small is powerful
Small is Beautiful and Powerful too :
“No coincidence should be dismissed as coincidence until it is proved that it is a coincidence”- Miss Marple
Sometimes small and seemingly inconsequential things have a significant effect on the fiber of the time and society.
For example the literacy rate went up from 1981 to 1991 census in India , sample this:literacy Total population 1981 1991 %change Persons 659.3 816.2 23.8 Males 340.8 423.6 24.3 Females 318.5 392.6 23.3 Population aged 7+ Persons Total 536.2 670.1 25.0 Literates 234.1 349.7 49.4 Illiterates 302.1 320.4 6.1 Males Total 278.0 348.5 25.3 Literates 157.0 223.7 42.4 Illiterates 121.0 124.8 3.1 Females Total 258.23 21.62 4.6 Literates 77.1 126.0 63.6 Illiterates 181.1 195.6 8.0 Literacy rate (%) Persons 43.7 52.2 Males 56.5 64.2 Females 29.9 39.2
If we observe the literates have significantly increased especially in the females category.
Was it the The National Literacy Mission launched in 1988 ? yes, but it may as well the rise of television and the power of Doordarshan as a medium to communicate to the masses. It may also be the yellow booths ( PCOs ) that Sam Pitroda succeeded to connect many villages and small towns with, thus ushering a new era of communication between people and spread of ideas with the “ word of the mouth” publicity. Even marketing gurus agree to the power of “buzz marketing”. Imagine pathshala and school as the buzz and the Government with follow up with the NLM and Midday Meal program reinforced the idea.
It is difficult to accept but communication alone has the power to change mindsets and provoke new thought among the masses ( the french revolution taught us that ).
In 1990-2003 the crime rate in the US fell by almost 80% in New York especially in areas like Bronx .Philadelphia, Houston, San Francisco, and Kansas City also saw their crime rates erode. What caused the crime to fall so steeply in Gotham ( Batman? )
Economic and demographic factors can be striked out in New York because the city’s economic recovery in the nineties was weaker than that of other major metropolitan areas. Gotham’s population of young black and Hispanic men—far and away the chief perpetrators of street crime—shrank, but less than the national average.
This surprising and seemingly logically inconsistent phenomenon has been discussed by Steven Lewitt in Freakonomics and Malcom Gladwell in the Tipping Point also. The crime started with the petty crimes like breaking windows and writing hate graffiti on walls. This was the angst of a generation of black people feeling insecure amongst poverty and slums ,lacking expression. Then came Rap and HipHop…
The Rap was initiated in the East Coast ( New York being the epicentre) by albums like “paid in full” by EricB & Rakim. The Hip-Hop albums like Public Enemy's It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back with strong confrontational tone became a rage ,but it transferred the angst of that generation from guns and drugs to drums and words.The bands like The Notorious B.I.G. had all reformed criminals.( so are 50 Cents) The movement spread to the West Coast with the rise of Tupac Sakur in the late 1980s and popularization in 1990s.
( ironically Tupac Sakur became a victim of crime when he was shot outside a studio in NY)
hence probably the power of communication through music may have caused this phenomenon that has baffled social experts for a decade. DonMclean in American Pie asks “ do you believe in Rock& Roll , can music save your moral soul”. Perhaps it does!
Talking of coincidences : what led to the entry of low-end financial analysis (also equity research) in the Indian BPO scenario and what transformed Indian BPO from Call-center centric and mere Data Entry back-end into a finance research hub that laid the cornerstone of KPO in India was a small law in US. The story ( Thomas Freidman mentions it in The World Is Flat) goes…
Initially all the Wall Street big shot firms hired big analysts at a high cost to do equity research.They charged the costs to the brokerage section and I-Bank section also claiming that the analysis helps them convince clients in the I-banking side. The New York District Attorney Elliot Spitzer conducted an investigation in this cost manipulation on the face of many scandals and concluded by a law that stipulated the firms to treat their stockbrokerge and I-banking divisions seperately. The stockbrokerage section now forced to bear the entire cost of the analysis sought to reduced the costs of analysis.
And they naturally thought to transfer a part of analysis to India. Thus enter the domain of financial analysis in Indian BPO scene.
So if we see small changes around us we must not ignore them as they may change what we see.
