J K Rowling a real cool talk

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J.K. Rowling Speaks at Harvard Commencement from Harvard Magazine on Vimeo.

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J.K. Rowling, author of the best-selling Harry Potter book series, delivers her Commencement Address, “The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination,” at the Annual Meeting of the Harvard Alumni Association.

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Value as the core

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Sudhir Kumar(officer special duty of Indian Railways)
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The common man believes that it was Lallu Prasad Yadav who turned around the Indian Railways, well why then did he not get the Railway Ministers slot once again? That aside what is to be learnt from Indian Railways and its success is its focus on compassion as the core. As we move towards the bio tech era, the core of any enterprise or corporation, perforce need to be values and compassion. That will be the driving force.

I was reading the article written by Jaspal Singh Sabharwal (MD Future Capital) and I was quite taken aback when the name of Mr Sudhir Kumar (office special duty of Indian Railways)came up.

Jaspal Singh takes two huge corporations - Indian Railways and General Motors and takes a look at their Environment, Mission and Core Competencies (Responsible Leadership) GM apparently fumbled in misreading the environment . According to Jaspal "Leadership is all about focus and compassion - its not about efficiency in a cost sense, its about don't get distracted get-all-the-wood-behind-one-arrow sense".

I like this part " Traditionally we have searced for the miracle worker with a magic want to tun an ailing organization around. To establish maintain and restore the three survival assumptions (Enviro - Mission - Core competencies) does not require a Robin Hood or Leornardo da vinci in the executive room. It is not genius; its hard work. It is not being clever, its being conscientious. The responsible leaders do not dismiss unexpected failure, they accept that the three assumptions are dynamic in nature and to be successful, one has to operate with heads-up"

“Bankruptcy to Billions”, book by Sudhir Kumar

Leadership is about focus & compassion Jaspal Singh Sabharwal.
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Edwin Ravikumar

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He has sharp features
Equally sharp mind
But Edwin sees things strange
His mind goes berserk
He says he has lost it all
He walks, smokes and smiles
He needs care
He is more concerned about others
He enquires of all his friends
You talk to him
You feel it all happened yesterday
You are carried smoothly to the past
Its difficult to comprehend
But I beleive he will get back his wits
He will become the smart young boy
I used to know
25 years ago
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Weak Humanism.

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Though I cannot make any claims to be a person who had done much to alleviate the suffering of people yet I must say that I have this incline towards people who suffer.As part of my personal mission statement "inspire the lowly", this idea of helping the weak and vulnerable and standing by them had always got me into a fix now and then. "You hang out with losers and you will become one" my friend used to advise.

I was a little confused, so to speak. After all we have been brought up with this attitude that the weak need protection, care and pity and that only the strong can provide. The weaklings are a drain while the strong are fruitful. Even the church celebrates the strong but equating strength and wealth to blessings and lack of it to curse.

Three months ago my eyes were opened when I heard about WEAK HUMANISM from Prof Anatagiri...As you will read from by blog entry - I was taken aback. Most of my constructs in my Mind came crashing down.

And now this article "Ecce Homo: To welcome the suffering is the sign of our humanity" by Xavier Le Pichon explains in detail about this.


Prabhu Guptara, a noted business professor and specialist on long-term global trends, offers this critique of President Obama’s proposed overhaul of financial regulation. In his article he writes (link to original article)

"why should it be necessary to have organizations that are “too big to fail” in the first place? Switzerland has just made the first moves to shrink the large institutions that are based there."

The recent economic crisis is a fair example on how the 'strong, big and mighty" have plunged the financial world into crisis.

Our planet is heating up and one of the first casualties will be the crops that supply our food. Scientists are working overtime to find solutions including going back to the ancestral origins of our staple foods.

Australian scientist Dr Ken Street is on journey from the drought ravaged farms of Australia, to the heart of the Middle East, to the mountains of Tajikistan where to hunt for plant genes that will help our food withstand the impact of 21st century global warming.

The cobwebs in my mind are clearing up. Even as far as 3 days ago I was talking the parents of a 'special child'...I was trying to encourage the parents, advising them not to accept the situation by work with the intent of making the child strong and normal.
Some words of comfort? I should have looked at the child inspite of all the challenges as a strong one, a wonderful gift of God to the world.
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Weak Humanism

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Is Saul among the prophets? this is what cropped up in my mind as I was invited to participate in a discussion group in a venue 20 kms away. The room had some wonderful minds, doctors, professors and some wonderful social thinkers who have devoted their lives for social cause.

The fact that life and living needs to be understood in social terms and by encompassing the society at large seems to resonate in my so very often. Which also means the futility of inward focused existence bordering around selfishness is probably the biggest threat to civilisation.


Prof Ananta Kumar Giri of the Madras Institute of Development Studies spoke about the 'Weak Humanism '. This was an eye opener for me. Weak Humanism? this needs more thought. What I understood was that as a society it is the strong who are celebrated and exalted little do we realize that through history it is the strong who have been behind aggression and violence. Weak Humanism is to celebrate the weak and learn from the weak. No wonder that we hear Jesus Christ saying "Let the weak say Iam strong" This can probably interpreted as not the weak becoming strong but the weak in their weakness stay strong.

It was late into the night as I was dozing off to sleep that I decided to light read and Philip Yancy seemed very inviting. The church and the family is supposed to uphold the weak, he says. That is christian teaching. But then the market mentality has over taken the church as well as homes that performance is exalted the weak are marginalized and shunned. If a nation were to do this, Hitler tried it with promoting Aryan supremacy and tried destroying the weak, it is destined to perish. Its the same that is bound to happen on an individual level too.
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