Kishore Kumar in the early 50s

Last night, I was desultorily perusing some articles from my father’s collection of clippings from Filmfare and Illustrated weekly and it suddenly stuck me – we all know the Kishore Kumar who sang – and sang such that he displaced Rafi and remained numero uno for 17 years till his death – for Rajesh Khanna, Amitabh Bachchan and a whole host of actors in the post 1969 Aradhana phase, but perhaps his gems in the early fifties aren’t as popular today, a today where every song seems as transient as a firefly in a summer evening.

That set a chain of thought and research and I thought it would perhaps be an interesting exercise to identify some of the gems from the period when Kishore wasn’t considered the singing equivalent of a Rafi or a Mukesh or even a Hemant (well, Salil was at the point of summoning Hemant to sing on Kishore for his Naukri). It would also be an interesting exercise to understand how and why the great music directors of that age, Naushad, Madan Mohan and the rest to ignore the fresh, fun, fabulous and fantastic Kishore so totally. Naushad for example never recorded a song with Kishore in the fifties when he was arguably at his peak, I don’t think he ever found himself in the same recording studio as Kishore (reader pl leave a comment!). OP and SJ for all the transformation they brought to the Hindi Film music scene utilized Kishore only for the movies where he was the actor and even in such cases, used Rafi to sing for an on screen Kishore for various reasons (SJ in Sharat, OP in Ragini). Perhaps only Dada Burman recognized the depth and vitality in Kishore’s voice and used him quite magnificently as the voice for Dev Anand through the fifties in a string of classics – Jeevan Ke safar mein rahi (Munimji), oonche sur mein gaye ja (house no 44), ae meri topi palat ke aa (Funtoosh) and even for non Dev Anand starrers like Bahar (Kasoor Aapka on Karan Dewan). While OP and SJ found Kishore eminently suited for singing for his own maverick style of acting, it required a personal request from Ashok Kumar for Salil to deign to give a musically untrained Kishore a hearing. So could I pick my favorites of Kishore (only solos pl) from the time when he was known more as the reigning comic star rather than the most loved singing voice in the country? For ease, I have considered movies released before 1957 and thus movies like Asha, Musafir Shararat, Awaz (with the Salil classic – Araram Tararam duniya ke kaise) and Chalti Ka Naam Gadi get eliminated

1. Marne ki duaen kya mangoon (Ziddi, Khemchand Prakash), his first and therefore needs to be on the list. The Saigal influence is obvious in this song and Khemchand Prakash needs to be congratulated on identifying this voice and the genius behind it. Thanks to youtube, we can even hear it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-KCGt1za0M


2. Arji Hamari Ye Marji Hamari (Naukri, Salil Choudhury), Naukri is one of the forgotten classics. Kishore was superb as the singing star giving a glimpse of what is in store – with the amazing voice & modulations and his onscreen persona opposite a cute looking Sheila Ramani. Hear it hear to understand why I rate it so highly http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNoa_hPG7ig&feature=related


3. Ek Chhoti se naukri ka (Naukri, Salil Choudhury), minimalistic music, maximum results. Hearing this one wonders why Salilda was once accused by Pandit Ravi Shanker to make the tune more complex than what it should be. I do stand corrected that technically this is a duet but at least this isn’t a duet with a female singer and thus perhaps can make its way in this list! One can see the classic here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iSdldDEGHI&feature=related

4. Chhota sa ghar hoga (Naukri, Salil Choudhury). I just cant help but get this song in the list. The song for which an incensed Salil initially refused to give the unemployed hero a singing break and instead was about to summon Hemant Kumar to render this classic. Would Hemant been able to sing the aaa, aae re part the way Kishore so evocatively did? Well, it is only left to imagination as one hears the classic here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRfgKRy-W7E&NR=1

5. Kunven mein kuud ke (Parivar, Salil Choudhury). Another Salil number. When I began my research on the early fifties numbers, I was quite prepared to find a clutch of SD classics and perhaps a couple of others, it is quite incredible to note the number of Salil classics I unearthed in the early/middle fifties. Hear this and let me know if this shouldn’t be one of Kishore’s comic leitmotifs - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUBUSEhlRuI

6. Nakherwali (New Delhi, Shanker Jaikishen), a song I heard in school and was immediately humming it. I still remember one of my classmates and I were studying for our Class Ten exams late in the evening in Calcutta with Vividh Bharati playing at a very low volume as a background to our concentration when this song came along. Wordlessly my friend looked at me and then turned to the radio to turn the volume higher and a for a few seconds we forgot the exams on the morrow and instead enjoyed a perennial classic. This song just makes one wonder why SJ were so frugal in employing Kishore when they were at their fifties zenith. Hear it hear and wonder whether Kishore and SJ should have been made for each other - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAqfsRgX_gE&feature=PlayList&p=4AD116A3E9306A81&playnext_from=PL&playnext=1&index=12

7. Are Bhai Nikal ke aa ghar se (New Delhi, Shanker Jaikishen). From the same New Delhi comes the other Kishore classic, hear it here and wonder SJ did justice to the talent they had at their path breaking disposal http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQ7n9Dyy74M&feature=related. New Delhi had other classics including the third Kishore number (Milte hi nazar aap) and most notably the Lata number – tum sang preet lagayi which had the SJ imprimatur written all over it, while the Kishore numbers didn’t really sound like the SJ of the fifties, did it? SJ’s reluctance to employ Kishore was probably best exemplified in Shararat (1958) where Kishore lip synced a Rafi classic – Ajab hai dastan teri yey zindagi. Arresting stuff when put over in the voice of Rafi but perhaps leaves a little bit to be desired in the Kishore voice, doesn’t it?

8. Aisi Shaadi Se Hum (Baap Re Baap, O P Nayyar). Simply impossible for anyone but Kishore to sing. This song has snatches of several songs which became hits later on (the yodeling in this song bears marked resemblance to the Main hoon Jhumroo number and on can hear snatches of deem nei tobu naam taar dingo from the Bangali Lokuchuri). Hear it here and let me know if you know a more funny song http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIEHBJt9RNI&feature=related

9. Jeevan Ke safar mein rahi (Munimji, S D Burman). A classic that has stood the test of time. A debonair Dev and a coquettish Nalinin Jaywant made for lovely watching. Not just this Kishore-Lata tandem (well tandems are allowed in this list, duets aren’t), all the songs were superb and we saw SD Burman alternate Hemant and Kishore on Dev – something he did quite consistently – alternating Hemant, Rafi and Kishore on Dev & with remarkably few exceptions till Gambler. Hear it hear and lets again understand why it stood the test of time: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qt_sZNMUJs0


10. Oonche Sur Mein Gaye Ja (House no 44, S D Burman). This movie was a musical jewel and perhaps the younger readers and enthusiasts would more likely remember the Hemant classics on Dev Anand (Chup Hai Dharti, Teri Duniya mein jeense se) or even the Lata number picturised on a resplendent Kalpana Kartik (Phailie hui sapnon ki baahen) but the pick for me was the Kishore number. Hear it for yourself and let me know if Kishore’s exhilarating pace was meant for the naughty Dev. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUYchyLiwnM

11.12, 13 I am sorely tempted to make this a best 13 and not a best 10 as there is no way I can miss the three Funtoosh classics (Ae meri topi palat ke aa, Denewala Jab Bhi deta and Dukhi man mere). Just see them here and let me know if Dev and Kishore weren’t but made for each other!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9ZIo6hsBBc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V57mevzgnFM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpRRm5-0WhA

14. Chhahe koi kush ho (Taxi Driver, S D Burman) I was about to end this at Funtoosh when I realized I haven’t done full justice to Kishore- SD-Dev combination – how can I leave out Taxi Driver – a movie where Dada Burman made Kishore compete for the vocal superiority with Talat Mahmood on a playful Dev? A Taxi Driver which won SD his first Filmfare award for the Talat classic – Jayen to Jayen kahan. Hear Mastram here and become one – the joi de vivre is perennial isn’t it? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUAIs5MFhrc and let me know if SD’s constant mix and match of Talat, Hemant, Rafi and Kishore on a debonair Dev was good value.

