You Can Heal Your Life by Louise L. Hay

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An excellent piece of work that descends on you as a shower of enlightenment. When this book was recommended to me, I felt a bit offended. I dont have a problem with my life, I believed. Still, I started reading it as it talked about something that I dont agree with. Chapter after chapter as I progressed, a sense of realization transcended upon me. Never before, a book felt so relevant to myself.

Primarily the books creats an impression that you are the power that created you. Everything that happens to you is chosen by you yourselves. Quite a theory it is. I have made sense out of it considering life as an co-existence of oneself and everything else that constitutes the universe. For things to work out in a better way, either or both of the constituents of your life must change. The easier it is to bring about changes in yourself than expecting the universe to change. The author however, takes her stand to the point that says you choose your parents before birth. It makes very little sense literally but a lot of sense otherwise. It gives one a strong reason to move on from all resentments over parents. This is just one little aspect of the content. Having also authored "Heal Your Body", Louise goes in detail on the power of mind to heal ailments and disorders with examples from her own life. A lot of light has been thrown on self approval, self denial, power of the mind to attract money and love.

To train the mind in a desired way, making affirmations to oneself everyday is suggested. Some parts of the book feel so real that I felt as if it was being narrated from my own life. It was a good exercise in itself to go through the book as I got a chance to retrospect my behaviour towards others and vice versa. It worked wonders for me when I followed the book to forgive past and let go a lot of hard feelings. I also realised the importance of loving myself and being thankful to all that made me. Its a must read if you wish to move forward in live and improve on your people skills, love life, finances.

The book is published in India by Full Circle, New Delhi at a MRP of Rs. 295/-.

State Vs Market

The famous 'State Vs Market' debate continues to haunt me. The for and against arguments have been doing rounds from times unknown to us. An admirer of theoretical communism, I believe that state must not take its hands completely off business any day. The argument had tilted in favor of free-market from the 90s with the collapse of Soviet Union and its inspired followers. However, current global recession has exposed the failure of market economy to effectively balance economic development with sustainable growth. Free-market at its best suggests short-term gains are inevitable for long-term growth. But, repeated market failures keep reminding us that ideal economic well-being cannot be built on greed and competition.

State ownership, on the other hand has rusted most of the economies that adopted it. A classy example is India. I had been to a branch of the State Bank of India to make payment for an exam. I was in time, it was just the last day to pay the fee. After an hour and half in the queue, the cashier refused to accept the payment. He told me he 'does not want' to accept it because he beleived that last minute work is wrong and he had already turned back a dozen people like me the same day. Shocked was I, as you are. He had the guts to say that on a day following a 2-day work strike by bank employees demanding pay-hike. I went to the manager just to be pointed back to the cashier. It took me another 45 mins to convince him to accept payment. Rust as I said are these people with no accountability whatsoever to anybody. I did not really know how to react to the above incident. Banks were nationalised to make credit available to everybody and it seemed I had to pay the price for it.

We are living witnesses to the immense growth our nation is seeing post LPG. Still, I keep asking myselves if this growth is sustainable. Sometimes it feels that we are effectively creating a whole nation of people with questionable values and identities. Serious is the issue as is my allegation. Leadership elected on promises of freebies shall not be interested in building an ideal nation with rational values. In the same way, market economy cannot deliver in the long-term when its objectives are set on clear motives of short-term profits.

Businesses must operate within a broader frame of regulations set by the state. The frame work for a regulated economy must be weaved carefully. Checks and balances must be in place to make sure the market operates freely and fairly. Advocates of Laissez-faire must be guaranteed action against state through a system of accountability if unwarranted intervention happens. We were a nation that did not do away with capitalists even while embracing socialist ideals for growth in 1947. We also ought to show the world a new economic system with a free-market working toward a welfare state.

Private B-school Business: Better Returns than Gambling and Dacoity

[Also see 'The United Nations - Quick facts']

I came across an interesting report titled "Jobless graduate sues college" on 'The Hindu' today. The very moment, I knew its gonna be in the USA. Well, wishing all the very best to the gutful girl who did that, its high time that we do something for us here as well. The HRD minister seems to have progressive ideas. The spirit with which the Right to Education bill was passed is commendable. But, its surprising that the plight of thousands of students affected badly by the unregulated private b-schools has not caught his attention yet. These institutes typically offering PG diplomas in management on the lines of the IIMs enjoy autonomy in framing their own curriculum. On the first face it seems that autonomy is good and it is going to be used to keep management education up-to-date. But the idea has grossly mis-fired. It has been used for nothing but only to create more and more useless courses with slightly different names. It has also given the institutes a free hand to employ anybody to teach the students, without any regard to qualifications.

Every year, at least a few lakh students take the CAT, XAT, MAT and other exams. Well, thanks to the media hysteria about the pay packages that a couple of IIM grads get every year. As a matter of fact, there are only 7 IIMs and around two thousand seats in them. The plight of all others wanting to mint up millions by just completing a PGDM is very sad indeed. Here comes to play scores of private institutions, many of them run by reputed business houses and political bigwigs. With least concern to quality whatsoever, most of these institutes also manage to get an AICTE approval. And thats the end of it. The fees they charge is whopping, thanks to the Govt. of India's initiatives to provide security-free education loans for higher education. They donot offer a masters degree, so there is no UGC in the picture, infact there is no existing authority that could question their practices or the fees charged. Students join them in the only hope that the lakhs they pay could be taken back through gainful placements, while the b-schools run on the only hope that "There is no legal resort if placements are not done or if not satisfactory".

The mill keeps running, the business of management education runs freely and grows steadily generating thousands of PGDM pass outs every year mostly under-employed in sales jobs. Many of these institutes have also the support of rankings published by business magazines by their side and it just makes things worse. Thousands of pass outs of the institutes that figured in the "top-10 private B-schools" in magazines, earn a meagre Rs. 10,000 to Rs. 15,000 per month selling Insurance policies to strangers. Being bitten by this venemous snake, the few who can afford further doctoral studies are unable to proceed with it since, PGDM does not qualify as a masters degree in reputed universities. I wish, like all other victims of B-school syndrome that the govt. realise its role of being responsible for the plight of its citizens and come for our rescue.