The Hindu Business Line : Happy Onam thoughts

Do you know that Onam is one of the oldest festivals of India? Or that it used to be celebrated almost throughout South India, from Venkadam (Tirupati) Hills down to Kanyakumari (Cape Comorin)?

Onam is older than Dussehra and even Deepavali, writes S. Suresh in one of the essays included in South India Heritage: An Introduction edited by Prema Kasturi and Chithra Madhavan, from EastWest Books (Madras) Pvt Ltd. Maduraikkanchi, one of the earliest Tamil texts, written around the time of Christ, describes the festival in vivid detail. Those days, Madurai, the capital of the Pandya kings, was widely known for its Onam festivities."

What happened then? "After the Tamil Sangam age that ended around the third century AD, we do not hear about the Onam festival till the seventh century when the Alvars (Vaishnava saints) refer to it in their hymns. By the ninth century, the festival celebrations were restricted to Kerala alone."

Informative and encyclopaedic.

Three Ls

The only path for economic players these days is to compete through innovation, says Jebamalai Vinanchiarachi in Rethinking Development Realities (www.idcrdialogue.com). "To innovate means to improve and develop products and process technologies, enter into new functions (design or marketing) and to move into new industries." This, says the author, is possible through three Ls, viz., linkage with dynamic sources of growth; leverage with other people's money, technology, knowledge, and markets; and learning to innovate.

Thought-provoking essays in honour of Reverend Father Casimir Raj.

`Ashwamedh' traction

Time: 7 a.m. "The siren sounds high in Kandivli (a suburb of North Mumbai) plant of Mahindra & Mahindra's Tractor division, signalling the starting time of the morning shift. Hardly any workers have turned up."

Thus begins a case study in Kanishka Bedi's Production and Operations Management, second edition (www.oup.com), narrating how in the 1980s reporting late was a norm. "Seldom does the morning shift start before 7:30 a.m. During the day shift, it was an ominous scene to find workers stretching out under the trees and relaxing during the working hours. The union leaders hung around the factory without doing any work at all."

M&M has come a long way since then, writes Bedi. "It has won the most coveted Deming prize for quality, and started a farming equipment assembling plant in the US." How did the transformation come about? "The workers were explained the multinational threats looming large. The entire programme was termed Ashwamedh and analogies were drawn from mythology and current competitive situation. This brought about a complete transformation in the workforce."

Well-presented.

Tailpiece

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D. MURALI

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