A protest for saving traditions. Ayappan unites Kerala’s Temple believers.

Supreme Court verdict on Sabarimala is hailed as a landmark decision in the history of India and one which is against the Hindu Patriarchy and gender inequality. Atheists and Hindu identity politicians alike welcomed the verdict and demanded Hindu renaissance.

But back home in Kerala, where Sabarimala is situated, the story has been different. Women in a large number have turned out on the street for protecting Lord Ayyappan’s wishes. This happened even after major political parties prefer to remain muted concerning their response, still, there have been huge gatherings, huge protest rallies and now you have political parties standing behind these protests and even CPM led “LDF” government now showing signs of caution.

It is important to understand the unity of Hindus in Kerala for Ayyappan, it has never happened before where everyone who believes in Ayyappan is coming forward to protect Ayyappan’s wish at Sabarimala.

Now to understand the significance of Sabarimala and Ayyappan, we need to understand that India has always been a diverse culture. We have not become diverse by the entry of Islam and Christianity. Hindu way of life is all about the freedom to live your life the way you want, it is not necessarily a single method of living.

Kerala’s lifestyle and beliefs are not the same even with neighboring Tamil Nadu forget about the north. Hence without understanding Kerala’s culture, nobody can paint Sabarimala as a place where there is gender inequality.

For all those media personnel who have been equating system at Sabarimala as deep patriarchal should understand Kerala society had a matriarchal system or where women used to be the owner of properties and were the real queens in the family. Like in other southern states, Families in Kerala celebrate menstruation amongst young girls, we don’t consider it as impure as it is said nowadays by a few intellectuals.

Kerala has its branch of Tantra Sastra, based on which Temple buildings, temple rituals are decided. Temples in Kerala are considered energy centers and not prayer halls, hence for every Temple has its rituals and customs, to make Deity as effective as it can be.

Devotees are aware of the fact that Temples are for their benefit, hence it is the devotee’s duty to ensure the energy of the deity is always kept just as per the prescription of Tantri, who is the expert on Tantra Sastra.

If you see large crowds in certain temples, it is the power of deity, as many would have been benefitted by praying or visiting deity in the past, otherwise why should more and more people visit temples year after year.

This is the sole reason why women in Kerala, who are devotees of Ayyappan, are now taking to the street and protesting.

It is all about the belief in the Temple system by Keralites and Ayyappan devotees. In north many temples allows devotees to do puja of deity, if tomorrow someone from North India demands the same right in a Kerala Temple, can we allow this? In Kerala temple sanctum, a priest is only allowed to do puja, now in the name of equality to worship, tomorrow even this may be called patriarchal.

Supreme Court will go by the evidence and arguments, in this case, Kerala Government has taken a stand which is against the ritual and custom, hence it is important that Kerala Government to do a rethink on its stand of not going for review petition, unless this happens Devotees of Ayyappan will have to protest peacefully on the street against the stand of Kerala Government, otherwise this may lead to we losing our great inheritance of Tantra Sastra and Temple system in Kerala.

Our ancestors have not built temples to be tourist spots or prayer hall, it has been developed as an energy center which can pass on positive energy to devotees.

In my opinion, anybody who believes Temples are for their benefit should come out of their home and support protests on the street or you are becoming responsible for losing a great inherited tradition and technique for mankind by our ancestors.

Let’s not fall prey to anti-strong India propagandists and let’s ensure Modi till 2024

 

The political fight that we are witnessing in India is not just a political but an ideological fight.

The ideology of divisions for diversity to unity in diversity.

The ideology of divisions has ruined India, once by our own in the name of the caste system by birth and later by the Mughals and British in the name of religion.

Post-independence, unfortunately, our elected representatives too preferred to follow the same colonial way of divide and govern, thus deepened the divisions within ourselves not just based on religion but based on caste, the region in addition to the religious divide.

The rise of caste-based parties and regional parties, along with the growth of vote bank politics has to be blamed squarely on the elected democratic governments India had until 2014.

Modi is the first Prime Minister, who has talked about India first, He is the first Prime Minister who is always talking about 1.25 billion Indians and he has been exhorting every Indian to fight poverty, lack of cleanliness, corruption and nepotism to fighting in between in the name of religion, region, caste, rich and poor etc.

Still, you see all the leftist, liberal media calling him communal, fascist without even a shred of evidence, this is what we need to clearly understand, why are they doing this. Ideally, they should have hailed him for his inclusive, progressive stand but they just won’t change their opinion, because they have an agenda, which is driven into them due to lack of understanding of Indian culture or due to vested interests or they were bought over by anti-India elements, in a word we can call them anti-strong India lobby.

This is what we Indians should realise and not fall prey to an agenda that is aimed at weakening India, it has weakened India for decades and now we have an opportunity to defeat the anti-India agenda under the leadership of Modi and we should for god sake not forfeit this opportunity.

Now let us understand the major allegations/propaganda against Modi government and reality.

1. Cow vigilantes and crimes attributed to them

We need to understand that there is a law in a few states in our country, which prohibits cow slaughter. These laws have been enacted by not BJP but other party governments like Congress. If such a law was enacted then there would have been a need for such a law in the respective states. This law was necessitated as a deterrent to the communal clashes that used to happen due to cow slaughter in various part of the country.