I do realize I have missed some classics from Ladki (1953) and the Karan Dewan enacted Bahar (1951) and I haven’t included the songs sung for Raj Kapoor in Pyar but this small list should be enough for everyone to look at the pre-’56 Kishore afresh – a time when he was a singing, comic star and not the voice of the superstars of the seventies. I think younger readers and Kishore fans would be delighted to peruse the early Kishore – a Kishore before he became almost synonymous with Pancham.

Well, those are my fourteen - a fourteen that showcases a Kishore when he was starting out, a Kishore before he became the best known male singer in the country and a Kishore when he had to ask music directors to give him a chance to take him seriously as a singer...

Why did it take him 2 decades to reach the pinnacle? Even die-hard Rafi fans like me wonder - did the great music directors of the fifties err by not using Kishore enough? What magic could a Shanker Jaikishen have achieved if they had lavished their magic on Kishore less sparingly than they actually did? Points to ponder...

The Garden of Eden

Eden...the name evokes a feeling of tranquility, green palms swaying gently in the breeze and a sense of contentment...none of these were in display when I landed at the Eden the morning of the day after the day of Valentine to witness the second test match between India and South Africa.

A stunning bowling performance from Dale Steyn and a work-over from Morne Morkel had the famed Indian batting line up collapse to a rare home innings defeat (funny but all three innings defeats in the past couple of decades have come at the hands of the Proteas) in front of empty stands in Nagpur but the Indian bowlers stuck back after two barren sessions on day 1 of the test to leave India in - on paper possessing the finest batting talent on the planet - a significantly better position. As I was taking my seat, India had taken the last wicket and Sehwag and Gambhir were about to commence. What transpired in the next 4 hours was amongst the most skillful batting one could hope to see. The same bowlers who has so terrorized the Indian line up were shown up as ordinary, the ball fled to the boundary with astonishing regularity and once Sachin and Sehwag came on together, it was a sight for the Gods. One was perfection personified, all technique, head still, hitting the ball with the full face of the bat and the other, all bristling aggression, skillful without being a slave to technique.

The Eden is an amazing place to watch cricket, you probably get better views in Chepauk or Lords or in Sydney - being smaller and perhaps better oriented grounds - but the sheer joi de vivre of the Eden crowd makes up for everything.The crowd is very eclectic, diverse, extremely knowledgeable & extremely friendly...in the days when I was a student in Calcutta and a regular to the Eden during test matches, serious bonding would happen over the five days of the test match. The sense of humor is something unique to Calcutta and the noise, corwds, discomfort and pollution does nothing to diminish the wise cracks that constantly emanate from the crowds much like the Sehwag cuts that punctuate the square boundary with metronomic regularity.

I was entering the Eden after more than a decade and half & more than half of the Eden was under renovation with the seating capacity considerably reduced but the feeling of nostalgia was incredible. I could almost 'see' Binny bowling from the High Court end getting rid of 3 quick Pakistan wickets late on the fourth day trying to set India to an improbable victory with us kids desperately shouting ourselves hoarse in an ultimately futile task in '86, I could almost visualize the bat flying out of a hopping Gavaskar's bat from a Marshall flier in '83 stunning a full house crowd and a lean & not mean Azhar elegantly square driving with a late minute flick of his wrists a Richard Ellison outswinger to the square cover boundary in '84. Beautiful memories and add the memories of actually playing on the hallowed turf - a turf where India's perhaps greatest victory was won - in 2001 against a mighty Australian side.

It was heartening to note that the crowds still throng the Eden for a test match at a time when matches are being played in empty grounds in the rest of the country, the sense of humor is intact (well, the language has changed from almost pure Bengali in my school days to a mixture of Hindi, English & Bengali now but which does nothing to diminish the spontaneous humor), the crowds are perhaps even more of a diverse set now with the yuppie crowd in significant numbers & the oranges are still on sale at the entrance to Gate 11. Brilliant, some things dont change and hopefully they never should.

The crowd, the pitch, the ground, the tradition of Eden - all beggar one question - why are so few test matches being played at the traditional Test Match grounds in India? Why doesn't the BCCI decide on a set of cities for test matches - Bangalore, Madras, Calcutta, Bombay, Delhi & Kanpur as cities which will host at least one Test match a year & allocate the other tests to the non-traditional centers like Nagpur and Mohali? I am sure Sachin wont have felt very happy crossing Lara's record in front of an empty Mohali stadium nor would Dale relished bowling in front of blue plastic seats at the Jamatha in Nagpur - nothing drives a sportsman more than a bunch of vociferous spectators and when the crowd gets going at the Eden, there is no more exhilarating sight in Cricket.

Ask Vishwanath and the ovation he got after a magnificent 97 in '75-75 against a rampant Andy Roberts or Tiger when he was clapped off the field with his bold moves early on the final morning to win the test match against the finest battery of fast bowlers after being roundly booed for the same tactics which didnt yield any results for an hour or more. Ask my father who still nostalgically recounts this test match for me.

Will Continental get my business again?

I dont know how many of you have read the news that former President of India, Abul Kalam was frisked at Delhi airport waiting to board a Continental flight to New York. I did, followed with interest the various blogs, news items about uproar in the assembly, insinuations that Hillary Clinton should be subject to a similar tit for tat (no puns here :)), reactions if a similar incident had happened in China blah blah blah.

A few points immediately come to mind - Indian's recent preoccupation with China, a new found sense of assertive outrage (I havent seen too much of this earlier) and the sheer number folks writing in the comments column expressing their displeasure in no uncertain terms.

The Chinese connection is the easiest to understand - I think the rise of the internet and thus freely available information has made Indians realise just how far behind we are to the Chinese in terms of Global influence and development - I think this feeling of jealousy is good - good for us to wish and work towards a better standard of living, development and better support for folks like us living elsewhere but still carrying the Indian passport with demonstrated pride.

However, the other side of the coin - the spirit of Indian freedom allows folks like me and everyone else to express themselves without any fear - I wonder if ordinary Chinese would have the same freedom of expression. I dont know but what I read in the papers suggests - perhaps not. Lets ensure India retains that precious and irreplaceable freedom of expression.

Now back to the news item - I actually have 2 questions here - One - would we all perceive the same sense of outrage if say a Laloo Yadav was frisked? I say perhaps not :). Two, would Continental ever get my business again? That's easy - NO. Not because of anything else - but simply for the sheer sense bullheadedness of their staff - I think doing something like this in an emotionally charged country like India was downright stupid - wonder what the person who controlled the World's fifth largest Nuclear Button could have carried in his shoe is beyond my comprehension.

I cant trust the airline which couldnt figure that one out with my life now, can I?

A Whale of a time...

June & July are the months of the annual whale migration from the cold Antarctic where they eat to the warm tropics where they breed. Sydney is on their journey and thus we are privileged to witness one of Nature's greatest sights - whales swimming past us, with their jets of water released from their version of a blowhole. Interesting - these huge creatures - some of them weighing well over 40 Tons dont eat for months on end - the females eat only after they have given birth.

Yesterday, we took one of the numerous whale watching cruises from Darling Harbor to see the magnificent spectacle. The ship went down the Parramatta river under the Harbour Bridge and past the iconic Opera House in glorious sunshine, with strong cold winds blowing past us. The Heads - the Heads is the name given to the area where the river meets the Pacific - were rough and for us sitting right at the foredeck , it felt more like a ride on one of the rollercosters at Luna park (a few miles to our left) than the ocean. The sea remained rough all throughout the ride and it was about an hour from the Heads that we first came to the Whale migration spectacle.

