Welcome to the Hindu News Analysis by Shankar Ayes Academy for the Date, 5th November 2020. These are the list of news articles along with the page numbers of five different editions that are taken up for today's discussion. Now, let us begin with our analysis. This news article mentions that the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs has approved a hydropower project in the state of Himachal Pradesh. So in this context, let us see about Cabinet committees, then about the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs and this project from perspective. The relevant syllabus is given here for your reference. Generally, if you see Cabinet means the committee or body of senior ministers who are responsible for controlling the government policy. You might have often come across news that the Union Cabinet has approved so-and-so project or the State Cabinet has approved so-and-so project. So, Cabinet means this. Now, what are Cabinet committees that are established at the central level? See, these are the committees that are established as per the Government of India Transaction of Business Rules of 1961 and know that they are not mentioned in the Constitution. So, they are extra-constitutional bodies. They are basically an organizational device to reduce the enormous workload of the Cabinet. Now, you can compare this with the parliamentary committees where the parliamentary committees try to reduce the workload of the Parliament. Now, let us see the composition of Cabinet committees. See, the Prime Minister selects a team of ministers in the Cabinet and he or she allocates the portfolio. Usually, if you see, Cabinet ministers are only selected as members of the Cabinet committees, but sometimes the non-Cabinet ministers also become members of certain Cabinet committees. Mostly, the Prime Minister heads the Cabinet committees. That is, whenever the Prime Minister is a member of a particular Cabinet committee, then he or she invariably presides over the Cabinet committees. But sometimes, if you see, the Cabinet committees are also headed by other Cabinet ministers like Home Minister or Finance Minister. See, a Cabinet committee can either be set up with a broad mandate or with a specific mandate. In most cases, the Prime Minister sets up different Cabinet committees with select members of the Cabinet and assigns specific functions to such Cabinet committees. This is basically for the smooth and convenient functioning of the Government. So, based on this, there are two types of Cabinet committees. First is the standing Cabinet committees. That is, they are of permanent nature. And second is the ad hoc Cabinet committees. It means, they are of temporary nature. They are constituted from time to time in order to deal with specific issues. See, the Government of India Transaction of Business Rules of 1961 mandates that there shall be standing committees of the Cabinet as set out in the first schedule of these rules. And it also tells that the Prime Minister has the power to amend this particular schedule. See, according to the requirements, we saw that the Prime Minister sets up the Cabinet committees. So, the number, the nomenclature and the composition of these Cabinet committees vary from time to time. So, they are not fixed. So, you need to be thorough with the current affairs in order to know the present set of Cabinet committees. At present, if you see, the schedule lists eight Cabinet committees. And this is the list of those eight Cabinet committees. The functions of these committees are also mentioned in the schedule. Generally, if you see, their function is to facilitate in-depth examination of policy issues and effective coordination. They formulate the proposals for the consideration of the Cabinet and they also take decisions. Know that in all areas that are delegated to the Cabinet committees, normally the decision of the Cabinet committee in question is the decision of the Government of the day. But if you see as per the 1961 rules, any decision taken by the Standing Cabinet Committee or an ad hoc Cabinet committee may be reviewed by the Cabinet. So, it is up to the Prime Minister to decide if any issue decided by a particular Cabinet committee should be reopened or discussed in the full Cabinet. So, this is in brief about the general functions of the Cabinet committee. Now, our focus today is the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs, which is one of the eight Cabinet committees. See, it is one of the most important Cabinet committees and it is headed by the Prime Minister. The members of this particular Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs include the Ministers of Defense, Home Affairs, Finance, etc. These are the other members of this particular Cabinet committee. See, this Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs has many functions as listed in the schedule of the 1961 rules. As I told before, some of the functions include reviewing on continuous basis of matters such as economic trends, integrated economic policy framework for India, etc. And even matters regarding the fixation of prices of agricultural products is one among the functions of the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs. And these are the other functions. If you see based on this Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs, there was a question in 2015 problems. The question is the fair and remunerative price of sugarcane is approved by the correct answer here is optionary Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs. So, from this discussion so far, you can see the importance of the Cabinet committees in specific the importance of Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs. So, this is in brief about the discussion of the Cabinet committees and about the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs that you need to know from prelims perspective. Now, if you look at today's news article, the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs has approved the investment of a particular hydroelectric project. It is called the Luchri Stage 1 hydroelectric project. It is located on a river sattelage. It is situated in the Shimla and Kullu districts of the state of Himachal Pradesh. This particular hydroelectric power project will have a 210 megawatt power generation capacity. And this project is being implemented by the Sattelage Jal Vidyothnigam Limited with active support from the government of India and the state government of Himachal Pradesh. These are some of the benefits of this project, just have a glance. So, from this news article try to know where this particular hydroelectric project is located, that is on which river. This is all about the discussion of this news article. To summarize, we saw about Cabinet committees, then about the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs and then in brief about the news which mentions about the Luchri Stage 1 hydroelectric project. Now, have a look at this practice question. Let us move on to the next news article. This lead editorial article is with reference to fixing the rules of the economy so that it favours the workers and the small businesses in India. Here the author also talks about certain terms like appreciating assets, good markets, the concept of total quality management, etc. So, we will discuss all these aspects in this particular discussion. The relevant syllabus is given here for your reference. First, the author begins this editorial by telling that India has an income crisis, that is the incomes of people who have lesser amount of wealth are too low. So, to come out of this crisis, the economists propose three solutions. One is to free up markets, that is to have free markets. The second is to improve productivity and the third is to apply technology. So, the author of this editorial examines all these three solutions, whether they would help in solving the problem of income crisis or not. So, let us take up the first solution which is to free up markets. To discuss this particular concept, the author first defines good markets. See, in good markets, both the buyers and the sellers have a win-win situation. In good markets, humans are not treated like commodities and they get fair wages for their work. So, this is the concept of good market. Now, if you look at the characteristics of free market, they will not have a clearly written fair contracts between the employers and the workers, which would be available in case of a good market. And these contracts would be regulated by the government. These contracts are part of the rules of the economy that is to be corrected or fixed. So, a free market is about poor wages and poor treatment for the workers. A free market will also not have any sort of fair contracts and it will also not have a proper government regulation. Therefore, the author tells that the free market aggravates, that is, it increases the income crisis. Now, our focus today on this editorial is about the labor markets. In case of labor markets, the economists say that the labor market should be free to attract and increase investments. But if you see freeing up labor markets, one way reduces the burden of wage costs on investors. So, as per this solution, the incomes will further decrease and it will further aggravate the income crisis. So, from this discussion so far, try to know the difference between the good market and free market. In case of a free labor market, the labor's would be at disadvantage. So, the author tells that freeing up the market would aggravate the income crisis. The next solution which we saw was improving the productivity. This is key to economic progress and you all know productivity is a ratio of output to input. See if there is a one unit of input and if the output is larger than this one unit of input, then we can tell that the particular system is having higher productivity and this higher productivity will help a country's economy to progress further. Now, if you look at this editorial, here the author focuses on labor productivity. See this concept of labor productivity is used by economists as a universal measure for the productivity of an economy. Here labor productivity means GDP divided by the number of people in that particular system. That is, it might be a country or an economy. See, both these terms are different. Country means a particular country. The economy can be a group of countries that have a common market. So, labor productivity means GDP by the number of people in the system. So, if the labor productivity has to increase, then the contribution of one unit of labor and the overall labor should increase over a period of time. Only then we can tell that the labor productivity is high. Now, in order to improve the productivity, companies apply two broad strategies. One is by adding more machines and technology to supplement the capacity of workers in order to increase the total output. This is a good strategy, especially for capital rich, that is money rich enterprises and countries. The other strategy is employers try to enhance their workers skills and create a culture of continuous improvement. That is, there will be limited capital resources, but the focus will be on creating more output. So, here the workers and the managers will have to cooperate in order to improve the capability of the existing system. For those students with an engineering background or for those managerial grads, you might have come across this strategy, which is called as total quality management. For those who are not aware, don't worry, it is a simple strategy that is generating more output from limited capital resources. This particular strategy was adopted by the Japanese companies in order to reduce their costs and they improved the quality of their products before 50, 60 years, that is in the 1960s and 1970s. So, here the focus was that the Japanese companies invested in their workers, like giving them better wages, upgrading their skills, having labor-friendly working conditions, so forth and so on. So, the Japanese enterprises became one of the most competitive enterprises in the world. So, here workers have become appreciating