Now, what we want to discuss in this part of the session is problem solving versus problem finding, formulation of a problem, types and attributes of research problems, sources of research problems, literature survey and patents and papers. So, now the discussion on problem finding will be much shorter than we spent on problem solving, thinking and so on. This is, this should not be taken to mean that problem finding is a much less significant activity than problem solving. No, far from it as I have said, problem finding, finding a good problem for research and formulating a good hypothesis is a very, very challenging exercise. The reason why the discussion is brief because often not much can be said about this. It is something that one has to undergo, the finding of a problem is not something that can be put in a very systematic fashion and that is why the discussion is short. Though it is, though the activity is very important, it is difficult to say much, it is difficult to give guidelines, too many guidelines about it. But there are a few, students are used to well-defined problems having a single solution. They are uncomfortable with ill-defined problems. So, often many research scholars have this difficulty and they complain that their guides are not giving them a clear idea of what they should work on. In fact, some years ago there was a lecture by a Nobel Prize winner in IIT Madras and before his lecture, he actually mentioned what was his experience and how it was doing a PhD. Now, he did a PhD from a reasonably well-known American institution. So, he said when he went there and he joined for a PhD, he was shocked to see that his guide did not seem to have clear idea of what he should be working on. So, he said it is only after completing my research, I realized that you know that is the state in which any researcher is in the beginning of PhD. So, it is not possible to clearly define the problem in the beginning, because defining a problem itself is a part of the research. So, finding a problem is harder, but more essential than solving it is much is as much students responsibility as that of the guide. Now, here is some very nice statement of about problem finding. A problem must spring from a researcher's mind like a plant springing from its own seed. So, this means that a research scholar, a PhD student should spend sufficient time in finding a problem, in owning of the problem. So, unless the problem that the research scholar is pursuing has its origin in his own mind, the research scholar will not be motivated strongly enough to pursue that. So, his emotional attachment with the problem will not be strong enough. So, this is very important. So, please do not as a research scholar do not expect your guide to give you the problem and clearly define it for you. Your guide can illustrate areas and the problem in very, very broad terms, but it is your job to define merely. A just found problem is ill-defined. Its formulation as a well-defined problem is an iterative process, which may get completed only after thesis writing. So, you see all through your research, you may be modifying the statement of your research problem and ultimately it comes out in a very perfect shape only after you complete the writing of the thesis. So, it is not as though the problems are defined in the beginning few months and then you take few years to solve the problem and write up the thesis. That is not the way it is. Some more words of wisdom about problem finding. It is better to kill a little problem than to bruise a much larger one. Now, these advices are not general. So, it varies from person to person. For example, if a research scholar is very strongly motivated and has grand ideas of doing some work that will fetch a Nobel Prize or something like that, then the advice is for such a student here. This first advice. It is better to kill a little problem than to bruise a much larger one. Many times, very good scholars have this difficulty that they take up a very ambitious problem and then they find that they are not able to make much of an impact. So, for such people, this advice is made. Do not worry too much whether your problem is the best one to study. Once you go deep, any problem becomes interesting. The important thing is to get started. So, often when PhD scholars join this and at the end of one year, they start comparing their own problems with others' problems, particularly if they are facing some difficulties and things do not seem to be moving. So, this is a very important advice for students. So, any problem, if you go deep, the problem becomes interesting. So, do not do unjust comparisons. Another statement, problem finding is an autocatalytic reaction. What is the meaning of an autocatalytic reaction? In autocatalytic reaction, a product of the reaction itself catalyzes further reaction. So, there are two components A and B and the resultant is a product C. Now, once a few molecules or atoms of C are generated from the reaction, then these atoms catalyze the reaction further and then increase the rate of the reaction. So, problem finding is like that, which means once you start off and you get a small thing to work on, then as you start working, you will find more and more problems. But to go to that stage where you get at least a small problem, significant problem to work on, it may take some time. But once you have hit upon even a small problem and you start working on it, you get many more problems to work on and then you will not know which problem to choose and which one to discard. So, let us talk about getting started for your research. Ideas strike by chance, but only to a prepared mind. So, this is the important thing. So, is there an element of luck in getting good ideas? Yes, there is an element of luck or chance, but it is very important, even that luck will come only to a prepared mind. Now, what is the meaning of a prepared mind? So, we will try to give some guidelines on how to prepare your mind. Now, only a prepared mind can follow a lead opened by an observation, which is too insignificant to attract the attention of common man. So, to prepare the mind, do the following, cyclically. Cyclically means, you know, one after the other simultaneously, you can even use the word simultaneously if you want here. So, reading, that is literature survey, implementing someone else's work and thinking about some doubts that you get when you do reading and implement someone else's work. So, the important thing to note here is that research is not like first doing only literature survey for a few months and then getting into the next stage and so on. Many things have to start simultaneously. So, here what is suggested is, supposing you have identified an area and you have started reading literature, it is not a good idea to just keep on reading without doing anything. So, now, what can you start on? Because you have not yet found a problem for research, what you can do is, when you read, you will come across some implementations of some ideas, when you read some papers. Now, you try to replicate those things yourself. So, suppose somebody has given a derivation of a particular solution, you go through the derivation yourself, do the derivation yourself. Somebody has done some simulation and given some results, if you have the facility, you try to repeat the simulations for the same data that is given in the paper and see whether you get the same result. Someone has done an experiment and got some data, if you have the apparatus, you repeat that experiment. So, repeating what somebody else has done is a good starting point. Now, this should be done parallely with reading. So, you read for some time, then sometime you spend in implementing someone else's work, then again you come back and read and then you think about some doubts, which you may be getting or difficulties that you may face in the course of this. So, to repeat, only reading is not a good starting point. You must do something. Now, this I will not spend much time. Dr. Sukath may in fact, steps in finding a problem and formulating a hypothesis, he is put down exactly the same steps. What I will do is, I will give you an example of how a hypothesis gets formulated. So, broadly these are the steps. First, a very general vague statement, then there may be some ambiguities that you resolve, then thinking and rephrasing. So, this is an iterative process. So, you try to resolve ambiguities and for doing so, you may have to think and rephrase, restate the your problem and so on.  As I mentioned already, the time period from a general statement and finally, a clear concise manageable statement can be the start of the PhD work and thesis writing, end of thesis writing. So, you know, it can be that long or alternately the clarity in your statement may come well before you start writing your thesis, but you should not be surprised if even during thesis writing, you know, you modify your statement and you are still trying to make it clear and concise. So, let me take an example of how you make a hypothesis precise starting with a general statement. Suppose there is someone who is doing research on comparing the productivity in Japan with the productivity in India. Now, just talking about productivity is vague. Evidently, we are talking about industrial productivity that is clear, but then productivity of which kind of products that is very important. So, this is how you start making the statement more and more precise. So, first step could be that you limit the duration in which you are going to study this relative productivity. For instance, here you can restrict yourself to a 10 years span 1971 to 1980. So, productivity of manufacturing industries you compare during a particular duration. So, you restrict the duration, you specify that I am going to study for this duration to make the statement more precise and then you might find that, you know, productivity in let us say Japan was higher than in India and you want to give reasons for it why this was there and so on. Now, what form of productivity? So, here you are making the statement more precise. You say it is labour productivity and then what kind of industries? So, you select some 15 areas of industries that you want to compare. You cannot compare an industry which is producing automobiles with an industry which produces semiconductor products. So, you have to compare industries in the same area. So, that is the next thing that you are doing here. Labour productivity of 15 selected manufacturing industries was higher in Japan than in India during 1971 to 1980. This is the hypothesis that you are formulating. Of course, you have to justify your hypothesis that comes later. This is another method of another example. You can go through this example yourself. I will just leave it to you. So, type of research problem. One of the persons who made presentation in the morning did, you know, talk about this little bit. So, I will just leave this. I think and professor Sukath may also mentioned about types of problems. Now, this is an important slide. How do you know that your problem is a good one to work on? So, what criteria you must use to assess your research problem? So, one dimension is difficulty.  