This is a guest blog post from Kaustuv Ghosh, country manager (India), Mobile 365, who recently attended the 3GSM conference in Singapore. (FYI: I have requested him to write another one on what happened at the conference. Hope he delivers one!). Read on…
Night falls gently on the Singapore river and the slightly sweaty day gives way to a surprisingly energetic evening. Like some stage after a curtain raiser, a kaleidoscope of colours weaves its way across both sides of the riverfront. There is an amazing assortment of humanity here. On my left, a perfectly British looking apartment block disgorges a horde of executives in khakis speaking in a distinctly Australian twang. On my right, a Latin looking chef caresses a polished string instrument while a couple- he European, she Malay- lose themselves from the crowd at the table next to him. I even see a few African American suits and with a familiarity that can tug powerfully at heartstrings, a happy gaggle of dusky young girls disappear into the pink shimmer of a nightclub guarded by Chinese dragons.
It is true that for many years we lost ourselves in the entrapment of a society that holds on. It is now becoming obvious that we may be getting around to recreating our lives with the help of mobility. You realize the power of mobility when you are at a crossroads such as Singapore. This is where worlds and trading blocs collide, strangers meet and transact. Blackberrys, laptops and a staggering assortment of mobile phones create the strings that tenuously hold together these exchanges, which lead to more exchanges. It may be a weary familiarity to people from the developed world, for they have long traveled the globe and created enterprise. For those like me who have begun the journey and are from the third world, it is a sudden realization that mobile telephony has set us free and turned back the clock to make us wanderers once again.
There is no greater delight than to wander and work. This is not a new tradition. By design or force or often sheer accident, people have moved and worked in different parts of the globe for millennia. But what has made an enormous difference now is that wireless communications are able to let us continue working as long as we want, wherever we want, whenever we want. It is important therefore that this liberatarian principle be kept alive and nurtured but it is increasingly not happening in India. There are too many walls being erected and too many barriers to free innovative enterprise. It must be realized that the pace of technology is too swift for a few organizations to control it. Profit needs us all to come together and work towards delivering the best to the most, fastest.
Globalisation has created a veneer of modernity in India but even in corporate life, we have not seen substantial movement in middle level working towards probity, decency, sharing and accountability. These are important and often, dangerously, these are dismissed as abstracts. But we need all these virtues to do business well. I do not agree that we need to be like animals in a jungle while conducting business- the best way to work is surely the honest way. Till these happen,we need to keep chipping away at the block in hope.
I realized when I was leaving Singapore that almost no
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