assets. Now, why we are telling this because the value of workers, that is the human beings appreciates with the development and improvement in their abilities. If you take machines and buildings, they depreciate over a period of time, that is they will be wear and tear. But human beings develop when treated with respect and when they are provided with environments to learn and upgrade their skills. So, the related norms have to change in order to improve the productivity. So, when the productivity is improved, it will automatically address the income crisis. So, the second solution which is to improve the productivity will address the income crisis. Now, let us come to the third solution which is applying technology, that is using technology in order to produce a good or service. Here, the author notes that India should not follow the western model of technology application. Why? Because it is not conducive to increase the incomes of workers. It will destroy the traditional workplaces, it will lead to mass unemployment, and it will even lead to mass migration. So, there are chances for disruption in the work culture of India. If at all India is going to follow the western model of technology application. The application of technology should be in such a way that it encourages the participation of workers and it increases their income for a long term or else such an application has to be avoided. So, this is what the author tells. So, the conclusion is technology can be applied but it should be applied in such a way in order to encourage the participation of workers and increase their income. So, from the three solutions provided by the economists so far, we can find that improving productivity is conducive to address the income crisis and application of technology with a proper approach is conducive to address the income crisis. But freeing up market will actually aggravate the income crisis. So, this is in brief about the discussion of this editorial. The author concludes this editorial by telling that the government must regulate the work contracts even in the jig economy. We discussed in detail about this jig economy in our second November 2020 the Hindu news analysis. So, please have a look at it to know more about jig economy. So, if the government is able to regulate the work contracts even for the jig economy, then the government would be able to create a good society not only for the investors but also for the citizens. This is all about the discussion of this editorial. In this editorial, we saw the author's analysis of the three solutions that have been proposed by the economists in order to address the income crisis where we saw if they really address the income crisis or not. Now, have a look at this practice question. Let us move on to the next news article. This news article talks about a new initiative that has been launched by the central government to improve the quality of life. This initiative is nurturing neighborhoods challenge. So, let us look at this initiative in detail now. See, it is a three-year initiative that focuses on shaping the cities for young children and their families. It will support the cities to develop, pilot and scale those solutions that enhance the quality of life of young children, their caregivers and families in the public realm. Know that this challenge is hosted by the smart cities mission of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs in collaboration with the Bernard von Leer Foundation of Netherlands and the World Resources Institute India. This challenge enables the Indian cities to adopt an early childhood lens in designing the neighborhood level improvements that will end up in promoting the health and well-being of young children and their caregivers. See, this challenge is basically a two-tier engagement process. In the first stage, 20 cohort cities, that is, 20 cities that have more or less same characteristics will receive technical support and capacity building over six months to do tactical trials and pilots. This will be related to development of streets or public places or parks and gardens, playgrounds, etc. Then in the second stage, 10 winning cities out of these 20 cohort cities will get technical support for two years from the World Resources Institute India, which will be supported by the Bernard von Leer Foundation. And this will be to prepare and implement early childhood oriented projects in the public realm and to prepare and implement long-term policy and institutional changes which would contribute towards enhancing the quality of life of zero to five year old children in those 10 winning cities. So, the selected cities will receive technical assistance and capacity building to do all these following activities. And this is the set of eligibility criteria in order to be qualified as one among the 20 cohort cities. So, this is in brief about nurturing neighborhood challenge. Now, have a look at this practice question. Let us move on to the next news article. Now, let us look at this editorial which has been written by one of the former state ministers in the state of Karnataka, who also happens to be the representative of the state of Karnataka in the GST Council. In this editorial, he talks about the current issues in the center state financial relations. He mainly criticizes the central government for weakening the financial capacity of the states. So, know that this article is basically critical about the central government, but if you see it may help you in your exam since you will get to know many things on center state financial relations from this particular editorial. So, let us look at this editorial from this perspective. The relevant syllabus is given here for your reference. You all know that India is a federal economy and we have imbalances between the functional responsibilities and the financial resources of the central government and the state governments. Here you can think about two types of imbalances. One is the horizontal imbalances and the second is the vertical imbalance. When you tell about horizontal imbalance, it is basically the imbalance between the states. Why? Because we have various states in India that differ in terms of resources in the level of development and in terms of per capita income. So, the horizontal imbalance occurs between different units of government at the same level of government or simply in our case between the states of India. Now, when you talk about vertical imbalance, it is nothing but the imbalance between the central government and the state governments. It usually happens due to disproportionate alignment of the revenue sources. Why? Because every year the expenditure obligations by the state governments increase, but at the same time there is improper alignment of revenue sources. So, on the one hand we have growing expenditure requirements, but on the other hand there is a poor yield of revenue source for the states in India. So, the intergovernmental transfers that is the revenue transfers from the central government to the state governments are an inherent part of a multi-level fiscal system. So, this is where the author concentrates in this particular editorial. He begins the editorial by telling that the financial capacity of the states is structurally being weakened. Why? Because he feels that the resource mobilization from the central government to the state governments have reduced considerably. For example, the ability of the states to expand their revenue has been constrained since the introduction of GST. In our various news analysis in the past, we have discussed elaborately about the current problem where the COVID-19 pandemic has reduced the revenue of the central government and the state governments alike. The tax collection has also seen much decline during this period due to reduced economic activities. At the same time, we have also seen that the center is obligated to provide GST compensation to the state governments for the loss of revenue that is arising on the account of implementation of GST and this compensation is to be provided for a period of five years since the introduction of GST in 2017. So, till 2022, GST compensation has to be provided to the states by the central government. And in the recent months, we also saw how the central government came up with new idea where it gave two options to the state governments to borrow the money in order to provide this particular compensation. And we also saw that both these options were against the wishes of the states and the author is also of the same opinion here. He tells that instead of finding mutually beneficial solutions, the central government has repeatedly opted to undermine the current and the future fiscal capacities of the state governments. Apart from this, he also talks about the systematic cut in the devolution of funds to the state governments by the central government. Here, the term devolution means share of states in taxes raised by the union government. Here, have an idea that the finance commission, which has the constitutional powers, recommend the devolution of funds that the center has to give to the states. Here, the author tells that the central government is not adhering to the recommendations of the commission. He says that the devolutions have been consistently less every year. Between 2014-15 and 2019-20, the states got roughly around 7.98 lakh crores less than what was projected by the finance commission. So, this results in a huge reduction of the fiscal resource capacity of the state governments. And apart from this, the central government is also reducing the pool of funds that is to be shared with the states. See, in order to generate revenue, the central government imposes taxes, seizes, and surcharges. See, a says may be in the nature of tax or fee, but it is imposed for a specific purpose. It is levied until the government gets enough money for that purpose. Examples include education says, Swach Bharat says, etc. And know that Article 270 of Indian Constitution deals with CES. Now, if you look at surcharge, it is basically a tax on tax that is imposed for the purposes of the union, that is the central government. And a surcharge is dealt under Article 271 of Indian Constitution. So, what happens is the proceeds collected from the CES and surcharge that are levied by the union form a part of the consolidated fund of India. Here, the important thing to be noted is that the central government is not required to share the revenue that is generated from the CES and surcharge with the state governments. So, through this method, the center can raise revenues and it need not share with the states, but it is not the same in case of taxes. The central government has the obligation to share the taxes with the states. Here, the author tells that by taking this as an advantage, the central government is resorting to imposing and increasing the CES and surcharges instead of taxes wherever possible. And in some cases, the central government is even replacing the taxes with CES and surcharges. Here, one more thing you need to know, maybe tax or maybe CES or surcharges which replace the tax, it is not going to affect the spending of the consumers. Why? Because the consumers are going to pay the same price as before. For example, if you see the author here has talked about the center's move in reducing the tax and increasing the CES and surcharge on fuel like petrol and diesel. So, as a consumer, we were not able to see any change in prices, but only this tax surcharge component changed. Taxes became less and CES and surcharges increased. So, the center has taken advantage. Why? Because the incomes that are generated from CES and surcharges are not required to be shared with the states. And as a result, the state governments lost out on their share. Here, the author notes that between 2014-15 and 2019-20, CES and surcharges increased from 9.3 percentage to 15 percentage of the gross tax revenue of the central government. So, you can see that the central government has really taken advantage by imposing more of CES and surcharges. So, finally, the author tells that due to the combined effect of reduced devolution