As an individual we all avoid facing the reality at some point or the other, as we do not like or understand the reality. A simple example is in the movie “Wake Up Sid!” where the actor is avoiding the reality that he has to grow up / work hard / achieve something in his life. Later when the actor faces the consequences (i.e. is kicked out of his house and so on) then he realizes as he can no longer avoid the reality. A more common example is avoidance of the reality that luck exists, and sometimes no matter how hard you try, things just don’t go your way.

Next, lets consider as countries (this was the original connotation of the person who said this statement as well). Greece is probably just the starting of the consequences of reality which many countries have been avoiding. The reality that you cannot spend more than you earn! Budget deficits have been a reality but they have been ignored in the past, but now they no longer can be. Even India as a country is ignoring many realities, one of them is that ‘our politicians are not leaders and can cause a lot of problem in the nation’. The average citizen of India is too busy earning livelihood and is avoiding this reality. I hope we never have to see the consequences of this but something tells me we might.

To think of it even as humans we are avoiding many realities. One of them being that we are not abusing this planet, and the frequent earth quakes, tsunamis, and tornadoes are probably just a consequence of it. We are avoiding how many natural resources are we using like the global oil reserves, the pollution we are causing, our ever increasing world population, and many many other realities. Maybe one day we will face the consequences and at that moment we won’t be able to avoid them.

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To quote the article,

The BBC understands that Buzz was only tested internally and bypassed more extensive trials with external testers – used for many other Google services. Google said that it was now working “extremely hard” to fix the problems.

This brings us to the controversial question – How much testing is good enough? The last week is indeed an ideal case study about Product launches in the internet world. The swiftness with which the firm has responded to the privacy concern of users is nothing short of legendary, I must say. They created a war room, changes were made live in days across all users and lots of privacy concerns have been addressed already. But could all this have been avoided in the first place?

A brief background about the case in point- The pressure to get this product live must have been immense, given the strategic nature of this product. Facebook, the world’s biggest social network recently got its 400 millionth user signed up. Orkut or friend connect on the other hand weren’t growing as fast. Also, there was a bit of a thinking shift here as well – something that is above routine testing -A friend on Google talk is a two-directional relation ( You have to give specific permission to another contact who wishes to chat with you) while a follower on Google Buzz is a one-way relation. This leads to complications, particularly in the email ecosystem. Hence, there must have been a trade-off between (a) time to go live (b) Testing (c) Philosophical shift from a friend to a follower.

This is just one of the many cases though. A startup can afford to correct such mistakes over time, since they start from ‘zero’ users. However, an established firm cannot afford that kind of luxury. The TTgL (time to go LIVE) v/s adequate testing tradeoff will always exist. How to get it just right is the question in my opinion – Put in your insights in the comments section …

Also, to have your own article on Strat.in , do check our Write a Post section…

Image credits: 1

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a)  India invited Pakistan for secretary level talks. The move astonished everybody, as up till now, India had categorically told Pakistan and the West that it would talk only and only if Pakistan took some ‘credible action’ against the terrorist groups operating from its soil. What prompted India’s proposal for the talks is worth wondering, but what followed was even more horrible!

Islamabad:  Pakistani foreign minister, ‘A year back, they talked of attacking us. Now they are inviting us for talks. They have realized their mistake. Pakistan has forced India for talks’. Replying to a question, he said, ‘Yes, Kashmir will feature in the talks and certainly, we will also rake up India’s involvement in Baluchistan’.

Back, New Delhi:  The Ministry of External Affairs had nothing to say! They were shell-shocked! Advani claimed that India was under huge pressure from the US to resume talks with Pakistan. In other words, we have no sovereignty and we dance to other’s tunes!

I am closely following India’s foreign policy for the past few years and believe me; our policies are governed by childish emotions rather than logic. We have framed the most babyish of policies! Here is what we have done in the past:-

First, we allow Pakistan to attack us! Then we threaten them with a war. US calms us down. We refuse talks. We demand action. We demand punishment. Pakistan does none. We wait and wait. We plead US. We wait again. We offer them talks. Man, come on, what were you doing for the past one year? Why did you give false assurances?

