I'm not going to explore deep into this subject, but from a HR perspective it seems to me that organizations with a 6-day working week are wasting their time. Organizations which ask their employees to work on Saturdays seem to have this deluded notion that an extra day of work means extra productivity during these extra hours. Here's my own analysis of this situation.

No doubt, the additional hours of work on Saturday means that a little more work will get done. But will employees really improve their productivity in the process? I doubt it, seriously. You see, a 5-day week with 2 days of rest is a perfect recipe for both employer and employee. The weekend seems long enough to feel attractive for employees to work harder during the week. I have no reason to doubt that the popular formula of 5 days of work with 2 days of rest is actually the most optimal formula to increase productivity. Fridays will be an extra productive day under this formula because people will try to finish weekly deadlines at this time. However, if the organization asks people to come into office on Saturdays, this motivation is thrown out of the window. Fridays no longer seem so important and employees won't feel the need to put in that extra bit of work. And to top it off people will tend to drag their feet into office on Saturdays. With a whole week behind them, fatigue is inevitable. Even with the so-called "casual dressing" rules, my belief is that people resent walking into a workplace after 5 continuous full days of work.

Even if you think that one extra day of work doesn't matter, consider its effect on Sunday. After 6 whole days of working, Sundays are practically ruined. Most people who work in high-stress jobs find it difficult enough to unwind in any case. Imagine having just one day of rest. And it's not just about the one extra day; with a 5-day week, Friday evening to Monday morning seems a lifetime. The addition of a Saturday removes that additional bonus completely: after all, Saturday evenings would be so tiring after work and you obviously cannot unwind on a Sunday evening as you have to get ready to face the next week!

And there's one extra reason why I feel that Saturdays are horrible working days. Not all organizations follow the 6-day week. Most government offices and banks remain shut during the weekends. Outside work (including interaction with customers/clients or other organizations) will be limited. All this increases my belief that a 6-day week is the lousiest idea in the history of mankind. And I've not even talked about the levels of stress or fatigue that employees might undergo as a result of the extra work day.

If all this seems like something out of the Papa Hari School of the Obvious, then I am surprised that so many companies still insist on following a 6-day week. I feel that it's best to let employees off for the weekend. Not only does it allow people to get back a sense of perspective from their time off, it also increases the motivation to actually get work done during the week.

I felt that I had to express myself on this topic after I read somebody's post on an online forum which declared that any illegal action automatically had to be a crime. These types of discussions do come up a lot in online debates about software/music/movie piracy. It never fails to annoy me when novice, over-zealous 15-year old kids with loads of time, misplaced self-assurance, very little experience in the real world and a holier-than-thou attitude to boot suddenly become legal experts online. The sheer audacity of such assertions can only be the product of abject ignorance and worse, a lack of common sense. Even a layperson will realize without exercising much brain-power that many actions can be illegal without necessarily constituting a crime. Take for instance the issue of non-payment of rent by a tenant occupying a building or a house. Technically the action of occupying any premises without paying rent to the owner is illegal, but does it constitute a crime which can be punished under the criminal law? In many countries the distinction between civil law and criminal law is very clear and this kind of illegality would clearly be covered under civil law. The landlord has to sue the tenant personally to get his rightful dues. The maximum (in most cases) that the Landlord can hope for is an eviction order (and not imprisonment). The State does not prosecute the errant tenant in this case. The above case is just a simple, obvious example. There are many such instances of "illegal" actions which are not crimes. More practically, the distinction between illegality and crime can be a lot more complex.

That no man-made legal system is absolutely foolproof or crystal clear in every respect is apparent. Far from being clear many Laws actually make very little sense even to legal experts. That's why lawyers are paid so much money to interpret and argue points of law. But on the internet, where everybody has the opportunity to become an instant anonymous expert, it's so easy to make blanket statements about the Law and spread a lot of misinformation. In fact, this level of ignorance is the reason which big corporations tend to prey on small individuals/organizations. The fear of the Law is so great (and justifiably so) that individuals can easily become intimidated when threatened with lawsuits, even if the Law is on their side. Big companies can afford to hire lawyers full-time to take care of their legal troubles.

Even if ordinary people cannot fully understand the intricacies of the law or legal procedures, I believe it's always important to know the principle behind a Law. Knowledge empowers and a basic knowledge of the Law should actually be a full-time subject in schools. Educating young people about their rights and duties should be an important priority in any democratic country with a working legal system. If nothing else, it will at least protect a new generation from smart-alecs online who mouth off any nonsense about Law/legality and crime.

I know it's still early days for the IPL and I shouldn't judge it prematurely, but somehow, after months of hype and hoopla, I had a shrewd (well, not so shrewd) instinct that the actual matches would be something of a let down. Understandly, the first couple of matches haven't really captured my imagination.

In my view, the IPL has some big disadvantages compared to the ICL which really drew me in despite the lack of official recognition, big names and sponsorship. And many people I've spoken to have expressed the same feelings, which leads me to believe that I'm not alone in my assessment.

