Apologies for missing out last week’s mind. We had to do a spring cleaning of the house to set it right for Kabir’s first birthday. And it was a very fulfilling experience. Now, back to business. Let us start with a favourite topic, religion.
For long, we have lived in harmony. The harmony was broken sometimes with clashes that were meaningless and imaginary. To fight for something or someone whom we have never seen but have only felt, is beyond any rational understanding. Yet, we do it all the time. We take it as a personal responsibility to defend an ideology. Sometimes even going to the extent of proselytization.
The mistake is not in just being a Hindu, a Muslim, a Christian or a Buddhist. The mistake is in being a minority who threaten or misconstrue to threaten the cultural ethos of the majority. Talking in management terms, it is about Market Share.
Market Share is defined as the percentage of sales of a product in an industry. Most of us use Google to search for information on the internet. Here, Google becomes the product and online search becomes the industry. Apart from Google, there are other search engines like Bing and DuckDuckGo that operate in the industry of online searches. Thus, for every 100 searches done online, the number of searches done on Google will be Google’s Market Share.
A dominant Market Share is usually when consumption is led and kept above 60% by a single company. Some examples: Google in searches, Cadbury in chocolates, Maggi in instant noodles (probably before it was banned), etc. And every dominant company aspires to do two things to grow:
- Grow the market share
- Grow the pie
Applying this concept to the number of people following a religion in a country, when 60% or more in a country follow a religion, that religion becomes a dominant one. That religion thus becomes the one with majority shares. The other religions that are smaller in market share become the minority. Like every company, every religion wants to grow their market share.
How can market share be grown for religions?
- By converting competition users: By converting people from other religion to their religion
- By converting non-users: By converting people from atheistic and agnostic beliefs
- By adding new users who did not exist earlier: By giving birth to newer people in their religion
- By making the users consume more of their product in a single usage: By making them more pious, drawing them to places of worship and increasing voluntary donations to fuel further growth
- By making the users consume more of their product by finding different occasions: Calls for newer festivals!
For the next 5 weeks, we will take each of the topics and see how we can grow market share for religions.
On that note, let us dive into this week’s mind!
A. Political
This is a case of anti-religious ideologies paving way for extermination. When state or army takes control to exterminate a group of people, one can do little to avert that. They can only flee and end up elsewhere as refugees. The Myanmar government’s organized pogrom is trying to obliterate Rohingya Muslims from the face of Myanmar. Two soldiers from the Myanmar army have defected to testify at the International Criminal Court at The Hague. A bone chilling account!
B. Technology
Consent-to-port: A new mechanism to protect our data, Rahul Matthan, mint
Our data is our data, none of your data. Taking inspiration from a famous maxim from the 1.9 imdb rated Hindi movie Race 3, we should be wary of our data. Data may be the new oil; the difference between the two being data is unlimited while oil is not. Data is generated every second that we are alive. This sentence that I have typed is data-created. If the previous sentence makes any sense, then it becomes an information.
Apart from this, the government owns our fingerprints and irises in the name of Aadhar. The powerful know more than what we know of ourselves. Donald Rumsfeld came up with the concept of known knowns and unknown unknowns.
C. Marketing
Nothing interesting here!
D. Economics
Nothing interesting here either!
E. Sports
EPL has started successfully. Usually the fans go through withdrawal symptoms during the 3- month interval. They go back to watching older videos and read up on which of their favourite stars is vacationing in Ibiza. But all that lull is lost. This time around there was no pleasure in the longing pain of waiting for football to restart. But now that it has started, what a weekend it has been. Arsenal and Leeds have come out to be the teams to watch out for!
IPL started yesterday with CSK doing what it is best at – winning! For the next two months, we would not realize how life whizzes past us. However, giving 4 hours of our lives every day to IPL is going to be doubly difficult. May be podcasts can take a backseat as we listen to the commentary while we wash the dishes!
F. eCommerce
Niche consumer firms grab investor eyeballs, Mihir Dalal, mint
It is always a wonderful story whenever a David challenges a Goliath. In a neutral game, one favours the underdog to win because it creates an excitement. The excitement is because, at some level, the underdog has shown spurts of promise that they can taken down the behemoth Goliath. Also, the underdog is nimble enough to push the boundaries and craft a new set of rules which will be difficult for Goliath to adhere to, given the protocols one needs to follow. This article is about 3 underdogs that are bringing about a revolution in what we have always known as way things will have to be done. They have challenged the status quo to push boundaries. They are testing new waters and have been successful in the initial stages. Will they be successful in the longer run? One must wait and watch their gameplay.
G. Behaviour
https://www.thehindu.com/society/life-hacks-for-young-india/article32520897.ece
Funny and witty! Neat and need of the hour! G. Sampath calls out the bullshit in our thinking in the meanest and the most sarcastic of ways possible. I so enjoyed the article that I made everyone at home read it (including Kabir :P)
H. Books & Cinema
Range by David Epstein is a must-read book if we are blinded by the fallacy of specialization. Specialization works its charm, no doubt about it. But a range of skills gives one an added advantage of connecting the dots. If one has just a range of skills and cannot look at the bigger picture, the skill in desperate need here then is the ability look at the bigger picture and connect the dots. To have creative solutions, various experiences help. And at last someone has penned down that having polymath interests is normal!
I am currently reading a short stories collection called Rhododendrons in the Mist by Ruskin Bond. I am a little ashamed to accept that this is my first foray into Ruskin Bond. And I love his writing already. More on it next week.
We finished The Family Man. Loved it and easily one of the best spy thrillers made. It is a must-watch. We are in the middle of Masaba Masaba. It is funny, light and sometimes therapeutic. The episodes are short, and it is a 6-part series.
In my me-time, I watch All or Nothing: Tottenham Hotspur. With Jose Mourinho, everything is a drama. Got to love this guy for not play-acting in front of the cameras. He is being his genuine rude-self. 3 episodes down and I cannot wait to finish it!
With that, we wrap up this week's musing.
Do share your list of interesting articles that you came across.
Do share your thoughts on what was good and what can be improved.
And that's word no. 1348!
1 comments:
From the comfort of my home, I've always found the Rohingya issue in Myanmar amusing. Much of the world held Aung Sun Kyi in such high regard. Her party's victory was celebrated and her story has been published so many times in so many formats. Almost like a poster child for peace and resilience. Heck, she won the Nobel Peace Prize
Yet, after coming out of the incredibly long house-arrest and assuming power, she defended the Burmese military's stance on Rohingya. The NYT article you shared refers to incidents specifically after she took charge. Have things gotten worse?
In this regard, I wonder which one crushes our morale further. Our terrible situation that never comes to light and hence remains unsolved; or a leader whom we emphatically empowered with our votes and our hopes, who then does a volte-face.
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