“No coincidence should be dismissed as coincidence until it is proved that it is a coincidence”- Miss Marple
Sometimes small and seemingly inconsequential things have a significant effect on the fiber of the time and society.
For example the literacy rate went up from 1981 to 1991 census in India , sample this:literacy Total population 1981 1991 %change Persons 659.3 816.2 23.8 Males 340.8 423.6 24.3 Females 318.5 392.6 23.3 Population aged 7+ Persons Total 536.2 670.1 25.0 Literates 234.1 349.7 49.4 Illiterates 302.1 320.4 6.1 Males Total 278.0 348.5 25.3 Literates 157.0 223.7 42.4 Illiterates 121.0 124.8 3.1 Females Total 258.23 21.62 4.6 Literates 77.1 126.0 63.6 Illiterates 181.1 195.6 8.0 Literacy rate (%) Persons 43.7 52.2 Males 56.5 64.2 Females 29.9 39.2
If we observe the literates have significantly increased especially in the females category.
Was it the The National Literacy Mission launched in 1988 ? yes, but it may as well the rise of television and the power of Doordarshan as a medium to communicate to the masses. It may also be the yellow booths ( PCOs ) that Sam Pitroda succeeded to connect many villages and small towns with, thus ushering a new era of communication between people and spread of ideas with the “ word of the mouth” publicity. Even marketing gurus agree to the power of “buzz marketing”. Imagine pathshala and school as the buzz and the Government with follow up with the NLM and Midday Meal program reinforced the idea.
It is difficult to accept but communication alone has the power to change mindsets and provoke new thought among the masses ( the french revolution taught us that ).
In 1990-2003 the crime rate in the US fell by almost 80% in New York especially in areas like Bronx .Philadelphia, Houston, San Francisco, and Kansas City also saw their crime rates erode. What caused the crime to fall so steeply in Gotham ( Batman? )
Economic and demographic factors can be striked out in New York because the city’s economic recovery in the nineties was weaker than that of other major metropolitan areas. Gotham’s population of young black and Hispanic men—far and away the chief perpetrators of street crime—shrank, but less than the national average.
This surprising and seemingly logically inconsistent phenomenon has been discussed by Steven Lewitt in Freakonomics and Malcom Gladwell in the Tipping Point also. The crime started with the petty crimes like breaking windows and writing hate graffiti on walls. This was the angst of a generation of black people feeling insecure amongst poverty and slums ,lacking expression. Then came Rap and HipHop…
The Rap was initiated in the East Coast ( New York being the epicentre) by albums like “paid in full” by EricB & Rakim. The Hip-Hop albums like Public Enemy's It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back with strong confrontational tone became a rage ,but it transferred the angst of that generation from guns and drugs to drums and words.The bands like The Notorious B.I.G. had all reformed criminals.( so are 50 Cents) The movement spread to the West Coast with the rise of Tupac Sakur in the late 1980s and popularization in 1990s.
( ironically Tupac Sakur became a victim of crime when he was shot outside a studio in NY)
hence probably the power of communication through music may have caused this phenomenon that has baffled social experts for a decade. DonMclean in American Pie asks “ do you believe in Rock& Roll , can music save your moral soul”. Perhaps it does!
Talking of coincidences : what led to the entry of low-end financial analysis (also equity research) in the Indian BPO scenario and what transformed Indian BPO from Call-center centric and mere Data Entry back-end into a finance research hub that laid the cornerstone of KPO in India was a small law in US. The story ( Thomas Freidman mentions it in The World Is Flat) goes…
Initially all the Wall Street big shot firms hired big analysts at a high cost to do equity research.They charged the costs to the brokerage section and I-Bank section also claiming that the analysis helps them convince clients in the I-banking side. The New York District Attorney Elliot Spitzer conducted an investigation in this cost manipulation on the face of many scandals and concluded by a law that stipulated the firms to treat their stockbrokerge and I-banking divisions seperately. The stockbrokerage section now forced to bear the entire cost of the analysis sought to reduced the costs of analysis.
And they naturally thought to transfer a part of analysis to India. Thus enter the domain of financial analysis in Indian BPO scene.
So if we see small changes around us we must not ignore them as they may change what we see.
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