It all began innocuously enough, the volunteer sitting next to me pointed to something that looked suspiciously like a larger surf on the ocean surface about 600 meters away - it took us a few more minutes to realise that we were indeed in sight of the largest creature the world has ever seen. Closer up, at about 150 meters away, the blowhole was jetting water up at least 10 meters - often the sheer amount of space on the ocean dulls the sense of time, distance and size - however there was no mistaking the sight of the creature that came up a couple of seconds after we saw the water jetting up the blowhole. It must have been at least 50 feet long, dark grey in color with spots underneath its jaws and black fins spearing through the rough sea. The mind was numbed for a moment with the spectacle before the scramble began to get the cameras and the recorders out and in action. Thrilling stuff.

After about an hour of witnessing these marvelous creatures and after the volunteer mentioned that he can spend all his life watching them (& I agree with him), we began the journey back to Sydney. We went into the cockpit for some coffee and I saw a very pertinent sign there - 'We love Japanese but hate whale killing'. As my wife and I sat drinking coffee in companionable silence, we both spoke almost simultaneously - how can someone have the heart to kill them? They are so beautiful...

Hard to imagine - if you dont believe me, please take a look and let me know if there are grander sights on earth.

Dada makes news again...

http://www.itimes.com/public_main_community.php?gid=16998&ref=toi_sg

I dont know how many of you have read the news - Sourav Ganguly the enfant terrible of Indian cricket is threatening to get into active administration. Saurav was always someone who fascinated me - brash, outspoken, giften (both with the bat and with a golden arm), mercurial and with a mind of his own - almost everything one doesnt credit a Bengali with. From a player accused of being too lazy to carry his own baggage in his first tour, he emerged - first as a supremely giften No 3 bat in England where Indian hearts immediately realised was the emergence of the next great batting line up (Dravid made his debut the same match with a skillful 90 odd) and then as a Captain - with startling clarity of thought, ruthless in his execution, skillful in team management and lucid in his commentary. A new chapter in Indian cricket history was waiting to be written - & what a chapter it was.

Saurav's new innings seems very interesting - we have an obviously intelligent man, highly experienced and someone who always got the best out of his team - entering cricket administration. I hope his innings at the administrative helm becomes as successful as the one as a player.

He has the best credentials anyway...

There are News and there are NEWS again

I dont know how many read this remarkable news - http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-world/south-korean-president-donates-millions-20090706-da9v.html

Great news as these are normally sent to the back pages - almost as if good news are irrelevant to the Press folks who want to remain almost totally in the grips of the sleaze and squalid. Human nature is one which is naturally benevolent, visionary and farsighted - the environment, pressure, competition and circumstances dulls the edges and makes it more malevolent than it actually is. I think the Press has an essential role to play in popularizing the good side of us - decreasing its almost obsessive interest in crime, politics and sensationalism. If you look at the front pages of any newspaper, the headline news are almost always sensational and negative...why cant we have such a news as the headline? Why cant the newspapers be filled with positive news and banish the negative ones to the back pages? I wonder - but then I am not a newspaper man...

Perhaps, we can revert back to the tradition of India's national newspaper - The Hindu which was the only newspaper not to carry news of Gandhiji's assassination on its front pages - because it then used to solely publish advertisements on its front page

Interesting, indeed.

Tennis and Tantrums

The last few days has been a study in contrast for me - waiting is never a good time if you are like me - impatient, full of beans...the one good point of waiting was the opportunity afforded to work less and watch TV more. Thus Wimbledon '09 and some of the finest matches ever played happened for the right time for me and I was priveleged to watch some of the matches. A few of them stood out - I like the way Federer took apart the giant Croat Ivo Karlovic, the semi finals with Haas was one played in the best possible sporting spirit (are the Aussies and the Poms watching and listening in the Ashes build-up?), the finals was one of the best I have ever seen.

I must admit I have never stepped into a Tennis Court (a Lawn Tennis Court - I do play a bit of Table tennis - better than a bit I daresay) and thus am blissfully unaware of the technical aspects of the game, the speed, skill and ball-sense that is needed to be a Tennis player. However, I have been fairly consistent in watching Tennis - especially the ones beamed live from the hallowed grounds at Wimbledon all the way to an India just waking up to the possibility of live matches available of Indian Television. My mind goes back to the matches on '84 which is probably my first recollection of watching tennis and I was instantly smitten by the brash, bold and bountifully talented McEnroe - his exhibition of tennis and tantrums as an art in 1984 I think has never been bettered and add his marvellously emotive & expressive face, you have all the makings of an anti-hero. I do recollect the boom boom wunderkid Becker in '85 and his titanic struggles with Andres Jarryd and Kevic Curran - dont recollect too much of the matches for the next few years...till 1989 when I recollect the match between Edberg and Becker then in the midst of their great grass-court rivalry.

Anyway enough of digressing - lets get back to the matches on display over the weekend - both the finals were great spectator marvels - the ladies final was remarkable for the power, accuracy and poise of Serena who was quite clearly the better of the two sisters and the mens' finals was remarkable as a slugfest between two of the three most talented players on the planet. The interesting fact was that Federer outdid Roddick in the aces columns - something few of us could comprehend - just goes to demonstrate the accuracy and precision of the Swiss maestro that makes up for the obvious lack of brute power. While the groundstrokes were a treat to watch and the serving par excellence - what I missed most was the loss of volleying as a key attacking component of an all round game. One misses the accuracy of an Edberg, the athleticism of a Becker and an inventiveness of an McEnroe at the net - games now a days lack that bit of spectacle when the volley is little used.

Well, I cant quibble after being priveleged to watch one of the longest and best matches played on Center Court at Wimbledon now, can I?

Letting Sleeping Dogs lie...

Indian politicians suffer from one incurable disease - not being able to let sleeping dogs lie.

Look at the Lieberhan commission and its reporting - it took the commission millions of dollars and 17 years to table a report which was clear as daylight the minute one sees the Television footage - what took them 17 years to come to a conclusion which is not going to make a difference to our country one way or other? How is the report going to benefit the country? What is the positive side of this report - I can think of quite a few negative ones though & we are already seeing a few being played out? When will we grow up - in intelligence, stature, vision, patriotism as opposed to jingoism - to focus on areas that we really need to improve and create a difference? The more I think about India, I feel more sad - sheer waste of some of the finest talents the world has ever seen. At the same time, when the same group of politicians put their mind into something, they can make a difference - look at Modi in Gujarat and Nitish in Bihar - two ends of the development spectrum - one starting and building from a positive base and the other starting from somewhere close to the rock bottom in the development landscape. What they have achieved goes beyond GDP and numbers - they have inculcated pride in their states and the people living in them - no longer will Bihari be a metaphor for the under-developed parts of India and hopefully no longer will Gujarat immediately invoke Godhra war cries from each of the religious camps

Can we have more enlightened, educated, enterprising politicians please with the necessary expertise to WANT to make a positive difference? This is where India has been singularly unlucky - we really never had a group of folks at the top wanting to make a positive difference or not getting the necessary freedom of thought and action for doing so.

Hope we have a day soon when 80+% politicans are in the job because they want to see a better India - not just a better themselves & their narrow communities. Till such time, I can only consider the progress we make as being made despite the system & not because of the availability of an enabling environment.

Indian Airports...

I commenced writing this on a notepad waiting interminably in the waiting hall in Calcutta airport for a flight back to Sydney via Bangkok and it stuck me - I was probably in the most ancient looking airport I have been for a very long time.

I travel often to India - a lot less often than when GFC was an unknown 3 letter word - and occasionally travel through Calcutta where my parents live. I rarely have time to kill at the airport but this time I checked in earlier than usual - blame the unusually less traffic - but it stuck me suddenly - Where did Calcutta get left behind in the rush to modernity? As I began typing this on a notepad (as evidently the wifi wasnt working - does it ever work??? Can someone comment on this?), I realised - not just Calcutta but all the Indian airports have been left behind, way way behind. Forget the snazzy new terminal at Changi or the gigantic terminals (& half empty most of the time) at KL, even smaller airports across APAC look great, have good service, good lounges, working wifi and decent shopping and food. In Calcutta, all we had for food was a coffee shop and a cold drink vendor who didnt even stock Thums Up which my daughter and I both adore. Nothing to eat. It was a sad state to see the city which was called Paris of the east fade away so suddenly and absolutely - and one cant even blame a war or natural disaster on this.