Now the implementation of the law has been so weak that few people have started taking the law into their hand and some of them have used the issue to unleash their criminal activities under the garb of cow vigilantism.

Prime Minister has condemned the violence not once but on many occasions, now it is the state governments which needs to act on various cases, how can centre interfere in the law and order situation in a state unless there is a president’s rule or state’s request.

Hence everyone attributing crimes under the garb of cow vigilantism to Modi government is doing nothing but spreading the agenda of divide and weaken India by creating fear amongst anyone and everyone who eats beef. We need to stay away from these propagandists as they are nothing but an enemy of united progressive India.

1. Assassinations of few rationalist journalists

Here again, the same trick is played out, as anti-BJP lobby is pronouncing the assassinations as the state policy of Modi government, whereas it is nothing but a poor law and order situation in the particular state where not just rationalist but many RSS workers have been assassinated over the years, but then nobody sheds tears if word Hindu is attached to dead bodies.

 

1. Demonetisation, GST implementation and failure of the economy

News is spread as if RBI has come out with a report which says Demonetisation has failed, whereas the fact is that RBI has come with no such report pronouncing the report card on demonetisation. Further, how will one deny the impact of demonetisation on fake currency, how can people with fake currency deposit it in Banks as Banks would never accept fake currencies just like that, so all those dealers of fake currency would have either buried or burnt the fake cash somewhere. Similarly, the amount of money that came to banking or formal sector is not all income tax paid white money, hence many of those depositors are now answering calls by Income Tax sleuths and paying their taxes and many new taxpayers have started paying their taxes, which otherwise was not the case until demonetisation. Still, anti strong India lobby would like to spread lies that demonetisation was a failure.

Coming to GST, don’t we need to show some patience here, as it is the first time we have a unified tax system in the country and considering our size, aren’t we supposed to have teething trouble, but for anti-strong India lobby, it’s another opportunity to defame Modi government, without looking at the benefits of GST in terms of higher growth with a simple tax regime where the scope of corruption is minimalised.

GDP numbers released for last quarter has been disappointing but is it time to write off economic growth just because you don’t like Modi. There is an expert view that in Indian corporate earnings, credit off-take, economic growth is at the rock bottom and only way is upwards, isn’t it the news that we need to spread out rather than painting a gloomy picture of our country. But anti strong India elements will always prefer a weak India, hence they will keep talking about failures and failures even if India grows at 10% going forward.

Strangely, people who are writing off the economy are silent on the strong fundamentals of economy, they don’t see a rate hike chance for India post GST, they don’t see the jump in FDIs, they don’t see the investments in infrastructure, they are so blind that they see only violence against minorities in India and nothing else.

Unemployment is another favourite subject of anti-strong India lobby, but will they speak the truth that there is no data point at this point which can tell the real position on employment in India and actually for the first time a government is working on to put up a credible employment data in our country.

We must not forget the new image of India at the international forum and we must not forget to give its due to Modi.

1. Kashmir problem and failed diplomacy concerning Pakistan and China

How can one be so blind to what is happening in Kashmir, the stone pelters are shrinking in number, NIA is finally exposing the links between Pakistan based terrorist groups and separatists, it’s even reported that nobody is willing to take up commander post of local terrorist outfits, still, anti-strong India lobby wants to call it a failure.

Similarly, can’t we see the isolation of Pakistan to Terroristan at international forums, aren’t we seeing the reaction of global powers towards Pakistan, yet anti-strong-India lobby will prefer to believe it as of no relevance, rather they might even add colour to it as Hindu India’s oppression of poor Muslim Pakistan.

Comes China, look at the diplomatic level defusing of Doklam issue, did we ever stood up against China’s aggression like the way we did at Doklam, never in the past.

But still, no good news for India is good news for these anti-strong India elements, hence it is of paramount importance that we need to guard ourselves against anti-strong India lobby at all times.

Now that we discussed the hollowness of criticism against the Modi government, it is also important to understand the ideology of the Modi Government and the larger Parivar or RSS ideology.

RSS Ideology

RSS like everyone else believes India is a country which is by default secular, it has accepted everyone and everything in this world and it always prays for universal peace and prosperity.

The only difference here is that RSS believes this speciality or uniqueness of India comes from the unique culture of India which is based on Hinduism principles and others while agreeing to India’s great traditions but never acknowledges the reason behind the greatness.

RSS has openly stated in its vision and mission about protecting our cultural values and unifying every Hindu for the cause of a united India. Here word Hindu for RSS is not based on methods of worshipping but anybody and everybody who has accepted Indian way of living and settled here for peace and prosperity.

RSS believes in Hinduism as a way of life, with a belief all religions lead to God or Goodness, that is the reason, why majority Indians while opposing Mughal, British slavery, never opposed either Islam or Christianity, as our belief system considers every religion as a process to attain goodness in life.

Now after having such great ideology, which is secular, inclusive. Still why RSS is branded as communal by a section of society, predominantly the leftist, Islamic and Christian communities, is a question, I often wondered about.

To understand the anti-RSS stand, we need to go back to India’s history.

In my opinion, India has been enslaved for more than 1000 of years and not just by Mughals and British but by our Indian Kings and Queens, who advocated and supported a system of caste by birth.