2) Ironically, India was kept out of the all important Afghanistan talks. We are rebuilding Afghanistan. Our tax payers’ money is being pumped into Afghanistan’s economy to keep it on fast-track recovery! We have a huge role to play in there. But when it comes to some serious business, we are given a cold shoulder! What the hell are we doing in there if US want to reconcile with the Taliban? Believe me, if Taliban has its way in Afghanistan; better be prepared to leave the country. In fact, this should send warning bells ringing back in New Delhi.

The larger perspective: If India is really serious about its business in Afghanistan, it should understand certain things really well. First, the US wants India-Pakistan never to resolve their issues. Second, it wants the Central Asian countries fighting with each other. This way, it hopes to put brakes to economic growth in India and China. A Taliban controlled Afghanistan would never let China tap resources in Central Asia and even create problems for it. Third, India needs to persuade UN to send its peacekeeping forces to Afghanistan. This way, it does not have to run away when NATO leaves Afghanistan.

Hope to see what you think about this issue!

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Thus when RSS and Rahul Gandhi took the bold stand and countered them I felt a relief and I felt proud of both of them. The steps which Rahul Gandhi took might be considered a political game by some, nevertheless I think he deserves a big applause for them. Quoting from IBNLive “In Mumbai, men in the NSG were from Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh and Maharashtra. At that time they were silent and did not say that those from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh should be taken out. India has to move forward and all have to be taken forward. India belongs to every Indian. Every part of India belongs to every Indian. All Indians have every right to go and work anywhere in the country.” The demands which Sena have been making are nothing short of regionalism and if left uncriticized will probably lead to a demand for a new country! It seems even to work or stay in Mumbai, people should apply for a Visa according to Sena. By answering them Rahul Gandhi actually took considerable risk but in the end came out shining brightly as a star.

Moreover that is not all that Rahul Gandhi did. Rahul went to Mumbai to show Sena that he does not fear them. Although he had a million security guards to protect him but the step was important, because it actually showed that Rahul does not fear a faceoff with Sena for his words! Moreover what Rahul did after reaching Mumbai is unprecedented. Rahul went to an ATM, took out cash, bought a local ticket and traveled in the mumbai local! This is a big achievement because I don’t recall any chief minister of Maharashtra or any major leader who has presented himself as a common man and traveled through the common man means. Rahul Gandhi would have a many security men, and the train will probably be on the fast track and many other things, but the experience of walking inside the station to the platform, the smell and dirt on the platform, the noisy mumbai local, are all a part of Rahul’s memory and hopefully one day he will make an effort to rectify this.

I feel the young leader has shown bravery in his approach and truly deserves appreciation. Will wait to hear your comments on this one though!

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On one side heavily criticized for his comments on the recent IPL auction for Pakistani players, Shah Rukh Khan had to moderate his comments and views for his upcoming movie – My Name is Khan. After being type casted as a “Traitor”, Shah Rukh Khan even though being one of the most popular names in Indian cinema had to negotiate for the release of his movie which has a budget of around Rs 38 crores. The movie distribution rights have already been sold for Rs 100 crores to Fox Studio (above the Rs 90 crores for Ghajini). Here was the battlefield for Shah Rukh Khan

And on another, one of the biggest up comer in Indian politics – Rahul Gandhi who will someday or the other be the Prime Minister of India also had exchange of words with Sena for his support to the Uttar Pradesh and Bihari population in Mumbai & Maharashtra. His comments on the North Indian NSG men were twisted to be an insult to the Marathi Police men who fought to death in the 26/11 terror attacks. On his recent visit to Mumbai, he was welcomed with black flags but the power of being the son of the most powerful lady in the country no one could scare Rahul a bit. Also his post Mumbai visit to Bihar brought interesting twist into Politics. His equation seemed to be like this:

Coming down to Sena who seemed to have been the biggest loser of both the incidents who played political cards to gain more ground in their vote bank. Now type casted as big mouths, Sena and similar parties are being criticized for all words and no work. With Marathi aam aadmi demanding jobs instead of politics they are in a very tight spot. Their equation was like this:

When Rahul Gandhi used public transport to relate closer to the Mumbai residents, he could successfully create a new wave of positivity and compassion. He also created a perfect ground for his visit to Bihar to revive Congress grounds. All in all the game of Politics, Economics & Power seems to have been negotiated in the battlefield by each of the players known to be the best in their fields.

