Platter of Half Baked Ideas

Stumbled across this article today, and re-publishing it verbatim. Original article can be found here . Apparently, all's not well in Dubai, but people don't know that. but they deserve to. I know many people who have moved to Dubai, hoping to make money and chasing prospects of better life. It sends shivers down my spine to think some, if not all, might be caught in a web as mentioned in the article!! The wide, smiling face of Sheikh Mohammed – the absolute ruler of Dubai – beams down on his creation. His image is displayed on every other building, sandwiched between the more familiar corporate rictuses of Ronald McDonald and Colonel Sanders. This man has sold Dubai to the world as the city of One Thousand and One Arabian Lights, a Shangri-La in the Middle East insulated from the dust-storms blasting across the region. He dominates the Manhattan-manqué skyline, beaming out from row after row of glass pyramids and hotels smelted into the shape of piles of golden coins. And ...

Let me start this post with a question: How many of you have seen the movie ‘Underworld’? If you have, then do you remember ‘The Elders’ from the movie? In the movie, The Elders was a group of three of the oldest and most powerful vampires. T his group controls all vampires and rule s them with a tight fist. And of the three, two die in first movie itself, whereas the third becomes a hybrid of vampire and werewolf. Interesting, isn’t it? Anyway this post is not about fictional characters and groups out of a dark movie. What will your reaction be if I told you that ‘The Elders’ actually exists? It does. And they are nothing like what is portrayed in movie.  T hey are far worse, infact quite good! It turns out that “The Elders are an independent group of eminent global leaders, brought together by Nelson Mandela, who offer their collective influence and experience to support peace building, help address major causes of human suffering and promot...

India definitely needs more of such entrepreneurs. I wish him all the luck in the world. Shaffi is going to need it.

Moving to Delhi opened my eyes to the kind of water shortage we are facing. I had earlier read about growing water shortage in Delhi, but living n water abundant states did not really prepare me to reality. And now that I have experienced this first hand, I am more aware of how we use water than ever before. Given the kind of wastage that is rampant across India (due to various reasons, into which I will not delve now), coupled with exponentially growing population, it is only a matter of time before other cities also face similar or worse water shortages. I strongly feel drastic action needs to be taken, and examples need to be set. Major companies can start by introducing rain water harvesting at their office complexes and production facilities. Real estate developers should follow suit and ensure that all properties can harvest rain water. All major complex should have water recycling systems in place too. I am not saying that this is going to be easy to implement, or eve...

Sticking to the theme of my last two posts, I now come to what I think is the most powerful idea I will probably write about. This is not a business though. It is a non profit venture. And it does not deal in any form of product or service we normally think about. It deals with what I have been writing about – Ideas! The setup I want to talk about does not create ideas, and neither does it sell ideas. It does not even fund ideas, though of late it has started assisting people bring their ideas to life. So what does it do? Simple. It shares ideas. And that I think, in itself is a very powerful idea. With this venture I have come to know about people I wasn’t aware existed, differences I wasn’t aware were made, dimensions and facets I hadn’t thought of looking at. By now many of you must have guessed what I am talking about. I am talking about www.TED.com . TED stands for Technology, Entertainment & Design. From the TED website: "We believe pa...