Makes one feel very sad indeed. Where does all the tax money that folks like me pay (despite living and working in Sydney) go? The government claims to make progress - where??? Someone will claim that we need to spend on poverty alleviation - but there can be no development until the base infrastructure is in place - that has to commence with world class airports and services at the primary entry points.

Is someone listening?

The memory is 26 years young...

They say memories fade with time, become sepia tinted and the edges get blurred, the details arent quite there...there is one memory though of a 13-14 year old, energetic kid that refuses to do any of those - the memory of India winning the 1983 cricket world cup. My childhood days in Calcutta were full of intellectual discussions - whether Zico should or should not have taken THAT penalty shot, whether Paolo Rossi was indeed the great striker he came to be in the '82 Football world cup or whether a Maradona can ever become the all round great Pele was...however all the sport centric discussions centered around football, often about the local matches but occasionally on the global scale - typically a few months prior to the world cup. All this changed through one thrilling week in June when India went through to the last four and then the finals of the Cricket world cup. I was always more than a decent cricket player and played for my class and club as a studious opening batsman till I was about 12 years old, and a considerably better cricketer than a footballer but we all - as Calcuttans - loved our soccer. Thus even though I was known to be a good cricketer, I never got the recognition that the good football players in my class got - I was merely an appendage but the footballers were the REAL thing. Those couple of weeks changed the way we kids lived, breathed and most importantly played -suddenly I was more popular than the footballers and classmates and neighbouring kids suddenly wanted to be seen with me and discuss THAT square drive the ebullient Srikanth (he had a single K in his name those days) played to a rampaging Roberts and whether Viswanath would have hit the same shot behind square as opposed to in front of...it was a game changer not just for India, but also for one of its insignificant kids in a Calcutta moffussil. The best memories for me are of the match itself. My uncle took a day off from work, my grandfather - then recently retired said he retired at the right time & for a change didn't ask me to study for my Class 9 exams, my grandmother was wide eyed with wonder that her country was in the FINALS of the world cup - a festive atmosphere reigned for the hours leading the finals. We had our usual share of neighbours, friends, relatives - all crammed into the 12 feet by 12 feet living room with us small kids being banished to squat right in front of the television while the elders occupied the pride of places on the sofas and the chairs. However, all discomfort - perceived and otherwise - disappeared the moment the match started. For me and my memories, there are 3 incidents that stand out - the square drive from Srikant that hit the boundary boards at point even before the fielder at point completed twisting around, the inswinger that got rid of Greenidge and the easy Lloyd catch by Kapil at mid off off a swinging Binny delivery. I am not mentioning about the the defining moment here - that catch of Viv - not because of sepia tints but because I only saw the replay - I was answering nature's call then the live images were beamed and I only heard the eruption of noise from the toilet which told me a key wicket had fallen. Time has passed and while India has moved on to become the most serious force in commercial cricket, it still hasn't won the world cup, it still hasn't beaten Australia in Australia and SA in SA - till those happen, I lie content with the non-sepia tinted memories as a 14 year old - & for a change, recollect the win over Pak in Pak five years back...more on that one in another post perhaps.

A New Paradigm - Blue Ocean Strategy

Blue Ocean Strategy is a thought provoking articulation of a strategy in creating value-innovation - essentially creating new markets rather than competing in existing markets - Red Oceans. This is a very interesting approach by Professors Chan Kim and Rene Maugorgne of INSEAD


Essentially the business world consists of 2 parts - the highly competitve, price/quality differentiated existing markets (called the Red Ocean as a metaphor for intense competitive landscape) and the newer, emerging, innovation defined markets ('Blue Oceans') which are often extensions of existing Red oceans but with some unique identifiers that create value.

The strategy talks about creating unique value and uses a very user-friendly tool based approach to develop the RERC (Reduce, Eliminate, Raise, Create) Grid to commnence developing the strategy. Additionally several strategies used by companies in varied fields from Culture and Entertainment (Circue du Soleil) to FMCG (Yellowtail) are described and elucidated using very easy to comprehend graphs and tables. All in all, a very interesting and perceptive look at creating differentiation in a crowded marketplace.

At HCL, the Blue Ocean strategy is one of the three key cornerstones for creating a value system - the others being the Employee First and Integrated Service Delivery. At HCL, we are constantly encouraged to think out of the box and use the available tools and frameworks in BO to draft business ideas, templates and define ideas for exponential revenue/profit generation - the key to the business strategy is 'Exponential' & not linear value/revenue/P&L creation

I was one of the speakers privileged to be invited by one of the leading Rotary Clubs in Chennai (formerly Madras) in India to address a very august group on Blue Ocean strategy in a fund raiser event. I thought the event was very well organized, had excellent speakers (despite yours' truly), was very well attended and for me, it was a great experience to share the dias with some of the best known folks in indian academia and industry.

Transformation at HCL – an interesting case study

Recently I was asked to speak at the FST (http://www.fst.net.au/agenda.aspx?confid=2) on transformation and what we did at HCL which elicited attention from some of the leading thinkers, analysts and journalists. I thought it may be a good idea to invite some thought process on what we did, why we attempted to do what we did and where we are in regards to the transformation agenda. Also we may discuss on some of the key learnings we have had as a result of this exercise, some areas where we did better than the rest. All in all I thought it was an interesting session and one of my proudest moments came when I was asked for a copy of the presentation made and asked to present by the CTO of a leading Bank in APAC to his team in Melbourne & Sydney. Not a bad day’s work I would imagine.

More soon to come...

Conversational Marketing

Conversational Marketing is a marketing communications strategy and philosophy that helps companies drive revenue through their CRM strategies. By incorporating a listening based marketing communications strategy such as Conversational Marketing, companies can have more productive communications, be more efficient with their revenue generation and better differentiate themselves from their competitors

Soon to come...

The 10 Best of Shanker-Jaikishen

Let me try and list down the 10 best songs which this dynamic duo created – this is a list of personal favorites and in no way reflect anything other than individual interest. Songs in Hindi movies are irrevocably linked to their picturization and I try and explain the rationale behind each of my picks – with the caveat – this is intensely personal.