and divisible pool to states by the central government and also due to the reduced GST compensation central grants this year, the state governments may experience a fall of 20-25 percentage in their annual revenues this year. So, in order to overcome their financial burden and at the same time to discharge their welfare and development responsibilities, the state governments are now forced to resort to more and more of borrowings. And if the state governments are going to borrow more, they have to repay it back again. So, this repayment burden will again impact the state government's budgets in the years to come. So, the author tells that due to this vicious cycle, the economic growth potential of India as a whole cannot be fully realized. So, what is the way forward that has been suggested by the author? Here, the author tells that as is the current trend, the revenue that is generated from CES and surcharge will definitely be high. Now, what has to be done here is that revenue that is generated from the CES and surcharge can be used to meet any contingency or emergency needs like the shortfall in GST, which is prevailing as of now. So, this won't be burdening the central government or the state governments since the entire loan taken to compensate the GST shortfall can be repaid out of the assured CES revenue, which will continue to even happen after 2022. So, as the state government's demand, the central government should borrow this year's GST shortfall in full and release it to the state governments so that the burden of the state governments will be reduced. So, what the author tries to convey is that the state governments are at the forefront of development and they generate opportunities and growth. So, stronger states lead to stronger India. So, the central government should help in increasing the revenue of the state governments instead of working otherwise. This is in brief about the discussion of this editorial. So, throughout this editorial, as I told before, it is kind of critical of the central government, but if you see, you can take a lot of points from this particular editorial to write answers with a balanced analysis in your main exam, which is what we call as constructive criticism. Now, have a look at this practice question. Let us move on to the next news article. This news article talks about two new services created by Interpol in order to facilitate cybercrime related communication among police and other stakeholders. So, let us look at these two services and then about Interpol from exam perspective. The first service is Cybercrime Knowledge Exchange Workspace. It will basically allow exchanging non-police operational information on cybercrime such as latest cybercrime trends, prevention strategies, detection technologies and investigation techniques. It is open to all relevant users such as law enforcement agencies, the governments, international organizations and cybersecurity industry experts. So, it will basically enable to share the knowledge and experience in cybercrime. The second service is Cybercrime Collaborative Platform Operation. See, it is the first of its kind platform. It will support law enforcement operations. It is basically a centralized information hub for the coordination of global law enforcement operations against cybercrime. But if you see the access to this platform is restricted to only the operational stakeholders. It enables them to share the intelligence in an interactive and secure environment. So, it will enhance the operation efficiency and effectiveness of the member countries. So, these are the two services introduced by Interpol. So, what is Interpol? It stands for International Criminal Police Organization. It is an intergovernmental organization and it has 194 member countries. Know that India is also a member of Interpol. It helps police in the member countries to work together in order to make the world a safer place. For this Interpol enables countries to share and access data on crimes and criminals. It manages 18 police databases with information from names and fingerprints to stolen passports. These databases are accessible in real time to members. Interpol also offers a range of technical and operational support like the two new services that we just saw. It also offers investigative support such as foreign seeks analysis and assistance in locating the fugitives escapees around the world. So, it helps in combating the crimes across the areas of terrorism, cybercrime and organized crime. Further, if you see in each country an Interpol National Central Bureau is set up. This provides the central point of contact for all Interpol activities. See this National Central Bureau is run by the National Police officials and it usually sits in the government ministry that is responsible for policing. If you look in case of India the Central Bureau of Investigation that is the CBI is the Interpol's National Central Bureau of India and the Director of the Central Bureau of Investigation is its ex official head. So, these are some of the aspects that you need to know about Interpol from exam perspective. Also try to know about the two new services created by Interpol that is discussed in this news article. Now, let us move on to the next news article. This news article is about the Action Plan for Vulture Conservation 2020-2025 which has been cleared by the National Board of Wildlife. The birds population declined in a drastic manner in the past two decades. So, Vulture Conservation is of importance and this is the reason why the National Board of Wildlife has come up with an action plan for Vulture Conservation for the next five years. This action plan proposes to establish Vulture Conservation breeding centers across five different states Uttar Pradesh, Tripura, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. Also there would be a conservation breeding program and also a vulture safe zone has been planned to be established in every state. Apart from this there would also be rescue centers for vultures in India based on the regions. So, these are some of the important action plans for vulture conservation. To know more about vultures we request the viewers to watch 13th March 2020 the Hindu news analysis. This next news article tells that US has formally exited from Paris PAC nothing but the Paris Climate Agreement which was signed in 2015. This Paris Agreement aims to keep the increase in average temperatures worldwide well below 2 degree Celsius and if possible to limit it to 1.5 degree Celsius compared to the pre-industrial levels. So, as per this Paris Climate Agreement we have the nationally determined contributions which are basically voluntary targets. If you see US is the world's second largest emitter after China so USA exiting from this PAC is of great significance. There might be change based on the recent elections that concluded on 3rd November in USA. So, we will have detailed analysis regarding US elections in our upcoming analysis. Not discussed much about this US presidential elections today due to the delay in the announcement of the final results. Now, let us move on to the practice questions discussion session. This first question is about cabinet committees. It is a three statement question and you need to choose those statement or statements that are correct. Look at the first statement it tells that cabinet committees are mentioned in the constitution. It is incorrect. We saw that they are not mentioned in constitution. Now look at the second statement it tells that they are headed by the prime minister only. This statement is also incorrect. We saw that cabinet committees are mostly headed by the prime minister but sometimes they are also headed by other cabinet ministers. For example, the cabinet committee on parliamentary affairs is headed by the union minister of defense. So, the second statement is also incorrect. Now look at the third statement it tells that any decision taken by a cabinet committee is final. This statement is also incorrect because we saw that the decision of the cabinet committee need not be final. It can be reviewed by the cabinet. So, all the three statements are incorrect here but now you need to choose those statement or statements that are correct. Hence, the correct answer is option D none of the above. This question is about nurturing neighbourhoods challenge. It is a two statement question and you need to choose those statement or statements that are correct. Look at the first statement. It speaks about the aim of this particular initiative. It is a correct statement. It will support cities to develop pilot and scale solutions that enhance the quality of life of young children, the caregivers and families in the public realm. Now look at the second statement it tells that this particular nurturing neighbourhoods challenge is hosted by the Ministry of Tourism and Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. This statement is incorrect. We saw during our discussion that it is hosted by the smart cities mission of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs in collaboration with the Bernard van Leeupe Foundation of Netherlands and World Resources Institute India. So, the correct answer here is option A one only. This next question is about finance commission of India. It is a two statement question and you need to choose those statement or statements that are incorrect. Look at the first statement. It tells that finance commission is a statutory body mandated to evaluate the state of finances of the union and the state governments, recommend the sharing of taxes between them and to lay down the principles determining the distribution of these taxes among the states. Know that finance commission is a constitutionally mandated body which has been set up under article 280 of constitution. So, it is not a statutory body. So, the first statement is incorrect. The remaining part of the first statement is correct. It is the mandate of the finance commission. Now, look at the second statement. It tells that finance commission recommendations are binding on the government. The statement is also incorrect. The recommendations made by the finance commission are only advisory in nature and they are not binding on the government. To know more about finance commission, refer to our 31st October, the Hindu news analysis we recently discussed in detail about the finance commission. This next question is about Interpol. It is a two statement question and you need to choose those statement or statements that are not correct. Look at the first statement. It tells that Interpol is an United Nations organization that enables countries to share and access data on crimes and criminals. This statement is not correct. Why? Because it is not a union body or a union organization. It enjoys a special role as a permanent observer at the United Nations since here 1996. So, remember this fact. So, the first statement is incorrect. Now look at the second statement. It tells that the red notice of Interpol is an international arrest warrant for internationally wanted fugitives. This statement is also incorrect. We did not discuss about red notice during our discussion about Interpol. Know that a red notice is not an international arrest warrant but an international wanted person's notice. A red notice alerts the police worldwide about internationally wanted fugitives. So, the second statement is also incorrect here since both the statements are not correct and you need to choose those statements that are not correct. The correct answer here is option C both 1 and 2. Always be careful what the question demands. These are the main questions given for practice today. Post your answers in the common section. We shall review and give suitable suggestions and feedback within a reasonable timeframe. With this, we come to the end of the analysis of all the news articles taken up for today's discussion and also the practice questions discussion session. If you like the video, press the like button, comment and share and do subscribe to Shankar IA's Academy YouTube channel for latest videos and updates. Stay focused and motivated friends. Thank you.


