Opinion on "The Senate Committee's Report on the CIA's Use of Torture"

Ever since "The Senate Committee's Report on the CIA's Use of Torture" has come out in the public domain there are two extreme views that I see. Those who would be saying the reports stand that torture was not required and it was extremism and compromised on humanity etc. The other's who would characteristically say the report is wrong, and it was because of the torture that many lives were saved.

I believe the truth is perhaps somewhere in between. Till now I was avoiding to write on it, but now at-least there is one expert who thinks on the same lines although they have left some questions in their article. Obviously since it seems like an American author so I wouldn't get into the details of his biases.

Now coming back, before getting into the moral questions lets try and recall what had happened. In India it was approx 9 in the evening in India when America was attacked.

It was typically a situation that was 1. Not anticipated. 2. And no one had any clue. 3. The top management, in this case the bureaucrats and the politicians who were perhaps thinking they were back in the wild wild west, where everything is my-way or the highway. And hence what followed next was more of a logical conclusion

Stratfor has perhaps got the entire thing closest to reality that most people while are calm now, were jittery then. They correctly diagnosed the problem: "The use of torture was not part of a competent intelligence effort, but a response to a massive intelligence failure."

On torture and what went wrong with US was perhaps quoted by the report as: "The problem with torture — as with other exceptional measures — is that it is useful, at best, in extraordinary situations. The problem with all such techniques in the hands of bureaucracies is that the extraordinary in due course becomes the routine, and torture as a desperate stopgap measure becomes a routine part of the intelligence interrogator's tool kit."

As far as the moral dilemma is concerned. There is a time when you don't know anything, so you get people who deliver with perhaps dubious means and then you build capability and transfer to achieve things in the right way.

This could have sound counter-intuitive and extremely grey. But we need to accept, not everything in life is in black or white. Many things are out-rightly in between.

Change in working style – political reporters in India

I have started falling back on my idea of writing everyday. As said earlier, I was travelling, but then agree its more of an excuse. Perhaps I could have written. Just don't know how or when. 

Off late I have had the chance to read up on certain interesting pieces and also think through some of the problems. For example. 

There was an interesting article in Business Standard on how government reporters are now finding it difficult to get information from the Lutyens. (Click here.) The author then writes about how the flow of information is very stifling on the corporate side.

The one sentence from the article that perhaps can sum up the problem when corporate stifle reporters from carrying their job would be --

"When an entire group gives up probing on a certain company altogether that results in blow ups such as Satyam and NSEL scam."

Perhaps something similar can happen with the government as well if it starts creating choking the freedom of the press. Perhaps political reporters should take a leaf from the corporate reporters' book. Now political reporters should also start reading all documents and make noise for transparency in governance.

They should perhaps think of themselves as auditors who are looking for paper trails and mismatch in the stories or some hard facts. It will increase the work load but perhaps this may be the new way of working.

Sometimes the only way of doing an interesting thing or achieving even decent result is by slogging hard. Now the time has come for journalist to show if they are in the profession because they actually like it or if it was just a coincidence and they don't like to do hard work. 

A Selfie World

After more than two years I was travelling home around a festival time. And the new trend that caught my attention was that many people were taking selfies’ and perhaps capturing their moment. Although I have no clue what that moment would be as in a selfie you rarely manage to capture anything outside your face.

I have nothing personal against it. It’s just that sometimes I find it amusing.

Some of the people on this flight were perhaps a bit over-enthusiastic and actually trying to capture all their moments; like a gentleman went on clicking pictures when his son and the wife coming from the toilet. Which sort of led me to think if I should ask the gentleman, if he was trying to capture the family’s ease of pressure or was it how they walk from loo to the seat on an airplane? But then I thought my inquisitiveness could be taken as rudeness, since I am most of the time inept in handling social conversations.

Anyways, selfie is a relatively new word in the English language. In the oxford online dictionary, selfie has been described as an informal word describing a ‘photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically one taken with a smartphone or webcam and shared via social media.’ Though my observation is that not all selfie find their way to social media, some just are shared within family members or as display pictures for the messaging applications.