Next, does it have value or is it useful? Third aspect. So, what I am discussing is not necessarily in that order, right? Originality. Is the kind of work that you do, would it be original or would it be something that other people have done? The methodology you are adopting and so on. Then, is it interesting? Now, note that, you know, a problem may be sufficiently difficult. It may be original, but not necessarily interesting. So, interesting is another dimension. So, a problem becomes interesting if it goes contrary to what people normally believe. For instance, we discussed an example of research in area of obesity. And then, we said that researcher, you know, showed with the help of an experiment that it is the external factor such as availability of food that dictates the eating habits of fat people than any internal factor. Now, people normally tend to believe that the factors which are responsible for overeating are internal to the people. So, here is something interesting. Somebody is saying, no, the factors are external. So, then it becomes more interesting. Significance and impact. So, now, this particular thing is may be difficult to judge. Exactly, how much impact will a research work have? May be difficult to judge, but at least we can ensure and we can see that these dimensions difficulty, usefulness, originality and interest, whether the problem is interesting or not. We can check on these and we hope that if a problem has all these dimensions, it is likely to make impact. But still, the level of impact may not be possible to judge. In this context, I want to give an example. So, it is true of all creative works that it may be difficult to judge its impact, prejudge the impact of your creative work. A famous music director was once asked this question as to which he regarded as his best compositions, ten best compositions. Now, and which are these compositions in which he spent lot of time, time and effort. Now, it turned out that only six of those compositions were actually musical hits in the public mind. This was a film music director. So, in terms of impact, only six of the ten compositions that the composer felt, he had spent lot of time on made impact. And interestingly, he said that some of the songs which became hits, he had not spent much time at all. And they were composed, you know, just maybe over a few days and it was completely a surprise to note that these songs made impact. So, this is true of all creative activity that it may be difficult to judge the impact. But at least we must make effort to see that the other dimensions, difficulty, usefulness, value, originality and interesting nature we should ensure. And finally, any problem that you choose, I mentioned this in the context of answering a question by one of the participants on, you know, whether he should work on nano machining or not. So, cost equipment and cooperation, we must also assess this particular aspect. For instance, there may be a research scholar who is not very comfortable dealing with a large number of people for getting things done. In which case, if he chooses a problem for which he has to frequently go and take the help of others, in doing experiments, in getting things done in different laboratories and so on, he may find it difficult. So, if it does not suit his personality, then, you know, you must choose an appropriate problem which suits the personality. But more than that, I would say the cost and equipment is a major consideration. So, all these things should be taken into account before choosing a problem. So, sources of interesting research, explanation of an anomaly, solution of a contradiction, transplantation of ideas and explanation from one context to another. These are three types of research which will, which ultimately become interesting. So, explanation of an anomaly. So, what is an anomaly? So, for instance, you know that taking an example from a simple example for electrical engineering, if you increase the voltage across a device, then the current increases. Now, supposing you come across a characteristics, a set of characteristics in which the current decreases when you increase the voltage. Now, this is an anomalous behavior, right, does not conform to commonly seen pattern. Now, such a thing, if you choose for your research and you can explain, assuming that others have not explained, then, you know, it can be interesting. Now, a contradiction. Again, taking the example from electrical engineering, for example, my area of semiconductor devices. Normally, if you try to increase the power rating of the device, the device will become much slower. It will not respond quickly to any changes in voltage or current. So, the more power a device has to support or manage, the slower is its speed. So, there is a contradiction between power and speed. Now, if you come up with a device, a new device in which it manages the same amount of power as a conventional device, but it does so, its speed is much higher. Then, you know, it is likely to be interesting. The research is likely to be interesting. Now, similarly, a transplantation of ideas and explanations from one context to another. So, we gave some examples. This is nothing but analogy and we gave an example of developing a model for an atom from the knowledge of the solar system and applying the similar ideas in different situations. So, this can also make your research interesting. Now, here are a few more sources of research problems. When you are doing literature search, you must look at the future work sections in thesis and papers. Then, you must interact with experienced researchers in the field and also engage in, you know, teaching, explaining, answering doubts and so on. Comparing different approaches by some objective measures of efficiency or accuracy. So, you are coming across different approaches of doing the same thing in literature. Compare these approaches and that can give you some research problems to work on. Some other things are also given here. They are self-explanatory. You can go through this slide. All these statements are self-explanatory here. Now, let me spend, may be in the next 5 or 10 minutes, I will close this about literature survey. So, we will try to answer why literature survey, what to read, how much to read, how to read and the importance of note-taking in the context of literature survey. Now, why you should do literature survey? To know sufficiently enough to identify gaps, this is well known. So, I will not discuss on this. But, this is important. To know the views and interest of others in a topic. Now, supposing you want to choose a topic for your research and you want to know whether it will be relevant, whether it will be interesting to others, whether it will be useful, rather interesting, I have already discussed how a problem becomes interesting and so on. Then, it is good to see the publications. Now, if no publications are coming in that area in recent years, may be it means that that problem is not of interest. This cannot be generalized beyond a point, but by and large this is true. So, how do you know or what do you mean by recent years? Normal practice is to look for the last 5 years as a guideline and see whether any publications are coming in the area in the last 5 years. Another important thing to know and establish contact with people who may be interested in your work. So, after PhD, you may like to do a postdoc. So, you would not like to know where you can go, what are the options available. To know if others have already done what you want to do, to integrate and compare various ideas on a topic to get hints on how to tackle a problem. Now, the sources, what to read? So, you should read journal papers, patents, research reports, conference proceedings and thesis. These are the various things that you can read. Some other sources are also written here, the self-explanatory. How much to read? Now, this is a question that many research scholars have, that are they reading sufficiently enough? Start with articles published recently and go back to about 5 years earlier. Now, this is the approach you should take. In order to understand the articles which are published in the last 5 years, you may have to read literature which is published much earlier. So, that you may have to do, but your starting point is last 5 years. That is what is important. So, that you remain current in whatever work you are doing. Read and think alternately. Do not spend eternity on literature survey. Start doing your own thinking early. One has to start in a state of partial ignorance and this has advantage that you are free from prejudice which suppresses new ways of doing things. Reading should continue throughout the research process. Sometimes what happens is, research scholars do literature survey for few months, then they hit upon a problem to work on and when they are working on a problem, they forget about literature survey. So, they work for a couple of years and then they find that they have done work which they feel they can publish and at that point, they do literature survey again and they find that same problem has been tackled by somebody else. So, unless you keep scanning the literature continuously, you will get into these difficulties. How to read? I think on this topic also, something was told earlier. The important point to note here is the last point made here. One can read word by word, line by line, paragraph by paragraph, chapter by chapter or even book by book. Now, this is an important statement. In fact, this statement let me illustrate a small anecdote about this. Once Swami Vivekananda took a book from a library and he returned it back within a week.  So, the librarian asked whether did you read this book or you just scanned a few pages and you are returning back. So, he said he is read the book. He said it is not possible.  And this was the answer he gave. So, he said people can read word by word, line by line, paragraph by paragraph or even chapter by chapter and to put it more dramatically, book by book. So, what it means is a small child normally reads, puts a finger under each letter and that is how he or she reads a word. And then as you grow, you start reading one word at a time and so on. And then as you develop your reading habit, you can even read line by line, quickly the whole line you read. It does not mean that you read every word, but you see a set of words and then you get the gist. So, sometimes if you are a very experienced reader, even by looking at a few lines, you can get the gist of a few lines together. Now, this is the ability that you have to develop. You cannot read word by word. If you use that kind of an approach, you cannot read so many papers that you have to read. So, you must learn to quickly get a gist of whatever you are reading. Now, that is where you have to first scan. So, scanning can involve the following. You look at the title, look at the abstract, look at the conclusion and look at the figures. Figures are very important. You can read by figures alone what is happening in a paper. Then what you should do is you must highlight whenever you are reading the few points that you have come across and so that you can read those highlighted points in detail if there is a necessity. On internet, a lot of material is available on how to develop good reading skills. So, how to read fast? So, you can do an literature search on this and you will get lot of ideas. In fact, this thing is very effectively demonstrated to students. I remember one instance where in one of my group meetings, I had asked a student to present some information and this student presented information, he drew a diagram of some setup. I wanted dimensions of some particular device that he had drawn. He said he made, you know, he read the paper two or three times, but he did not get the dimensions that I was asking for. I asked him that, you know, how did you read? He said, sir, I have read the complete paper line by line. I asked him for the paper and then it took me only a minute to locate the place where actually the dimensions were provided. So, the student was surprised, but how is it possible? Now, this is what is important. If you try to read word by word, you might get tired. Your mind may get tired because of monotony.  So, you must know what kind of an information is available in which location in a paper and you must try to search around that place rather than reading the whole paper to locate this. So, note taking, a few points among note taking, these are also explained here. It is very important to keep notes when you are doing literature survey because when you read fifty papers for instance after four or five months and then you want to go back to some paper in which some idea was presented, you will not know which paper it was. So, if you make a proper note keeping important information about the references, noting that also against an idea that you have read, then it can be a great help. May be I will have a few minutes of interaction. Let us take whale seniority, can I? I want to convey some message to the participants, that is, here we are seeing that so many participants are doing research and they want to do the research so that I want to convey some message. That is, most of the people are thinking that the PhD is the only way to do the research. That is not like that. That is, when we want to do PhD, then before that itself we have to start the research work. Then only we can finish it in time and also it is it should be a efficient one. And also so many people are thinking that the area of choosing will be a guidance given by some other persons. That is not like that. Whatever we had done and whatever we had studied in our UD and PG, in that we will get some idea or interest in that, that has to be extended as a research and then they can register for PhD. That is the message I want to convey so that when they are, that is all, sir. Let me make minor revisions in what you have said. Though it is true that you prepare yourself for research by doing your bachelor's and master's, but the exact problem you want to work on, you may get an idea of this only when you do literature survey of journal papers by and large. Sometimes you may get a very good doubt based on what has been taught in the class and that may be good enough for a research problem, but often unless you do that kind of a literature survey of journal papers where other research work is published. Journal papers are not the, really the places where latest research is talked about. So that is a... For choosing our broad area, we can get idea from our UD and PG. After choosing the broad area, in order to find out the, this problem or the problem finding, we can go for journals or some other papers like that. Yes. The question is, yesterday there was a suggestion that once you formulate the problem, you give a seminar, but I have a feeling that, won't it result in some, there is a risk involved in that. Say for example, suppose you finalize a problem and then you decide how you are going to proceed. Somebody else who is working in the similar area can get this idea and then why not we take this idea and then do research. Over to you sir. Now, this problem can be easily overcome by choosing appropriate people in your seminar. You choose people who are in your same area, but will not. For example, in a research group, two people will not do the same problem. Definitely not. They will have different problems to work on, though the area may be the same. That is one point. Second point is, we must also introspect whether this fear is our own kind of nature to be suspicious or whether there is any real truth in it. Are there people around who will really steal your idea? Many times what happens is, we may be suspicious. Actually, people may not be interested in stealing an idea. But you are right. Sometimes it can happen. So, seminar does not necessarily mean a broadcast to the whole world. Seminar means, it is an occasion for you to speak about your work. As we said, there is a link between speaking all these activities like speaking, writing and so on. So, speaking about your work, writing about your work, it stimulates thinking. Plus, comments made by others will definitely add much more stimulus to new ideas. So, you will lose the benefit of that. So, that is the point that is being made. So, that is a very significant loss, I would say. So, if it is possible, you should definitely give seminars on your work. What is your thing you propose to do? Suppose you presented some conference, this idea in some conference, then you can claim that this is your own work so that you can proceed there.  