Your commentator is Basil Reisdale. The first military surprise blow in the Italian stalemate comes in a bold, large-scale landing on the Nazi hill post near Anzio. Yanks of the American Fifth Army sees a wide beachhead. Swarming ashore in force, they take the German high command completely unaware. British units of the invading force come ashore from the fleet of landing craft to back up the American division. Nazi bombers meet a warm reception, but get over the target. Throughout the landing operations, the bombs rain down, to lie where they fell. Fires sweep Anzio. It is here that Nero fiddles while Rome burns. Now the Nazis try to turn the tables. Weapons, supplies, and men pour ashore until the beachhead becomes firmly established and a threat to Rome that puts Hitler on the anxious alert. South of the casino area, swirling floodwaters and terrific handicaps of the Italian terrain face the allied armies. Pontoon bridges are frequently swept away as calm rivers suddenly burst into roaring torrents. Engineer battalions struggle valiantly to keep communications open. There is no battle area anywhere where nature is more closely allied with the enemy than in Italy. But battle-hardened Yanks, supported by British artillery, continue to move up, exerting a constant pressure on the Gustavs lines, even the patient donkey becomes hardened to war. The Italian people reap the bitter fruits of fascism's alliance with Hitler. American bazooka as it blasts a nearby Nazi pillbox, it continues with its deafening chorus constantly reverberating to the war-torn hills. Termin artillery checks its range from a water tower, so allied engineers destroy it. Veterans of Sicily and Salerno are in the thick of the fighting and adding to their laurels, putting Hitler's best storm troops to their most severe test. These tough Nazis have had enough. The villages enter, close to fortified heights that dominate the allied lines, so they prepare to take action. It is the ancient St. Benedictine monastery, occupied and fortified by the Nazis. Pathlets of warning are strewn over the objective before the bombardment begins. Few warning, the artillery gets the rain. From those heights, the Nazis have shelled American and British troops for weeks. Causing serious casualties. Now the bombers operating from captured Italian fields come over to teach the Germans that no sacrilege of ancient landmarks can save Hitler. Enemy gun emplacements on the hills around Casino are hammered without letter, as the constant allied pressure on enemy lines draws heavily on Hitler's reserves of men. His weakening air force, his oil, his armor, his munitions of empty shell cases speak eloquently of the fury of the allies fight for Rome. Fails to save the Nazi invaders. The Red Army smashes forward from the Liengrat Ukraine. Soldiers of Soviet Russia press onto the very borders of Latvia, Poland and Romania, to complete disregard of heavy Nazi shell fire. From a crippled Nazi tank, still serving the makeshift pillbox for its crew. The enemy is driven out and shot down. The world marvels at the long sustained power of an offensive stretching 800 miles from Stalingrad all the way to the Tamplin Gulf. Frontline casualties get immediate first aid by heroic nurses. German mechanized equipment is battered in a banner from the Gulf of Finland to the Boog River. But Nazi strategy is to force the Russians to pay as heavily as possible in munitions and men for every mile reconquered. Enemy artillery tries to find a destructive Red Army rocket battery hidden somewhere in this area. Field Marshal Timoshenko watches the blasting of enemy positions. Moliensk, Gomell, Gep, Revoi-Rov, thousands of smaller towns are swept clean of the enemy. Hundreds of thousands of Germans either perish or surrender. Completed ruin is left behind by every retreating Nazi division. They blast and burn in a senseless orgy of destruction. The bitter fruit of Hitler's intuition is not only useless slaughter and waste, but a Russian hatred of everything Germans symbolize by a thousand flaming villages. Flame-lighted streets of a recaptured town, the Soviet tide floods on toward Poland and Romania, sweeping the shaken enemy before it, but never a let-off in months of fighting. Suicide squads of the German rear guard are encountered. There goes a grenade, and there goes a Nazi sniper. On the heels of the victorious army, Russian peasants straggled back into their devastated villages in pitiful groups. Everything lost, homes, personal belongings, and most of their men. The Red Army frequently gains from 10 to 15 miles a day, smashing great holes in the German positions from the private marches to the Black Sea. The intense emotional joy of Russia's liberated people blinds them to scenes of destruction. Every soldier is a conquering hero. Homes may be a flame, but a woman kneels in thanksgiving. Everywhere peasants weep for joy that the Nazis are beaten. Out of hiding comes a suffering people. The procession of Hitler's hoodlums passes under guard, mainly to protect them from an enraged people. The rumble of a Soviet tank brings up the children with a wild joy. Every Russian soldier is decked with garlands and hailed for its courageous part in Russia's smashing offensive.


You ready for this? Maybe a good day. From Prince Edward Island, he's this truck right here. He's blocked in by Western Express over here. It's from, like I said, Prince Edward Island. He was in here, I was grabbing a coffee from McDonald's at one of the rest areas here. And he came up and said, hey, watch your videos. And I thought he was from around here. He said, no, it's from Prince Edward Island. Geez. You Maritimers, you're so nice, you're following me. Everywhere I go, there's a friendly Maritimer. So he's on his way. He said he's delivering about 20 miles from here. Where are we right now? I think we're near the border with Connecticut. Let me check. We're in Massachusetts still. Oh, we got a little bit of aways yet. We're just north of Sturbridge. And it looks like we're gonna hit I-84 and then go down into Connecticut. And then I'm going to take the 287 around New York City and make our way through Washington, D.C. That should be interesting today. Woo. All right, okay, well, just wanted to say shout out to Josh. And I'm sorry you're blocked in there, bud. He can't get out now because this guy came here. I can't really get out. I think I still get out, but. Another piece of good news right now is that our fence is being put up today at our house. So hopefully he'll get that done today and tomorrow or whatever in the next couple of days. We'll have a fence around our yard so that our dogs can run off leash. That's gonna be awesome. It's gonna make walking them so much easier in the wintertime. It's gonna take a lot of stress off of myself and Britt, especially because she's there every day. Can't wait to show you guys. And let's get down the road. I forget what else I was gonna tell you. I was gonna tell you something else. I'll think of it. I'm excited. Let's get truckin'. All right, let's see if we can get around this guy. It's not a very nice place to park there, bud. Walking us all in. My lights are on. Some people will see me. Make our way out. So we still have 1,994 kilometers to go. That's two full days of driving. So all day today, all day tomorrow, then I'll deliver this on Friday. And I still don't got a reload that I know of yet. They probably got something in the works for me though because they always do. I did request to go home. We will see how far that request makes it. They'll get me home. I know. I have faith. I've been out for a long time now and I have the New Brunswick there. I mean, I need to get home. I got a life, you know? Life isn't trucking though. Pull ourselves out. I'm heavy. I'm sitting at 79,500 pounds. Barely legal to be traveling down these beautiful interstates. Good thing I'm not any fatter or they'd probably pull me in and give me a ticket. So it takes me a little while to get up to speed here. And I've got to be very careful. It takes me a long time to slow down. I make all my lane changes and maneuvers slowly and smoothly. But here we go. Let's get around New York. Let's get through D.C. Let's get on down to Georgia. Georgia. Diesel. Georgia. Where the sun shines and the palm trees grow if you go far enough south. I've got my own palm tree one day, you know? I really hope that by the time I retire all of these COVID restrictions are gonna be gone so that we can go on vacation to the U.S. again. Because I'm gonna wanna be a snow bird once I'm old. I am not, once I'm old, I have earned not having to deal with snow anymore, I think. Getting to the sunlight. Your windshield is when you drive straight towards the sun. I'm sitting on to Interstate 287. That's gonna take me all the way around the city center. So I don't gotta go through that mess. Is this Midland 287 this way? Everything's under construction here, so. And it doesn't help that the sun is right in my eyes. And two people yelling at me. I'm taking 287. Karen thinks I'm taking the long way. Cliving through the Northeast if there wasn't at least one massive traffic incident. On here, there's a lot of flashy lights coming up ahead of here and people are getting impatient. I drive like, is this?  Looks like there's a big rig tow truck there. It's hard to see, cause it's at night. I can't see nothing from here, but I do see a big rig tow truck, which would make me think that there's probably a big rig that he is towing. You know, I have these thoughts in my head. Sometimes they make sense. Any rubber neck? Let's all slow down, let's all take a look. Emergency vehicles. Cause you're not supposed to block the shoulder. He's getting impatient at the back of the line, I guess. He's trying to get by everybody. I don't know why people think that that's a good idea. You know, bridge or something and they can't get in and now all the emergency vehicles that are supposed to be coming down the shoulder for the accident are blocked. That was that guy, genius. Oh, he doesn't know how to use his signals up there either, that makes sense. You've really gotta wonder where some people get their licenses from, you know? Like, we've got problems like this up in Canada too where, you know, what would you call them? Serial box drivers that got their license in a serial box? That's what it seems. So we've put a whole bunch of new regulation and law up into effect up there now, where it's a lot harder to get your class one or your CDL now. Which is, it is a good thing, but it's also a bad thing because it's also very expensive now and with the shortage of drivers like we always have. Now we have even less drivers because it's like 10 grand to get your license, I heard. My license, it was like 200 bucks. No, no, it wasn't even.   