Tips to pick friends at workplace

By Charu Sabnavis

‘People with one friend at work are likely to find their work interesting. And people with at least three close friends at work are 96 per cent more likely to be satisfied with their life’, reports Tom Rath in his book, Vital Friends: The People You Can't Afford to Live Without. With professionals spending majority of their time at work, friends at workplace have become an important part of professional and personal lives. You need someone to share your joy and sorrows... don’t you? And yes, of course complain against you boss! Well for all this, you need someone whom you can confide in - a friend. So how do you strike the cord?

Win a friend

Surveys have shown that people continue to be at organisations despite odds because of friends and camaraderie. So how do you make friends? It is an art that comes naturally to some and needs to be cultivated by others. Friendships emerge from careful observation and awareness of group dynamics at workplace.

Your behaviour at work will help you win or lose friends. “You can win friends and gain influence by observing and being tolerant,” observes Emily Post, an etiquette guru. As a new entrant you need to be at the observation post. Just sit back and observe. Who are the live wires whom everybody gravitates to? Who sounds warm and friendly? Who seems to have fallen out of favour and why? Who is to be avoided? While you are observing the environment, you too are being observed. People would try and gauge how easy it would be to get along with you. How would your presence impact their work load?

People like to connect with those who are capable, helpful and conscientious - team players in a nutshell. Those who keep the gossip windmills moving fall out of favour.

Talk sense

Try and identify people with common areas of interest, as this would give you a ground for striking a conversation and building a relationship. Try and be reasonably well informed about subjects of general interest. Brush up on topics that are the talk of the town - e.g. the popular TV soap operas, the latest in Hollywood and Bollywood, music concerts, best selling books etc.

Remember people generally gravitate towards those who are well informed, witty and have a sense of humor. This is not to say that all this can be engineered in a day. One needs to inculcate the habit of being abreast with what’s happening around.

Tread carefully

Do not be too hasty in acting upon your observations. Be amiable towards everybody in general. Extend your hand and see the response. If somebody responds with positive vibes, move forward and work on building the relationship. If somebody is distant and standoffish, beat a hasty retreat.

Hierarchy prevails even in the so-called flat structured organisations. People at the same level form natural groups. Don’t aim at affiliating with a group that is at a level above yours. Just because a senior has been friendly, does not mean that you ask him out for lunch the next day. You may be in for a disappointment. It is the senior person’s call to make the first move and you need to fall in line.

Give it time

Try and associate with people in your peer group. Don’t rush the friendship. It will come to fruition as you strike the right cords during the course of working together. Don’t ask intrusive questions or relate your life story early on in the relationship.

Don’t appear too keen either. If most of the effort towards building the relationship is from your side, you will always be a junior partner. It’s best to meet half way for a balanced relationship.

Match office culture

It also helps to evaluate the culture in the organisation. Is it laced with formality and stiffness, or is it sociable and informal? Do people meet over coffee or a drink outside work hours? Also introspect to evaluate your own personality. Remember that the organisation will not fall in line with your approach. You need to forge relationships within this cultural framework. Don’t adopt too casual an approach in an environment where things are formally laid out and refrain from being too rigid in a sociable set up.

One cannot work in isolation, meet and greet office colleagues to make work fun. Friendships give meaning to our existence. Besides making the work more engaging, friendships at work can develop into life-long associations and it is worth investing time and effort in nurturing such relationships.

10 Tips to connect effectively

Look for like-minded people

Identify common areas of interest

Connect effectively

Identify positive vibes

Behave well, talk sense

Be amicable and helpful

Use wit and sense of humour to your advantage

Spend time together after office hours

Reciprocate, nurture relationships

Build a long-lasting bond, remember to keep in touch even if you are not working in the same office.

(The author is Senior Manager, Training with Morgan Stanley. The views expressed are personal.)

Source: The Economic Times, 1st May, 2007

Always think POSITIVE +++

Stressed and anxious at work? Most people are, but a few know how to get things going with their positive attitude.