Won't it be more effective? Yes, yes. See, I think there are different types of seminars. Seminars are given for different reasons. When it was suggested that you give a seminar in the beginning of your research, the goal of that seminar is different. Goal of that seminar is to, let us say, firm up your own ideas about what you are doing because when you speak formally about your work, you spend time in arranging your ideas. That is one benefit you get. Plus, to get some input from others who are, you know, friendly and but at the same time critical. What they say feel about the problem that you are working on. A conference seminar, on the other hand, unless you are prepared up to some level and you have done some level of contribution, you cannot make a conference presentation. So, the type of seminar that was suggested was to get benefit in formulating your problem and to just assess whether you are in the right direction. So, a seminar given at the conference, its purpose is different. Similarly, a seminar given before submitting a thesis after you have made journal publications and conference publications. That seminar has even a different purpose. There, the purpose of the seminar is to announce your contributions to people. So, seminars are given with different purpose. The first type of seminar is for your benefit, not for the benefit of the audience. It is for your benefit. So, Phongu Engineering College, Perundurai, Eeroad. I am doing my research in humanities. I am just wanting to measure the nervousness of students since it is in humanities. And I have prepared a new scale of analysis. I would like to know what are the factors that I can add in order to validate my scale. I have just gone through existing papers which have also validated their scales. And I feel that whether my research and the factors that I have considered so far for validating that scale would be of value or would not be of that much valuable. So, I need your opinions and what are the factors that I can consider to validate my new scale, which may be acceptable to others also. See, now, just coincidence. One of the slides that I had on hypothesis is related to nervousness among students. It is just a coincidence. But more than that, I have no acquaintance with this field. Let me go back to that slide. So, it is about link between the learning capability and nervousness in students. So, the hypothesis says average learners are less nervous because they are average. So, there is a correlation. You find that average learners are not so nervous. Now, you want to know why it is so and you want to frame a hypothesis for working in this area. So, how this hypothesis can be made more precise? So, towards the end, for example, finally, a hypothesis that can be tested because the hypothesis should be testable. Read something like this. The students at IIT Madras having an IQ score on the WBA intelligence scale within the range of 90 to 110 have low percentile ranks on the subscores of a personality inventory than a like group of students having a total IQ score less, greater than 120. In other words, the average learning has been defined in terms of the IQ score because you have to define. You know, what do you mean by an average learner? So, some quantitative figures have to be given. Now, when you want to generate these numbers, you have to define the kind of test because different tests can give you different numbers and then based on these numbers, you say that high learners are those who get a score of more than 120 and maybe, you know, poor learners are those who get a score of less than maybe 80 or something like that. So, this is how hypothesis becomes testable and clear, suitable for pursuing in research. I think more than that, I have nothing to add to, you know, to what you have asked me, but it is an interesting problem to work on. So, many problems in humanities, particularly in psychology are of great interest to everybody, though everybody cannot give suggestions on the kind of research problems that you are talking about. If asking whether is it enough to depend on questions or we have to go for an interview. No, interview is, see, you can get a written response or you can try to study, you can record the responses to some stimuli, right, in interactions. You can also make measurements, like you measure the blood pressure, you know, you take the heartbeat. There can be some parameters which you can measure, probably you can use such measures also. So, that is all what I can say. Sir, do you have time for one more question? Yeah, please go ahead. Sir, this is a issue which you are talking just quite a while ago. It is about the originality of the work. Suppose I am doing a work in a particular area and after sometime I am seeing the same kind of work as a product. In what way I can prove the originality of my work? I mean the genuineness of my work. You said that we can give a seminar. If at all I have not given a seminar, in what way I can prove my originality? Okay, let me reframe what you have said. You are saying that you started working on something and then at some point you, when you are reading some literature in your area, you found somebody else is pursuing similar kind of work, right? Now, what happens to whatever effort you have put in? How does it remain original? Now, this sort of a feeling can happen. Many people get into this situation. It is not at all an uncommon situation because so many people all over the world are simultaneously working on similar areas, right? Therefore, the ability lies in seeing what are the differences in your approach and the approach adopted by the other person. See, fortunately there are many things common among people but there are many things which are unique. So, normally whenever we do independent thinking, there is some element of uniqueness in whatever we think about even though the matter that we think about may be similar to what other person is doing. So, it depends on the ability, your ability as well as your guides ability to see which aspect of your work is novel. You can always find something that is different from the other person. So, it is that ability that normally helps in such situations in identifying the where exactly the originality is there. So, some things may you may find which is that they are common. But if you do a careful analysis of your approach and that person's approach, you will find that some aspect you know you may be better than the other person. So, this is where again productive thinking looking at your own work from different angles and other person's work also from different angles is important. Only when you look from many different angles you will develop discover the strength of your work. So, repeat many researchers get into this kind of a situation because there are many people are working in the same area and you should not get a shock if you know get into this sort of a situation. You must think about your problem deeply and in different ways and you will be able to identify some uniqueness because inherently people are different fortunately in some respect or the other. One face does not resemble the other face. Similarly, one mind does not think in the same way as the other mind. So, you must bank on this particular law of nature. What is the correct time to write a journal paper? Whether after getting the result or whether getting after getting the observations from our result of our work. That is after getting the result or after getting some of the observation from our work. I have to reframe your question because it is not clear in the way manner you have asked but before that I just want to say something in a later way. I thought you are saying what is the right time to close for the day. So, I was thinking that that is what you are going to say. So, we will take your question and then we will close for the day. Now, let us answer your question. What you seem to be implying is you have done an experiment and you have collected some data. Now, after you have got the data, is it the right time to write a paper? I do not know what you mean by observation and result. So, I am assuming that you mean by result interpretation of the data because the data itself or the observations themselves can be regarded as result. So, I do not know what you mean by these words. I am assuming that you have collected some data and then whether this is the right time to write a paper or whether you must explain the data and so on and get some conclusions and then write a paper. What of it is executed? After that, can I write a paper? That is what. It is not clear what you mean by part of what is executed. So, okay. That is one of a module, one or two module is executed, whether shall I write a paper based on that results? Look, see, general guideline is like this. You can, you write a paper whenever you feel that you have something that is significant. For example, supposing you have come, you have synthesized a new material and let us say you are measuring the conductivity of the new material. Now, you get some value. Nobody else has measured the conductivity of that material and nobody has reported the value. Now, in such a situation, even that value that you have obtained, though you are not able to explain how you get that value itself can be significant. You can probably write a short paper on reporting that you have measured this conductivity and this is the value that you have got and it is something very unusual. So, if something unusual is there, you can report. On the other hand, if the value that you get is not very significant, then it is not the right time to report. You must probably do more work on it, you know, get an explanation for that value and when you try to derive an explanation, suppose you find that some new phenomena are taking place in the material or the device, which others have not reported, then those phenomena which are new, according to you, may be worth reporting. So, the point is, I think you should look at it from the point of significance of whatever you have got at any point of time. If whatever you have got is significant, it is new, it is of interest, then it can be reported. That is the stage at which you write paper, understand? So, you should not have the guideline for writing a paper as follows. I have done two years some work, okay, I will write one paper, then after another two years, I will write another paper, okay, that is not the way people decide to write papers. So, some people may write a paper within the first year if they got something significant. Some other people may work for four years and only then write papers. They may write four papers after four years, all four papers, one after the other, but at the end of a four year period, because they have done work for four years and you know, they have set up apparatus, then they have got some observations and they have got the explanations for them and then only they start writing papers, okay. So, there is no hard and fast rule about this timing. The guideline is is it something significant new, then only you write. So, we are closing for the day.


