Start up business realities

While startup life seems glamorous at best when it comes to dizzying valuations, the truth of the matter remains that 70% of all businesses (with employees) fail within 10 years. Business failure is a harsh reality. While 80% will make it past that first-year mark, only about two-thirds of all businesses with employees are able to survive their second year. The fifth year? Just half. Ten years out? Just 30%. 

There are some specific reasons why these businesses are failing. 

• You won't fail unless you entirely give up. 
• If you don't put your customers first, the potential for failure skyrockets.
• Regardless of your situation, find a good mentor who can help you navigate the stormy waters of any business in the current climate.
• Focus on the long term. Do your best today.
• Successful businesses deliver the most value. Find a way that you can under-promise but over-deliver. Always over-deliver. No matter what the situation. If you're looking for a fast buck or to get rich quick, you'll quickly find yourself at a dead end. 
• If you can't connect with your target audience, your business will fail.
• The truth is that it's hard to sell anything to straight cold traffic.
• Businesses that lack authenticity and transparency will fail. 
• Staying afloat is exponentially harder when competition is fierce.
• It's easy to spend when the coffers are full. When the expenses spiral out of control, or a founder uses much of the company's money for personal or frivolous expenses, it's impossible for the business to survive.
• When problems do arise navigating those murky waters becomes an impossible task for newcomers without real business world experience. Businesses need to build up their board of seasoned advisers, and founders need to find trusted mentors, if they're serious about longevity.
• Your employee tribe and culture is crucial for long-term success.

Information is empowering

• Information: Facts provided or learned about something or someone. 
• Knowledge: Information and skills acquired through experience or education. The theoretical or practical understanding of a subject.
• Information is only a means to empowerment. Knowledge is power and sharing knowledge is empowering. 
• Information is free. Knowledge is not.
• Information is empowering. It can make us stronger, more confident, more in control and more able to claim our rights. It enables us to grow and learn. It helps us to make good decisions, engage with each other, build knowledge, create informed communities, connect globally, and in many other ways. 
• Information provides individuals with knowledge to address public issues, scrutinize government and become active participants in the democratic process. It reveals and clarifies the basis for government decisions, discloses environmental and health dangers and sheds light on error, mismanagement and illegal activities.
• Facts and figures doesn't speak for themselves. They have to be examined and interpreted by reason. Information results in improved records management, prompts routine disclosure of information, and results in better government services and efficiencies.
• Unless information is organized, processed, and available to the right people in a format for decision making, it is a burden, not a benefit.
• Information is power, but interpretation is more powerful. Data taken out of context can have unintended consequences. Transparency alone is not the great equalizer. When we're overloaded with information, wisdom is obscured.  

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; 
this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, 
receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers 
... United Nations, Universal Declaration of Human Rights

In common use almost every word has many shades of meaning, 

and therefore needs to be interpreted by the context ... Alfred Marshall

Aadhaar makes citizens more vulnerable

Last year Delhi Police busted an ISI spy ring and found that Mehmood Akhtar had an Aadhaar card naming him as Mehboob Rajput. In May this year, the Central Crime Branch found that three Pakistanis had obtained Aadhaar cards in Bengaluru through a middleman for Rs 100 each. More recently, Zeebo Asalina, an Uzbek national arrested in Orissa, had an Aadhaar card naming her as Duniya Khan.