The caste system was never by birth but by the job, it was nothing but an Indian version of division of labour. To prove this point we have great examples like Maharishi Valmiki, Vyasa and others, who attained, highest saint intellectual pre-fixes like Maharishi, notwithstanding their birth castes like hunter or Sudra, Kshatriya etc. But somewhere down the line caste system by job was converted into the caste system by birth and thus depriving a large number of the society of the benefits of our advanced society.

This has divided the country as well as weakened our country to a stage where even lesser developed societies like the Mughals, Britishers could enslave our country for 1000 of years.

RSS stands for unifying everyone in India, irrespective caste, religion but who wants that, all the elitist powerful lobbies in India, has always preferred caste system to ensure their superiority and they just could never digest even dream of their gardener’s son becoming their leader or minister, thus they were the first one to oppose RSS as communal. Lutyen’s Delhi’s intolerance to Modi is the classical example of this.

Muslims and Christian identity politics lobby is the other player here, whose primary objective is to play identity politics based on religion and if RSS succeeds in spreading the Indian concept that religion is nothing but a process and all religions leads to GOD or goodness, what will happen to their political business, thus they have been opposing RSS since inception to till date.

The rationalists and Communists, always equated RSS with draconian upper caste atrocities without even being honest to understand the stated mission of RSS, which is unifying Hindus notwithstanding caste and community differences.

Communists being rationalist, atheist always knew the roadblock they had in India was nothing but Hinduism. Hence, they had to paint Hinduism as the ism of caste by birth and as the ism of atrocities by so-called upper caste towards the deprived ones in the society. They too have been opposing any idea of the unity of Indians in the name of principles of Hinduism as that will ring death bells for communism in India, as such, as it is the case with communism in India, now.

Now that we have discussed, RSS ideology and why certain groups still want to paint RSS as communal, we now need to understand, on what we as Indians need to do to support the mission of unification of Hindus or Indians in the name of Indian or Hindu, irrespective of caste, religion differences.

Understand the basics of Indian culture by analysing at least 3 stands out philosophies of Indian culture.

Point No.1

Indian culture believes in doing RIGHT. All our Puranas, Vedas tells us to follow, what we believe is right and abstain from doing anything what we believe is not right.

If I believe, drinking alcohol is not right, then I should abstain from it, but if I believe it is ok to consume it then I shouldn’t have a problem if my children, wife, mother consuming alcohol.

As long as you can practice your Rights, you will be able to make the right decisions in life and your life will have peace and prosperity.

Point No.2

Our culture always believed in two types of people and they were never based on religion, caste but was based on Progressive and Regressive mindsets.

Progressive mindset always wants peace and prosperity and Regressive mindset wants enslavement of others in the name of religion, caste, community, gender, relationships etc.

Even in Purana’s we see Deva’s as progressive and Asura’s regressive, always fighting for supremacy.

Point No.3

Techniques for strengthening the mind are one of the greatest achievements of our culture. If developed nations are looking to learn Sanskrit, Yoga and Hinduism, it is to understand these great techniques.

These techniques are as simple as Bhajans, Prayers to deep meditation to complex mantras and other shlokas.

Similarly, Yoga, Martial arts to Ayur Veda, were developed by our ancestors to strengthen our body and mind. Because we believe, it’s all in our minds and the stronger our mind, better will be our ability to make decisions and better decisions will mean a better life.

What we need to understand from above is the difference in our culture from other cultures.

We never believed in identity of us based on religion, region, we believe we are just one of that creation of God, just like plants, animals, rivers, rocks, mountains in the universe. If we pray Sun and planets, if we pray River, Birds, elephant, even human beings, it’s because of our belief that God exists in everything in this universe. That’s exactly why we pray for peace and prosperity of the universe and all the beings and non-beings in the universe.

This is why India never went out to conquer other civilisations across the world, we never thought our invaders were different from us, just because of their religious practice and their place of origin, even though they considered themselves as a different species just because of their religious beliefs.

Now as Indians, we need to understand the greatness of our culture, due to which we were the most prosperous peaceful society in the world, once upon a time and we also need to understand the reason behind that glorious India along with understanding the mistakes of our ancestors in dividing the country in the name of caste by birth and then further dividing of our society by Muslim invaders, as Hindus and Muslims and then by the British as Hindus, Muslims and Christians. But what is most unfortunate is the state of affairs post-independence, our political leadership preferred to strengthen the divisive caste system by birth and religion-based identity politics by providing governance based on caste and religion.

Thankfully, finally, in India, we have a Swayamsevak as Pradhan Sevak, and now we are seeing open discussion on India first to religion and caste first ideology.

It is for this change, everyone in India, who is progressive and wants to see a better India for our future generations, needs to support our Prime Minister or we will once again lose the country to the hands of divisive politicians who destroyed India from 2004 to 2013.

Hence, it’s my humble request to each and everyone reading this article, not to fall prey to the propaganda of anti-strong India elements and ensure Modi till 2024.

Indian sages and saints, probably were the first communists in the world

 

In India, if anybody is against Indian culture, then it has to be the left brigade and the reason is simple that left ideology believes in equality by birth and Indian ideology believes in destiny and Karma. You see communists supporting anyone including naxals, terrorists just to oppose the idea of great India and see them polluting the universities across India with anti India sentiments.