I thank you very much for having me here to present on these evaluations on behalf of everybody who took part in them. So I'm actually going to talk about two different programmes in two very different settings, so there's a lot to get through but I'm happy to clarify at the end. We're talking about the integration of non-communicable disease care in the Democratic Republic of Congo and in Swaziland, the MSF experience. So as I said, these are two very different settings. roedd ymateb o'r defnyddio gyda'r coff diabyt i gyfrifiad ar y cwmgylch yma, yn Nôrth Aquif, yn y Ddemolwgr Republicau Congol, ac ymddych â'r gyfrifiad yma yn y ddeifud wedi eu gyfrifiad ymddych, yn y ddodio gyfrifiad, i ddodio gyfrifiad, yn y Swasiland. Rydych chi'n unig o gyfrifiad mewn cyfrifiad ym unig o gyfrifiad, ac mae'n yn qudweithio i ddigon i gyfrifiadau gyfrifiad. So MSF decided to evaluate both programmes in collaboration with the London School of Hygiene. And the main objectives of these evaluations were to try to understand the programme effectiveness, to look at some of the factors influencing treatment outcomes. And in the DRC this involved the effect of conflict and heightened insecurity on treatment outcomes. And we also looked at programme costs for each programme from the provider perspective. So just to underline the differences in the two settings, on the left you see a map of the DRC and in the circle is the province of North Kivu, so it's an unstable chronic conflict setting with repeated displacement of the population. And on the right you'll see the map of Swaziland, which you've seen already today. And this study was based in Matsafa and it's a, as we said earlier, it's a high HIV prevalence, high TB prevalence resource constrained setting. Also the programmes were quite different in each place. In the DRC it was nurse-led outpatient care in a hospital setting. Nurses provided most of the care with doctors reviewing at enrolment and on a six-monthly basis. And nutrition support, psychosocial support were integrated into the programme. Whereas in Swaziland this was broader NCD care delivered within a primary care level outpatient and HIV service. Nurses reviewed the stable patients, doctors reviewed those that were unstable and patients on enrolment. And in contrast there was no specific adherence or psychosocial support integrated into the programme. So to describe the methods from Weso, there was a retrospective analysis of the routine cohort data done on all enrolment patients from the beginning of the service in January 2014 until February 2017. And we also analysed the relationship of clinical outcomes with different time periods within the programme which were defined by programmatic changes or contextual changes that were related to heightened insecurity. And as I said we did a costing analysis from the provider perspective for 2014 and 2015. And then in Swaziland again we did a retrospective analysis of the routine cohort data for a one-year period from July 2016 to June 2017. In addition routine patient exit surveys were done. The team did some regression modelling looking at predictors of outcomes, clinical outcomes. And we also did this costing analysis from the provider perspective looking at annual total and the unit costs. So from Weso back to the DRC, to pull out from this slide we had 243 diabetic patients enrolled. You'll notice in bold that almost a third of the adult cohort was underweight. Also the alcohol, so self-reported recent alcohol intake at enrolment was relatively high at 22.8% compared to what we know about self-reported alcohol levels in the region. The fact that many of the patients were underweight might explain what's happening in the pie chart on the right where almost a quarter, the portion in grey, were not classified into type 1 or type 2 diabetic patients by the staff. And this could be because there is a reported phenotype of diabetes related to malnutrition in Sub-Saharan Africa where patients have a non-cutotic hyperglycemia, so very high glucose levels. They have high insulin requirements and they're often young and malnourished or underweight. So it doesn't fit neatly into type 1 or type 2 diagnosis. Now this is a very complex looking graph, but I'll explain what was done. So we divided the time period into six different sections which were related to training that happened in the program. Suspension of service when there was heightened insecurity. The next suspend to in green means that the drug supply actually ran out and then there was a gradual return in service. So what the graph represents is actually the delay in attendance at appointment. So on the Y axis you have the number of days after the appointment time that the person actually arrived for their visit. And on the X axis you have each month of the program. So each bar represents the average for the month. And the low bars between the red and the green lines represent the fact that there was a short delay. People were not late for their appointment. Whereas during the return period, the high bars after the dark blue line, they represent the fact that there was a long delay. So people were arriving up to a month late for their appointment. So clearly they were unable to reach the clinic during the heightened insecurity. And that's the circle. So again, this is a complex graph, but I'll try to pick out the most important points. Again, we're looking at these same program periods. And what we're looking at here is the clinical outcomes. So blood pressure and glycemic control and how they related to these different periods. And we have on the Y axis the proportion of visits that were considered controlled. And on the X axis, again, it's the month of each program. And we stratified the patients by whether or not they were on insulin. So the key messages really are that control was fairly consistent. There was just a modest deterioration and disease control during the period of interrupted service. And that mainly happened after the drug supply was exhausted. And the lowest line at the bottom in black, that represents the blood sugar control in diabetics taking insulin. So overall they were less well controlled and they had a fairly stark dip during the period of interrupted service. Okay, so now over to Swaziland for some of the results there. So this was a much bigger cohort. We had 895 patients enrolled in a one year period. 17.4% of them were known to be HIV positive. And it's notable that 46.5%.  It's a broader NCD program. So people were treated for hypertension, diabetes and chronic respiratory disease with hypertension. The main diagnosis at enrollment. And it's notable also that 28.5% of the cohort had two or more of the target NCDs, not including HIV. So we looked at some indicators of clinical quality and some clinical outcomes. So among the hypertensive patients almost all had had a blood pressure check performed at their last visit. And of those almost two thirds were at target. And then we looked at type 2 diabetics and again most of them had had their blood sugar checked at their last visit. And about two thirds were at target. And those are actually very good results in terms of disease control compared to the data that's available for the region on NCDs. So lots in this slide, but basically a convenient sample of patients were surveyed as they exited the pharmacy. 85 patients took part. They were strong at being able to name their NCD diagnosis and name a selected drug and its indication. But they were less good at being able to explain the detail of their diagnosis and particularly to link lifestyle advice and behaviour change with disease prevention and disease control. And also the team looked at some of the predictors of achieving control amongst the population. So in hypertensive patient there was a weak association between being obese and being HIV positive with having uncontrolled blood pressure. And in the type 2 diabetic patients we didn't identify particular predictors in this cohort. So as I mentioned we did costing analyses for each programme from the provider perspective and they were incremental costing analyses. So from WESO in 2015 annual costs were 32,000 international dollars per patient per year this was 224 international dollars. In WESO for 2016 the per patient per year costs were almost double at 441. But to put this in context there's some data from chronic HIV programmes at primary care level from PEPFAR and others that shows that the cost per patient per year of delivering this care is between 208 and 642 international dollars. And it's higher in places like South Africa. Some lessons learned from the implementation of these two different programmes. So in WESO it was nurse led diabetic care and it was well integrated into an outpatient hospital setting. In Matsawa task shifting to nurses or task sharing to nurses did not actually occur as was intended. And we felt this was due to the complexity of the care, the lack of experience generally in providing this type of care and regulatory barriers to nurses initiating. And changing medications. So it is, there are of course limitations to both studies and to both evaluations. They were small clinic based cohorts with no control groups and it's retrospective data with inevitable gaps. Our conclusion is fairly long but it is that NCD care can be integrated into MSF supported national health services. Can achieve acceptable intermediate clinical outcomes and this is at a cost that's similar to the delivery of HIV care at primary level. In terms of next steps we did think that NCD care could be simplified for stable patients. That lessons learned from HIV care could be integrated into NCD care for example community adherence groups and lay counselling and support. And also that contingency planning is required to minimise treatment interruption for NCD care for patients in unstable settings. And again lessons have been learned from HIV in this regard. So I'd like to thank everybody involved in the evaluations especially the staff and the patients of both services in the DRC and in Swaziland. And thank you all very much for your attention.