(Views are personal and Strat.in is not responsible for them)

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See the greatness of the IPL (Indian Premier League), how highly it stands among other sporting events, which has already provided us so much drama before the play has actually begun. It is in the news all over, flashing here and there, and catching eyes of all. Media is so much excited! After all, everybody was so much bored to see bald-headed Headley and evil-smiling Rathore’s face every day at the breakfast. IPL has provided the idle-sitting cricketers something to chirp about, write columns and give fancy statements in the media. It has given some freshness to the Pakistani people who had all got bored burning effigies of the US and the Taliban. It has given Pakistani ministers something to brag about and divert attentions from more serious issues.

Anybody who is not aware of what actually happened (I doubt this), here is the summary. It all started when the star-studded Pakistani team and others, went under the hammer at the IPL auction in Mumbai. To everybody’s surprise, nobody from the T-20 champions got any call! Meaning, all the Franchise owners sidelined the Pakistani team and all of this was pre-decided. They defended themselves saying they were doubtful of Pakistani players stay in India, whether they will get a visa- or not. This makes complete sense! After all, which business group will pump money into something that gives no returns! Now, this is the rubbish part of the story we all have heard. Here is the truth-

Government of India in a media release said that it has already granted visa to 17 Pakistani Players who could go under the hammer at the auction. It said it did not interfere by any means. So why, why after all, all the franchisee ignored Pakistan? Why was Pakistan embarrassed? Reason is not too hard to guess! It was the Shiv Sena’s hard talk that haunted IPL teams. It would not let matches happen if Pakistani players played.

In the past also Shiv Sena had disrupted two Indo-Pak matches, by digging-up the pitch! This is not unusual for them. They dared the Australian team to play in Mumbai. (After ‘racist’ attacks on Indians in Australia). The MNS threatened candidates from North India who want to take a job in Maharashtra. They forced PSU banks to admit only Maharashtrians. They asked film-makers to use ‘Mumbai’ and not ‘Bombay’ in movies. They beat up an MLA for taking oath in Hindi, in the Assembly and in front of the Governor and the media. And, above all, they call themselves patriotic! They are afraid of no-one! Seems like jungle-‘raj’ going-on!

But, it is the Government which is the biggest ‘Gunda’, yes, you heard me right. Can’t they stop all this hooliganism? Can’t they teach this ‘moral police’ a lesson? Can’t they put these law-breakers and murderers behind the bars? What holds them from punishing those crooks who beat-up an MLA? Is the Government afraid of losing its vote-bank and if it is, this is the saddest part of the world’s largest ‘democracy’ where the Government has to bow to hooligans and crooks to retain power.

Everybody is free to work anywhere in India, and nobody can encroach upon this. Every Indian national is free to speak the language of his choice. I find no wrong in Shiv Sena’s (and the MNS) ideology! I support their philosophy and respect the love they have for their state. Maharashtra is a great state, it has rich culture and traditions and they are great people! I appreciate Shiv Sena and MNS for various programmes they conduct for the promotion of the Marathi language. But what I find irritating is the methods they use and misuse to promote their views. They misguide us. I hope you will agree with me.

This post is written by Puneet Yadav. He is a student at IIT Delhi, pursuing graduation in Chemical Engineering. Involved in varied extracurricular activities, Puneet has great interest in history, political affairs, management and engineering. Recently,he has developed keen interest in Fuel Cell Technology. Read his previous post here.

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Gosh! The device perfectly lives up to the hype generated in the last few weeks as the last post describes.
Check out the Apple website or just google for the iPad, and you can get to know all of its features, its sleek design and everything else that makes it another Apple masterpiece.
What I wanted to share here are some strategic insights the the iPad offers for analysis.

1. Technology Reuse and Organic product evolution
Bloggers were talking about the new Apple device to be a tablet that runs on the iPhone OS. Well almost.
The iPad runs pretty much on the core of the path-breaking iPhone. The user interface is similar. And thus the user experience too. This is a perfect case of building or creating a new technology that can be reused, or made reusable from a design standpoint. Everything about Apple is a case study in evolution. The iTunes laid the platform for the iPod. The iPod got itself into a phone cum internet connection device called the iPhone. And now the iPhone has heralded the iPad. There have been many instances of technology products that cant scale up or grow organically and have been constantly forced to redesign from scratch. Oh i reminded of Microsoft Vista now. But hey dont want to spoil the party- its Apple’s day today!