Wasn't even that long. I mean, I got my license in 2006 and they've stepped up regulations since then. Good thing I had a good trainer. My dad was a veteran driver by that point already. He knew, he made sure I knew what I was doing, but it's scary to think that a lot of drivers out there don't have that, don't have that help and they just get given a license and woo-hoo. There you go, here's 80,000 pounds of hurtling steel. Have fun. Try not to hurt anybody, okay? The thing by your finger there, that's a signal. It's optional, but if you wanna use it, it's pretty cool. Don't have to. And you guys know I'm not the biggest fan of regulation, but some regulation, okay? I just like there to be like, you know, a reasonable amount. And I think that the regulations they've brought in for getting your license now is good. I think that they've made, I think they've made it safer, made it better because it was getting crazy, you know? Because up in Canada, we haul more than 80,000. We haul, like I can haul 87,500 in this unit up there. End up, out east, I can haul even more. Some units, you know, they're hauling upwards of 120, 150,000 pounds. And, you know, they're just giving the keys to these drivers who have, who they used to be giving the keys to these drivers that had like no training. And then they throw them out into the mountains in BC or Northern Ontario on those two lane highways and they're like, all right, bud. Have a good trip, eh? You know the number for 911, right? All right, have fun. I think it's good that we make sure that people who are guiding these trucks down the highway among us are trained properly. And I'm not a trainer, okay? I'm an entertainer, but I do like what I do, okay? This is one thing I'm good at. I got this little parking signs right there. Like parking on the side of the highway like this, I just find it risky. So let's see if there's anything for us in the rest area. I have my doubts. What do you guys think? Can you see? I know this camera sometimes doesn't pick up so well at night, you just have to trust me, it's packed. This guy didn't even try to straighten out. Nice, this is one of those rest areas where it's the parallel parking only. So only like 10 trucks can fit in here, but we've tried to fit in 20 next one. I think the next rest area was in 30 miles. That's one thing I like about the Midwest. Oh, can I fit in here? I don't think I can. A little bit too small. Ah, come on. Oh, what up here? Parking signs there. I still got time left. We'll just go on to the next rest area. Parking on the side of the highway like this, especially like this guy here on the left. And these guys over here, and if somebody blows a steering tire just as they're coming past here, all of these trucks are gonna get clobbered. Guess we really gotta find a place to park soon then. I think the next rest area is coming up here soon, though I have my doubts that I'll be able to find parking. But we'll see, we got lucky last night. So far we've always found somewhere to park. According to the Trucker Path app, there's some parking here at the Liberty Truck Stop. I think this is what, Harrisonburg? Turn right. I'll have to double check. Where do you want me to turn right? I've never actually stopped here before. Liberty Truck Stop. Let's see if they actually have parking. Or if the app was lying. It's on South Main Street for one kilometer. There's already people parked up here, so chances are back here. But we'll see. This is actually quite a big truck stop. I had no idea that this was even here. Oh, there's gotta be like 100 parking spots here. Thank God for the Trucker Path app. I like that thing. Okay, and if you find a truck stop with space, the more people that use the app and update parking lots and stuff, the better it works for everybody. Let people know when there's parking. The app said there was some parking here. I don't know. Weasel, how does it feel, man? How'd you feel being back on the road? Tell the good people. Tell them. Well, it feels nice. It's very nice. Everything's very nice to you, Weasel. As long as you get your food and your treats. So our fence got finished today at our house back home and my mom went by there to take some pictures for me and send them to me and Britt video called me once she was at home there and showed me at all. It looks great. It looks awesome. It turned out very well. So I can't wait to get home and actually see it in person. We can now let our dogs out in our yard, off leash, they can burn their energy, chase each other around. I can't wait to take diesel back there. He can chase Chevy around diesel. Where's he gonna chase you? No, he's, no, you're gonna chase Chevy, right? One of the two. You're still pretty fast, man. You can get him. You miss Chevy? Of course he does. So I can't wait to get home. They can run around now in our yard again. Glad that got done before winter. I was really honestly expecting to only get it done in spring because it's the end of the year. We've already had a few snowfalls already. Frost is gonna set in in the next month. And no, they squeezed us in. Got it done in one day. And apparently it looks great. It's perfectly in line. It's perfectly level. It's sturdy. It's not flimsy. And it's exactly what we wanted. So I'm really excited about that. So it's time to go to bed now, though. We found a spot at the Liberty Truck Stop. Oh, I was gonna tell you what town this was in. What town are we in, Diesel? You know where we are, I have no idea where we are. I think it's Harrisburg. Oh, Harrisonburg Travel Center. Yeah, that's where we're in. Harrisonburg, Pennsylvania. Not Pennsylvania. Virginia's for lovers. That's their state slogan. So yeah, I'm going to bed here anyways. Hope you guys enjoyed the video. If you did, give it a thumbs up. Subscribe, tell your friends to subscribe. Spread the video around. Talk about Trucker Josh everywhere you go. See if we can get this channel up to 150,000. You think we can do it? I mean, we made it to 100,000. I bet we could do 200,000. But let's set our goals at like 150, okay? 150, let's see if we can get there. You think we can do it? Not this year, maybe by the end of next year? I don't know, I'm not really growing that fast. I got a good bass, a good audience, that tunes in every night. But I haven't really been attracting the masses. But maybe with your help, we can do it. I don't know, we're going to keep trying to grow. So see what you can do to help me out if you want to. If you don't want to, if you just want to sit there and watch my videos and go watch the next video after this and that's totally cool too, I don't care. Thanks for watching this one though. I'll see you tomorrow.


My name is Tathagat Verma, you can call me TV, it's much more handy or you can, this is my Twitter handle. Anyone knows this picture? What is this? Anyone knows what these two, a box and a circle, what do they mean? Sorry? Nobody? It's piece is turned upside down. Okay, so I'll just give you 10 seconds kind of etch it in your memory because this is what we are going to learn in today's session. What is this all about, right? And it's actually a tool that I'll share today and we'll do a slight like a mini workshop kind of a thing here. But before I get started, I have a question to all of you. Can you name a few products that you absolutely love?  Slack is one product, okay, we'll talk about why you do that. I just give me three or four names so that we can kind of deep dive into that. Come again? Omni focus. So many of us may not have heard of Omni focus if you can just, okay, great. So I look up to you for help and your name is Jim. So I look up to you for help for that in terms of why you love Omni focus, right? Anything else? Jeera, okay, great. I think a lot of techies, no consumer, no love for consumer products here. What's app? Okay, great. What's app? You have? Square. Okay. Everyone knows square, right? You can make it as a point of sale terminal, okay. These are the five products we saw here, quicker, Twitter, okay, Twitter, okay. Now, I have a question for you. If I were to ask you, why do you love these products? Can you go a little next level into that and tell me why do you love these products? And we'll focus to only these six products that we have talked about, okay. So by offering something in a bite-sized format, how does it help you? Okay. So I want to just nail down on the last phrase that you said, it doesn't waste my time. So you can theoretically get the same information, you can scrape the web, but then you would spend probably hours just to get to that point, and here you can save the time. So it saves the time, right? Okay, so that's the thing, just keep that in the mind. You had a product from here, which was the Jeera, okay. Why do you like Jeera? Customizable, and how does being able to customize help you really, okay. Okay. So if you were theoretically, if I have to flip the question around, if you were not using Jeera and if you were using something else, it would not probably give you the same level of customization, or it will impose a different way of thinking on you and not meet your requirements, right? So you would, and you have, you want to do something, but then Jeera or other tool may not allow you to do that. So whatever pain is there in terms of solving the problem is still going to be there, but Jeera comes and takes away that pain from the whole process. Totally? Okay, I have not put words in your mouth. I'm just trying to put them in a certain way. Thank you. Thank you. Omni-focus, can you tell me why do you like Omni-focus? That specific help from the tool, hassle-free. Okay, so it takes the pain away from that. It takes probably the guesswork. It takes away the unnecessary steps, probably. It just gets the job done, right? Okay, so let's just keep it here for now. Square, what is it that you like about square? So that's what you're talking about from a merchant point of view, I'm assuming. So ease of use and standard no-nonsense kind of a do-it-yourself configuration. Yeah, probably, yeah. So low price point, low entry barriers make the job easier. It's free now, yeah. You had a product from here as well, right? Okay, why do you like Slack? I know in the morning we actually had a lot of discussion around Slack, right? But then anything else that you would like to call out here? Correct. So it's being able to stay in touch, otherwise if you are in the shopping mall and somebody says, hey, that deliverable was due.  I'm sure there will be a group of people who probably don't like Slack for this exactly same reason, right? Fair enough. Okay, was there any other product that we left out? There was one more. WhatsApp, right, yes. I know a lot of project teams who don't like using Slack, but they use WhatsApp for project communication, right? They actually track the entire project on that. But anyway, that's personal preference. So that's good, thanks for that. Bear with me for another few minutes. Can you tell me three or four products that are absolutely, absolutely lousy products?  If you meet the creator of the product on the road, you want to kill them. Okay, that was, that was, that was some statement, right? End the sentence. Okay, so we'll come to that in a moment.  But anyone else wants to say any other name of product that they absolutely hate? Visual Studio, okay, PowerPoint, okay, okay. So let's come back to these three for a moment. Let's start with the Jira gang here. So if potentially, if potentially United Artists were to remake modern times, Charlie Chaplin's modern times, and those of you who have watched it, they know it, how Charlie undergoes a nervous breakdown doing the stuff on the conveyor belt. Probably there will be an equivalent of Jira in the modern times, right? It's like handling tickets throughout the night and, okay. So you feel that it is actually turning people into a mechanical box, and they are all they are doing is just responding to that, and they are driven by the SLAs, okay. And you feel that it basically the purpose for each other, which has been created is not really something else, but it's turning users into something else.  You're not, okay.  