Apparently now there are also selfie competitions that are held and awards distributed like here. 

Among the various famous selfies that I managed to see in the process, the following are the best:

Most dangerous selfie ever. That happened.

Fan Thrilling. Smart move for upping popularity.

Example 1 - Beyonce

Example 2 - Pope

It is interesting to know that although selfie as word has come about and entered the usage only since 2002. Though Wikipedia says, that the first ever selfie was perhaps taken by Robert Cornelius in 1839!!! 

A poor excuse!

It has been only 3 days when I made the plan of writing every day, and I have already missed one day. Although I had only set the limit of not having an excuse. The good part of being all -- jury, judge and executioner -- is that you can make the rules in way that pleases you. So I was making an excuse. Hence to compensate I am writing more about my experience. 

Shifting is a tantalizing work. Even though I had to shift merely 5 km and being bachelors we have kept things to bare minimum. Despite this it seemed like a herculean task. While we had movers and packers so they just came, packed everything and dropped it as instructed to the new location. The challenge is upon reaching. 

Since the layout of no two house is same so either you have extra-stuff or you have empty spaces in the house. In either scenario you can be innovative or completely predictable, selling or giving out stuff if you don’t have any use for it, or buying stuff based on the requirement.

The question is how do you be creative in this situation? Well I don’t have an answer to that one, since I fall in the latter category of being predictable most of the time. 

Anyways, when shifting cities always make sure to get an insurance for everything that you are transporting through couriers. 

Also make sure to change the communication address for all the financial and nonfinancial documentations which you will be receiving regularly. Prior to applying for changes you will require proof of new address. Updating address with bank is important as it may affect your credit score. Credit score is important as your credibility for bank loans are affected by this score. 

Many people tend to neglect but if you have changed location then it should also be updated on your passport as well. Another thing to remember would be to always check the electricity meter upon shifting. These are some of the primary items that I learned about to check upon shifting within the city. 

The best one liners of Dilbert

A friend of mine had recently shared this with me.

Some of Dilbert's best one liners:

1. I say no to alcohol, it just doesn't listen.

2. Marriage is one of the chief causes of divorce.

3. Work is fine if it doesn't take too much of your time.

4. When everything comes in your way you're in the wrong lane.

5. The light at the end of the tunnel may be an incoming train..

6. Born free, taxed to death.

7. Everyone has a photographic memory, some just don't have film.

8. Life is unsure; always eat your dessert first.

9. Smile, it makes people wonder what you are thinking.

10. If you keep your feet firmly on the ground, you'll have trouble putting on your pants.

11. It's not hard to meet expenses, they are everywhere.

12. The guy who invented the first wheel was an idiot. The guy who invented the other three, he was the genius.

13. The trouble with being punctual is that no one is there to appreciate it.

14. In a country of free speech, why are there phone bills?

15. If you cannot change your mind, are you sure you have one?

16. Beat the 5 O'clock rush, leave work at noon!

17. If you can't convince them, confuse them.

18. It's not the fall that kills you. It's the sudden stop at the end.

19. I couldn't repair your brakes, so I made your horn louder.

20. Hot glass looks same as cold glass. - Cunino's Law of Burnt Fingers.

21. The cigarette does the smoking you are just the sucker.

22. Whenever I find the key to success, someone changes the lock.

23. To Err is human; to forgive is not a Company policy.

24. The road to success...... Is always under construction.

25. In order to get a Loan, you first need to prove that you don't need it ..

MBA

The following comments were made on The Economist over the "Would the economy be better off without MBA students?"

guest-isoswwj wrote:

MBAs are strewn along the hallways of banks and consulting companies like litter along the roadside. They contend that they bring value to business, and to some extent they do. They remind us that there ought to be cooperative connections between departments in a company that contend against each other for precious resources. They are able to tell us that by moving the sorting table closer to the conveyor belt, we can box our products more quickly and boost our daily output by 2 percent. That's wonderful, but to be honest, they do what anyone would or could do if he were willing to stop thinking according to the party line and to think for himself.