By Charu Sabnavis

When entrusted with a difficult assignment or a tough deadline at the workplace, an optimist focuses his energies on identifying a solution and charting out a roadmap. He nurtures a mental attitude that admits positive thoughts, words and images, leading to success and happiness.
Our attitudes are shaped through constant conditioning as a result of interactions with family, friends and environment. They are so ingrained in us that it is an uphill task to alter them. Positive thinking is a hallmark of an optimist professional, who expects to see brightness and sunshine everywhere. The language of an optimist is ‘I will’, ‘I can’, ‘It’s possible’. A pessimist would lose precious time just thinking about the problem. An optimist focuses on the solution, the pessimist on the problem. An optimist would introspect and figure out the disconnect between performance and expectations and try and bridge the gap, never losing sight of the goals.
When caught in the quagmire of negativity, one’s misperceptions overcome one’s logical thinking. These irrational themes are manifested in many ways:

FILTERING:

We magnify the negative aspects of a situation and filter the positive ones. For instance, you have been promoted and you’ve got a good increment. However, the percentage of the increment is a notch below your expectation. You focus on the latter instead of celebrating the former.

PERSONALISING:

You hold yourself responsible for anything that goes wrong. If the team overshoots the project deadline by a day, you take complete responsibility and curse yourself.

CATASTROPHISING:

You live in the realm of Murphy’s Law, expecting anything that could possibly go wrong, will go wrong! E.g. if you are organising a training programme, you will anticipate that the trainer will not turn up, the equipment will fail and the participants will either not show up.

POLARISING:

You look at things in white or black. So the boss is either excellent or nasty, the colleagues are supportive or uncooperative, team members are performing well or not at all.

Making Positive Thinking a Habit:



EVALUATE YOUR THINKING:

Watch your thinking during the course of the day. Check yourself the moment you find yourself edging towards negative thoughts. E.g. Instead of lamenting over lack of resources, think of creative solutions. Similarly, don’t get overawed by tasks that seem too complicated.They’ll seem less daunting if you break them up into smaller units and then address them. If you think that you do not have the expertise in a particular area, look around for experts who can help you. Try and induce more of self acceptance and less of self criticism. This will enable you to relook at ‘problems’ at the work place as ‘learning opportunities’ and handle stress in a realistic and constructive manner.

EXERCISE POSITIVE AFFIRMATIONS

Susan Jeffers, noted self help author, avers that positive affirmation is a proven tool for steering clear of negativity and fear. She explains, “Positive affirmation is a strong positive statement telling us that all is well. With constant repetition of this uplifting and soothing statement, the voice of doom and gloom is replaced with thoughts of peace, power and love.” Pin up positive affirmations like “It is all happening perfectly” or “I am powerful and I can do it” at your office desk or in your car, and look at it on your way to work. It has been demonstrated that just repeating, writing or thinking positive statements lend us strength, whether or not we believe them. And if we say affirmations often enough, we ultimately start believing in them! Positive affirmations can certainly arm us with resilience for facing adversity.

ASSOCIATE WITH POSITIVE PEOPLE

Both positive and negative thoughts are contagious. At the workplace one often encounters unhappy souls, who find something wrong with almost everything around them. They point fingers when things go wrong, they grumble, moan and find fault. It helps to steer clear of these people as they rub off their attitude and state of mind on us. When we meet people, we are affected by their aura and thoughts consciously or subconsciously. Therefore, it helps to be in the midst of people who are optimistic, upbeat and happy.
Positive thinking can empower us in a way that would boost our self esteem, expand our comfort zone and envelope us with well being and health, thus paving way for personal and professional growth. It has been aptly said that a positive thinker sees the invisible, feels the intangible and achieves the impossible!

(The author is Senior Manager, Training, with Morgan Stanley. The views expressed are personal.)