Let's, let's be kind to everybody, right? So why, so you're talking about the OS. Is it for Vista or is it for 10, okay? Well, I'm sure there are people like it. Anything specific that you can help us with, which, hey, this is really the thing that actually pains me or takes, okay? Okay, well, the governments of the world are known to the same thing to people, so. Fair enough, point taken, okay. Third point, you had PowerPoint there, what is it about PowerPoint that you hate? Okay, awesome, fair enough, I mean, we have Prezi, I, I personally use HaikuDec, anyone HaikuDec lover here? HaikuDec is an amazing MVP of PowerPoint. It has only three features, but 90% of the time I need only three features of PowerPoint and I use only HaikuDec. H-A-I-K-U-Dec-B-E-C-K, Haiku as in Japanese word, Haiku, HaikuDec.com, I'm not here, they haven't paid me for that, but that was it, okay? So thanks for that, I just keep that in mind because as we go into this, it will be helpful to kind of have some of these things that we talked about of what is it that you are liking about some of the products and what is it that you are not liking about some of the products, right? The fact that you have a choice to your opinion is sacrosanct, we are not going to debate that. We just want to understand how can we use some of those ideas in building better products here. So officially the title of the talk is creating awesome value proposition using value proposition canvas and this is actually what is known as the value proposition canvas and I'll explain you what this is all about. So this is what we are going to spend next 30 minutes talking today and we'll have a Q&A, you can jump in in between, it's a small group, so feel free to jump in and ask me. So Alexander Osterwalder is a guy who created, he wrote this book basically in 2010, The Business Model Generation, is it familiar to a lot of people here? Okay, I see four or five hands going up. So if you haven't read this book, I would strongly recommend it. I think it's one of the best books written in the last five years. However, I'm going to use Alexander's second book in my discussion today and I'll talk about that as well. I have just taken it for the context a few things from there. So what Alexander Osterwalder talked about was the fact that when we look at any business model, the first thing we actually try and do is look at the environment map here. So we try to see what kind of an environment we are really operating in. There are market forces that impact us, there are key trends and they could be technology, social, societal and so on. Then there could be industry forces and finally the macroeconomic forces here. Now this is really the big picture kind of a thing, right? I mean there's not something that you would go into your weekly or monthly reviews but this is something that is a very strategic level kind of a input there. So this is the first thing that he talked about. The more interesting thing was something that he talked about in the context of business models and the business model he defines as that they describe the rationale of how an organization creates, delivers and captures value. Now if you are not familiar with this context there, I'm sure most of us will understand the notion of creating and delivering value. A lot of times most of us really don't understand the context of capturing value. So I'll just give you a small example because if we have more time I can talk more about that. Take the case of Uber. Now Uber uses every single free APIs that are available to it, whether it is the Google APIs for actually looking up the distance and so on. But it doesn't pay anything to Google. It doesn't pay anything to Comcast. It doesn't pay anything to Airtel. It doesn't have to pay anything. It actually, Uber is, so look at it the other way around. Comcast has laid the copper fiber. Google has made the APIs and has done the mapping of all the GIS information. A lot of these guys have created the value. They have delivered the value, but somebody else is capturing that value. Uber in this case. And Uber has a $50 billion, $60 billion valuation for something that it doesn't make, it doesn't own. It just sits on the top of the tech stack and makes money out of it. So capturing the value is one of the most recent conversations that we are having. Take the case of airlines. Airline, anyone knows the size of airline industry globally, $750 billion. And how much is the profitability as a percentage in that sector? 3, 2 to 3%. Now imagine no industry in the world has that level of money flowing in $750 billion, all for 2 or 3% of profitability. And then you see all these fancy shop stores and everybody really trying to make money out of it and pay nothing to these airports or aircraft. And that is why you see all the low-freight airlines. I mean if you travel in India and Indigo, you would see, like I remember 15 years back somebody actually when he told that fact to me, it opened my eyes. How many of you go to and watch movies? A lot of us go to multiplex and watch the movies. What's the average movie ticket price? $250, $300 depends on the season, right? How much? Come again? Depends on the city as well. In Karnataka, they are actually working to reduce it to $120 now. They are already now. How much money do you spend on the popcorn and the soda? They make more money, right? They make more money out of the popcorn and the soda and they actually do it on the ticket sales, right? So PVR if you look at their balance sheet, a good 60% of their revenues were coming from popcorn and soda and not from the movie ticket. Movie ticket is subsidiary. They might, they can actually stop selling movie tickets for all you know because they are making more money. So that's the, absolutely. And caramel, my favorite is caramel. You never get caramel anywhere in the world. You only get it inside the movie theater and I watch movies only because I have to eat caramel popcorn there, right? Thank you sir. Okay. So this is all about, so I think capturing value is more important. Now what Alexander Osterwalder did was he basically said any business in the world, whether you take a GE or a Walmart to the two people startup that's coming up in your basement garage, everything has these nine building blocks starting with the customer segments, value proposition, channels, customer relationships, revenue screen, key resources, key activities, partnerships and cost structure. And you can actually, so any company in the world, any site, any kind of a thing, you can actually put them in these, you can map their business model in these nine building blocks. Now that's not news to us. We all know that. But what he did was something very remarkable that he actually created in a graphic manner. He put them all together into a what he calls as the business model canvas. And this canvas was actually a very revolutionary thing because it create a shared visual language of communicating the building blocks of a business. And they have a purpose here because what you see on the right side is the value that the customer sees.  And these are all the back office things that happen on the left on the back side of it, the partnership, the activities and the heavy lifting that you do in order to deliver the value to the customer. So this is how basically he created that. And how do we use that? So now I have a question to you. Suppose all of you are entrepreneurs and you are starting your new business. How do you think your business model canvas which is supposed to look like this? How will it look like on day one? Yes, so white page. Yes.  Who are our customers? How do we market? All that kind of stuff. It's a it's a blank slate. Because honestly, we don't know who are our customers. We don't know what is the value proposition. We don't know any of these answers here. Right. So what do we do? What are you going to do with that? Because you obviously cannot start on a blank slate. So how do you proceed with that?  But the problem is if you told anyone that you are guessing, you'll get fired. So we take a little more sophisticated language and we say we are doing hypothesis. Right. Because hypothesis. Right. Because hypothesis is a much, much cooler term for that. But end of the day, we are all doing the guesswork. Anyway, right. So, so, so that's what we do because we have to get started. So we obviously have to make a meaningful. Now, even though you put some hypothesis on that, here is my my guru who basically I like. I mean, I love whatever Steve Blank says. This is what he said. There are no facts inside the building. So he said, get out of the building. I think this is the most important words ever written in a management book. Because what happens is we typically in our, in our earnest and zeal to solve a problem, we make decisions on behalf of people who we don't understand. So we say, yeah, I think we should do it this way. No, no, I think that's how people would do it. You are not the target customer. Your product is not being designed for you. How do you understand it? So, so now if you have to convert this guess into something meaningful, the only way for you to do that is something known as a customer contact. We have to go and talk to the customer. We have to go and talk to the real people in the world and do that stuff.   Some of them are an obvious no starter. Some of them start there and you validate it and it goes for a toss. But at some, but one of those business models keep changing and you keep iterating on them till the time all the boxes are green, which means all the hypotheses have been validated based on real world data and they are good to go. And what does it mean? You have found here, you don't know how to make money because you don't know who are the customers? What is the cost structure? What is the revenue stream? By the time you come to this point, you have figured out a repeatable and sustainable way to make money. Your father-in-law does not have to call anybody's brother-in-law to get a business. That is basically a sustainable and scalable business model. You have learned how to make money. When people come and buy your product, you are not shocked and surprised, why somebody is buying my product? Because you know who are those customers, you have discovered them and you know why they are buying your products here. That is the nirvana. That is basically what we want to do here. That is the 101 of business model canvas. Now we start our discussion after that in this session. How do you create the value proposition? You know the target customers. You know what is the value proposition. The challenge is how do you create a value proposition? We looked at some of the products that you spoke about and you said some of those things were awesome and also some of the bad products there. Why is it that these companies were not able to create the right value proposition? We will try to understand that. So in 2014, Alexander Osterwalder wrote another book, a beautiful book, amazingly lovely graphics there, a value proposition design in which he actually took the whole theory to the next level and he explained how we build the right kind of a value proposition here. So I am going to refer to that. Sorry, the some of the pictures are not coming but they will be on slide share so you can have a look at that. So what he did was he said basically we talked about environment, map is the first thing, then we went to the business model canvas and now we are actually blowing up the business model canvas. So if you see here what they have done is these two columns here. If you go back, these two columns, we are talking about the value proposition and the customers. What this guy has done is he has basically zoomed into that and he has blown them out and said this is what is the value proposition canvas. So these were the early the graphics that I showed in the slide number one and we will understand what each of these boxes mean here. So let's start with the first one, the customer profile. The piece circle inverted is the customer profile which basically helps us clarify customer understanding and all we are doing is the theme of this is observe because we don't want to second guess on behalf of our customers. We don't know enough about our customers. So we are going to learn about it by observing them. And we'll understand each of these boxes here. The value map is the other square on the left side which is basically creating value for your customer which is how we design based on how we have understood about the customer. So the blue circle is what the customers are and the yellow box is how we are going to design it for the customers. And so let's look at each of these things. Now the circle itself has three of these quadrants. Customer jobs, gains and pains. Let's look at each one of them. Customer jobs, they describe the things that your customers are trying to get done in their work or in their life. The customer job could be the