Okay, welcome back everyone to our second lecture on BC310 Church Administration. We are now talking about finances, accounting and budgeting just to give us an overview. So this is not an in-depth course on financial management, but just an overview of these are the things to be mindful of when you are managing the finances of the church or the Christian organization. Now, okay, let's go back to the notes. So we looked at some of the key biblical principles that motivate our way of managing finances, generating and managing finances. Now let's just get into some of the practical things. I would definitely encourage all of us to make use of an accounting software. Within India we have Tali, it's a very commonly used accounting software. There would be others in different countries that help you stay compliant to the local regulations for reporting and so on. Tali helps us here in India. There are some other free open source accounting software packages as well. I've just mentioned too, there'd be definitely others that you could use. And sometimes some banks offer some form of accounting within the banking software itself for their customers. So that is also something you can look at or whatever works, but definitely use a system, a software system because that's very important. Some general things to keep in mind is that in most accounting systems today, I should say almost all, they use what is known as a double entry bookkeeping method or double entry system. So every transaction, transactions, it's either a debit or a credit. So it's a double entry, so every transaction appears either as a debit or a credit. And then the advantage here, of course, and this is all from an accounting perspective, you don't have to worry just that you need to know what's happening. All of this would be done by your accountant. It standardizes everything and it makes it easy to make accurate financial statements and detect errors because it's a double entry. At the end of the day, everything must, there are the debits and the credits must equal. So then you know, yeah, we've tracked everything. So that's a quick check. It's almost like an automatic check to the whole accounting process. The terms general ledger is part of this double entry bookkeeping method. And that's kind of what is referred to, it's in the general ledger meaning and it could be a software system. It's where all the data is stored. So you refer to that as the general ledger. And the within that are subheadings, you know, where money is allocated or where they're or you can call the expense accounts or project based accounts or so on from where money is taken. So this is referred to as a sub ledger within that main general ledger. Now, very important years. These are some things to think about. You may not necessarily, you know, have everything in place to begin with, but I'm just giving an idea as you go forward, is that you have designated fund accounts. So these are general ledger head, headers, right, fund accounts. So at a high level, at a high level, and, you know, we have, you know, our general fund account, that means all tides and offerings go here. So when people give tides and offerings, they go into a general fund account. But then we also have designated fund accounts. That means we try to the best we can track coming funds coming in by church location. So there are five locations here in Bangalore. There's a sixth one in Mangalore. We all work. It's all one accounting. So six locations, you know, what money came in in each location we track. Also, there are times people give to specific ministries within the church. So we have certain categories that is fund accounts called example, APC books, APC India missions, generosity fund, which is to help people in need. We have APC media, we have Bible college, we have outreach churches that is a support the church plants. Then recently we introduced the church planting accelerator program as one of the designated accounts that we have. So these are publicly visible. That means when people want to give, and then of course there's a building fund account for building construction, land purchase, all that. So there are about these 10 designated heads, including this general fund. So general fund plus nine others. So when people want to give money, they can either, if they don't say anything, that money goes into the general fund account, but they can also give designate. They can say, I want to give this money to India missions. I want to give this money to books, the work that we do through publications. I want to give this to media. I want to give this to church planting, whatever, you know, they can designate it. So that's designated giving. So then when money is given to that, of course it all goes to one bank account or we have, sorry, we have three different bank accounts. But anyway, it's all just three bank accounts. But in our accounting system, it will be posted against a specific head, a ledger head. So we know how much money has been designated for that particular area of work. And so money goes out of that for expenses and so on. And then of course, from the general fund, we allocate. So we budget, we allocate funds to these. And then there are a lot of internal headings. Like, you know, we have the course of any year, we'll have several conferences. So men's conference, women's conference youth, this youth, different conferences, we will have different events happening. So there are several internal ledger heads that are not exposed to people. People don't know they exist, but they exist inside the system. And funds are allocated from our general fund to those things. So we know that's the money we're going to spend. That's, you know, that's the budget, whatever expenses is reported against that header. So at the end of the year, I can, or anytime we can say, Hey, how much money did we spend on conferences? Or how much money did we spend on the men's conference? We can go down to that level. Right? So there's, or how much money did we spend on rentals? How much money did we spend on, you know, ABC, ABC Central running the service? So we can pull out that information anytime because everything has been posted against a particular ledger head. And that's important for you to do it.  Where do I need to change? You know, so for example, if the media team from Central comes and says, Hey, we like to do this. And I tell them, Hey, no, because we're already spending so much money on all these things that we're doing. So if you want to do it, we've got to cut somewhere else. It's not that we don't have the money, there's plenty of money, but we don't want to waste it in that particular area, you know, to keep everything tight. When you keep every area tight, then overall, everything is tight. There is no wastage of money. Right? So when you know what's happening at that level, at the micro level, that means very specific to each fund or each ledger, then you can make those decisions and overall, everything is safeguarded. Right? So that's just a high level. But this to this level, if you as a leader know how money is managed and, you know, being used, then you could, you know, it's very important you will be able to make decisions and take good care of the money. Now, of course, the actual work is being done by professional accountants or people who know how to do all that work. And so you would need a finance department. Now, when we began, when we started, when APC started, we didn't have an internal accountant. We didn't have those days, we were very small. So we just had an external accountant who would come. So we started with this, right? We had an external accountant, we had an external auditor. So they were not part of us, external organization, they would send an accountant who would come, you know, for a few hours in a week. That was all there was. She would just type everything into the system, check everything, go. So those days, the work was very little. In the early days, I would say the first three, four years, it just took a few hours a week. So we didn't need a full-time accountant. This person would come, we give them all the information, you know, this is the money that came in, it was all hand written, they would put it, she would put it in the system, work is done, monthly reports would be generated, etc., and so on. Then over time, as things grew, we had our own internal accountant. That means we needed a full-time person to handle this. So I think it was only, so we had a part-time internal accountant, I would say from, I think from 2011, so almost 10 years later or something. So I forget the year, let me think now, a part-time internal accountant, I can go back to 2005, I think. Yeah, so somewhere around that, there was an internal accountant, but she was part-time. So actually this same person was handling accounts for the IT business that I was running at that time and she would then give some of her time to church work and handle that. So I think that happened from 2005 or something. Anyway, so we had an internal accountant and then that was a part-time and then later on, we had a full-time internal accountant because as the work grew, there's a lot more to be done, they have more staff and all kinds of things. So we had a full-time internal accountant and external accountant, external accountant. So this is what we have right now and this is sufficient for us at this point in time. So even today, we have a full-time internal accountant. The external accountant still comes once a week, will check the work, the internal accountant will give, you know, internal accountant does her work, she gives all the details to the external accountant who will also cross-check on a weekly basis. Everything is checked on a weekly basis. Then on a monthly basis, this external accountant generates reports. Every three months audit happens and then every year audit happens and then there's another external independent auditor who will verify what this auditor has done. So all the things are checked. Now at some point in the future, we may have an internal auditor. So that means we audit or keep things in check internally as well. Right now, we don't need it because the external accountant is coming every week and checking what is being done by the internal accountant and then every quarter, every three months, there's another audit being done.  So purchasing request goes to this person, she approves the vendors, makes the payment, etc. But at some point, we may need, when things are much bigger, we may need a purchasing person or handles who checks the vendors, verifies them and then approves all the purchasing that is being made. So the point is, this finance department grew over time, but these are the kinds of roles that you will need within your organization. Another important thing to think about is to follow a two-person rule. At every point, whenever money is handled, there should be at least two people involved so that, you know, there is that sense of, hey, we can't mishandle things. So if it's one person, you know, things could be easily mishandled, but two people, they would hold each other. So example, if money you're receiving offering in the in the in the service, you should have, you know, two, three, four people counting that money, right? So that means it's not one person counting, you have more than one person, at least two, preferably three, four, five, so that they're sitting together and counting, they're holding, they're watching each other, right? Then money comes into the office and then from there on, there should be at least two people checking it. So like we have on a weekly basis, an internal accountant, an external accountant. So everything is being checked on a weekly basis, but two people, two people are involved. So that is happening. Then in our purchasing, which I said, you know, there's these internal accountants. So for purchases, all typically, you know, big purchase, that means over 5000 rupees. What we say is that it has to be pre-approved.   