1. Awara Hoon: Awara (1951) – the song that began it all, my blog, rekindling of my passion for SJ so tragically lost in the pressure of work, immense re-hear value, lovely touching lyrics, a smooth song to sing in all parties – almost everyone knows the tune and the music is lilting and foot-tapping. The song was photographed lovingly in electric black and white, the mischief in Raj Kapoor’s eyes was inimitable, the motion of the chain-watch hypnotic and was in perfect cadence with the SJ background score. Mukesh as usual, excelled when singing for Raj, if he was the body in ‘Mera Joota hai Japani’, he was the soul in this song. Truly timeless.
2. Pyar Hua Ikrar Hua: Shree 420 (1955) My all time favorite RK song – I just love that interlude music especially and THAT scene is truly amazing – the scene where Nargis and Raj are huddled under the black umbrella in a fair shower – Nargis points out to the three Kapoor kids and lips – hum na rahenge tum na rahenge phir bhi rahengi nishaniyan. I dare you to think of a more poetic romantic situation. Evocative.
3. Nanhe Munhe Bachhe Teri: Boot Polish (1953) - This song made a convert of my niece – a young 6 year old kid & who only loved the new age music...she stood absolutely still when she heard this for the first time and then by the second stanza began humming it. Music – as they say, is divine and the look in her face was indeed divine & reflected pure bliss. I can still visualize the precocious Baby Naaz and the vibrant Master Rattan dancing to this amazing Shanker-Jaikishen beat. David was on hand to lip sync to the magnificent Rafi. Add to the heady mix - consider that Boot Polish was meant to be a songless film and the Aah disaster forced Raj Kapoor to do a rethink & create songs and song situations within a few weeks. Invigorating Stuff.
4. Hai Sabse Madhur Woh Geet: (Patita, 1952) - Dev Anand had this dreamy look throughout the movie and perhaps never more than in this song. This is a song which makes you wonder why there weren’t a lot more of Dev-SJ combination in the early fifties. In fact, the next Dev-SJ combination after Patitia came as late as 1959 - Love Marriage which had the famous dig at O P Nayyar (Tin Kanister Peet Peet Kar). The Talat numbers in Patita picturised on Agha – Andhe Jahan Ke & Tujhe Apne Paas Bulati Hai & the Lata solos picturised on Usha Kiron – Mitti Se Khelte Ho & Kisine Apna Banake, the Lata-Hemant lullaby picturised on Dev and Usha – Yaad Kiya Dile Ne all were amazing and deserved a place in any other list best songs but the song I chose from Patita is for that rare combination of wistfulness, passion and desperation, it evokes a sense of nostalgia and ‘what could have been but for…’. Trust SJ to bring out the right mood and Talat to express it so evocatively. The icing was the debonair Dev looking handsome, lost and forlorn…pictures that stay with you a long time after the movie is over. Timeless...
5. Main Piya Teri: (Basant Bahar, 1955) – This movie is stuff musical folklore are made of. Anil Biswas, the great music director was initially chosen for this musical magnum opus but the distributors insisted on SJ – whereupon Anil made his displeasure very clear and reportedly passed some derogatory remarks on SJ's lack of Classical Expertise. Shanker picked up the gauntlet and along with Jaikishen proceeded to give some of the finest classical based songs ever created. Each of the songs was a gem – the Manna Dey classic in Pilu - Sur Na saje Kya Gaon Re and his ode in Miya Ki Malhar (Bhay Bhanjana), the Manna-Bhimsen number – Ketaki Gulab Juhi in Basant Bahar, the Rafi classics Badi Der Bhai ( Pilu) & Duniya Ne Bhaaye (Gurjari Todi or Lalit – I am not sure, comments welcome), the Lata-Manna sweet duet in SJ’s favored Bhairavi – Main Piya teri…which is probably why I pick Main Piya teri amongst the galaxy of shining stars in Basant Bahar as my personal favorite. Listen to it and let me know if you feel as I do – SJ and Bhairavi were truly made for each other. Also, the old story of Shanker telling Pannalal Ghosh on what, how and when to plan his famed flute is the stuff legends are made of & what are they if SJ aren’t one! The best amongst the very best. Truly Classical...
6. Ae Mere Dil Kahin Aur Chal (Sad/Happy, Daag, 1952) – Amazing song, Talat at his very best. Somehow Talat was never as popular as a Rafi or a Mukesh amongst the post ‘1970 listeners which is somewhat of a tragedy. I thought he has an amazing voice admirably suited to the soft and sad songs he often sang principally for a less Debonair Dev in the early fifties and a more composed Dilip around the same time with so much feeling. The two sides of the Daag classic is an example to boot – Dilip as the drunken hero in the sad version made the audience look up to the heavens with him as he cried ‘Chup raha beraham aasman’ and made the same audience tap the feet in energy as the strains of the happier version floated like the season’s first snow flakes on a cold Boston morning. SJ at it – the sad and soft allied to the enterprising and energetic. Super Stuff.
7. Ae Bhai Zara Dekh ke chalo (Mera Naam Joker, 1971) - For sheer joi de vivre this is hard to beat. Mera Naam Joker was a disaster at the Box Office prompting Raj Kapoor to banish himself from the screen and SJ from the Music Studio but the movie was a musical marvel - one of the finest all round musicals of all times. The pathos laden strains of Jaane Kahan Gaye wo din contrasted perfectly with the playful Asha classic Paan Khaiyo saiyaan hamaro. The philosophical Jeena Yahan Marna yahan found a telling riposte in the sparkling Kehta hai joker. But for me the finest was the Manna contribution to Mera Naam Joker - the song fluctuated constantly, with the fast and the slow strains and the meaningful lyrics ending quite magnificiently with Veeran duniya ka basera hai. It got Manna a well deserved Filmfare best singer award. Philosophical stuff with a rythm about it.

8. Ye shaam ki tanhaiyan (Aah, 1953) - Again I am picking a song from what was a box office disaster prompting Raj Kapoor to make a musical Boot Polish instead of what was supposed to be a bold attempt at making a songless wonder. Hear this and leave a comment - has Lata ever sounded better? Aah had amazing numbers, the Mukesh Lata duet (Jaane Na Nazar), the Lata solo picturised on the other sister (Sunte the naam hum) and the Mukesh lullaby (Chhoti si zindagani) come to mind immediately but this Lata solo was - for me - the pick of the jewels in the Aah crown. Sheer Melody from the melody queen.

9. Baharon Phool Barsao (Suraj, 1966) - The pick of the prolific Rafi-SJ-Rajendra Kumar collaboration for me. Suraj was a great musical despite Shanker's fascination with Sharda in Titli Udi. Baharon Phool Barsao had it all - excellent initial music breaking into a crescendo, good lyrics, Rafi's romantic voice, the amazing use of orchestra and the clever use of the variation in Rafi's voice. My friends may wonder why I havent picked some of the better known Rafi-SJ combinations but for me melody is key, rythm and beat come later. For sheer romance and melody, this ditty is hard to ignore amongst the ten best. The most romantic voice singing one of the most romantic numbers. Beautiful.

10. Jiya Bekarar Hai (Barsaat 1949): The song that started a rage - SJ's initiation into Bollywood as a musical entity. Legent has it that the team sat on the footpath outside the recording studio wondering about their future - little knowing they had created history - the best, most versatile and the most popular music directors of all time were born. Barsaat had several first, Lata singing all the songs for both the heroines, the use of significant orchestra, a single song sung by two different people in tow different locations to different sentiments (the rumbustious Mukesh and the doleful Lata in Patli Kamar Hai) but for me Jiya Bekarar Hai is the key song in the SJ repertoire. If this song isnt as good as it was, SJ would not have become what they did - the best of all times.

You may realize I have been partial to the early fifties – I think the duo gave their best music when they were together – in the true sense of the word – and a lot less effective or evocative when a lot more than the hyphen separated them.

Consultative Elicitation

Introduction:

I have been a consultant for a significant portion of my working career working mainly in Financial Services (Capital Markets principally), Retail, telecom as Vertical Domains, CRM and Offshore Development Process/Methodology Definition as Horizontal competencies in geographies ranging from North & South America to Continental Europe, Japan and APAC. This experience has stood me in good stead to understand the nuances of what to expect from customers who know something is not quite right but probably don’t know exactly what or how to influence the outcome positively. Consulting has been a much maligned term especially in India and some developing markets but one must know that before one can commence writing code or testing it – one needs to ensure the requirements are elicited and documented to the best extent possible. As one moves from effort based pricing to outcome based pricing, this is becoming critical to define ROC and ROI.

Consultants would always tell you that the customer never knows what they want to do. However, they almost always know what they want at the end of it all – the problem is that this ‘to be state’ is very often information driven and not data driven, its emotion driven and not facts driven and most times is individual driven and not organizational driven. Unfortunately few of us are experts in interviewing techniques (‘Elicitation’) and get customers to talk candidly about their issues, perceptions, opinions, tasks and bring them I into the context of defining necessities, needs, wants and desires. Sherlock Holmes once commented the issue with simple cases is the largesse in terms of clues and the good detective knows which is important and which are not – it’s often similar in Elicitation. Most consultative Elicitation commences from a position of extreme information overload but less reliable actionable data. So the first step is often to determine which the data elements are that need further elicitation and which need to be kept in abeyance. Let’s now understand how to approach such cases of Consultative Elicitation.