This is happening because of sheer ignorance on essence of Indian culture.  Lets understand this by doing a deep dive into the basic characteristics of Indian culture, which is deeply into a spiritual way of living, we understand that Indian sage and the saints, who are the creators of our privileged cultural values, were probably believed in equality for everyone way before the arrival of communism.

When a child is born, he /she are born with a characteristic called want. From the very entry child starts crying and it’s believed that crying is for want of milk. So the “want saga” in our lives starts from our very beginning and then as a child, you want toys, you want X, Y so on and so forth. This continues in your teen age, old age and ultimately you want a peaceful death.

So we human beings are completely under the influence of wants and what happens when our wants are not fulfilled, we just go crazy, we become desperate, soon turns into violence, etc. Against this if our wants are fulfilled, we are happy and content till next want arrives.

In India, our sages and saints, who might be communists in their thought process, would have had the realization that every human being is born with a characteristic of want and it is our ability to convince others what matters in fulfilling our wants.

Most successful people around us are the ones who convinces others the best, even amongst children we see few getting whatever they want from their parents or others compare to their peers, again what is at work here is a better convincing ability. Now every child is born with different levels of convincing ability and our sages and saints with a leftist view would have thought to address this issue of inequality at birth and have figured out spirituality as a tool to improve one’s convincing skills.

Now in India, spirituality starts with prayers, visiting temples and then going deep with meditation and other methods. But ultimately, as a person starts improving his convincing ability say like from 1 to 10, he /she reaches a position where he/she is able to convince himself/herself that want is the characteristic that is the root cause for all our troubles in life and if we can liberate ourselves from this want, then we will be happy for ever and we can reach a stage where we will be happy and content for ever.

According our culture, we believe a person who is liberated from the want cycle attains Moksha or get freed from rebirth forever. If we fail to liberate ourselves then we will have to come back again and go through the process of life all over again and again.

Hence our saints and sages wanted everyone to practice spirituality and improve convincing ability and reach the final stage of Moksha and in the process ensure equality amongst all.

Unfortunately, the selfish souls amongst our earlier generations kept vast majority away from spirituality in the name caste and community and thus deprived people from equality.

If the left Brigade in India understands the basic essence of our Indian culture, they will never go behind the preachers of violent struggles in foreign lands for inspiration, rather they will start worshipping Indian legends and exhort everyone to take up spirituality and improve their convincing skills and realize their goal of equality by birth at least in true sense in India.

Wish all lefts will turn right and will ensure equality, which is their ultimate goal.

 

 

 

 

Why Modiji is wrong, when it comes to TV boxes and News paper headlines?

Since Modiji’s Wembley magic , I have been wondering why such magic is not seen happening in Indian cities off late and why we have to wait to see the firebrand , decisive Modiji till he leaves the shores of the country.

This has puzzled me, because I personally believe Modiji has been the best Prime Minister for India till date when it comes to vision and ability to convert vision to mission. He has changed the way government machinery has been working in India, since occupying PMO. Various non partisan reports and opinions have publically acknowledged this.

But somehow the good work done by him is not visible within India and when Modiji says at Wembley that India is much deeper than what you see in TV Boxes or through News Paper headlines, we can gauge the level of disappointment he has for media back home.

But I feel Modiji is getting it wrong here. Because TV and National Print media plays an important role in forming the psyche of politically neutral public and it is not correct to assume that media is bias due to one reason or the other all the time.

If we analyse how the relationship between Media and Modiji has been since 2002 onwards, It’s a glaring fact that main stream media did in a way sidelined Modiji post 2002 and never really accepted the Gujarat success story as it is but always with many coloured question marks.

But BJP victory of Gujarat in 2012, according to me, did result in a sea change in Indian media over Modiji’s image. Suddenly there was a growing acceptance to understand the brighter side of Modiji to his 2002 image. Media finally seems to have woken up to Modi magic and what we saw after that has been 24/7 Modiji literally till his swearing in ceremony as Prime Minister.

So media did change its attitude towards Modiji but whether Modiji changed his view on Media is something, I am not sure off.

Point that I want to make here is the change in media post 2012 and how that change helped Modiji to connect with a larger audience pan India via TV boxes and News paper headlines.

We have seen the response by viewers to Modiji, wherever he was going as a speaker, it was nothing different from Wembley or Madison square in terms of viewer response. Whether it’s Sriram College, India Today conclave and many such outings, which had resulted in huge fan following for Modiji.

Now one must accept that in 2014, people had voted for Modiji and not exactly for BJP. They voted for a decisive development focused Prime Minister. It was indeed a vote for personality and Advani Ji was cent percentage right when he attributed victory to Modiji ki krupa.

Hence expectations from the voters / supporters are from Modiji and not from Arun Jaitely or Rajnath Singh. Not just on governance but on political issues as well as ideological issues.

Now Modiji has been defending and publicizing the progress made by his government but when it comes to political and ideological allegations, we see a different Modiji, who is ignoring the issue or being silent, leaving it to his colleagues to respond.

Now during 2014 election campaign, we saw same allegations of being corporate friendly, divisive etc being thrown at Modiji by opponents namely the Gandhis but then there was a point by point rebuttal by Modiji before 9 pm news room shows. This clearly meant all the allegations had life of few hours or till such time Modi ji rebutted on it.