task that they are trying to perform and complete the problems they are trying to solve or the needs they are trying to satisfy. Now let's look at the some of the products that you guys talked about. Are you able to see that you are able to map the customer jobs to Jira or to the Microsoft office or to square that we talked about? Like what does square do? It allows you to actually make anything, any phone with a 3.5 mm jack is a point of sale terminal so that you can swipe your card and make it as a payment gateway. A Slack would be something which is a collaboration platform which makes it possible for the entire team to come on the same page literally and irrespective of where you are, in what time zone you are, you are able to access and be with the team there. A Jira for those who are Jira lovers would be actually that it allows you to be in control of how you want your project information to be managed, tracked and reported and communicated and so on and so forth. So those are the customer jobs there. Now the types of job could be functional, social jobs also could be there. Anyone knows what's a social job? So it's hardly the social work literally it's more like I want to buy that latest smart phone so that I look cool in front of the people that I hang out with. So that is the social job here. It has a social slash emotional kind of an appeal to basically uplift your image in the group that you hang out with. It could be personal jobs or supporting jobs. So there can be n number of things that Alexander Osterwalder describes in the book there. Now let's look at the pain here. That's the second box here. The pains describe anything that annoys your customer before, during or after trying to get a job done or simply prevents them from getting a job done. Pains also describe the risk that is potential bad outcomes and so on and so forth there. Now the risk itself can be extreme or moderate similar to how the jobs can be important or insignificant there and the type of pains could be undesired outcomes, problems, characteristics, obstacles, risks and so on. So let's go one by one again at some of those products that you talked about. Are there any pains that WhatsApp solves for you? And it cost money every time to send it and there was no group SMS unless you bought a group SMS software or something in which case it was promptly declared as a spam. So you had all kinds of problems in keeping track of the mail thread. So these were all the pain points there which it was solving there. From the only focus point of view any pains you would like to basically say that you had before you started kind of using it. Paper and pen very difficult to do but now you have a way in which you can kind of put them all on the same page. Probably you can even do I am not familiar but maybe it allows you to do some kind of a projection or what if analysis or a compare and so on and so forth. Fair enough. So those would be some of the pain points that probably might come there. Let's look at the gains that is the third quadrant in the customer side of the equation. What are the gains? The gains describe outcomes and benefits your customers want. Some gains are required expected or desired by customers and some would surprise them. They include functional utility, expected gains, required gains, desired gains and so on. So let's engage with the participants from here. Any gains can you think of from when we talked about some of the products earlier when people were settling down but any gains you want to add about any product that you love that hey this is the gain that it gives me. We talked about earlier I think we had a thing that Jira we had somebody saying that hey I am able to sort it out and hence I am able to save a lot of time. The fact that I am able to save time is a pain I am sorry it's a gain because I am gaining all the time here right. Anything else anyone would like to write? That's a gain there because it allows you to share the document without worrying about hey which version of document you have and is everyone having the same version at the same time or not correct. So it's a real time collaboration that's available right. So that could be a gain that that's a good question we'll come to that in a moment. You're already five slides ahead of me. So okay so then what do you do now you have worked together as a team and the whole idea of them is work together as a team with bunch of post-its and do that thing and then what we do is we rank them all together. So we basically put them all together and say hey these were the job importance there's a severity the relevance and we are just putting it all together here kind of a thing from important to insignificant and so on. So this is the first part of it we have done some analysis some observation we understand about customer pain points what what do the customer expect to gain out of that what are the jobs that they are looking to get done. I mean when you buy in when you buy a cappuccino you are not expecting that cappuccino to give you a status report the jobs to be done with a cappuccino is that you expect to get some energy first thing in the morning so that when you reach office people don't say that you have party till four in the morning right or something like that you do want to look fresh in front of the people. Now let's look at the design part of it we have tried to understand it from the customers what are the pain points how are things with them now let's look at some of the gain some of the design how we do that so again there are three boxes products and services gain creators and pain relievers as you will see this is basically mirroring actually so it is mirroring the pain that we saw on the customer side of it with the pain relievers and the gain it is mirroring with the gain creators here and let's just deep dive into that. So products and services we all understand basically a list of what you offer think of it as all the items your customers can see in the shop window metaphorically speaking so if you were to potentially put up a shop window anything that you will put up in the in the glass pane is your products and services right these could be physical tangible these could be intangible digital financial there could be n number of ways of basically slicing and dicing the the products and services what about the pain relievers now pain relievers describe how exactly your products and services alleviate specific customer pains so if your customer pain is hey i'm getting this information from seven different sources and i have a problem with the format every time i don't know how to keep track of it well that's a specific pain reliever of taking care of it and getting it in case of slack for example your problem might be hey people are all having updates at the different time there is no centralized repository i've been i'm used to doing ms project there which is a one-way street it only it only dictates people what to do but it has no scope for really bringing it back and that information is in a word document or in an excel sheet or somewhere i can have it all together and slack i think last week they also introduced a group chat or a group phone actually so everyone can even have a conference call all so a bunch of things that it's basically taking away the pain that people might have recognized in a group collaboration platform like slack kind of a thing that they might be expecting those features right so that's that's the kind of pain reliever third category gain creators so gain creators are describing how your products and services create customer gains right now we talked about some of the gains what like i might be saving now what kind of gains do we have it could be saving time it could be saving money that by doing it i'm actually able to save two hours of my time every day for example if i can pay my electricity bills online it saves me two hours of hassle every time otherwise i'll have to go out in the traffic stand there in the queue and make it happen right if i use a microsoft powerpoint it actually saves a lot of effort for me in terms of putting a presentation together and and and so on and so forth right so these are basically the gain creators which can allow you to do that now the question that you had shitty pain relievers versus gain creators so the whole idea is that yes they might appear to be very similar and we are not saying it can there can even be an overlap at times the only reason alexander osterwalder in his book decided to keep it too separate was just to explicitly nudge people and say have you thought of pains have you thought of gains just so that you don't miss out something there in in practice we might see a lot of overlap as well we don't deny that so that's the whole point here but there are some differences here as well in terms of pain relievers and gain creators as well i've written it i can share i'll share this little later again you ranked them all together the idea is to again once again do that and then you start looking at it and then you start looking at hey how can we create a fit between these two so we know we know what is it that people want to do with microsoft powerpoint or a slack or a whatsapp or a twitter we know what are the pain points that they have today people are saying hey i know i don't like twitter because twitter doesn't allow me to send a tweet with 10 000 characters or the gains could be that hey twitter allows me to send pictures and 10 second wine videos and all that stuff there so these are the gains that i can do because i can send the video or i might be and then i start looking at it and saying hey i know that this is the pain here how am i going to relieve this pain here can i do something about relieving that specific pain so you start kind of mapping these things so you are subconsciously aware of the 20 different pains and then you are saying okay i think i have relieved about 15 of the pain points here i know that i cannot relieve all the pain points here but i have understood the most critical pain points and now i am in a position i think it looks good for now so this is basically how we do and that's when we start talking about the fit because unless these are really fitting with each other the magic doesn't happen right you cannot have these two as two different incoherent pieces of information one is going in its own plane one second is in its own plane right so that's where we want to look at the whole notion of fit what is fit you achieve fit when customers get excited about the value proposition which happens when you address important jobs alleviate extreme pains and create essential gains that customers care about if this fit doesn't happen normally the other type of fit happens right because as customers and consumers of something we start saying who can i mean what were the thinking when they build that product right that kind of stuff so we want to avoid that fit and get to this fit so in the in the book basically they have explained about it and the whole fit happens on three level the first one we talk about is the problem solution fit which happens on paper what does it mean when you go and map this information here you have a bunch of post rates and a bunch of information and you say okay am i able to see can i relate some pain reliever to the pain that it is here or at least some some kind of a mapping where i have basically taken care of taken care of the pains in the game they may not be a one is to one mapping all the time but more important is have we adequately address the most critical pain points that the customers are facing right so that is on paper that we have done which is what we call as the psl of the problem solution fit we go to the next level when we build something out of it because obviously something on paper is useless unless we can put something in in in a tangible form and put it in front of the customers in which case we go out to the market with an mvp or a