Source: The Times of India, Mumbai, 12th July, 2007

Mandal’s True Inheritors

Reservations should go to MBCs, not OBCs

By Chandra Bhan Prasad

A quarter of a century has passed since the Mandal report was submitted to the president on December 30, 1980. Since then, tonnes of newsprint and plenty of air time have been consumed debating Mandal. But rarely do we confront a basic question — why did L R Naik, the only Dalit member in the Mandal Commission, refuse to sign the Mandal recommendations?
While submitting his report, chairman of the commission B P Mandal wrote to the president on why the commission could not arrive at a consensus, and referred to L R Naik’s note of dissent. That letter forms the inaugural part of the report. How could V P Singh ignore the very first page of the report, which refers to Naik and his note of dissent, while posing as a crusader for social justice?
During the Mandal controversy, the Congress only mildly opposed the report, saying it was not properly debated. Its think tank knew of Naik’s thesis, but didn’t raise it openly. Clearly, V P Singh and Congress had similar political compulsions. Fifteen years have passed since Mandal was implemented in August 1990, but neither the Left and nor the Bharatiya Janata Party talk of Naik’s thesis. Cutting across party lines, all are afraid of discussing his observations.
Naik said that OBCs were made up of two large social blocks — landowning OBCs whom he describes as intermediate backward classes, and artisan OBCs whom he describes as depressed backward classes. According to Naik, intermediate backward classes or upper OBCs (Yadavas, Kurmis, Jats, among others) are relatively powerful, while depressed backward classes, or most backward classes (MBCs), remain economically marginalised. He argued for splitting the Mandal quota into two in order to safeguard interests of MBCs, as he feared that upper OBCs would monopolise Mandal jobs.
Naik said this 25 years back when the nation did not know of Mulayam Singh Yadav, Lalu Prasad Yadav or Nitish Kumar. Today, most states are ruled by upper OBCs, who have evolved into lords of the countryside. People have a fair idea of upper OBC affluence and political power. But who are MBCs and where are they situated in the caste hierarchy? Of this, people are less aware. As traditional service and artisan castes, MBCs are spread all over India. In fact, there can rarely be a village without MBC castes.
With the introduction of modern farm equipment, blacksmiths have become irrelevant. Modern kitchenware did the same to
potters. Has anyone seen palanquins in contemporary India? Only a century back, several hundred thousand people belonging to a caste called Kanhar shouldered this human-powered transport. What happened to them? What happened to Noniyas, the traditional earth movers? Has anyone seen traditional oil-pressing tools in recent times? With motorised oil presses, the bullock driven tool has disappeared. Hundreds of such professions disappeared with the arrival of machines and modernity. What happened to the people involved in those professions?
Traditional artisan and service provider castes called MBCs form more than 50 per cent of the OBC population. With the disappearance of their trades, most of them turned agricultural labourers. In most indices of development, they often fare worse than Dalits. Since they are spread all over India, and divided into so many smaller caste groups, they do not become electorally decisive in any assembly or parliamentary constituency. MBCs have neither political leadership nor any lobby in business or the intellectual world.
Unlike MBCs, upper OBCs are traditional peasant castes, who have now turned into landowning castes. They control most of the countryside’s wealth and institutions. As masters in booth management, upper OBCs control politics at the grass roots, which is reflected in the composition of state assemblies and Parliament. OBCs invest least in
education of their children and block their money in immovable assets.
They need a social movement, not reservations. Naik advocated the cause of voiceless MBCs a quarter century ago and demanded splitting of Mandal quota into two to safeguard their interests. In 2006, justice demands that upper OBCs be expelled from the Mandal list, as MBCs are the truest inheritors of Mandal quotas.
V P Singh refused to buy Naik’s thesis because his eyes were on the powerful upper OBC vote bank. He spoke of social justice but quashed hopes of MBCs. The intelligentsia, which harps on social justice, too stood with upper OBCs, leaving MBCs to their fate. Fifteen years after V P Singh’s assault on social justice, the Congress-led UPA government is going down the same path.
Congress seems to have decided to be the upper OBC party of India. Or else, upper OBCs have blackmailed the UPA government. It is time that the nation got together to redefine the very meaning of social justice. How can the country treat MBCs as social orphans just because they are not a political force? The anti-Mandal lobby gained in legitimacy simply because Mandal went the wrong way.
It is in that sense that Mandal hurts even Dalits. Much of the anti-Mandal steam will evaporate once Mandal is handed over to MBCs — its truest inheritors.

The writer is an ideologue on Dalit issues.

Source: The Times of India 12th April, 2006

The Big Mac index

The Economist's Big Mac index is based on the theory of purchasing-power parity (PPP), according to which exchange rates should adjust to equalise the price of a basket of goods and services around the world. Our basket is a burger: a McDonald’s Big Mac.

The table below shows by how much, in Big Mac PPP terms, selected currencies were over- or undervalued at the end of January. Broadly, the pattern is such as it was last spring, the previous time this table was compiled (see article). The most overvalued currency is the Icelandic krona: the exchange rate that would equalise the price of an Icelandic Big Mac with an American one is 158 kronur to the dollar; the actual rate is 68.4, making the krona 131% too dear. The most undervalued currency is the Chinese yuan, at 56% below its PPP rate; several other Asian currencies also appear to be 40-50% undervalued.