The big problem I have with MBAs is that they are in love with their own set of buzzwords, those words that are either invented (so they can be "branded") or redefined and imparted with specially nuanced meanings that only the cognoscenti would understand, unless of course they stoop to the level of the hoi polloi where we usually reside to explain in the most patronizing way what they mean to say in plain English.

MBAs are not risk takers. They would be scared to death to be exposed to the capital risks of business ownership, to stake the welfare of their families on the outcomes of their decisions to go with this product or that service, and to trust one's inner hunches as we, who actually run businesses, do. They are quite comfortable doling out advice at exorbitant rates, knowing full well that whether or not their advice bears any fruit is completely disconnected from the "value" that they assess for an hour of their time.

I am not opposed to education. I spent 11 years in higher education accumulating degrees, taking extra courses to puff up my resume like the Pillsbury Doughboy. Did it make me smarter? No, but it made me sound smarter to those who had not willingly subjected themselves to the same rigors. It is odd to see how people with sound judgment defer to someone else with a degree. It is as if adding some alphabet soup to the end of one's name is the same as throwing dust into someone's eyes: he has to beg for assistance to navigate a path he has trod many times before.

MBAs do have their place, and my feeling is that their first stopping place should be in the mailroom. From there they could start to climb the ladder, eventually moving into sales where they have to learn the very visceral lessons about what it takes to produce a dollar of real revenue, what it takes to listen to "No" said a thousand times before a "Yes" is uttered, and what it takes to sell an product that is imperfectly aligned with highly moveable public tastes. Finally, when he has mastered sales, he can move into compliance where he can learn what it is to keep a company in the good graces of government regulation whose scope and reach change more frequently than women’s fashions.

Once the MBA has had that kind of "street" education, the combination of what he has learned in class and what he has learned on the job becomes truly valuable...if he has something different to say from what those of us who slug it out on a daily basis already are thinking. There is an old adage in the computer programming business that goes, "If it were so easy, everyone would be doing it." Owning and running a business is not for sissies. It requires a personality that can deal with uncertainty, economic hazards, potential litigation from employees and customers alike, and worst of all, the deeply rooted inner sense that perhaps one cannot endure the costs of perpetually trying to outmaneuver his competition.

If MBAs want to find a real market for what they offer, they should get into the business of building courage and inner strength in business executives who burn out in their late forties, who are doomed to have heart attacks before they are sixty, and who will likely die an early death from the stress of running businesses upon which their employees and their families depend. I think more than ever, what the economy needs are businesses and business leaders who have a conscience and a sense of the debt they owe to society for patronizing their businesses. Instead of the current crop of business leaders, advisors, MBAs, and the rest of the hangers on that are in constant pursuit of "monetizing" essentially worthless endeavors, we need new blood that understands that the most important objective of business leaders is to enhance the lives of those, who by dedicating one-third or more of every working day of their lives to the goals of their employers, make business success a conceivable outcome. Those same business leaders need also to adopt the view that their second and inferior objective should be to enhance shareholder value. If that were to happen, society would truly be different, and the MBAs that emerge from their schools with their faces all scrubbed clean, their hair parted, and their shoes shined like bowling balls would probably be different, too.

posted on 28/11/2012 01:10:19 amRecommended (59)Report abuse

CnKQ7pSia6 wrote:

Dear Sir,

I'm applying for an MBA degree right now. And I've been a management consultant for 6 years.

To see what value MBAs add you have to ask which are the most common sectors/employers that MBAs go into. The answer is unanimous - management consulting and investment banking.

Not to say that these two fields add no value to the economy, but having been a management consultant I can tell you first hand, one doesn't know much at all about a sector at least for the first 2-3 years. Worse still, many of my colleagues don't even know what they don't know. Having the name McKinsey or Bain on your business card doesn't transform you overnight into an insightful visionary (in many cases it makes you obnoxious but just as dumb as you were yesterday). When I first entered the field I was amazed how much crap gets passed around as "business knowledge" and the word I probably hate the most - business "learnings" (I used to angrily say there was a word in the English language - LESSONS - so there's no need to make up nonsensical words). I learned that the clients I was supposed to "advise" had been working in that industry for decades - and me, a come-in-yesterday Johnny is going to advise them on how to do their job better? What a joke. It taught me to listen carefully to the men who actual had their feet on and ears to the ground... you know, the people that my fellow consultants think are not worth listening to... the accountant in that X office who knows how the company negotiates with its suppliers, the field manager who knows how the product actually gets sold and so on.

