Hunger free future

"Every 3.4 seconds, somebody dies of hunger"

Damn! This cannot be happening. Yes. This is the first reaction of 9/10 people. We cannot imagine anybody dying of hunger! Hats off to my friend Mukesh who made the above video around 3 years back. Do watch the video if you haven't.

India's performance at the common wealth games was remarkable. The joy of clean sweeping Aussies at home, priceless! "However, another kind of ‘competition’ ranked 84 countries in accordance with achievements in a different field this week. India was a lowly 67th. The field was hunger", said an article in Hindusthan times on 14th October. The report also added "By hosting the Commonwealth Games against all odds, India has shown that with political will, it can overcome problems and find solutions. With 55 million children under five being underweight, we need to show similar leadership to find a solution to the silent epidemic that is quietly wiping out generations of our children”. I then searched for few more articles on the internet and found this interesting piece "India is failing its rural poor with 230 million people being undernourished — the highest for any country in the world. Malnutrition accounts for nearly 50% of child deaths in India as every third adult (aged 15-49 years) is reported to be thin (BMI less than 18.5)." - TOI, feb 09, 2009.

Hunger is not a new problem, especially for the third world countries. Statistics say that over 90% of the starved population is the third world countries. Let us consider India, what could be some of the possible reasons. I searched for the same and found the following "The government of India's grain godowns are bulging with twice as much grain as is required, blocking about Rs4000 crore. More grain rots on Punjab's roadsides waiting for godowns to empty so that new grain can be picked up by the government". "The report said that while general inflation declined from a 13-year high exceeding 12% in July 2008 to less than 5% by the end of January 2009, the inflation for food articles doubled from 5% to over 11% during the same period." These could be some of the possible reasons at a macro level.

When I was still searching, I found this revolutionary, Pulitzer prize winning picture taken by Kevin Carter. This was taken on his trip to Sudan in 1993 when the girl had stopped to rest while struggling to a feeding center, whereupon a vulture had landed nearby. He wrote that he waited about 20 minutes, hoping that the vulture would spread its wings. It didn't. Carter snapped the haunting photograph and chased the vulture away. The photograph was sold to The New York Times where it appeared for the first time on March 26, 1993. Practically overnight hundreds of people contacted the newspaper to ask whether the child had survived, leading the newspaper to run a special editor's note saying the girl had enough strength to walk away from the vulture, but that her ultimate fate was unknown. Carter took his own life a year later, and his last words were "I am depressed ... without phone ... money for rent ... money for child support ... money for debts ... money!!! ... I am haunted by the vivid memories of killings and corpses and anger and pain ... of starving or wounded children, of trigger-happy madmen, often police, of killer executioners..". Imagine how much suffering he would have gone through, had he been alive today.

Is there anything that we can do about it? I found this quote by our father of Nation "There's enough on this planet for everyone's needs but not for everyone's greed." How true. Please do not waste food. Every rice grain few rice grains we waste would have made their day for thousand of people in our own country. We can even take many other precautions like cooking only as much is required or re-distributing the wasted food. Thinking on these lines. I searched for any waste food redistribution organisations in India. I hardly could find any. I found one NGO named "bhookh", and they are doing a phenomenal job. With hunger growing at this rate, we are in urgent need of these organisations, who can reach the needy, who can redistribute the tonnes food left over in parties, marriages etc.

Let us do our part in making this rich nation, truly rich. Because, when politicians can’t do anything, people can! And we as the ultra-educated youth of this nation, definitely can. If little things like these help save the life of a person, why not. Let us spread the message and wipe this silent epidemic of its roots.

Visit this website betterworld.net, which is dedicated to fighting this cause. A quote on the site says "If we are going to stop wars on this earth, we are going to have to make war on hunger our number one priority." - David W. Brooks, member, Presidential Commission on World Hunger..

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Sources:

A Special thanks to Mukesh for the awesome video. Hunger: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4b9SNbAihQ&feature=fvw

Kevin Carter - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Carter

Better world http://www.betterworld.net/quotes/endhunger-quotes.htm

What India's growth story conceals http://www.hindustantimes.com/What-India-s-growth-story-conceals/Article1-613072.aspx

India tops world hunger chart http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/India-tops-world-hunger-chart/articleshow/4197047.cms

Bhookh http://www.bhookh.com/un_world_food_proramme.php

Between godowns and chronic hunger in India http://www.dnaindia.com/india/column_between-godowns-and-chronic-hunger-in-india_1401812

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Latent demand, Psycho-graphic segmentation and Holistic marketing

"It is clear that the forces defining 21st century are leading businesses into a new set of beliefs and values. Today's marketers best recognize the need to have a more complete, cohesive approach that goes beyond the traditional applications of marketing concepts." The lines given in Marketing Management by Kotler and co. I couldn't think of a better introduction to this post than this. I am writing about a few amazing concepts, which I found are the amazingly relevant in todays world.

The meaning of the word "latent" is "potentially existing but not presently evident or realized". Latent demand is the demand which the industry does not know it exists. A good example is the ready mix masala. People never knew that ready made masala could make such a big market. Though masala had been used always, it was prepared at home with a lot of effort. But tapping such a big need just of no where was amazing. The other examples could be camera in a mobile phone, trolley suit cases etc. Though it might take a genius to invent a new product, all it takes is a good thinker/strategist to identify a latent need and with so many inventions already done, latent demand marketing is a wonderful way forward.