2. Brand-Continuity
Closely tied to organic product evolution is brand continuity. The look and feel of the iPad is just like the iPhone or the iPod touch. Black aluminium shell and multi-glass touch screen. Oooh!

3. iTunes Store. App Store….and now….the iBook-Store
With iTunes for music and App Store for iPhone applications, Apple has basically pioneed the online store model as well along with its iPods and iPhones. The iPad brings with it the iBook-store, where users can easily buy and read books. There are already 5 major book publishers who have signed up for the bookstore to offer books online. Is this the end of the Kindle? Quite frankly, Amazon’s Kindle looks silly now. Personally i feel Amazon should have stuck onto its core competency of online retailing instead of getting into the e-reader device market. The Kindle is definitely not an iPad beater. And i am pretty sure Amazon will soon start selling iPads on their store. They already sell all the ipods and iPhone models. Will they sell the iPad too? That will be interesting considering that they claim Kindle to be the most sold holiday gift of 2009.
Amazon also has its own Kindle store where users can buy the Kindle version of online books for the Kindle e-reader. Keep a watch on who wins the ’store-wars’ now? By the way, the iBook-store application on the iPad is a visual stunner. take a look at the pics online. just visit www.apple.com
Life is good with Apple around! Truly

4. No its not Intel or AMD. Its Apple! Huh? Yeah!!!!
For a very long time Apple fashioned its devices based on chips/processors made by a company called PA Semiconductors. Apple has since bought the company. But they also changed their anti-Intel stand in 2005 and started using Intel chips for their devices. Now hold your breath. The iPad runs on a chip called A4. And yes its designed by Apple themselves specifically for the iPad combining the latest in hardware and software technologies with a processor speed of 1Ghz. At the start of today’s launch of the iPad, Steve Jobs openly declared that ‘Apple is a mobile phone company’ with its mobile phone revenues that have exceeded Sony, Samsung and even Nokia. For a company known to make computers and then music players, this is a terrific statement to make. And to think that they also made their own processor for the iPad? Whoa!!

5. iPad might slay the smartphone/netbook/e-reader in one shot
Just check out the device on blogs online. And read its features. Its got everything that will make you think its better than any of these devices I just mentioned. Not sure however is its capability to effectively work on corporate documents, and Office like files like presentations and word documents. It does allow those too, but for a device thats basically giving u the ultimate pleasure of entertainment and convenience, its not fair to expect it to replace your office laptop! And no! the iPad is much much more than a large sized iPod Touch. Whats going to be interesting is the global rollout of the iPad. Kindle is today being sold globally. iPhone took a while to enter India.  Wonder whats the Apple strategy on the iPad. Too early to tell perhaps.

6. Online Shopping. And Others
Online retailers and merchants now have the biggest incentive to invest more in online retailing. Coz the iPad comes with wireless as well as 3G data plans. That means you can either connect to the internet as you would on your regular laptop, or use your cellphone wireless network. Either way, online retailers who earlier jostled for increased screen space on the mobile phone (read smartphone) will now have a larger than life screen size to work with. And yet not too big to prevent shoppers from carrying the device in their hands and shopping on the move. Other players are moving quick too. The gaming industry is the biggest benefactor of the iPad with Electronic Arts reportedly already working on custom made iPad games and software. The newspaper industry plans capitalise on the pricepoint economics that have come along with the technology innovation. Oh by the way, on stage today was a demo of a New York Times application for the iPad where users can read newstories on the device and and view videos of stories right within the article. So you can click on a ‘newspaper picture’ in the article and ‘the web-clip’ or news video starts playing. A startup called Vook (meaning Video on Book) was in the news recently for creating e-readers and e-reader software that allows readers to read e-books and also view videos of the story embedded. Its not rocket science. But its new. Apple will kill them all with the iPad. We arent surprised.