Research: I always tell people that the key to a good consulting effort is the background research one does on the prospect and areas of initially isolated concerns. The research needs to be comprehensive ranging from Market facing data (Revenue, Growth %, areas of growth, areas of growth vis-à-vis market, profitability, profitability around different business areas, strategic direction, cost of support, cost of operations etc), Internal Strategic Initiatives – Internal research data, HR management and initiatives, Press Releases etc. This would give a very good idea where the issues and concerns could lie thus focusing the attention much better during the next phases. This ensures the initial discussions and interviews become validation statements rather than Q&A sessions cutting out valuable time and increasing management attention. Articulating a research objective sets the stage for a successful interview.
Developing the Base Questionnaire - The right questions are those that help us get beneath the surface and understand the customer’s world, work, and concerns and validate assumptions. These would be more in terms of validating some of the data and associated conclusions one could have drawn from extensive research. This would result in either focusing more on the areas of concern earlier identified or going back to the drawing board for further focused research. So initially, it’s recommended that one speaks about overall objectives, options, directions and broad level concerns.
Developing a Good Questioning technique: It’s a good practice to clearly enunciate and understand the overall objectives internally before meeting the customer & commence asking questions. What do you hope to accomplish by interviewing the customer? Do you want to explore broad options or understand a specific business processes? A wandering, unfocused interaction will yield paltry results and frustrate the customer. Once you’ve defined the broad objective, brainstorm a list of all the questions, suggestions etc related to the topic. It’s a good practice to organize the questions in a set of matrices – on the horizontal plane from general to specific and familiar to unfamiliar & in the vertical plane around opinions, recommendations, perceptions, risks & emotional issues (including HR issues). The process of preparing questions helps to identify key topic areas to cover. Following a set list of questions isn’t the point: successful interviewers invest time in designing and testing questions—but then use them as a guide, not a script. As you prepare for an interview, consider different types of questions. Each type will serve a purpose and elicit a different response:
1. Context-Free Questions
2. Meta Questions
3. Open Ended Questions
4. Closed Loop Questions
5. Leading and Show Me Questions
6. Past-Present-Future Questions
Develop In-Depth Questionnaire Patterns: The key to elicitation is developing the detailed requirements is analyzing data obtained from Research, User Interviews, Manager Interviews etc and reverting with a series of if-else, what-if and but-if logic loops. These would enable the interviewer to focus on key core issues while ensuring the tangential ones and symptoms of problems get documented as such. You could think the data is adequate when all the data from Research, User Group Interviews, Other Interviews, and focus interviews is able to identify a set of concerns / issues (process, technology or people) which would explain at least 90% of the issues and concerns expressed.
Data Analysis Template: FTSC: One good practice which I have come across is to analyze all data on the basis of the FTSC dispersal – Foundation, Tactical, Strategic and Continuum. Basically it means that all issues or data could either be related to Foundation (base issues, typically operational and can be rectified by minor operational modifications) Tactical (short term, needs some operational and process tweaking), Strategic (medium term, market facing issues which need broader and senior management), Continuum (Broad Operational areas - fairly operationally efficient but need constant monitoring and efficiency checks).
Conclusion Template: The most critical aspect is the presentation of the issues, suggestions and recommendations. Always remember the client is almost always aware of the issues – the symptoms & sometimes the underlying causes – and tailor analysis to
1. Symptoms observed
2. Possible Causes
3. Probable Causes after data analysis
4. Criticality of causes
5. Recommendations – Process, Technology, Others
6. Suggestions – Process, Technology, Others
Some Pointers: Before you rush off to try out your interviewing skills, practice. Start with a colleague, and then try your interview with an internal customer proxy or subject-matter expert. Its always a good practice to work in pairs with the members taking turns to ask questions and BOTH taking notes. Its better to limit the questioning sessions to 4-5 hours in a working day and keep at least 30 minutes between sessions for note-sharing and data sharing. Avoid using this time to draw conclusions but use this solely to flesh all details and document them effectively. A quick 30 minute discussions with all interviewers at the end of the day – typically informal – is a good idea to get some first impressions about the people, who seemed very open and others who probably were not. At the end, just remember consulting is not rocket science – all it needs is a thinking mind, perception, an eye for detail and documentation ability. Its good to have the requisite domain knowledge but often I have seen its needed as a team – not with every individual.

An Evening in Sydney

The most arresting aspect of Sydney – it’s a lovely city and I have nothing against it or the beautiful people who inhabit it - is the fact that all shops and commercials establishments close at 5 PM. Yes, you read it right, 5 PM every day including weekends (actually they close earlier then) except Thursdays. I am not a great one for shopping or doing the tourist rounds – in fact, the only occasions when I went across the street to view the Eiffel Tower when I lived in Paris was those infrequent occasions when friends & relatives used to drop in and insist I show them the Eiffel Tower…actually, but my idea of a holiday is be in the midst of 10 million other human beings in Calcutta reading a good book and sipping the local hot brew in the day time munching on samosas or kachauris or drinking something a bit bitter later in the day… anyway more about my likes and dislikes later but about Sydney first before I digress once again.

This aberration in global terms at least of establishment owners finding places to drink rather than open one themelves leads to some peculiar problems for folks like us who have to earn an honest living by working till pretty late in the evening. When I come out at about 10 pm in the evening which is late by Sydney standards, I very often am the only person in the North Sydney suburb where I live and work when I am around. The biggest tragedy is that the bars close up at 10 (PM, not AM) leaving people like me search and scrounge around for places to get an honest bitter. Tough times folks.

More to come on Sydney…Interesting experience its been so far...

Transforming Contact Centers Using Knowledge Centered Support

Introduction:
I was driving a team responsible for building one of the leading Knowledge Management tools in the world while driving the CRM practice for my orgainzation. Without a lot of background knowledge on CRM & especially Knowledge Management or Contact Center Applications - given my background in software engineering for Financial Services - I was swamped with the data and my corresponding lack of knowledge initially... but the topic was so interesting and topical that I was intrigued. Intrigued enough to spend the past 2 1/2 years - incidentally loving it -working on several contact center consulting projects & CRM implementations especially in the Telecom and Financial Services Industry. Amazing experience and this article is a compilation of some of my thoughts around Contact Centers and Knowledge Management over the past 2 odd years...

Base Camp:
Over 92 percent of U.S. consumers form their image of a company based on their experience using a call center. However, Call Center is regarded as one of the major 'cost elements' for accounting purposes. The tool or process that is most essential for customer attrition is regarded as by many as a 'cost element'. Funny right?

The Customer Service and Support (CSS) centers of today need to transcend much beyond handling customer requests with minimal cost. CSS has to be enabled to make the transition from being regarded as a ‘necessary cost center’ to an ‘indispensable profit center’. The key to this, I argue are Knowledge Management, Channel Integration, Effective HR Training, Integration with Back end systems and a Culture of Continuous Customer Centricity.

Why is KM so important?
Lets understand why KM lays such a crucial role in a contact center or a CSS channel:

1. Minimize time to resolution – the key to customer satisfaction during a call or a transaction is not just the time taken to identify the customer (which is pretty straight forward given the investments most companies have made in stand alone CRM & IVRS systems) but the time and efficiency by which the customer issue or query is resolved to complete satisfaction. This requires a high degree of sophistication in terms of Knowledge Management, Integration etc.
2. Knowledge Driven Service Model – A good KM model allows companies to capture unstructured data, information and structured data and make it available to all employees and customers, as well as outsourced contact center agents/companies. This presents a model for effective updation and modification of Knowledge Management & ensuring the knowledge is captured and processed into identifiable and re-usable chunks of data
3. Customer Loyalty: Effective KM sharply reduces the need for escalation or change in agent due to specialization within a contact center. There is a direct cost benefit of reduced escalation & additionally, a more strategic impact on customer satisfaction. We all – as customers, recollect positive experiences with pleasure which makes customer retention easier and good press due to increased CSAT.
4. Customer Data: Market research practitioners will agree that Customer feedback is extremely difficult to gather, analyze, authenticate and draw actionable items from with a large degree of certainty. With effective KM in Contact Centers there is an easier way out than asking Customers to fill in long questionnaire or answer interminable questions from an often bored and dispassionate interviewer. Knowledge-powered Web sites and other channels enable the business to capture the customer's dialogue with the organization, which can be easily analyzed and action items derived for customer insight and increased wallet share.
5. Pursuit of constant improvement: A structured KM program allied to effective tools breeds a team of people constantly trying to improve available knowledge. This is especially true for companies with a large and diversified customer base and correspondingly large Channel Management office.