• The perception that security agencies may have a better chance of nabbing potential terrorists if all mobile connections are verified using Aadhaar is flawed. Since Aadhaar cards were based on forged documents and UIDAI does not conduct any verification by itself, it retains the flaws of these documents and is not ‘fraud-resistant’. In fact, once they have Aadhaar, things may get easier for potential terrorists, given the incorrect perception that it is foolproof.
• Paper IDs are not good for privacy since they can be reused for other purposes. But Aadhaar is worse, because once data is shared with hundreds of third parties, it is no longer secure. 
• Electronic KYC is cheaper for telecom operators and banks, it is costlier for citizens. The cost of the loss of personal information is much higher than the benefit of collecting it. UIDAI has no control once data leaves its system via eKYC, which has a tick-box approach to consent and no checks thereafter.
• The risk of personal information leaks increases with more services getting linked to Aadhaar due to security vulnerabilities, or sheer incompetence of the government or third parties.
• Disclosure of Aadhaar numbers is illegal as per Section 29 (4) of the Aadhaar Act.
• Whereas RTI Act makes it mandatory for every public authority to publish the manner of execution of subsidy programmes, including the amounts allocated and the details of beneficiaries of such programmes. This is conflict with Aadhaar Act.
• Biometrics are the least secure form of authentication. They can be cloned from photographs, and you leave fingerprints on every glass of water you pick up.
• Estonia had to suspend its digital ID cards due to cybersecurity related vulnerabilities. Spain is facing similar issues. 
• The government’s cavalier attitude towards privacy that privacy cannot be at the cost of innovation indicates its willingness to put citizens’ personal safety at risk: that your privacy is a price that GoI is willing to pay for making it easier for businesses to be built around your data.
• Data for millions of people has already been compromised by the government, the allegation that critics are “alarmists” and “motivated” is a tactic to divert attention from badly designed architecture, execution mistakes, security failures and the yet-to be-addressed risks.
• While there are some benefits that might accrue from customisation of thousands of services that might otherwise not have had your data, a government that forcibly takes sensitive and personal information from you, and a court that has allowed this to happen despite appeals to stop it, has acted against you and 1.3 billion others.
• All your data, linked to a single ID and accessible to the government under unspecified ‘national security’ considerations, without sufficient checks and balances and judicial oversight, is also dangerous in the hands of a future government that might look to retain power by any means necessary. 
• Mass surveillance for which Aadhaar is an enabler, is an unnecessary and disproportionate infringement of rights, and dangerous for democracy. 
• With Aadhaar numbers littered all over the web, anyone can create a dossier of personal information by finding and joining datasets bases with the Aadhaar number and hence stating that Aadhaar is not a secret or confidential number is misleading and dangerous.
• Publishing a person’s caste, Aadhaar number, or mobile number or emailids is an unwarranted invasion of the privacy of the individual and serves no public interest but the leaked info can also cause financial loss. It opens doors for fraudsters to perform attacks on unsuspecting individuals.
• Publishing of last four digits of Aadhaar number only might not satisfy the provisions of both RTI and the Aadhaar Acts. Publishing Aadhaar number, full or partial, on the open web will put too many unsuspecting people at risk. It’s illegal for UIDAI to pass the buck and act innocent about data leaks. It needs to get across to users of Aadhaar data to follow the law or be held responsible.
• Instead of blaming the transparency requirements of the RTI, UIDAI must be pressurised to enforce its agreements with its partners. Whether you call it a data leak or not, doesn’t reduce the harm done if the authorities continue to publish Aadhaar details on the open web.

Government can't make citizens safer by making them more vulnerable.

The issue is not about Aadhaar as a tool in identification, but of linking it with everything under the sun is gross violation of privacy by government. While linking Aadhaar as remedy to plug leakages of government subsidies is well taken but forcefully linking it to all IDs is as imprudent as having one password for all your transactions which exponentially increases vulnerability. There would be little remedy to assaults by fraudsters on systems that are indiscriminately cross-linked. In the absence of robust data security environment, stringent privacy laws and meticulous penal agreements for any kind of data leakage or misusing, Government has no business to make Aadhaar linking mandatory to all citizen IDs and exposing them to security threats and unknown & unmitigated financial losses.

Dynasty runs every where in India

Dynasty runs every where in India in all walks of life -- politics, businesses, professions, and so on. This undermines merit, the essence of democracy. Royal titles having been abolished but Indians seem to not given up on the idea of dynastic rule. About 30% of the current MPs are dynasts.