But anything bigger than that. And it's not a large amount, but just as a rule, we have saying it has to be pre-approved. So the person who wants to buy that, you know, it could be any person, any staff who needs to buy whether equipment or whatever they need to buy for their area of work, they get the quote, they send it to the ministry leader. So it may come to me for several things, but it may go to another pastor, say example, Mr. Jay Kumar, or whoever's in charge of that area of ministry for review. And then once it is approved, of course, the internal accountant is copied on these emails. Only after that, the purchase will be made and the payment, the purchase will be made and payment given. So before a vendor is selected, the vendor has to go through an approval process. So we only allow our people to buy from pre-approved vendors, unless it's, you know, so known, say, online platform or something. But otherwise, if you're engaging a vendor, the vendor has to be pre-approved. We have a pre-approval checklist. Then that person gets the quote for what they want, sends it to the pastor or ministry leader who approves it, checks it, approves it, then it is paid. So there are two checks, the one making the request, the one who's in charge of the ministry area, and then the accountant will dispense the money. So wherever possible, you have this kind of two-person trial. And now everything is done online. So there are no checks to be signed, hardly any checks to be signed, almost none, you know, all the transactions are happening online. So we route it through emails, everything is documented, everything is stored, so we have a record of what has happened. A few other things and we'll take questions. For everything that you do, there has to be a receipt or a document. Yeah. So when counting happens, everything is documented in our book. When money, cash is deposited into the accounts, there's deposit receipts, there is a recording of, I mean, of course, bank transactions, everything is recorded, direct deposits are all acknowledged, are all recorded, and in some cases, not all cases, in some cases, contributions are acknowledged. Now, the reason I say some cases is one is in India, we are not required to track money, track the contributor, right? So, for example, in the US, it's different, you know, everything is tracked by social security number. So you know who gave that money and they get a tax deductible receipt at the end of each year so that they can use it on there for their tax benefit, tax reductions. In India, we don't do that, there are no tax benefits of giving to a religious organization. And so we don't track who gave how much, we don't do it. But there are certain people who request for an acknowledgement, so then the accountant sends an acknowledgement, when she knows that that person has contributed to an amount and they send us an email, we say, yeah, money has been received, we send them an acknowledgement. The acknowledgement serves no benefit in terms of tax purposes, but it's just us acknowledging that that amount has been received. So we have that in place only for certain people who asked for it. But generally we don't do it, there are people who contribute, so many people contribute, we don't even know who that person is, who's contributing, there could be people in Bangalore, there could be around the country. So we don't track based on, it's not required for us to do it. In some parts of the world, you may need to do that. So it's different. Other things that you would need to be mindful of is vendor verification. So before any of our staff can engage with the vendor, we verify them. That means they need to sign a vendor services agreement. We tell them, look, this is our standard of working. We want to make sure there are no kickbacks being paid anywhere, not none of that, in order to get our work, especially if it's recurring work. Every month we need their services and so on. We want to make sure everything is clean. We want to make sure that they are accountable for tax purposes. So we ask them for their tax documents, etc. So all that happens in the vendor verification, only then they come on board, only then we work with them. This is just to make sure, protect ourselves as well as protect our organization and, of course, it's also beneficial to the vendor. Then, as I mentioned, purchase processes. There's a pre-approval process before any purchase beyond 5,000 rupees is made. There's a disbursement process. We make all payments to our vendors within three working days. So that's something part of our vendor services agreement that is, we don't need you to wait 30 days. Most organizations would say you wait 30 days to get your payment. For us, we say we'll pay you within three working days, and usually it happens within 24 hours. But we keep it three days in case there's some busyness happening, busy thing happening. So that means we want to pay our vendors. As soon as they deliver the service, send us their bill, we pay them. So there's no waiting from there. So that's payment priority. We make sure everybody's paid well. Our payroll is taken care of. That means all our staff are paid on the last day of the month or maximum the first day of the month. So payroll happens on the last day, on the first day. And this is so strict. We never fail to do that. Then our consultants will be paid between first and second, maximum third of the month. And sometimes there's already in between.  So the accountants, you have to pay them before the third of the month. So all staff, the payroll happens last day of the month, latest first day of the new month. And consultants paid before the end of day three, so long as they report their time sheets and everything is clear. Expense claims, that means people who spend money, the staff will spend money. They are reimbursed for what they spent. And again, we have a process. You have to submit the bills, send it in by email, and then the accountants will be paid back within the same working, within 24 hours, pay you back. All tax payments are made on behalf of all the staff, consultants. So we are very strict on that as well. Sometimes our vendors want to avoid tax and we say, no, we cannot do that. Tax is paid for all our staff, consultants, vendors, tax is paid. There are times when we have to pay cash, but anytime we have to pay cash, and these are for daily wage workers. Suppose we need some things to be moved from place to one place to other. We call in a few workers, or in daily wage workers, then we have to pay them cash. Then we take receipts from them, that they have received the cash. We take their ID card so that copy of the ID card so we know the cash has been given to them, that particular person get it signed. And we keep that as little as possible so there's no cash expense. Everything is done through online transactions. So let me pause you. Are you guys getting bored with this? Again, you're learning something or is it getting too boring? No, faster. We are learning a lot. Elisabeth, we can't hear you. Sorry. I was saying we are learning a lot from the practices of APC. We are not bored with it at all. Okay, thanks. Sometimes people don't think that, oh, I'm going to hear all this in Bible college, but I feel it's just very important. Yeah, thank you. All right, let me just the chat then I'll go back to the notes. Laisha, is it difficult to teach a congregation to take loans to give in support of the gospel? So, Laisha, this is my stand. We discourage, we tell people, do not take loans to give to church. Don't do it. Because why should somebody else go into debt in order to support God, God's work? So we said we never even talked about it in church. We've never talked about it in church, telling people to take loans to give to church. In fact, if anybody came and asked me personally, should I take a loan to give to the church, my first answer, no, don't do that. It's not right. God doesn't need you to go into debt in order to support his work. Don't do it. So that's my position. Kennedy's question. Talk, how have you used your credit facilities? Have you ever borrowed money as a church or to a teething problem in a church? If any, how did you manage the situation? Is it in order for church to take, to trade in forex to generate extra income? All right. So two questions there, Kennedy. One is, should we, you know, have we borrowed from the church, borrowed money for the church? So here's another area where from the very beginning we said we will never borrow. It's just our, I'm not saying it's wrong. If somebody wants to go take a loan from a bank or whatever, that's their decision. But for us at APC, our decision was we will never take a loan. In fact, in India, the bank will not give a loan to a religious organization. So we can't even take a loan from the bank if he wanted to, because the religious organization doesn't have a steady income, meaning it's dependent on the free will contributions of people. So the bank does not look at it as a source of income. So banks typically will not give loans to religious organizations unless of course they can pledge immobile property like other lands and buildings and so on. So that's a different scenario. But our position from the very beginning is we will never take a loan from any bank, any institution or any individual. So we've never done it. Our position is always God, you know, let the money come in and we will do what God has called us to do. And that's been the way and God has always given more than enough. In the very beginning, like the first two, three years, we're very small. So the second question Kennedy is asking is about our teething problems when we started the church. Now, our position was a little different because when we started the church, I was also running an IT company and God worked in such a way that, you know, working from Bangalore for a U.S. company, I was actually earning more in Bangalore than I was working when I was working in Chicago. You know, God just worked it out that way. So in the first few years, we had no lack, we had just surplus simply because the company were tied into the church and we had more than enough, more money than we knew what to do with. You know, our congregation was very small, like 20 people. But because the company was giving in to the church, there was a surplus of money. And we got on cable TV, we started printing, we started doing missions or everything, you know, within the first two years, so on. So that was our experience. I know that's not the experience of any person. But in our case, it just, God just orchestrated that in that manner. And then the church grew and then a lot of people also started contributing and so on. If that was not the case, example, you know, somebody else is starting a church and, you know, maybe the congregation is very small, the income is very small, I would say, you know, just trust God and let God, you know, journey with God. You know, each one has their own journey with God. God was gracious in our lives and this was our experience. But I also know that for many people, that's not their experience. But in the early years, it's very tough. That's why we want to help churches start, you know, we want to really fund as many churches as we can all over the world so that we can help them start. God was good to us, we need to be good to other people, other churches, others were starting churches. So in those early years, for many, it is difficult. But, you know, we just have to trust God and work with what we have. And I'm sure God will bring us to a place of plenty and, yeah, okay. All right, let me take other questions. There is Sri Kumar and then there is Charles. Please