A step by Step Primer to Implement a KM Solution for a CSS:
About to come...

My Present Area of non-professional interest...

Presently, my interest & research centers around Shanker-Jaikishen - a duo of music directors who revolutionized music in Hindi Films with some breathtaking compositions in the early fifties and remained the supreme duo till the untimely death of Jaikishen in 1971...This interest got re-kindled when I was on a recent visit to the Bay Area. While I was in a cab proceeding from the SFO Airport to Menlo Park, my phone rang - the tune was set to a song from a movie called Awara released in 1951. The cab driver - a white caucasian - immediately began humming the tune under his breath. Once he realised I had completed my call, he turned to me and asked if I was from India -& whether I know Raj Kapoor - the actor on whom this song was picturised - its incredible to imagine this scene - a white Russian emigrated to US 30 years back and still remembers a tune he had briefly heard when he would have been 10 or 12 years old...amazing...that set me thinking - what kind of geniuses could have created a tune that rests in the sub-conscious mind for 55 years and remains fresh?

Operational Risk

Introduction:
Operational Risk is an area of emerging interest and was a lot more nascent when I got into it and the sheer paucity of information - reliable, simple and accurate - prompted me to write this artice along with a good friend & cousin (in that order) Raghu. This was published in several magazines a few years back and I hope proved to be somewhat useful for practioners in Financial Risk.

Summary: Barings, Daiwa, Natwest, Sumitomo suffered catastrophic losses in the area of operational risk, causing regulators and banks world over to refocus on the topic.
As businesses become more and more competitive, as the pace of change inside and outside the organization continues to increase exponentially, as the market place becomes more and more complex due to technological advancement and innovations, the management of operational change and the risks has become a critical success factor. Business operations will need to be as efficient as possible to deliver seamless service to the customer. Risk management structure and practices will need to mature to satisfy all stakeholders versus shareholders, employees, government, regulators and the society as a whole.
As the new millennium unfolds, the challenge for business leaders and decision-makers is to adopt an integrated approach to strategy, value proposition, customer service, capital management, finance, operations, risk management and corporate culture.
What is Operational Risk?
Operational risks are enterprise wide and inherent in any business. It is more pronounced in industries like nuclear power plants, chemical industries and as has been seen lately in the banking industry.
An acceptable and recognized definition for OR is yet to evolve. However, the description of OR ranges from narrow definition of covering operational breakdowns in processes to broad definitions which capture all risks that are not credit or market risks.
Historically, OR was associated with only operations and technology. The Financial Services Authority, (FSA), U.K., describes OR as the "risk of loss, resulting from inadequate or failed internal processes, people and systems, or from external events." Significant operational losses in recent years in the banking industry have highlighted that OR can arise from internal and external fraud, failure to comply with employments laws or meet workplace safety standards, policy breaches, compliance breaches, key personnel risks, damage to physical assets, business disruptions and system failures, transaction processing failures, information security breaches and the like. With increasing attention being paid to social, ethical and environmental issues, the scope of OR management has extended to monitoring and managing these risks as well.
The Basel Committee on banking supervision has recognized that managing OR is becoming an important feature of sound risk management practice in modern financial markets. The committee has noted that the most important types of operational risk involve breakdowns in internal controls and corporate governance. Such breakdowns can lead to financial losses through error, fraud or failure to perform within accepted time lines or cause the interests of the bank to be compromised in some other way, for example by its dealers, lending officers or other staff exceeding their authority or conducting business in an unethical or risky manner. Other aspects of operational risk include major failure of information technology systems or events such as major fires or other disasters.
Operational Risk - The Drivers
The banking industry is by far the most advanced than any other in attempting to manage the credit, market and operational risks in an integrated manner. Regulatory pressure has helped and goaded the banks to adopt a strategic approach to operational continuity and risk management. It is being realized that by managing risks on the operational side, banks can maximize returns through more efficient use of capital, thereby increasing shareholders' wealth.
Globalization, consolidation, outsourcing, nearshoring and offshoring, breaking of geographical barriers by use of new technology, consolidation, growth of e-commerce, competition etc. have significantly increased the profit-making opportunities of the banking industry. At the same time, increased regulatory focus, increased awareness of "uninsurable" risks, greater focus on corporate governance areas, renewed emphasis on corporate accountability and director's liability, public expectations etc. have become the key drivers compelling organizations to focus on management of operational risks. The industry's risk-control structure has more often than not, not kept pace with the hectic changes taking place at the operational level functionality of the bank.
The Basel II Norms
The Basel committee, saying that operational risk has become too important to ignore, decided that banks must take a disciplined and proactive approach to managing it. Though the final guidelines are still not very clearly defined, it is required for banks to apply an explicit capital charge to cover losses arising from operational risks. Ultimately, this would require two measurement models:
Measuring operational risk and
Measuring to determine how much capital must be allocated.
These models are currently in their formative stages with multiple ideas and proposals being discussed. In the meantime, many "best practices" banks have created reserves for operational risk losses by substituting non-interest expense for the data that the models would otherwise provide. A few banks have made a fair degree of progress in developing more advanced techniques for allocating capital with regard to operational risk. To determine their capital allocation, they simply use a percentage of non-interest expense. These banks have allocated 8 percent of non-interest expense to sometimes as much as 20 percent. If the top 100 banks - which have a combined $500 billion of non-interest expense - set aside 30 percent, the allocation would total $150 billion. As with buying insurance, the banks would have to take an annual charge - using current interest rates of about 5 percent - of $7 billion to $8 billion to buy access to this reserve.
On a microeconomic level, a commercial bank with say $1.0 billion of non-interest expense would have to take an annual charge of about $40 million to finance a $250 million of allocation by similar calculations. Thus this would severely limit the bank's risk taking and consequent profit making abilities. In absence of good models or best-of-breed operational risk management scenarios, banks could rely on this percentage calculation of averaged historical data or another data substitute to establish the required capital cushion. The illogical aspect of this plan is that, regardless of operational risk performance, all banks would be treated alike, and better performers would be penalized as they would have access to correct and accurate data increasing the need for minimum capital allocation calculated on standard derivative functions.
On the other hand, banks that can define, design, develop and follow best practices models to accurately measure their operational risk can allocate just enough capital to cover their exposure by using the newer and more accurate derivative functions. As a result, banks that manage their risk efficiently, measure it effectively, and allocate capital effectively would be rewarded with a smaller regulatory burden and more capital to support innovation and expansion. At the same time, their customers would be protected not by unnecessary amounts of external insurance but by solid operational risk management.
More importantly, true competitive advantages arise from developing an organizational culture that proactively manages day-to-day risk, identifies new risks progressively, shares best practices in the organization and beyond and systematically tracks risk exposures. Building the right culture for that begins with instituting a disciplined approach to operational risk management, starting with the board and filtering down through every level and business unit and across every major process in the organization using a software framework customized to peculiar needs for each bank and country of operation. Once the infrastructure is in place, banks must learn to assess the quality of their risk risk-management programs continuously and assign monetary values to the risks they confront, understand the same and take effective measures to mitigate the same. This is the starting point for building a model that banks can use instead of the standard percentage rate that regulators will probably assign across the industry making the better banks enjoy less leverage.
Measuring Operational Risk
Operational risk is more difficult to measure than market or credit risk due to the non-availability of objective data, redundant data, lack of knowledge of what to measure etc. The data requirements for measuring market risk are pretty straight forward - prices, volatility and other external data, packaged with significant history in large databases easily accessible and measurable. Similarly, credit risk relies on the assessment and analysis of historic and factual data, which is easily available in most core banking systems.
Operational risk, however, is an ill-defined "inside measurement," related to the measures of internal performance, such as internal audit ratings, volume, turnover, error rates and income volatility, interaction of people, processes, methodologies, technology systems, business terminology and culture. Uncertainty about which factors are important arises from the absence of a direct relationship between the risk factors usually identified and the size and frequency of losses.
Capturing operational loss experience also raises measurement questions. Further the costs of investigating and correcting the problems underlying a loss event could be significant and in some cases exceed the direct costs of operational losses. Measuring operational risk requires both estimating the probability of an operational loss event and the potential size of the loss.
Thus any mathematical approach to operational risk struggles with lack of objective data. Operational risk could cost the 100 biggest banks $14-15 billion a year given the evolving nature of operations and a single enterprise-wide historical view of operational risk may not be the right approach.
Instead, banks should develop suitable internal measures of operational risk to substitute or add to available historical risk data. This means identifying categories and classes of risk and gathering all readily available information, which together can support a reliable measure of operational risk in each area of activity and for each category or sub-category. Information can be data on risk experience, inherent risk on risk-scoring mechanisms and subjectively based measurements of risk impact and likelihood. Better operation risk management means that banks are less likely to have major losses through error, fraud or failure to deliver quality service.
Along with protecting a company from potential damage, proactive risk management contributes to the bottom line. The benefits include protection of assets by preventing major losses, protection of shareholder value, avoidance of regulatory censure, the ability to render services without interruption, and the maintenance of a good reputation and public confidence. In the long run, the new Basel II guidelines will motivate better control of operational risk, leading to greater efficiencies in pricing and, ultimately, lower costs for lending money. Institutions with enterprise wide operational risk awareness and ownership and clear processes to monitor and manage it will be best equipped to embrace change and profit from it.
Risk Management Tools
A robust operational risk management process consists of clearly defined steps which involve identification of the risk events, analysis, assessment of the impact, treatment and reporting.
While sophisticated tools for measuring and managing operational risks are still to evolve, the current practices in this area are based on self-assessment. The starting point is the development of enterprise-wide generic standards for OR which includes corporate governance standards. It is extremely important for a robust risk management framework that the operational risks are managed where they originate. Risk management and compliance monitoring is a line management function and the risk culture has to be driven by the line Manager. It is, therefore, the line manager's responsibility to develop the generic operational risk standards applicable to his line of business. The purpose of this tool is to set minimum operational risk standards for all business and functional units to establish controls and monitor risks through control standards and risk indicators.
Once the standards are set, the line manager has to undertake a periodic operational risk self- assessment to identify key areas of risk so that necessary risk based controls and checks can be developed to monitor and mitigate the risks.
Control standards set minimum controls and minimum requirements for self-assessment of effectiveness of controls for the key processes.
The risk indicators identify operational risks and control weaknesses through statistical trend analysis. The risk indicators are reviewed periodically to ensure that they are constantly updated.
Reporting is a very important tool in the management of operational risks since it ensures timely escalation and senior management overview. Reporting should include significant operational risk exceptions, corporate governance exceptions, minutes of meetings of operations risk committee and real-time incident reports.
Operational risk management is one of the most complex and fastest growing areas in financial services industry. The methods to quantify the risk are evolving rapidly though they are not likely in the near future, to attain the sophistication with which market and credit risks are measured. Nevertheless, it is extremely important that the significance and impact of this risk area on the overall viability of a banking enterprise is given due recognition so that there are strong incentives for banks to continue to work towards developing models to measure operational risks and to hold the required capital buffers for this risk.

