Polaris Group

03/01/2016

Little Good News

During Polestar award function, I felt the need of 'Little Good newspaper' similar to current newspaper which we pickup in the morning and start the day with all sensations, accidents and conflicts.

The proposed newspaper can carry what 'next door' human being is contributing in building spirit of compassion, innovations and contribution to larger purpose of humanity.

I am sharing the first news - 'little Good News #1'

Normally we had very poor opinion about Govt. and corporation schools though most of Middle class like me studied in those schools. I visited on my birthday, my old Govt senior secondary school sector 6, RK Puram, Delhi. It was me, Manju and Akansha who were very symphatic to state of govt schools and before entering to the school, discussing about 'how to change them'. This school in 1972-73 was one of the worst school I had studied.

I was pleasantly surprised as soon as we started talking to Principal of the school Mr R R Meena. I observed
1. School has 72 rooms. Well painted including learning picture on the walls. It is Co education school.
2. Principal is sharing his room with few staff members and they are working as a single team,
3. The school has 1800 students with pass percentage of over 98 percentage.
4. School has full size swimming pool with viewer desks.
5. The school had 5 houses where each house is collaboratively managed by 5-7 teachers and students. Each house is responsible for school discipline, cleanliness and assembly participation.
6. The school has RO water plant and clean toilets.
7. I was impasse by school auditorium which can house more than 1000 students and have acoustic wall paneling along with high quality sound system.
8. The principal Mr. Meena and Vice Principal Mrs Nita were very enthusiastic in sharing the success of their students.
9. The school conducts extra classes during holidays for needy students.

We were totally spellbound from this experience.

13/12/2015

Learnings - Chennai Floods shared by Prabal Basu Roy

Millions of personal documents of people have been lost or damaged. Important papers like Insurance Certificates and Medical Records are lost or destroyed. In panic, fleeing people have abandoned them.

Solution: Digitizing your documents.

Please scan and store the following documents for you and each family member in a Pen Drive. Whenever you add another document, please scan it too and save it in the Pen Drive. The Pen Drive can be kept inside a small Ziplock pouch. Make a few copies of the Pen Drive and keep them in very safe places, so that even if one is lost/damaged, you still have copies.

The documents list:

1. Passport, including Visa Pages
2. Insurance Certificates for Life Insurance
3. Insurance Certificates for Medical Insurance
4. Birth Certificate
5. School Certificates
6. Degree Certificates
7. Fixed Deposit Certificates
8. Important Medical Documents, including medical prescriptions for elderly family members
9. Driving License
10. Aadhar Card
11. Ration Card
12. Voter I'D
13. PAN Card
14. Previous years Income Tax returns
15. Property Papers for home, farm arc
16. Vehicle Insurance papers
17. Vehicle Registrations and Tax tokens
17. Warranty Papers for important items
18. Any other Insurance Papers like Home Insurance, Mobile Insurance arc
19. Prescription Lenses for Eyes
20. Employment Record, including Appointment Orders for previous companies, Salary Slips, Releiving Letters arc

Never know when a systematic document preservation system will suddenly be helpful. This need not be needed only during calamities, they may be needed even in normal life situations.

05/12/2015

Project Warm - blankets distribution by Jito - 24 Hour project from concept to ex*****on

Today was an humbling experience when I had opportunity to meet overwhelming response from all the Community groups and NGOs since morning.

All the phones of Jito volunteers kept on ringing whole night and received more than 2000 calls from Chennai, Mumbai, Bangalore, London, US, Germany. I was surprised why some one call from outside Chennai. These were well wishers of Chennai.

It's good that executive team of Jito spent yesterday whole day in planning and designing the supply chain and distribution mechanics. Today we felt good that we spent planning time but we still couldn't plan enough to cater to the overwhelming number of NGO waiting to be served. I admire the patience of all NGOs who waited to receive the Blankets in rain. They brought in their vehicles in a small street where many truck load were to be unloaded in make-Shift warehouse (conference room of Intellect).

The huge number of volunteer were talking to each Community group of NGO to verify their credential of genuinty along with detail form requiring 5 trusted names. Then another set of volunteers trying the match demand with Supply available. Then another set of volunteers issuing Delivery Token. Then Delivery team counting required numbers and delivering thousands of blankets in few hours. I can defined this as 'Disciplined Chaos'.

All the above processes were just getting designed and innovated real time by volunteers as I mentioned the Jito team spotted the 'Blanket project' just 24 hrs ago. Managing Order, Procuring complete quantity from Bangalore, Loading it, tracking Lorries and then getting to central chennai. Herculean tasks again.

Over 200 Organisations and more than 500 people were there at small building of Carex Center.

At end of the day it was a very satisfying day for all of us at JITO, Polaris and intellect. It was totally new dimension added in our personal resume - Concept to Ex*****on of large project of this size in 24 Hours. New dimension of Project management.

I must appreciate the JITO funding was organised in less than 6 hrs from all the chapters of JITO.

The team knew the Help in Such calamity is all about Urgency and TIME.

The team enjoyed each moment of this project till now and continuing 24X7.