go ahead, Sri Kumar. Thank you, sir. I have two questions. One question. The first one is, how we handle the finances of the churches which is outside Bangalore, like as you said about Bangalore, we have branch and other part of the country, we have branch. So how we, are they actually depositing the money every week into the APC account, direct account or and how we audit those, that finances like or is the same, is there, it's a common auditor who audits everything and keeping the records. My second question is, like, do we ever forecast any project like, you know, with the money, like saying that we are going to buy this land and this will be the approximate cost. And this is something we are looking for. So and based on that, if the people wants to start contributing the money, though, is it, is it okay or is APC practicing like that thing? Thank you, sir. Good. Two good, two good questions. So first one, how, so we have, let's say, I think, I think 12 churches outside Bangalore. Oh, I forget about the forex issue. Okay, I'll come back to that, Kennedy. Yeah, I'll mention. Sorry. Thanks for reminding me. Oh, let me, let me answer that. Then I'll come back to Sri Kumar. So Kennedy asked about forex issues. So a third aspect is a third discipline we had as a church is the church will not make any investments other than fixed bank fixed deposits with people's money. So it's also part of our legal trust document. That means the money that comes to the church cannot be used for any kind of private investments. It cannot be done. So I'm answering Kennedy's question whether, you know, the church can invest money in foreign exchange and so on, things like that. So one is legally, we are not permitted to use money that we get in India, outside India, we're not permitted by the government to do that. All money obtained in India must be spent in India, because as a religious organization, that's what we are looking to set up an entity in the US and that will take care of our work outside India. So, and second, this and so the other thing is that money comes to the church cannot be invested in any private investments. I mean, if we can't, you know, trade in mutual funds, we can't invest in stocks, it's not allowed. We're not allowed to do that. That's part of our legal setup. We can only buy property in the name of the church, or we can only put it in, it's already in the bank, in the bank, put it as fixed deposit. So you get between 5% and around 5% interest. That's it for a fixed deposit. Of course, if you trade in mutual funds, you can get 11%, 15%, 17%, whatever, but you're not allowed to do that. So that's the rule. So what happened, the reason is this is not money we earn through profit, it is donations. So it has to be protected. It cannot be invested into anything that carries any kind of risk. And so only allowed is bank fixed deposits or purchase of property for the church. Is that okay, Kennedy? Yeah. So going back to Srikumar's question. So all of our six churches, that means the five churches in Bangalore and Mangalore are all budgeted under, are all covered by ABC accounts. What we are doing here, everything I've described to you today covers all of these six locations. Now, the way we work with our outreach churches is we tell all our outreach pastors to form their own legal entity. That's one thing. So we say, look, we want you to own the work you're doing. We don't want to own it. Ours is a relationship with them because many of them studied with us or trained with us. But their ministry is theirs. So we encourage them, we've encouraged many of them to form their own legal entity. Some of them have done it. Some of them have not done it because they had difficulties in their own states or cities to register a Christian organization. The people are creating problems. So they've not been able to register. So then what we do is we say, don't worry, you operate as an extension of ABC Bangalore, but they do not give any, whatever money they get for all our outreach churches, whatever money they get, we say, you don't have to give us anything back. Use it right there. So they don't give any money back. So this is aside from these six locations, which I said, where we function as one organization, all the other churches, the 12th, I think 11 other churches, some of them have registered independently, they function completely independently. Some of them are continuing under ABC as an extension of ABC Bangalore, but financially they're completely independent. That means whatever money they get, they spend plus we support all these churches every month. So they get our regular support. So that's how we work. They don't give back. We don't ask them to give anything back because it's people who are locally giving and let it be used to serve the people locally there and from there they can grow and so on. So we don't ask them. Now, for organizations for the churches that are independently registered, we try to teach them how to do the same thing we are doing.  Now, many of these are very small churches, many in terms of finances, they're not getting lots of money. So they're actually below the radar of that income tax and all those things. But if in case the money comes, grows, they know that they are supposed to report and do all those things there. So that's the first question. And Shikumar, what was your second question? So do we project the finances like? Oh, yeah. So budgeting, yeah, we do budgeting. And that's I think the next topic I'm going to talk about is for every ministry area, we budget. So what our accountant does is we use historical data. That means how much did we spend in each of those areas the last three years? Take the average, increase it by 10% so that in the next year, calendar year, that's kind of about the amount we want to spend. If you're doing the same thing, right, sometimes what happens is we may have had a conference example for 100 people, but now you're doing it for 200 people. So obviously, you know, the budget has to go up. But if you're doing a similar thing, okay, a 10% increase somewhere, that's ballpark. So we tell our ministry leader, you plan that event or you plan that ministry in that amount. Okay. But if the event or the ministry is increasing, then of course, the numbers will go up. But we do the budgeting and we give that guidance to that particular ministry leader as they prepare for, and as they're working on the budget for their event or their ministry. One. Secondly, for all new ministries, we do an estimation. So for example, we estimated church planting accelerator program. That means we want to plant, we want to have, you know, plant churches when help people plant, I'm talking about India, help plant churches in India for people who come within to Bangalore to work, work with us for one year, you know, we need to take care of their expenses.  So an estimate was about four crores over the next three years. So that's an estimate right now, when we actually start doing things, things may change, but at least we have an idea. Same thing for our books. This year, our budget was okay, we will spend 40 lakhs on 40 lakhs means four million rupees on our printing of books, which we just restarted from July because after we opened up and started restart printing next year, our projected budget for printing books is eight million 80 lakhs. So we've given that information to our publication. Okay, next year, you can go ahead and spend 80 lakhs on printing books, printing and distribution of books. You work with that, you know, so we project for what we need and so on. Or same thing with the building project. You know, so when we said we want to build a Bible college, we did our research and we said, okay, we want to spend so much money in buying the land 15 crores, we want to spend so much money in building the building or the facilities 15 crores, that's our budget. And everything is working very well as of now in the purchase of the land, which is well under that 15 crores. So the answer to your question is yes, we do this, we budget for known activities and we budget for upcoming new things that we're going to do. Sir, I just also, I also want to know that Louis forecast this budget and we inform the people so that they can also contribute this thing. And yeah, and I think if if church as you are seeing that like how the 10% increase is happening in the budgeting, we also want to know that as a church, when you type, as a church, if you are typing, then how that thing is also practiced. Thank you, sir. Okay, so in terms of informing the congregation, we only inform them about the big things. Like, you know, I sent an email out in the month of I think August, I sent one email saying these are the new areas of ministry, these are new things you're planning to do. This is what we are estimating like for books, we're going to be resume printing. So this is what we're going to spend this year, this is what we're going to spend next year. For the church planting accelerated program, this is what we want to spend for the next four years for APC media. So we wanted to start, you know, producing short films, so on, we budgeted one crore for five films. And so we said, okay, this whatever. So I sent an email out one email in the month of August, so that if people want to give, they can give towards these new projects. But no pressure, you know, we're just sharing a vision, we're sharing this what we've estimated, they are welcome to give. Now as a church, you know, I don't necessarily calculate our tithe month on month to do our giving, but our giving, because we give in so many ways and forms, which exceeds what we get. So our outflow, which are giving, free giving, our giving is one is we are supporting all our outreach churches. Second, we give to other missions and Christian organizations in India, especially those whom you know, I personally know, because you know, we don't want to give money into something that we don't know. So there are certain ministers, especially the mission oriented ministries who are doing missions work in India that we support, we give to them. Third, we give through our books and our conferences, that means all these are free. And so the huge amount of money goes out in the books and conferences. And fourth, we give to special needs, that means that is our generosity fund, which supports not only people in Bangalore, but outside Bangalore, especially for those who are Christian ministers who need money for children's education, food, you know, living expenses kind of thing. Those are the main areas, sometimes medical bills, but mostly it's education and living, you know, so the generosity fund money. So if you ask me, Thai thing, we don't say, okay, here's this money we'll give to one in one ministry. No, there's actually more than our Thai that goes out, but it goes out in all of these various categories. And it happens throughout the year. Thank you sir. Thank you. All right. Let me see if I can finish the other questions before time is up. Abraham, when I unable to download the CPAP application form, oh, okay, yeah, because Abraham, because the last day was 31st, our team would have taken it off. We will update that page, you know, and open it up for the next year. So we will get that back. Okay. I'll let you know. Elijah should finance amount one is able to raise, be an indicator for successful minister, how effective a minister is. Answer is no. So money is not an indicator of how good we are or how successful we are. I think what's important is to be good steward of whatever God has given to us. You know, and yes, we know the biblical principle Luke 16 Jesus said, you know, if we are faithful in little things, he will set us about more. He'll give interest us with more. So we know that progression is there. But the important thing is we don't evaluate success by money. Money is only one of the many things God gives to us to steward. Right. Just like he gives us time. He gives us people. And so we shouldn't look at money. Sometimes God gives us great influence. He gives us opportunities, favor. Sometimes favor is more powerful than money, you know, so we shouldn't just look at money as an indicator. There's just so many other things in which ways in which God works through the Christian ministry. The point we want to emphasize is whatever money God has given to us, let us be good stewards of that. Okay. Christopher's question is just a plan in church donations as an income tax on churches at 50%. So in India, Christopher, if we do a 12 a registration, that means there is so you register as a religious trust, plus you do an additional registration, that will exempt all income from tax. So but that is provided you have the 12 a registration, which is normal. You know, we tell all all our religious, all our churches. So you register first as a religious organization and then you apply for you do the 12 a registration and you keep it active. If you keep your 12 a registration active, then the government exempts contributions to religious organizations from tax. So you don't pay tax on those contributions. That's in India. Maxine, apart from church collections, do you also practice fundraising activities to boost finance? The answer to your question, Maxine, is we don't do any additional fundraising activities. We just tell people to give.  