The index is supposed to give a guide to the direction in which currencies should, in theory, head in the long run. It is only a rough guide, because its price reflects non-tradable elements—such as rent and labour. For that reason, it is probably least rough when comparing countries at roughly the same stage of development. Perhaps the most telling numbers in this table are therefore those for the Japanese yen, which is 28% undervalued against the dollar, and the euro, which is 19% overvalued. Hence European finance ministers’ beef with the low level of the yen.

Source: The Economist 1st February, 2007

IT pays well, but only to a few lucky ones

By Thanuja BM & PP Thimmaya

IT sector is generally seen as among the best paymasters in India. Often, parents tell their kids that it is one of the faster ways to become a ‘lakhpati’. However, the reality is that only a minuscule number get into the magic circle with six figure monthly salaries.

A look at the number of persons at the top three Indian IT services giants — TCS, Infosys and Wipro — who draw salaries over Rs 2 lakh per month or Rs 24 lakh per annum shows that this group constitutes just around 0.5% of their total headcount.

To be specific, TCS employed 85,582 persons at end of FY07, of which 221 employees get salaries over Rs 24 lakh pa, accounting for just 0.25% of its total staff strength. And only 11 individuals get over Rs 50 lakh pa which accounts for 0.01% of the employees.

Bangalore-headquartered Infosys Technologies had 72,241 persons in FY07, of which 531 belong to the Rs 24 lakh pa plus category, accounting for 0.73% of the total employees. Of this, only 32 persons draw salaries over Rs 50 lakh, which is 0.04%. Its city peer Wipro employs 75,052 employees, with Wipro Technologies and Wipro Infotech accounting for 67,818 people. Some 306 persons get above Rs 24 lakh pa, accounting for 0.4%. Of this, only 39 get above Rs 50 lakh pa, which is 0.05% of total employees. Only three persons in TCS including CMD S Ramadorai and four in Wipro including Chairman Azim Premji make it to the Rs 1 crore plus pa category.

What do these figures tell you? Well, that one has to be among the high performers or have special or niche skills to get there. The road to salary figures of Rs 2 lakh per month will also certainly take more than a decade in an industry which sees an average hike of salaries in the range of 12-15%.

Says Stanton Chase International vice-president Priya Chetty-Rajagopal: “People with niche skills and positions can get into the Rs 24 lakh plus bracket in 10-12 years. However, for certain businesses and domain areas, especially in the BPO sector, it could happen in 8-10 years depending on the individual.’’ Concurring with the above view, Vati Consulting CEO Amitabh Das says it is a fast tracker with an engineering and MBA degree combo who reaches this level.

Experts say that apart from these salaries, many of the high performers have performance variables and Esops which contribute to a larger overall pay packet. Some companies give Esops which are equivalent to 40-50% of their salaries and are in addition to the salaries paid.

Even at the broader level for the IT industry, it is not a case of those entering the profession turning lakhpatis overnight. TVA Infotech CEO Gautam Sinha says that about 25-30% or 2.5-3 lakh employees of the 1-million strong Indian IT industry get salaries over Rs 1 lakh per month or Rs 12 lakh per year. And about 1-2% of this number, ie 10,000-20,000 people across the industry, earn a Rs 24-lakh and above salary, excluding Esops and extra benefits.

The average time taken for a fresher to breach the lakh mark depends on the institute the person comes from and the base salary in the campus offer letter. “If one has got a Rs 6 lakh per annum offer, which is typically high end of the fresher market, you can reach the six figures in 2.5-3 years. Whereas if you have got a Rs 2 lakh offer, then it will take one about 6-7 years to reach the mark,’’ says Mr Sinha.

According to a compensation survey and student perception study conducted by Campus Connect, a division of CareerNet Consulting, just 2.5% of over 4 lakh engineering students graduating every year in the country draw upwards of Rs 7 lakh p.a.