Even though now it’s not an election time, but look at ferociousness with which his opponents are attacking him and now remaining silent is perceived as lack of conviction or weakness, both of which were never attributed to Modiji Yet.

We see oppositions ganging up against the government in parliament and block GST , put pressure and roll back of land reforms or see them raking up communal issues and other issues like growing intolerance etc and we see no action from Modiji.

I believe this has resulted in major confusion amongst both traditional support base and the neutral base, which matters a lot in elections. All those Modi Supporters, supports him for his decisiveness, ability to fix problems, ability to override petty political games and that’s what he has been known for in Gujarat. How many times we have heard Gujarat assembly being held to ransom by few opposition MLAs, rather I remember on one occasion few trouble makers were evicted from the house.

Now all the Modi opponents knows that he has a strong image when it comes to governance but they also know that his weakness remains 2002 image and look at what they are doing , they are painting the media with their interpretations on each and every wrong thing in the country as the result of Modiji’s divisive agenda and media truly doing their job by printing whatever they get and here unfortunately it is the opposition whose view point is put forth strongly and the response by BJP brigade has been either arrogant or apologetic or too late. So in a way lion share of media coverage is going to opponents and whatever little space managed too is doing more damage than good.

Now the present speakers of BJP doesn’t really matters to the public , for them they don’t exist and they want Modiji to come out strong on all the domestic issues either to fix it or bulldoze it. But they want action. That unfortunately has been missing.

Modiji has been assisted well by his colleagues in governance but then when it comes to ideological battle and political battle, they have been way below par. Hence time has come for Modiji to stand up and take up the battle of perceptions on his own hand. This will not only enable him to win back the media space but also get back with the support base both traditional and neutral.

If he doesn’t do that now, I am afraid; things are going to be tough for Modiji and for the Government going forward. Because already there is a question mark put on governments so called divisive agenda on one side, putting off neutrals and on the other, inability to crack problems posed by oppositions is being seen as same old, frustrating political weakness exhibited by successive governments making traditional support base turning to questioning.

People want to see Modiji the way he had presented himself during the 2014 election campaign and not necessarily as a global leader or statesman like Vajpayee Ji at least in the immediate years.

Hence I feel Modiji should do introspection on his Media strategy and do the corrections wherever it is required. Because in India at this age and time, TV Boxes and news paper headlines do matter a lot to common man in shaping up his opinions. Hence it’s important for Modiji to be back on the domestic circuit discussing issues that is being debated and be on the TV Boxes and news paper headlines with his view point. Its demanding ,considering his Prime Ministerial tasks but once it happens, Wembley, Madison etc will be a thing of past and we will have Mumbais and Delhis showing same passion and appreciation to the Leader Modi and his government. This I believe is needed now.

Hope Modiji is listening!!!!

 

 

Will IDFC fit in to banking attire? Article on Economic Times 22/4/15 and Few ideas for the new bank.

Below is the copy of mail, that I shared with IDFC Chairman on few of my Ideas for the new Bank.

On Thursday, April 23, 2015 8:29 AM, Rajiv Lall <rajiv.lall@idfc.com> wrote:

Thanks!!

Sent from my iPhone

On Apr 22, 2015, at 8:11 PM, “vijay menon” <vijaymenon_2000@yahoo.com> wrote:

Dear Sir,

Post reading the above article, few ideas came to my mind. Which I am sharing with you, in an article form.

For any bank to survive in the present scenario of stiff competition will be first, raise deposit rates to attract depositors or reduce lending rates to attract borrowers. Now this is taken, every bank will go this route sooner than later but then is this enough?

Being associated with banks, I often meet banking customers and the last thing they would like to do now is shift their account unless they are being offered better rate of interest on their business loan, which is under stress now or they are running a major complaint with the bank.

Now if one analyses the typical types of customers, broadly there can be two types of customers, first one being the branch dependent customer and second being non branch dependent customers.

Let’s understand branch dependent customers.

They are the typical, high transactions CA customers who need cash services / trade services /cms etc with a large volume, where interactions with the branch manager /officer are critical.

Similarly there are SA customers, who are basically self employed dealing in real estate or any other profession involving large transactions in cash or customers using investment /broking services attached to a particular Branch Head or Relationship Manager etc.

Now these customers are dependent on branch or its staff and not on brand. They are happy shifting accounts based on the service promises or happy changing banks along with movement of respective RM/BMs. These customers are low hanging fruits, as Bank can poach them along with hiring good Branch Managers or Relationship Managers and then using attractive referral programs can build book of these types of customers.

Now coming to Non branch dependent customers, it is where a new Bank like IDFC will have to think differently to acquire significant casa at tier 1 centers. Now I am listing few ideas which might make the process easier for IDFC or for even for existing Banks in acquiring fresh casa customers as salaried class or as individual customers.

As we know typically HDFC /ICICI or Axis customer who is managed by a RM or PB will have 3 to 4 products attached to him and it is the difficulty in shifting his various hooks that prevents him from not operating his new accounts opened at various banks satisfactorily. Means customers now a day’s use one bank as primary bank where he has maximum hooks on him and other banks he uses product basis. And these customers are happy doing their banking through alternate channels and they don’t like to get trapped while visiting the branches and cross sold.