Gone are the days when the market segmentation, for promotion of any product, was done on the basis of age, gender, region etc. Though demographic segmentation is still a powerful tool, it is not conclusive. Consider the following example given by our prof yesterday, the real ages of a retired army person and a bank manager might not be the same. So here comes psychographic segmentation, which uses the psychology of customers along with the demographics to narrow in on a market segment. A simple example could be McDonald's which altered its global menu to match the Indian appetite. We also see several ads like mountain dew, where the spirit of adventure or cadbury's diary milk where the spirit of celebration is marketed.

Holistic marketing recognizes that everything matters in marketing. It is based on development of processes and activities which recognize their interdependencies. It has four main concepts, out which integrated marketing is a beautiful concept. It explains that the 4 P's of marketing i.e. product, price, place, promotion, should communicate and deliver the same value for customers. An example could be cadbury's celebrations. Here the only idea is celebration, which is clearly reflected in all possible ways.

Our marketing classes have begun from the last week of September and it was a different story altogether. Thanks to our prof, there were so many assignments and submissions from day 1, and this added to our misery as we were already flooded with company presentations, filling up applications etc. The good part was, there was never this amount of exposure to the industry, ground realities, which ideally should have been major part of the curriculum in an MBA. After two weeks of data overload, we had a market survey project on our plate, the first of the many to come. Our topic was book buying patterns of children and the location was an on going book fare in Lucknow. So we, as a team of 5, had done a good job in interviewing at least 20 children. The findings were common, like the books recommended by teachers or parents sold the most, books with lots of pictures had higher sales etc. One thing was a most interesting factor, we found among students of age group 10 - 12, the maturity or at least trying to look mature by flaunting books like the Oliver twists and Tom sawyers. The experience as a whole was enjoyable.

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Exams, Dabangg and home sweet home..!

This whole curriculum of Term 1 was amazing. There were seven courses in all with three full and four half courses. After so many varied courses in so less time, I now wonder what have I really learned. Apart from a few accounting concepts and Micro economics, I am not very sure that I am going to remember the other things so well. Economics was the most interesting to me, especially Game theory. It was so amazing that I am now seriously considering Strategy management along with Marketing.

The last week in term 1 was less hectic than expected. Luckily, the deadlines of the projects were spread along the week from Sunday to Wednesday. Now that we all know each other well, the projects were less hectic this time. Luckily, I was done with all the projects early and exams were fast approaching.

Somehow, these exams again reminded me of my B Tech exams as I was opening the book for the first time for most of the subjects. I tried very hard this time to change my habit of sleeping early, but with a lot of difficulty I learned to study till 1. Time moved at snail’s pace during exams with most of us having started counting down a couple of weeks back! The day before the last exam was the longest and the exam being an open book exam made it even more difficult to study. I wanted to remember at least the chapter names so that it would become easier to search. A fiend of me gave me an even more brilliant idea to look at which part of the book others are going through if you get lost. The final exam was less painful as all I wanted was the exam to finish. The joy on everyone’s face after the exam was an amazing scene. After three months of nonstop activity, it was time to enjoy! It looked like the last annual exam and the start of summer vacation.

After a lot of planning, we visited the Imambara in the evening. The climate had added its part to the beauty of the day. Then was the time for Dabangg! The movie was an absolute cracker from scene one. It was a complete high drama telugu movie, with scenes, fights, songs and even the romance seemed to be a spoof. But it didn’t matter as all we wanted was enjoyment and dabangg had lots of it. Sukanya Venkatgarhavan of Filmfare rated it 3/5 stating, "Dabangg rides totally on Salman Khan's magic. Had director Abhinav Kashyap cast a less popular actor, it’s doubtful the film would have the chutzpah that Khan has lent to it". Salman was a treat to watch, his dance and fights attracted many whistles in the hall, after long time in a Bollywood movie. Sonakshi was beautiful in some different way but portrayed the role superbly. There wasn’t a moment to relax as the movie never seemed to be boring. There was sentiment, music, action, romance and an excellent screenplay of all of these together. My thumbs up to the director, Abhinav Kashyap, and all the best for his future projects.

The next day started with a lazy morning. I went for a photo shoot of the campus along with a friend. The freedom was amazingly enjoyable. Our flight to Hyderabad was at 2.45PM. The journey was pleasant as there were around 12 of us travelling together. After 4 hours, we were in RGIA Hyderabad. Hyderabad, as always, was so lively and vibrant and truly enjoyable. I had a nice truly hyderabadi dinner with my friends as my bus to Guntur was at 11PM. The stay in Guntur was what everyone dreams of. I had a nice time sleeping and eating, as my mother prepared a special for me almost every day. One week was too short and I never felt so bad to leave home. The time table, with a few additional subjects for this term, was sent in the holidays, adding to it were the summer placements, and they all made my feelings of not going back even stronger. But as everyone did, my journey back has started. I reached Hyderabad a day before to meet all my friends. I went to JNTU H, fifth time after I left college. Our flight back was on the next day, which was a pleasant journey too with around 35 of us travelling together.

Life is normal again. Classes, Projects, Assignments… 13 weeks to go, for 2^nd term vacation!!

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