Israel, Lebanon...... and what are the problems ahead.

The highlight of the article is where he explains how the Markets are smart:

Markets are supposed to be smart. What are they telling us? That the current era of globalization is more powerful, widespread and resilient than many people realize. Today we are living through something practically unique—simultaneous growth worldwide. The United States, Europe and Japan are all doing well, but so are China, India, Brazil, Turkey and a whole slew of former Third World countries. Their rise is powering the new global order. Emerging markets now account for 30 percent of the world economy and for 50 percent of global growth last year. One important benefit has been that advanced industrial nations have maintained extremely low interest rates for almost two decades, enabling some countries—such as the United States—to grow faster than many experts predicted. This could not have happened without two global deflation machines, China and India, which keep prices low in goods and services, respectively.

Quite true, as the world is flattening and globalization will become a norm, the competition and inequalities in the world become will also become more prominent yet some countries/economies will continue to thrive irrespective of the neighborhood bombs and border wars. As Fareed writes in his article "There is no way to turn off this global economy, nor should one try."