This has resulted in to banks opening new accounts at a good run rate but failing to bring in much deepening in to these accounts on the casa front. Even salary customers whom Banks hunts along with loans now a days, doesn’t keep money in their salary account if their primary banker is someone else.

How to fix this? This is where, most of the banks are figuring out ways and means to activate customer base now than merely acquiring customers. So in case of IDFC, it will be all about developing a model where it will result in not just numbers but values too and that to happen customer will have to find the accounts relevant for him as well as adding value to him than his present option.

So what is the way out?  The only way out is ability to offer a relationship pricing. Means Banker should be able to tell the customer that today your cost or Income from banking with say HDFC Bank is Rs.45000/ , I can offer IDFC banking relationship at 30000/.

For example: – Customer A has his Casa accounts with HDFC, where his average balance is 100000/- , where he earns 4% i.e. Rs 4000/-, he hold an FD of Rs.1000000/- @ 8 %, assumes interest coming to Rs.80000/. And he has Demat & Trading account where annual fee is Rs.500/- , Monthly EMIs on Home Loans and Car Loans put together coming at Rs.35000/- per month.

Now total credit he is receiving from HDFC is Rs.84000/- and Total Debits happening towards EMIs/Charges is Rs.426500/-. Hence his total cost of banking with HDFC is Rs.342500/- (426500-84000).

Now if any banker goes to Customer A and gives him a solution, where by his cost is reduced by 20% or any %. Will that make him think of shifting his entire business to new bank in a manner whereby he will shift his entire banking deals? Answer should be yes, provided the shifting head ache is borne by the new bank.

This approach makes lot of sense to the customer but the challenge is to have a solution providing ability in real time to customer post understanding his present cost /income status and ability to process his accounts (loans/Deposits/Si etc) shifting requests seamlessly using a channel or vendor.

Now once the customer is in the books, stage 2 starts, which is nothing but service and pure services.

Now a days, customers are afraid of visiting branches due to the cross selling eyes present in the branches. This is one of the main put off reasons for many customers, when they talk about X or Y branch or bank. These needs to change, branches should be purely focusing on service and service delivery and they should be only tasked on service and the most reference as a result of service quality.

This is very important, because unless customer visits the branch regularly, the balance builds up or adding on other products will always be below potential, hence branches should be branded as a great place to walk in for fulfillment of banking requirements and customers should be induced to give references by using various promotional activities than pestering by branch staff.

Branches should be single service point for all types of customers and should be monitored for service efficiency than sales efficiency as seemingly practiced at many bank branches.

Now third idea, which I feel will help the banks to acquire new customers is on the expense management side.

Household expenses are different from home to home, hence if the Bank can develop a solution which can capture all the house hold expenditure like groceries / vegetables etc and before month end can get back to the customer with a solution stating same pattern of monthly expenditure can be now done with 20% discount, if there is an account with the bank, it should make wives curious.

This can be possible if Bank works out with a vendor, who can work along with various super markets offering various discounts weekly/daily on different products. So some smart backend processing can get the cheapest price for the same product at a particular day or week. And if banks solutions can play the bridge between super markets and customer, this product solution can become an instant hit with households and women customers.

Once we women customers in, it won’t take much time for the entire family to be in the same bank.

 4^th idea is about creating an APP, which will be more than banking. Means today I need to use various apps for various services hence given a choice of an App of App concept, I will be keen to see it and use it.

Means using IDFC App, if I can book a taxi / book trip / book a movie ticket / know which is nearest restaurant etc, then my using of Bank App will be more relevant and chances of me hooked on to the App is higher thus using bank for all the linked monetary transactions. This is critical going forward as most of our life is going to be revolved around Apps until something new comes in place.

Further, it is critical for the bank to have an efficient call center, where customers can connect instantly and get resolution on any complaints / requirements as per a prescribed TAT. This is lacking now across banks.

And finally, ability to deliver all the products & services to customers with specific TAT based on categories of customers.

For ex:- A customer maintaining Rs.10 lacs casa should get all the banking products & services within say 30 minutes or A customer maintaining Rs 5 lacs casa should get all the banking products & services within 45 minutes.

This will mean all the deposit /assets & other value added services. If a solution can be developed here then there will be customer delight and casa boom.

Now at the end of it, all the above ideas are possible with a solid process at the bank, hence if IDFC is able to invest good money in technologies and other logistics, all the above process driven business acquisition models will fetch casa the way IDFC is looking at. And one mistake which IDFC should avoid is the people centric model or  investing too much on people instead of process and expecting people to work than a stabilized process, which will always be consistent/predictable than people.

So huge opportunities are awaiting IDFC and wish IDFC all the success in its new avatar as IDFC Bank.

Regards

Vijay Shivram Menon

Free and accessible online education, a panacea for India’s problem with peace and prosperity

Greatest expectation from each and every Indian from Prime Minister Shri Modiji, is that of turning India to a developed nation, where everyone will have an access to peace and prosperity.

Now I have been thinking about this for a long time on how this will happen. With your Make in India, we might see more job created and more and more family improving their lives but is that enough, I believe NO.

Because peace and prosperity is the dream of every human being and when it is unavailable to them, they turn to the extent of being evil to deny it to anyone else around. It is the mere dissatisfaction amongst us, which makes us hate others and turn us evil.

This realization made me sleepless for few months and finally I got an answer, which I like to share with you. My answer tells me, basic of development is skill set and then opportunity to use the skill for a living.