7. The iPad SDK

When Apple announces a launch, there are some things that have become the norm: Steve Jobs announces the product in a packed house auditorium with a stunning life-size slideshow. He wears blue jeans and a black turtle neck shirt. Expect the words “never before” and “breakthrough” all the way, and dont worry, you are never disappointed. Steve Jobs means what he says. Then there is a ’store’ launch. There is talk of ‘Apps’. And so as we were expecting, Jobs announced that there the iPad would have access to all of the 140,000 iPhone Apps. They would work bigger and better on the iPad. But there were also Apps specific for the iPad. And Apple released the iPad SDK kit. Which means developers or people with passionate ideas like you and me can create applications for the iPad. Expect an explosion of the iPad apps.

8. AT&T and the pricing
Apple did not ditch AT&T contrary to customer dissatisfaction with the AT&T network connectivity on the iPhones. The reasons are ofcourse strategic. It makes sense to continue the deal with AT&T as Apple can extract a sweeter deal than if it partnered with Verizon. Besides AT&T has a more robus wi-fi network across the USA. The iPad starts at $499 dollars. Both Apple and AT&T (which has been coaxed-or bullied- into offerring a contract less 3G plan along with the device) have collaborated to keep the price affordable. I mean..did we really expect to get a tablet PC for 499$? From Apple? I got my HP laptop for like 600$ after some discounts. And it runs on Vista. What a pity!

Well the Apple website has a link to sign up for getting notified about the selling of the device.
80 minutes after Steve Jobs announced the device, that link was down. The last time Jobs announced a new version of iTunes, Twitter broke down.
Apple just loves to turn the tables. Sometimes literally. Well almost!

Oh take a look at the iPad for yourself and do share your thoughts.

Shantan

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Now how does Apple manage to generate such unbelievable hype with every ‘Special event’ that it announces? Why does a MacWorld or an equivalent event looked up to so much by the world in general, and Apple fans in particular? There are many reasons for that, but here are my top 3 in reverse order:

3. The inimitable Steve Jobs - He is the CEO of the decade, the man who survived a liver transplant and someone who gave the best graduation speech I have ever heard. The whole idea of one man being the face of such a huge company is unbelievable! Steve Jobs deteriorating health caused some turbulence in the stock price in 2k8, that is the kind of respect the industry gives to the CEO.

2. Product design - To summarise in one sentence, when Apple says its a breakthrough in product design, they really mean it. Their last breakthrough was Magic mouse – to check one out in a Croma/Super Mall near you to find out what exactly I mean.

1. Their last product, the iPhone -Quoting the recent conference call:

Apple sold 3.36 million Macintosh computers during the quarter, representing a 33 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. The company sold 8.7 million iPhones in the quarter, representing 100 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter. It sol d 21 million iPods during the quarter, representing an eight percent unit decline from the year-ago quarter.

100% growth in the number of iPhones sold, that says it all, doesn’t it? All other firms flood the market with so many devices – Apple released one device, went totally against the market norms and is now a dominant smartphone in the US.

I think the way iPhone has changed the industry is the single biggest reason why there is so much hype about the Special event! 24 hours from now, we all will know what the latest creation is all about! I am definitely all ears tomorrow, for sure! Lets discuss about this in the Strat chatroom in the toolbar you can see at the bottom tomorrow then.

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When it comes to the IT outsourcing market, it seems that we have always been ready. It started with menial data entry jobs and low skill clerical work. While continuing with that, Indian companies upgraded their competency levels and started attracting low to mid skill application maintenance jobs. With the vast pool of engineers and innovative management minds coming into the business, a big wave of BPOS and KPOS swept the country and is still going strong.(Though BPO jobs are lately being lost heavily to Philippines though)Along with these developments, a parallel path of piece meal product development started hitting the Indian shores. Offshore Product Development needed higher levels of skills and companies managed to put together systems to generate those skills and delivered superb results. This is when MNCs started coming and opening offices all over India and the latest trend has become the outsourcing of R&D processes to Indian offices of MNCs like Google, Microsoft, Oracle etc.

Companies are setting up centers here because of the vast untapped pool of engineers and scientist in India and most of the giants like HP, IBM etc generate more than 50% of their revenues from the emerging markets outside US. Moving to India is a part of the strategy to keep the research close to the customer.