Source: The Economic Times, 10th July, 2007

A myth called the Indian programmer

By T Surendar

They are the poster boys of matrimonial classifieds. They are paid handsomely, perceived to be intelligent and travel abroad frequently. Single-handedly, they brought purpose to the otherwise sleepy city of Bangalore. Indian software engineers are today the face of a third-world rebellion. But what exactly do they do? That’s a disturbing question.
Last week, during the annual fair of the software industry’s apex body Nasscom, no one uttered a word about India’s programmers. The event, which brought together software professionals from around the world, used up all its 29 sessions to discuss prospects to improve the performance of software companies. Panels chose to debate extensively on subjects like managing innovation, business growth and multiple geographies. But there was nothing on programmers, who you would imagine are the driving force behind the success of the Indian software companies. Perhaps you imagined wrong. “It is an explosive truth that local software companies won’t accept. Most software professionals in India are not programmers, they are mere coders,” says a senior executive from a global consultancy firm, who has helped Nasscom in researching its industry reports.
In industry parlance, coders are akin to smart assembly line workers as opposed to programmers who are plant engineers. Programmers are the brains, the glorious visionaries who create things. Large software programmes that often run into billions of lines are designed and developed by a handful of programmers. Coders follow instructions to write, evaluate and test small components of the large program. As a computer science student in IIT Mumbai puts it — if programming requires a post graduate level of knowledge of complex algorithms and programming methods, coding requires only high school knowledge of the subject. Coding is also the grime job. It is repetitive and monotonous. Coders know that. They feel stuck in their jobs. They have fallen into the trap of the software hype and now realise that though their status is glorified in the society, intellectually they are stranded. Companies do not offer them stock options anymore and their salaries are not growing at the spectacular rates at which they did a few years ago.
“There is nothing new to learn from the job I am doing in Pune. I could have done it with some training even after passing high school,” says a 25-yearold who joined Infosys after finishing his engineering course in Nagpur. A Microsoft analyst says, “Like our manufacturing industry, the Indian software industry is largely a process driven one. That should speak for the fact that we still don’t have a domestic software product like Yahoo or Google to use in our daily lives.”
IIT graduates have consciously shunned India’s best known companies like Infosys and TCS, though they offered very attractive salaries. Last year, from IIT Powai, the top three Indian IT companies got just 10 students out of the 574 who passed out. The best computer science students prefer to join companies like Google and Trilogy. Krishna Prasad from the College of Engineering, Guindy, Chennai, who did not bite Infosys’ offer, says, “The entrance test to join TCS is a joke compared to the one in Trilogy. That speaks of what the Indian firms are looking for.”
A senior TCS executive, who requested anonymity, admitted that the perception of coders is changing even within the company. It is a gloomy outlook. He believes it has a lot to do with business dynamics. The executive, a programmer for two decades, says that in the late ’70s and early ’80s, software drew a motley set of professionals from all kinds of fields. In the mid-’90s, as onsite projects increased dramatically, software companies started picking all the engineers they could as the US authorities granted visas only to graduates who had four years of education after high school. “After Y2K, as American companies discovered India’s cheap software professionals, the demand for engineers shot up,” the executive says. Most of these engineers were coders. They were almost identical workers who sat long hours to write line after line of codes, or test a fraction of a programme. They did not complain because their pay and perks were good. Now, the demand for coding has diminished, and there is a churning.
Over the years, due to the improved communication networks and increased reliability of Indian firms, projects that required a worker to be at a client’s site, say in America, are dwindling in number. And with it the need for engineers who have four years of education after high school. Graduates from non-professional courses, companies know, can do the engineer’s job equally well. Also, over the years, as Indian companies have already coded for many common applications like banking, insurance and accounting, they have created libraries of code which they reuse.
Top software companies have now started recruiting science graduates who will be trained alongside engineers and deployed in the same projects. The CEO of India’s largest software company TCS, S Ramadorai, had earlier explained, “The core programming still requires technical skills. But, there are other jobs we found that can be done by graduates.” NIIT’s Arvind Thakur says, “We have always maintained that it is the aptitude and not qualifications that is vital for programming. In fact, there are cases where graduate programmers have done better than the ones from the engineering stream.”
Software engineers, are increasingly getting dejected. Sachin Rao, one of the coders stuck in the routine of a job that does not excite him anymore, has been toying with the idea of moving out of Infosys but cannot find a different kind of “break”, given his coding experience. He sums up his plight by vaguely recollecting a story in which thousands of caterpillars keep climbing a wall, the height of which they don’t know. They clamber over each other, fall, start again, but keep climbing. They don’t know that they can eventually fly. Rao cannot remember how the story ends but feels the coders of India today are like the caterpillars who plod their way through while there are more spectacular ways of reaching the various destinations of life.