But now its too much for me. I've come to think that consultants are just smooth slick snake oil salesmen with no real skin in the game. Same goes for investment bankers. Both sets collect their fat fee, no matter what the result.

As for the bankers, I love finance. I really do and that's why I want to study that in business school having never had any formal education in economics or finance (I was a scientist and physician). But I see finance as a critical but support function. I once said to a couple of fellow consultants that our kind and bankers were at best like midwives and it was the entrepreneurs and actual business managers that gave birth to actual value. They looked at me as if I were from another planet.

But you know what the biggest tragedy of it all is? Its that these kids are the brightest and best. The ones sitting around me graduated from universities like Harvard and MIT in subjects like math, physics, economics and chemistry. You know, those old fashioned fields where you need to REALLY think and analyze. Not just make pretty slides. And I used to think at least half a dozen times each day "What a waste!"

There is such a ridiculous echo chamber in these groups that everyone will parrot the latest mantra. I'll conclude with two examples -

1. Teamwork - whatever one can do, a team can do better! Or at least that's what's drilled into you. One of my favorite questions when interviewing candidates for my firm was "Tell me two examples of something that are better done individually than in a team" I can count on the fingers of one hand, the number of candidates that could even attempt a decent answer (among dozens of candidates).

2. Another mantra is "leadership" - but what exactly does that mean? Are the qualities required of the US Army Chief of Staff the same as those needed by the head of Amnesty Int'l? Would a great CEO also be a great president? Is there some formulaic design for leadership? You'd be astounded at how many of the MBA types think so.

I hate to say it but I wouldn't put most of my colleagues in charge of managing a corner grocery store, let alone a large organization.

And yeah - I'd wish they stop using all that stupid jargon! In my experience, the more a person uses big important words to explain something, the less he actual understands the subject. A genius can explain a concept in a way that even a fool would understand. But a fool will explain the same in a way that even a genius would not understand.

Thanks.


My personal views are also similar. And hence wouldnt like to add anything more.

Greedy tip

Among the seven deadly sins that mankind is afflicted of, I would say "greed" is perhaps the most common. Maybe because of my profession, I have managed to notice more instances of greed .

Well I am associated with business journalism, mostly covering personal finance -- Stocks and Mutual Funds -- for over two years. Even in that my domain was mostly about writing features on stocks (Jan 2009- Dec 2010). And everytime I would mention about this, most often people would ask me for a quick tip to make a quick money.

My response was the same then and now, investing is not a fun game. It is not easy money. You will have to do some work to make money. Its like an activity, you can enjoy it only if you like working hard. And I would always offer them tips on how to study the market and understand stocks. Was even ready to help them learn everything that I know.

Alas! Not many people would agree that its not easy money, and then most will actually stop asking or saying anything. Sometimes I get the feeling, they think I have no clue about my job.

In a way, it was sad to see how everyone wanted the easy money. It seemed they had forgotten the proverb: "Give a man a fish and he will not be hungry for a day. Teach a man to fish and he'll never go hungry".

Everyone wants a fish and doesn't care about tomorrow.

In school I had read a story. I am sure you must have read it too. Don't remember the exact text but it goes like:

Once upon a time there was a man. He was poor as compared to some of his relatives but he had everything in his life, a nice house, decent work, good family and was able to meet all his commitments. Then one day he made a statement that if given a chance he will make a lot of money and even the devil cannot take away from him. 

The devil heard and decided to take the challenge. 

The guy started making money and grew rich. Then one day, he was given an offer that he can have as much land as he can run and cover. The man started running, and though he was tired, he thought if he could run a little more, he will have that extra land as well. In the end he dies, ran too more than he should have and the only land that he actually got was the space in which he was buried. 

Now what I don't get why don't people ever understand the lesson.