Some factors counting against the IPL:

• Smells too much of money power and arrogance (read: Sharad Pawar and the BCCI). I know a lot of cricket fans might disagree, but that alone has been a big turn-off for me.
• Has the "me-too" factor stamped all over it. In spite of the IPL being the "official" league, everything about it feels phoney and duplicate. All right, it has the big names, but the teams seem to have been put together in a hotch-potch manner and there just doesn't seem to be a sense of harmony among the teams (which was apparent in the ICL).
• Many of the foriegn players in the IPL will be leaving for international duty after a while. This will definitely take the sheen off the league. In contrast, the ICL, being shunned by the cricketing world at large, definitely has the advantage of keeping its contracted players playing for the league over a period of time.
• Believe it or not, I actually believe that local players should be given more importance than the foriegn players. And the ICL actually promoted the local boys and helped them gain recognition. Names like Ali Mortaza, Stuart Binny, Rajagopal Sathish, Tejinder Singh and Syed Mohammed come to mind. On the other hand, the IPL seems focussed only on the big names - the likes of Sachin Tendulkar, Saurav Ganguly, Mahendra Dhoni and so on.
• Last, but certainly not least, the media attention given to the IPL has made me sick of it already. That the ICL was widely ignored by most of the media has actually given it something of an advantage and allowed the promoters to focus exclusively on bringing out a quality product. On the other hand, I feel that the IPL promoters know that their product will sell anyway, so might not be too worried about the game itself.
• A minor gripe: the team names chosen by the promoters are horrible. Case in point: Mumbai Indians, Bangalore Royal Challengers, Kings XI Punjab?

I'm aware that all these are subjective issues, and I fully acknowledge that my opinions might be completely out of sync with reality, though.

It is my strong opinion that talent often goes unrecognized by the majority. I think the reason is that even to detect talent, you need a bit of it in the first place. Not a lot, but enough to understand the speciality of that talent. On the other hand, mediocrity recognizes and understands nothing beyond itself.

You see, I believe that each of us is born with something that we can do better than others. Sometimes, it takes a long time, hard work and painful effort even for the individual concerned to recognize and nourish it. For a few people, their special talent comes so naturally to them that they end up not valuing it enough. Rarely do you see child prodigies. In such cases, the whole world has no choice but to sit up and take notice.

I think the best organizations in the world are the ones which detect talent early and discipline it quickly. Microsoft of the early days is a prime example in the software world. The ability of Bill Gates and co. to pick up talent and mould it made them what they are today. But sadly, most software companies today lack this instinct. That is what comes out of cutting corners in HR management.

Like all areas of specialization, I think Human Resource management is a key discipline in any business. But if you check out the HR department of most software companies today, all you can see is a bunch of incompetent, inexperienced staff who sit around imagining that HR is just about recruitment, hiring, firing and paying salaries. It's not. HR goes far deeper than the day-to-day activities of man-management.

The main reason why there is a high rate of attrition in the software industry is the HR staff of organizations. Not only do they neglect talent, they actively discourage it because they cannot see beyond their own limitations. And even if they do, they are too insecure to give it its due reward.

A prime example of talent gone unnoticed is my brother who is an extremely talented OS programmer. Most companies he applied to rejected him because he did not have so-called "experience" in a job they consider as constituting valid experience. But today, he earns far more doing what he enjoys and does best than even top programmers do in the Indian software industry. It was the inability of these software companies to notice his talent that helped him find his true potential. If he had, by any chance, been recruited by any of the Indian software firms, I'm sure he would be wasting his potential, sitting in an office and churning out code that any trained monkey can churn out.

I just feel that the whole concept of PC is flawed because that it is extremely selective in application and only to certain issues or certain groups of people who are, for the lack of a better term, more powerfully offended by the usage of certain terms than others.

Take the example of the recent race row in India's Cricket tour to Australia. Harbhajan Singh was accused of calling Andrew Symonds a "monkey", which is supposedly a racist taunt (I wasn't even aware of this before the issue arose). Now how do you decide whether "monkey" is more offensive than say "bastard" which is a deadly insult in India where we hold family traditions sacred? Or how do we, as Indians, explain that "monkey" is a term of endearment used commonly to describe a naughty child and with no offensive intent? Yet, the other side hardly bothers to understand the cultural differences and prefers to wallow in indignant self-righteousness.

Another example of meaningless political correctness is using the term actor used in both masculine and feminine contexts. That's just a ridiculous practice adopted by the media. The funny thing about it is that even the same newspaper doesn't adopt this usage consistency and columnists frequently revert to the feminine form "actress."

Even though it's simply not in my nature to use crass or vulgar language, I feel that if every group of politically sensitive people start lobbying successfully to ban specific words or phrases, very soon dictionaries will shrink to half their size. And of course, Political Correctness will remain an exclusive weapon of the group with the largest voting power because they can and will impose their version on the others.

Let me just say I'll accept Political Correctness the day when you accept my list of offensive words/phrases/language usage in the same way that you want me to accept yours...