What this means that as we have moved up in the value chain, the entire product lifecycle from research to product development to maintenance to voice & non-voice support to menial data entry is happening at the highest level possible – within India! From low skill call center work to high caliber IP generation, we have a talent pool that has stood up every time the outsourcing industry has stretched its hand towards it and we can now start to imagine that we have the experienced resources becoming available in all of these disciplines.

So much so, that for the opponents of outsourcing, ‘losing jobs in the US’ is becoming a secondary stand and the “US Outsourcing away its competitive edge ” seems to have become a more powerful argument. As far as India is concerned, outsourcing has done a fabulous job and continues to be powerful in its place. But it is definitely not an answer to everything. In a BBC radio show debate between Shashi Tharoor – out Current minister of state of external affairs and Niomi Klein – Canadian Writer, even the all optimistic ‘Soft Power’ claim of Shashi Tharoor falls short of being convincing and he does agree that Outsourcing is not a final answer to everything for technology in India. But are we ready or at least on track towards the next step – a “product revolution” to march ahead of the services revolution?

With the vast pool of engineers and now, the experienced pool of professionals catering to every level of the value chain being available within India and with the proximity to most of the fastest growing markets, are we now in a better position than ever to be able to defy the odds and wash off the label of a ‘stagnant innovative and invention technology ecosystem’ that has been applied to us continuously by almost anyone reporting on this topic?

We have had champions within the service industry, master managers who have handled teams of hundreds to dish out world class software for companies throughout the world. What is stopping the champions of our product industry? Is it our culture that discourages risk and looks down upon failures, poor infrastructure, brain drain, or our history of being used to providing ‘services’ to foreigners?

All the MNCs coming to India have shown us that we have the talent and skills that can be leveraged to respond to the highest levels in technology. Are our entrepreneurs, investors, mentors and startups  READY enough to use this same talent, the advantage of availability of experienced talent due to the globalization of R&D processes in technology and put into action the next technology revolution for India ? Or is outsourcing going to be our best answer for the mention of ‘technology’ for years to come?

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While a lot has been written in the media about this issue, ( TOI , NDTV, Rediff ) – has the message reached the common man? Apparently, BMC  (Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation) has roped in Aamir Khan as brand ambassador for their ‘Life is Beautiful’ campaign -

The workshop called ‘Life is Beautiful’, is meant for teachers at all BMC schools where 4.5 lakh children are studying at the moment. Dr Sanjay Oak, dean, KEM hospital said, “Students like Aamir’s personality. He makes films with a strong social messages.” On the anvil is an extensive multimedia campaign featuring the star, “appealing the young to appreciate the beauty of life”

The plan is indeed admirable but I believe, the challenge doesn’t lie in reaching out to students alone. The real deal is in reaching out to parents. A lot of parents in the state believe that ensuring that a child regularly goes to school is the end of their responsibilities towards the child. The truth sadly is far from it. 2 weeks back, I was chatting up with Manu Jindal – a strat.in reader . He is among the 80 odd candidates selected from all over India by ‘Teach for India’ for their 2 year fellowship program. Manu is of the opinion that educating parents about the intense competition in the acedemic world and the need of providing adequate monetary and mental support to the child is extremely important.

Also, I am sure this problem isn’t limited to Maharashtra. Depression in general, must be a nationwide phenomenon ( I don’t have stats to prove this- its a pure estimation). At the grassroots level , there is a need for all stakeholders – students, faculty, administration, course makers and parents to broaden their horizons. In today’s date, 300,000+ students sit for an exam called the IITJEE. Of them, less than 2% are finally going to secure admissions. The ratio is similar for securing admissions into any top college in the country. Clearly, its important that parents set objective, constructive goals for their children. As long as the community doesn’t get this message across to parents, suicides sadly will keep continuing. While its one thing imbibing discipline into children, discipline shouldn’t instill fear of failure. That sadly, is exactly what is happening.

To conclude, let me state that reaching out to parents as the real problem is singularly my take on the issue. There are other (Perhaps bigger) issues like acedemic pressures, academic system etc. But the problem can be tackled at home first, and for that reaching out to parents is a critical element.

Image credit: 1

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