Source: The Times of India 18th February, 2007

Muslim Puzzle

By Harbans Mukhia

The Muslim question, never out of sight in the Indian context, has again been brought centrestage by the Sachar committee.

It is time to look at some of the commonplace assumptions about how the Muslims came to inhabit India in such large numbers — after all, the world's largest Muslim population lives in South Asia.

The notion that most of those who converted to Islam in mediaeval India did so to escape the oppressive Hindu caste system seems to underlie the Sachar committee report.

This theory was lent academic respectability by a 100-odd page essay in 1952 by Muhammad Habib of the history department of Aligarh Muslim University.

Examining the easy victory of the Turkish Muslim invaders of India in early 13th century, Habib, inspired by visions of massive popular uprisings in Russia and China in his century, was dismayed by the absence of such resistance in India, and explained it in terms of caste oppression.

He felt that the coming of Islam, even at the hands of the decadent Turks, far from inspiring popular defence of India's rulers, was welcomed.

The positive point about this novel explanation was that it brought society into the explanation of a major series of events, distinct from the 'divided rulers' theory.

The flaws were many: Its source was a mere two excerpts from Manusmriti and Al Beruni, separated by several centuries.

The assumption that these normative prescriptions reflected society's actual functioning, which remained unaltered over centuries, was highly suspect.

But there is an even more substantial basis for questioning the theory. If rebellion against the repressive Brahminical caste regime led to the acceptance of Islam as an alternative, one would have expected massive conversions in the heartland of the Hindu orthodoxy: in the northern plains, in Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar more than anywhere else.

Yet, here, according to census reports, the Muslim population never exceeded around 15 per cent. The real mass conversions took place in areas of very weak Brahminical hold: Kashmir valley, Malabar, and what is now Pakistan and Bangladesh.

This brings up the second common assumption: the mediaeval Muslim state, guided by the binding Islamic precept of converting kafirs to Islam, exercising immense power for five and a half centuries, was clearly the chief agency of conversions.

This is the favourite hobbyhorse of the sangh parivar. History, however, has a strange habit of decimating easy assumptions.

If the Gangetic plains comprised the heartland of Brahminical orthodoxy, it was also the core of the highly centralised as well as long lasting Muslim power in mediaeval times.

Yet, massive conversions to Islam occurred in the outlying areas, in the four geographical corners of pre-partition India, which also comprised the politically peripheral corners of Muslim power in mediaeval India.

Kashmir valley had turned to Islam long before Akbar had conquered it and Malabar had forever lain beyond the reach of the Muslim state in the north.

West Punjab and East Bengal were in a fairly constant state of rebellion which the rulers sitting in Agra or Delhi were seldom able to control for any meaningful length of time.

There thus appears to be a clear inverse relationship between Hindu orthodoxy and concentration of poli-tical and administrative authority on one hand and regional density of Muslim population on the other.

If that were not enough, the available evidence suggests that the heaviest concentration of conversions occurred in a century or so when the British regime had fully established itself in India - between the mid-19th century and 1941 when the last census before partition was compiled.

While one in every six individuals in the subcontinent got converted between the arrival of Islam in India in the 11th century and about 1850, the ratio rose to one in every four in the next century, when Mughal power had long gone.

How about the Sufis, then? While we do get occasional references to conversions being effected by Sufis, even a preliminary review of the itinerary of their migrations would indicate that they were moving from one Muslim-dominated area to another and rarely to a non-Muslim area where conversions could be made.

Indeed, when Muhammad bin Tughlaq, before moving his capital from Delhi to Deogiri in Maharashtra suggested that Sufis go and settle in the region to prepare a Muslim base for his arrival, they refused point blank.

While practising Islam and spreading its message was central for Sufis, it seems to have fallen way short of any attempt for mass conversions.

We are thus faced with a massive paradox: While the world's largest chunk of Muslim population inhabits the Indian subcontinent, there is not a single work on the process of conversions here.

This is largely because we don't have enough data from mediaeval India for historians to work with. This absence by itself defies any attempt to locate a single, or even a major agency or cause or occasion, for mass conversions.

We need instead to look for diverse agencies and processes which worked unobtrusively over long stretches of time to turn such huge numbers towards Islam.

The writer is a former professor of history at JNU.

Source: The Times of India 29th November, 2006