Now imparting skill set doesn’t happen by just having few colleges, rather learning of skill set should be free to all and should be available to all according to ones appetite. Means a person should get an opportunity to learn what he wants to learn, free of cost. This will make him truly skillful in that particular subject, rather than learning a skill just because it is taught in the neighborhood school or college.

Using online medium, we should be able to provide world class education on all fields free to each and everyone who wants to learn and we should have free online classes across the villages / towns / cities , where anybody could join freely and take classes on subjects wherever he /she has an appetite for.

For example, I have an urge to know about rocket making technology, then there should be an option whereby I can prove my aptitude for the subject and take classes from renowned teachers of rocket technology. This will mean tomorrow I might end up with better solutions on rocket technologies as I will be learning it because of my urge to learn it and not because I want to get a job at ISRO.

If a person has an appetite for learning about Galaxy, he should get an easy access and opportunity to learn about it. If we can revolutionize education to such an extent , everybody will get to learn what they want to learn , will mean we will have an educated person truly expertise in a field than being just called a graduate or post graduate and taking up a profession where his heart lies thus resulting in super productivity.

Ultimately, with a billion population being expert in his or her subject , doing what he /she likes doing , will mean a billion satisfied minds. Satisfaction of billion dreams and goals is what will take us to a truly prosperous and peaceful India.

But then I too realise my view is appreciable, but how to implement such views. And I have just one answer, which is Modiji. Because if anybody could read IMPOSSIBLE, I am possible,  it is Modiji and I truly wish he will give a thought to my views one day and use free and accessible online education to make India truly peaceful and prosperous.

Good times and Bad times, an interesting conversation..

Yesterday while visiting my neighborhood temple, I could over hear an interesting conversation between the Priest of the temple and a young couple at the temple. Conversation was all about good times and bad times. Even though the conversation lasted for about five minutes the impact it created on me was immense and I thought it was such a fantastic conversation that I should share it through my blog.

Coming to the conversation, Priest was not just talking about good times and bad times but he was defining it and also listing out the actionable one need to practice while going through these phases.

Priest says “Good times and bad times can be defined by measuring the happiness of an individual with respect to three indicators i.e. 1. Economic status 2. Family status 3. Social status, if an individual is happy with all the three existing status he or she is in at the moment, it can be called a good time and vice a versa”.

Now once you know whether you are in a good time zone or a bad time zone, there are certain things one should keep in mind and it goes like this, during good times it is important that one strengthen all the three status indicators i.e. ensuring money is spent wise and enough savings are done to take care of eventualities and for future than wasting unnecessarily on showing off. Similarly ensuring the family bonding at best levels than spoiling family ties by way of ignoring family under the pretext of busy schedule etc. Further it is important that socially you are visible and active and thus create good bonding and good will within your society than ignoring the society around just because you don’t need anybody’s help as you are going through the good times.

These actionable are of high importance as everyday won’t be a Sunday like every good time got to have an end and when bad time arrives these actionable practiced would lessen the impact of bad times to a greater extent.

Similarly during bad times where one is not happy with his economic, social and family status, there are some important actionable one should follow.

During bad times it is important that one realizes, it is bad time to start-with and post realization one needs to have loads of patience and optimism that these times will give way to good times if not today but tomorrow. Unless an individual exhibits patience and optimism, the bad times will not remain just bad but can potentially become worst times.

Now under both the cases what one needs to exhibit is maturity and understanding that nothing is constant here in life, good times can’t last forever so as the bad times, hence it is important to be balanced at all times in life, good times needs to be enjoyed as well as utilized and bad times needs to be lived through patiently with optimism.

Finally Priest concludes by saying, “ One and only way to attain balance in life is by strengthening mind and easiest way to do that is prayer , visiting temples and meditation and once balance is attained, life becomes a balanced journey capable of withstanding various turbulence on the way forward”.

Priest was thus telling the young couple about life ahead and how they should face it and was probably underlining his and temples role in their life too along with. But end of the day whatever he was speaking made lot of sense and made me think and I hope the readers too.

2014 General elections India, Lets vote for development and just development

Finally elections are starting from Monday i.e. 7^th April and on May 16^th world will know who is going to be the new Prime Minister of India.

Unlike earlier elections present elections are pitted against a common grievance of lack of development which is being realized as the most important issue faced by Indians across states except state of Gujarat which is being showcased as the model state which every state can become if India votes Mr.Modi to power on May 16^th.

Mr.Modi has been considered to be a hard core hindutva icon by his political opponents but in reality he seems to be more identified as a man for development or Vikas Purush and testimony to this observation is the bull run witnessed by Indian stock markets based on various opinion polls predicting more and more seats for NDA and the endorsements Mr.Modi has been receiving all these years from various corners and Mr.Modi’s own speeches across length and breadth of India , where he has been advocating development as the solution to India’s all kind of problems.

One of his speeches in Bihar, where there were even some explosions, he said every Hindu and Muslim should decide whether they need to fight with each other or with poverty, that probably set the agenda for NDA and Mr.Modi for 2014 elections and no wonder since then NDA has swelled with allies thus erasing a big worry highlighted by political pundits on difficulty in roping in alliance partners if BJP anoints Mr.Modi as its Prime Ministerial candidate.