prototype or a proof of concept or whatever is there that helps you validate okay this is what customers are suffering and this is what will alleviate some of their pain points here so that is what we call as the product market fit because that's the time when we can actually start seeing that a real working prototype or a software actually addresses some of the customer pain points and finally we have the third level of validation or the fit when we say when the money starts ringing in and when you are when you are getting it in the bank which is the business model fit which means now that you have built this fantastic product you can put it out in the window on the shelf customers will swipe their card pay for it and buy that product there so you start getting paid for it because that is the highest proof point that we are looking for right theoretically you might even go to the point of saying hey our customer is actually using it or not that might be at another form of it but at least alexander has talked about these three things so so there are three types of fit and obviously you can see we start from here we haven't built anything right and some of the talks that we had ganga gave a fantastic talk he basically talked about the whole notion that you we should try to minimize the amount of software we are writing right I mean in some of you might be familiar with Google Ventures design sprint so Google Ventures actually has taken the design thinking process into what they call as a five-day design sprint and they teach people how to prototype literally on a dime that kind of a thing there and some of the tools that they do for prototyping so for example if I have to build some app kind of a thing today if any of you have to build an app to demonstrate some feature or some workflow what is the amount of time you are you guys are going to need to build that working software or a prototype with any level of technical bugs or maturity in that give me a number couple of months one month so at Google Ventures they actually teach entrepreneurs how to do that in 20 minutes no working software responsive design I'll you can click on that on your smartphone or whichever form factor you take you can click on that it will show you the next it's not a pixel perfect but it will have solid design basically and it will allow you to navigate and show functionality it will have mock-ups it will have fake doors but it will still allow you better than a word document or a paper prototype it's actually if you think of it it's faster than making a paper prototype and it's not a magic I mean the tool that they use is basically they talk about Kinotopia and Kinotopia is a software available with keynote and basically what they say is and again the key thing about Kinotopia is you don't write a single line of code so you build a working software a working prototype in 20 minutes flat with a software which you don't have to do any coding in that see that's the whole idea that's the fun because your your aim should not be to give maximum output your aim should be to get maximum outcomes the learnings that is the outcome that we are interested in with the minimum amount of effort time and money invested in that that is something that you need here so have as much of maximum outcome and minimum investment done on that and only then when you have some level of validation you go to the market and start looking for a product market fit and then in that case go to the bank because that's where you have to put a lot of money to build a really nice shiny application there right and so so in this book they basically talk about how do you use these tools because and this is a famous squeaky thing there the whole idea is this is how the innovation and creativity process is it is very messy it is not waterfall it is not linear it is not sequential it's unpredictable it is circular and we come out of it basically over a period of time by doing bunch of experimentations trials failures and then we get into the whole execution part of it and these are the set of tools that allow you to basically manage your journey through this messy period because you don't know so many moving parts which one has a cause and effect relationship how are you going to track it but using tools like this can actually allow you to design experiments so that you can come out of it much faster with more solid validation of some of your hypothesis this is one nice way where you can actually use some of this to basically do some ad libs some of you might be maybe from I don't think anybody is from a marketing or advertising but this this tool is a great way so you might say our products and services help customers who want to get the jobs done by removing the pains and gains unlike a normal thing where there is nothing that we are aware of it right so it's a good way to actually understand and if you are able to articulate that then you might be in a position to basically explain to yourself not even to other people why are we even doing something a lot of times we do something and we don't understand why are we doing this requirement is it is it something that really helping customers in some shape or form is it eliminating some pain that they have lived with all through and through so this is one way of basically looking at that so how do we wrap it up if we look at the whole thing there this is where we come from the business model canvas to the value proposition design to create the value for your business you need to create value for your customers and to sustainably create value for your customer you need to create value for your business so it's kind of a cyclic process that feeds off each other and this is how it happens there so I talked about business model canvas we start from there on the day one like as you said it's a clean slate on day one we don't know enough of things so we make hypothesis we start validating those hypotheses but one of the challenge with the original business model canvas conversation was hey how do we really design the value proposition as accurately as well it meets the customer things as possible we know the customer but then there was no theory or no explanation or no tools given in the original business model canvas book so then this is the second book came with this the value proposition canvas instead of this particular single way of looking at the customer segment we start looking at customers as jobs to be done pains and the gains and then we are able to stratify it even further because we know more about it because otherwise it gets totally clubbed into one single monolithic way but here we have separated out jobs to be done pains and gains and then based on that we start saying okay what are the products and services we offer here what are the gain creators and what are the pain relievers and then we start really looking at the map of it one key thing from this point of view is our innovation is not something which is a technology driven innovation as in we are not saying that just because I know how to develop this product and service let me throw it at customers let me impose it on them but I am going with the whole humility of saying I know the technology but I don't know what exactly you have in mind I would love to know about it I would love to be a design thinker I would love to be to be able to walk in your shoes and really understand what is what is it that you really crave for what are their pain point so we are doing actually a very customer driven innovation which is we identify things on the right and then move to the left to basically design the product and services exactly yeah so we are looking at all these factors and then if you really zoom in back into this so this is basically you go at this level and then zoom into this you get details of that you come back and you again look at the whole business model canvas here right so these are basically the things that I wanted to share here I'm almost on time but I think I can take a few questions if we have but otherwise that's that's for me thanks a lot for here you've been a great audience yeah sure how do you address that yeah like I said there is no hard and fast thing they are looking at the one thing that they definitely say is pain is something that you don't have control over whereas gain is something that you might get out of it uh very subtle distinction they have given actually but pain is something that you most likely don't have enough control over but like I said the key thing is irrespective of whether we call it as a pain or gain the idea is that let's not forget one of them it's possible that I might have skipped something but explicitly calling pain and gain I might probably remember it better and be in a better position to to identify that you yeah so there could be I would even look at it philosophically at actually between the the the thing that we use needs versus wants right so I might be hungry I want food that is the wants right now any food will do to biologically any food will do but then I might say that I want to go to to a fine dining and I want to have a like a 80 dollar meal there or a 200 dollar meal that's what I need I need caviar and champagne I need that I'm actually gold plating my requirements so my my if I look at it from a pain point of view I just need food to fill my belly because that's enough from a biological perspective but if I take my aspiration and social and emotional needs and I say that I need caviar and champagne I'm actually gold plating the requirements and going to the gain because I if I am really moving in that company it might actually mean a lot for the group that I hang out with my personality my social image might go short issue through the roof right so I would even look at it from that point of view yes right yeah so actually they talk about pain and something that even after trying to get the job done so sometimes the very act of helping people creates pain right so this is what is so they recognize we should not look at pain as only something that is before the jobs being done it could be before during and after as well you would have you would need to have I mean like I love apple products all right most of the time they work much better than any other product known to us but then every time there is an upgrade it's a show it's a show what we call as a forklift upgrade five GB space should be there on your iPad it's like you have to delete a lot of times because you don't have enough space there so while it solves me a lot of problem it creates a lot of problem for me in my jobs to be done because I have to delete something then I get the latest image of I us then again I have to reinstall those applications right yeah so I think it's the whole idea is this will give you a a shared visual language which actually makes it easier for you to kind of track it and share it with the people and say we know these are the pain point now the same information might be available in your PRDs and specs and BRDs of the world it might be spread in 30 pages and you have no clue how do you assimilate them together or correlate them whether this particular feature is actually addressing a particular pain point or not by actually putting it on a canvas and in this kind of a fashion you probably create higher awareness among your team members and imagine the power of this was on a on a wall like this everybody would know in the team what exactly we are doing why are we doing why is this feature you might even want to put a kind of a mapping there that's in here this is the pain point that we are really after it doesn't matter what we are implementing what we need to understand is this is the pain how do we alleviate our customers from that pain maybe somebody comes up with a smarter solution for that right so okay I think I'll I know Smitha is here for the next talk here my time is up if there are any more questions we can meet in the hallway otherwise thanks a lot