Tsunami Disaster & Rotary Members Visit Dec 26-31 2004

Introduction:

Rotary along with Sherlock Holmes, P G Wodehouse, Shanker-Jaikishen, Mohd Rafi, Pink Floyd has been my one of my abiding passions. Befitting a Gemini, I am prone to frequent mood and interest changes but Rotary has been one of the 'one fixed spots in a changing universe' as Holmes said about Watson.

At Rotary, we are committed to make the society we live in a better place to work while enjoying all the camaraderie, friendship and fun we share. I am priveleged to belong to a Club in India called Rotary Club of Madras, Chenna Patna (RI Dist 3230) and we did a fair bit of work during and after the Tsunami that stuck our coast the morning of 26th Dec 2004. I have attached a report which I published after I visited the coastal areas a few hours after the disaster trying to lend a helping hand to my fellow countrymen.

REFLIEF OPERATIONS AT KARAIKAL/TARANGAMBADI

The sight that greeted us was incongruous and would have been funny but for the fact that the mood was somber. One Ford Ikon, a Cielo, an ambulance and a few buses were scattered around in a large field along with scores of two-wheelers and one could appreciate the fury that had been wrought when one looked back and saw the now-calm sea was a good 700 meters away. Once in a while, Nature reminds us she is the boss is and we helpless human beings can only look on in awe at the power when on display and in sorrow at the destruction that is wrought.

Rotarians Capt Ravi, Saiseshan, Major Lakshmanan, Praveen Mehra and I; accompanied by my colleague, Anil of HCL Technologies and a few others left early for Karaikal in two cars. It was a good 6 hour drive & we reached Mr Ilangovan’s spacious office close to 1 pm and the mood in the normally cheerful little town was one of distress and sadness. Mr Ilangovan and Mr Chockalingam – 2 Lions as any – accompanied us with some of their associates most notably Mr Kesava who runs an orphanage and Mr Satya for a tour of affected areas and we saw for ourselves the state of roads, houses, bridges and boats.


Roads which proudly once carried 3 buses side by side and boasted a view of the sea rivaled by few, now looked forlorn, their width reduced to a few feet incapable of carrying even our car, the proud embankments reduced to rubble and lay scattered across us, the sides of the road a steep gradient now with water on all sides and a few feet away we saw a most distressing sight – a blue plastic chair on which presumably an old man would have been sunning himself in the early morning warmth and would have watched helplessly as the waves hit him.

The tragedy hasn’t spared anyone from any strata of society. A young doctor slated to go to UK for further Doctoral studies in a week’s time lost his life as he went to play tennis with his friends. His body was found about 2 Kilometers from the shore - a young life and talent lost in prime. Scores of fishermen & their families lost their lives, homes and livelihood and the waves stuck with force and surprise. Several pilgrims lost their life while they were on the beach after spending the morning in the pew praying. More than a hundred patients lost their lives as their hospital – more than a kilometer from the sea shore - was washed away and we saw the now-ghost like frame of the building with no doors or windows.

After a reconnoitering of the area with our new friends, we were informed that there was a good deal of aid material available in Karaikal proper, but the areas near Karaikal like Poompuhar, Tarangambadi etc were without proper aid as they were difficult to reach. We then went to one of the major relief camps at Tarangambadi where we saw 1500 inmates packed into a small school building living off aid. They were eating out of leaves and whatever they could get their hands upon and our distribution of plates and glasses was very welcome. There were not enough medicines and doctors at the site were glad to see the quantity and quality of drugs that we were carrying, drinking water is in perennial short supply and we were able to unload some of the water packets we were carrying. Clothes and bedsheets were to be distributed in areas where they are really needed and our friends in Karaikal were planning a trip to Thirukkadayur to distribute the balance over the next day or two. We also met a hard working Rajya Sabha MP, Mrs Gokulindira and the Project Officer, Mr Balasubramaniam who asked us for further relief material and long term assistance to rebuild houses, schools, hospitals and boats.

There is request for further material most notably, utensils, medicines, drinking water sachets, Bedsheets & Chatais (mats used for sleeping). There is also the need for like minded people to volunteer and ensure distributions reach the right people. Most important there is a very real need to assist the affected people to rebuild their shattered lives – vocational training for widows, houses, boats & fishing nets for the fishermen, schools for children and long term medicinal assistance for people affected both physically and mentally by this most unexpected tragedy.

The most poignant memory of this trip was when we called a certain Dr Valluvan’s number who was a close associate of our new friends in Karaikal. The recorded message ‘this is Dr Valluvan speaking, I am fine…’ the sound dies away to waves pounding in our ears and we could visualize the valiant doctor even at the last moment letting his friends know he is fine. In heaven.

Coelreidge came to mind...Water water everywhere, but not a drop to drink….