IndianMaze

Every end of the year brings a slew of learnings and a new year brings an equal if not more number of rsolutions. More on that a little later in the post but the biggest impact of the informal sector on real business. India and Delhi in particular has seen a silent and hugely impactful show of mass power not seen apparantly since India's fight for independence. At least I do not remember seeing such power in silence in the last 4 decades that I recall. Yes, I am referring to public protest against women safety. But more importantly, it is an even that makes public sensitivity to a new level where a very high profile new year party hosted by a prominent 5* hotel in India's millennium city, Gurgaon, was forced to be cancelled by the sheer social media force. The combine of facebook, twitter and others made the lead artist for the programme an undesirable personality as his compositions are not kind to women's modesty. I think the businesses need to be far more careful ...

Over the weekend, I was wondering as to how little I have seen the country? Having pondered over the same, I got to my experiences in travelling across India on road. It was nice to recall all the old memories of travel, food and other interesting stuff. In a nutshell, have travelled through 39 National highways (plus 5 NH extensions). These are 1, 1A, 1B, 2, 3, 4, 5 ,6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 12A, 17, 20, 21, 21A, 24, 25, 28, 29, 31, 33, 34, 35, 43, 45, 55, 56, 58, 69, 70, 72, 77, 83, 86, 88, 96, 200, 205, 544 and 716. In my cars, I have clocked more than 250,000 kms. Have taken about 2,500 flights and equal number of train journeys. Of the airports covered within the country are: Srinagar, Jammu, Amritsar, Chandigarh, Dharamshala, Delhi, Jaipur, Udaipur, Lucknow, Varanasi, Patna, Siliguri, Guwahati, Dibrugarh, Kolkata, Jamshedpur, Ranchi, Bhopal, Indore, Raipur, Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Rajkot, Gandhidham, Bhuj, Mumbai, Pune, Nagpur, Goa, Bangaluru, Hyderabad, Vijaywada, Rajamundhry...

India is always seen as the land of diversity. From high mountains to sea, from world's wettest to driest places, from dense jungles to vast deserts, from thickly populated areas to remotest areas, from -40 C to +50 C. 16 official languages to one common business language. She is simply amazing. This is true of the economy as well. India is attracting the close attention of some of the most expensive brands in the world just as ironically the poor vie for bare minimal calorie intake for survival. This may make people smile with $$$ signs blinking as almost 8 millions earn as much as $46k+, a size that is more than the population of Singapore. Another 16m earn $ 30k+, a size comparable to the poulation of Australia. Paradoxically 748m earn almost 50% of what the poorest zone, Sub Saharan Africa earns...... India produces amongst the highest number of engineers in the world just as much that most number of illetrates are added every year in the world in this very country. ...