That's where the ministry information is to give. And so people from within our congregation, people from outside give on their own. We don't force or do anything extra. And you know, when we have conferences, when we have events, we do charge a registration fee. But everything, first of all, is at 50% of the actual cost. So we're not actually making any money on it. And plus, for those who cannot afford even the 50% of the actual cost, we subsidize further. So we don't make any money, even through our conferences or events, you know, it's always the event is given at a subsidized cost to all our all the people want to come. So we don't do anything apart from the contributions that come from people on their own. Charles question, do you sell APC publications? No, all our APC publications are free. We don't sell them. This is one reason, you know, we're not able to put them out on Amazon, because Amazon requires you to charge a small amount. I think they nowadays, I don't know if they can give it for a $0 amount. And I'm not sure what we I think in the time past, when we checked, you had to charge even $1 or something, we didn't want to. So we don't sell our APC publications, all are given for free. And so we distribute it through digital platforms where we can distribute it digital freely. All the print publications are free. So we don't charge for it. Okay. All right, our time is up. But let me finish these last two questions. Charles, how would you advise a member of another church who seeks advice from you when they have been advised by the church bosses to loans? Bring it either then pray for it and they get profits? My response to that Charles is don't do it. Don't do it. I don't think it's the heart of God for us to go and take a loan and give it to the church or to the ministry in order to gain profit. So my advice is don't do it. If somebody on their own, they want to go take a loan because they have money coming next month and they will clear out the loan and they just want to do this now. I mean, that's their choice. My advice is don't do it. God doesn't need it. God can handle his money well. But if somebody goes and does it, it's entirely their choice and their responsibility. But I would say don't do it. Yeah. Okay. Good. Thank you for these engaging questions. So we will finish talking about finances and then do a little bit on the legal side of things next week. They get into project management and execution. Just share some things on project management. I was looking at the calendar. So my plan is to finish everything by 17th in the next two weeks, 10th and 17th.  You can work through it. Okay. Any questions before we close for the day? Okay. All right. Let's pray and close. I know we already taken time into our break. Somebody could pray and dismiss us, please. Let's pray. Dave and Father, we thank you so much for the time that you spent. Lord, we pray that you will continue to help us to put these things in practice but also to invest more time in them so that we'll be able to do them well so that the stewardship that will be put in and we are able to do it, we shall bring glory to your name, when Jesus' name will pray. Amen. Amen. Thank you, everyone. God bless you. Enjoy the rest of your day. I'll see you next week. Bye now.


Hey guys, Omar Yusof here, part of the Kaizen team, happy to finally announce our squat specific program is released and we're really damn proud of it. I think you guys are going to enjoy it. Before I go on, however, I should make something clear, there's nothing magical about this program. You're not going to get superhuman powers. You probably won't even grow calves, but what this is, it's an effective program by three knowledgeable coaches that have collectively over three decades of training experience and training other individuals. Ladies and gentlemen, silent Mike back with another video. Today, we're going to talk about the ever argument, which I think is dying. Thank you to all my fitness friends on the internet. I'd like to think I played 1% part in this, the sumo versus conventional conversation, but we're going to put a little twist on it because I'm getting a lot of questions on not only sumo versus conventional and what muscles do they work? Maybe your goal isn't powerlifting to lift the most amount of weight. Maybe it's a more aesthetic base. Maybe it's a balance. It's athletic based and you're trying to get better at your sport. Which lift should you do? But also within people that are taking training seriously and maybe not competing again, which one should I do for my program? Maybe you bought the Kaizen program or anything or any other program or you have a really good coach online or you found a really good training system that fits you and your lifestyle and you're wondering which lift should I do when and why and we're going to dig right in. A lot of you guys have followed my training, I guess on the internet now for eight years or so, but I've been training for strength in particular for over 10 years and throughout, depending on when you joined my journey, I've trained both an extensive amount. My biggest pull ever is seven hundred and five pounds in the sumo deadlift kind of a deadlift only competition ran by my boys at the caffeine kilos. But I've also pulled conventional in a meet around six thirty and in the gym like six fifty for two or something of that nature. So for me personally, they're very close and in my training, I tend to use them as tools to kind of balance each other. One, depending on how I feel, depending on what else is going on in my training, depending on injuries or how I beat up. And then besides that, the performance of it is I use them as variations because for me and how I'm built as a human, they do balance each other out well. So I'll do different blocks and different phases of each method. Now, for the majority of people, I think, especially a beginner, early intermediate or even sometimes an intermediate, if you've been training anywhere from zero years to two or three years, it's probably really good for you to hop in on the conventional deadlift. I think learning the hip hinge is something that a lot of people struggle with and it doesn't come very naturally. And the conventional deadlift shows that teaches that and builds a proper musculature, the hammies, the low back, the glutes, obviously, your traps, your grip and teaches you how to get tight in that position. From there, if you want to experiment with the sumo, it is still a hip hinge, depending on how you're built. There are some people that are a little bit longer in the arms, a little shorter in the torso that can kind of sneak away with a squatting the weight up, but either way, the sumo does work slightly more quads. And it does work your low back a bunch, just like the conventional, but it can take the load off of that a little bit. It's a little bit more of a squat in terms of musculature than the conventional deadlift. Now, which program you're running and which form you should use for that program kind of depends. Right now I'm running a couple blocks of conventional poles. I want to push my low back a little bit as I'm getting healthier and I'm pushing my weightlifting to continue to build that to assist my other goals in the squat and the clean and drink and the snatch. But for you guys, it kind of depends again. If you're early in your training, I would do again a year to maybe three years of conventional really build up that musculature in the hip hinge.   If you do compete, I always recommend the last 12 to 16 weeks into a competition, be the movement or the style or the specific way that you're going to compete in. And that goes obviously extreme for the sumo and conventional as they are almost different lifts, but that's the same as squat. You know, if you put the bar a little bit higher in the off season to build your quads and stay a little bit more upright, as soon as you get to the last 12 to 16 weeks, deadlift, bench, whatever it might be, you want to be as specific as possible and try to emulate exactly how you plan to lift the new PR one rep max in the competition. If your goals are more aesthetic based, I do think that any hip hinge will probably do, depending on the general program, as I can't say for every individual, their goals and their history, but even a stiff leg deadlift, I know there's a lot of bodybuilders, natural bodybuilders and otherwise that will use any kind of deadlift.  There's a lot of variations you can throw in, um, in different blocks and different training cycles that allow you to continue to progress. At some point, we can't just deadlift conventional once a week, one rep maxes threes or fives and expect our progress to be great. You're going to have to up the volume and frequencies so you get more practice in or throw in a variation. Again, there's multiple variations within those lifts as well, and that depends on the training program, your goals, but in an off season of like a powerlifting or even a more aesthetic based, hypertrophy based program, there's room for some pause work, some block work, elevating the plates, um, on both the sumo and conventional and a lot of ways you can mix things up to not only keep progressing because when we keep progressing, adding either volume, a set or a rep, a week, a month, a year, more weight, a week, a month, a year. Again, these small progressions will allow for more hypertrophy and more strength in the longterm. Uh, and obviously that's the goal for all of us here. The goal of our community, the goal of this YouTube channel, the goal of my personal lifting and my coaching to you guys is to continue to progress. I appreciate you guys, man. Uh, hopefully you guys enjoyed the video. Got a little something from it. Comment below what questions you want me to cover in the upcoming one. This is probably our main format of our YouTube videos right now. We're going to be going with kind of an instructional. I'm taking topics that I get often either in my DMs or on these YouTube videos itself. I'm going to talk about them in regards to how I can help you guys progress in your training as well as showing my journey, weightlifting, powerlifting, whatever it is, my progressions in the gym and relating these topics, questions to you and hopefully my own training. I appreciate you guys. Give this thing a thumbs up. So I'll be out of here.