Now as a voter most of us feels the pinch of cost cutting, lack of opportunities across business, lack of jobs in the market and low increments etc and if things continue in the same manner or worsen in the near future, it may be chaos in India and push country to the toughest period in its existence post independence, hence I believe it is important this time that we vote for development and not for parties, religion, caste or any other considerations but just development.

India needs development across states which will only guarantee peace and prosperity across states and Gujarat is the right example on what development can do to a state , as Gujarat started the last decade with the baggage of natural calamities , riots , political opportunism but last decade state witnessed enormous development and what we heard from Gujarat has been nothing but stories of development against which at national level we have been sick and tired of news of scams and violence day in and out hence this time I have decided to vote for development as I too believe development is the only solution to all kinds of problem faced by us, as at the end of the day it is about well being of each and every citizen of the country which will bring peace and prosperity in the country and unless development happens across the country peace and prosperity will remain a distant dream and well being a myth.

Hence let’s vote for development and just development this time.

 

Racist Indian?

Yesterday I happened to see a talk show in one of the leading English new channel on Racism especially targeted against people from north east in Delhi resulting in the unfortunate death of a young boy Nido.

Now when I realize my own experience as a young boy studying in my home state and later studying in another state, I realize what it means to be at the receiving end of racism and with my experience I believe there are two types of racism, physical and emotional.

Physical racism is violence unleashed because you are not considered one of us thus subjecting you to physical violence , here the law is clear and anybody indulging in violence is punishable under the law but question is the severity and probably law needs to be stringent or really stringent.

But when it comes to emotional racism there is no violence but it is emotional torture like calling names, making fun of your looks, accent etc. Now many a times the doers doesn’t realize the impact of emotional trauma , anxiety caused by them to the victim and unfortunately there is not much scope under the law to stop such racism as many a times it get projected as a joke or unintentional racial attack.

Now question here is what leads to racism and how can we stop it. Answer is simple; we need to educate everybody from their child hood about racism and the impact of it on victims and how every one of us can be subjected to it as when we move out of our state, city, country etc. Unless there is a widespread awareness of racism and the impact of it, none of us will feel sensitive to the issue of racism and we will keep repeating racist actions without realizing how it is impacting the victims.

In the west racism is a bad word and it is high time we treat racism as a bad word in India too and for that we must realize that we are racist by nature as we keep on making fun of others whom we think are not like us, whether it is making fun of people from other states, other religions, people with not so acceptable looks etc amongst ourselves and even our movies and television shows reflects our attitude by typecasting people other than the so called mainstream.

This needs to be changed by creating awareness of racism and making emotional racism punishable as well as placing the physical racism as a bigger crime than a petty brawl or an attack.

But for now the fact is we Indians are racist, even though majority may be out of ignorance. Hence its time to discuss racism as bad word and shun it from our society forever.

Engagement – Most important tool of a Banker

Meaning:-

Engagement can be defined as an effective  communication between two parties i.e. in banking scenario it can be between Bank and general public / employees / customers and for Bankers it can be between customers , prospective customers and own team members.

Examples of engagement can be advertisements, interviews of management representatives published through media, branding, branch ambience, employee appearances and etiquettes, interaction quality between banker and customers /prospective customer and within the bank it can be email communications, interactions between various team leaders and teams etc.

Importance:-

Character and quality of the bank is judged by the engagement quality of the bank as a whole, for example public view MNC Banks differently to a state run bank notwithstanding now a day state run banks offers everything under the sun as probably done by MNC Banks. But still MNC Banks remains preferred Banker for many high net-worth individuals in India compared to state run banks.

This is where the importance of engagement comes in, MNC Banks brings with them American and British flavor in their engagement style which is far more classy compared to Indian Banks and thus customers looking at prestige and class look towards MNC banks against Indian peers.

Similarly there are customer groups who prefers to bank with a particular bank based on pure preferential treatment assigned to them for years by that particular bank. This is prevalent in many region centric banks. Here again the differentiator is engagement style of the bank with particular groups, where services are offered in the most desired manner.

When we analyze the employee behavior it is often surprising to note that same individual who hardly used to cross sell in a traditional old private sector bank suddenly turning out to be the best cross seller in his newly joined bank, where cross selling is the mantra of banking. Difference here is again engagement.

Using engagement tool for improving results:-

Thus engagement comes out as an important factor or tool in Banking which plays a dominant role in enabling the bank to capture its market share.

Let’s now discuss factors needed to be taken care while improving the quality of engagement.

Bank level engagement:-

At Bank level, most important is the match between bank’s aspirations and engagement quality; unless there is a perfect match bank will fall short of its aspirations and ground results.

 Team level engagement:-

Every bank has its own process of business and it is important that the process is conveyed to the team by effective engagement. Unless everybody in the organization speak the same language and subjects, macro level aspirations won’t be reflected at micro level.

Team to customer engagement:-

Bank level engagement with public at large should be followed at ground level in both letter and spirit and perfect level of uniformity should be exhibited in the engagement between team and customers or prospective customers through all channels.

Conclusion:-

Considering the importance and criticality of engagement, banks should use engagement as the most important tool and start managing engagement quality at all levels. Unless the quality of engagement remains uniform across Bank / Team and Customer level, aspirations of the bank may remain pretty distant from ground realities.