• Whether it’s politics, businesses, or bollywood, Indians seem to have trust in their off springs, irrespective of whether they might be deserving or not. The stunning example is Rahul Gandhi.
• Dynasts are a widespread phenomenon in Asia. Singapore is effectively run by the Lee family. In China, sons and daughters of leading party members are known as 'red princes' because of the influence they wield. With the Roosevelts, the Kennedys, and the Bush family, America can't afford to sneer at Indian dynasts.
• Dynasticism works in modern political systems because it appeals to notions of inherited charisma that help legitimize leadership succession and minimize organisational division. In India, dynasts do seem able to hold parties together. 
• The Nehru-Gandhi family is the most prominent political dynasty in the country with four generations of the family having ruled the country. The Nehru-Gandhi family is the keystone of the Congress party. Take them out and the Congress party collapses. There are several dynasties across party lines all over the country. There seems nothing objectionable in political power passing from parent to progeny. In India dynasties are serving the needs of the present times while preserving democracy by providing a measure of stability.
• Even big business houses are quite often family-run enterprises. The Birlas, the Tatas and the Ambanis, three names that signify wealth and entrepreneurship for Indians, have passed on the baton from generation to generation, rarely allowing outsiders to head their conglomerates.
• One of Sonia Gandhi’s fiercest critics, Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray slammed her and her family for running a “fiefdom” and then went ahead and did exactly the same thing. In 2004, Thackeray declared his son, a political novice, as leader of Siva Sena.
• The Bollywood is dotted with “star kids” hoping that their children will continue to capture the imagination of audiences, lack of talent notwithstanding. Some have made it and some have fallen by the wayside.
• Governments run by 'the dynasty' doled out more subsidies, spent more and indebted the economy more than by non-dynastic governments. Subsidies create distortions in asset use, dampen individual incentives, promoted rampant corruption and resulted in retarded economic growth & development of nation.
• The communists and the Jan Sangh (BJP) were participants in Indian elections from the very beginning. Yet, in comparison to the Congress, they are far less dynastic.
• America which shouts loudest about democracy could be described as a plutocracy, such is the wealth required to enter the political fray as a major player there.

If you are not a communist at 20 you have problem with your heart and 

if you are not a capitalist by 40 you have problem with your brain ... Sudha Murthy

In a democracy it is the 'will' of the people which is supreme. Dynasty or non-dynasty is immaterial, as long as the candidate ascends to position based on the principle of the 'rule of the law'. There is no bar on dynastic descendant to participate in the process of elections. Most politicians forget that what ever sense or nonsense they do as per their whims is not necessarily in the interest of people nor has their approval. Therefore the processes must be transparent and followed at all times, discretion must be exercised rarely or never, accountability at all times, and financial matters must always have prior legislature approval. To ensure these, institutions must be strong and independent and must not be trampled with. Unfortunately that is not happening and opposite is prevailing. Social media cramped with BJP trolls are spreading untruths always pro-BJP and anti-Congress sentiments where as the fact is that both are as bad as each other. Today very few are bothered about worst state of economy, unemployment, distressed agriculture, perilous banking sector etc but are happily engaged in dirty politics and chest thumping for nothing with trophy projects or achievements. The kind of money spent each day on government advertisements for self aggrandizement -- a small town or 100 villages could be modernized every day.

Post Nehru, Congress governments rule resulted in rampant corruption and unmanageable subsidies and political landscape got filled with corruption money, musclemen and criminals. However, non congress governments headed by Morarji Desai and VP Singh did no better or even worse. Vajpayee did nothing except building highways & roads and could not control communal riots especially in Gujarat. Congress governments succeeding these non congress catastrophic governments provided much needed stability and economic recovery. Today, Modi government's 3+ year rule there is nothing to boast off except relentless publicity with economic parameters worse than where he started in 2014 despite very low oil prices. Failed demonetization, mangled GST hurriedly rolled out impacted economy greatly. With PSU banks on the verge of collapse with nearly Rs.10 lakh crores of NPAs economic recovery prior to 2019 is unlikely. 

Therefore, dynasty or non-dynasty is not an issue as long as it has people's mandate. Under Modi administration several state governments patronized by Modi's BJP don't have electoral mandate but are in power with manipulation of numbers. Matter of shame in the largest democracy.