PS: I am not publishing the names of any team members since I shud not miss out any name inadvertently. I will make a list tomorrow to give their small credits.

03/12/2015

Help reached - 4th team led by Sriram

Community collection at mandaveli and alwarpet

We formed a small community of 8 people and went door to door in 200+ flats and collected clothes, blankets for all ages .. children to the elderly... for both genders..

Very good collections

Local slums are accommodated at PS high school mylapore and mandaveli train station who need these

We sorted the clothes .. bundled them and sent them to the school and station for distribution. .

We also sent few biscuit packets along with them

The whole thing was done in under 3 hours and good cooperation obtained from local community

Vl send couple of pictures...

Sharing this as a working practice. .. can b repeated in other local communities. .

03/12/2015

Help reached - 3rd team led by Krishna Giri

There are 5k people in Vettuvankini at two locations with woman , children and little kids . Stranded in School, Church etc. organising food for them tonight. Does anyone know the owners of modern bread ? Would like to order packets and easy to distribute for Tom evening.

03/12/2015

Help provided by City office team led by Vinodh

We have bought some 1000 packets of water and ordered another 9000 to be delivered tomo. 500 power banks bought. we have also ordered 5 lt water bottles, this is no where available, but they will give us tomo mrng. Medicines we have spoken to Apollo Pharmacy, they are checking the inventory, we will get it soon. Blankets delivered to slums nearby. The collection centre is open here and some quantity blankets, pillow, towels, bedsheets arrived. We are awaiting the truck you talked about delivering 10000 blankets. 8 member team here plus your team of Anand Surana and others.

02/12/2015

Project Lotus - Chennai situation is really really really bad.

It's not about safety of our own people which is off course required but safety and Hunger & safety of thousands of stranded people.

1. The communication lines are gone. Mobile towers are gone.

2. WIFI is working as of now which may go down anytime. One can use Whatsapp call or FaceTime calls.

3. Power is not there.

The question - what can we do as resident of chennai or from outside.

1. I believe food will be major issue for next 3 days. Can each family cook 5 kg of rice sambhar daily for next 3 days to distribute the food in nearest suffering colony for next 3 days. Procure rice or dal today.

2. Polaris admin - a. Can you procure 500 kg of rice and Dal from somewhere and use Navalur kitchen for 24 by 7 cooking and distribution on OMR. The 187 people who are stuck in the Center can act as a volunteer.
B. Can you make guest house as a kitchen for cooking similar to Navalur.

3. We need large size vehicles like tempo travellers eye to move around. Who so ever has large vehicles or Water proof SUVs please inform on Facebook to control.

4. There are 700 people stranded at Airport. Can someone near the airport provide 700 packets of food.

5. There may be many other stranded points like railway station, bus stops where people from other cities might got stranded. They will need food and clothes both including blankets. Anyone who lives near railway station can do something about them.

6. Update the local area crisis if you are observing near your locality.

7. In case anyone needs help please report.

I could not reach chennai last night and camping at Bangalore. My phone will be working. I will facilitate all the communication among people.

Please keep writing on this wall.

30/08/2015

Biases

I was observing group of crows in the lawns of Madras club. They were playing with themselves. Other birds like Parrots were also playing in other groups. Similarly, group of pigeons or group of Maina's were playing the same large lawn.

I felt why Group of crows is occupying more space to play, there shud be more parrots using the same space.

I found I have strong bias against Crows vs Parrots. Why my mind likes Parrots playing not crows?

Is it Color or voice or gesture or may be all three?

I further questioned - did parrot given me some benefit in the past which helped in creating positive bias or
Crows harmed me which created a negative bias?

I didn't have any such personal experience yet my mind was so strongly biased.

Where did bias comes from?

The same biases appear for me when I am looking people around me.

Thus if simple bias against crow (who has hardly any role to play in my life), what other biases limiting my perspectives and choices.

I felt it is extremely limiting occupying more than 80 percent of thinking space in my mind, which means if I have 1000 sqft of mind apartment, my 800 sqft is used by Bias, only 200 sqft space is available for creative thinking.

08/07/2015

Starting up startups with 'Nukkad', a special initiative. http://bit.ly/1Co2bna

I have often said that the next $100 bn will come from product companies in India, that this country would see the next Silicon Valley-like phenomenon.

18/06/2015

Watch as the entire spectrum of Digital in the Banking industry is encapsulated in 5 succinct features. An excerpt from the CII BANKing Tech Summit.

Customer, competition, convergence, compliance, and cyber-security. The five Cs of banking in the digital era. Arun Jain quotes RBI's H.R. Khan in the plenar...

01/06/2015

"Quantifiable financial benefit to the consumer," that's digital in a nutshell for banking. An excerpt from the inaugural address by Chairman Arun Jain, at the CII BANKing Tech Summit 2015.

Digital meant something altogether different in the 1970s. However, the vision it triggered of the future, is finally here. In the world of banking, 'Digital...

20/05/2015

The science and intelligence of cell division. An observation of a natural wonder. From Arun Jain's blogs - http://bit.ly/1Gp0Gp2