Month: November 2015

Carnival of Blogs on Golden Era of Hindi Film Music – November 2015

Welcome to November, 2015 edition of Carnival of Blogs on Golden Era of Hindi Film Music.

We will begin our present issue with a post that is so very topical.

My Favourites: Songs of Cool Breezes ushers in the early signs of winter in our part of the world. We will also enjoy the feel of the early chill by way of some of the rare songs from this excellent list:

And now we turn our sails to the tributes.

My Favourites: Salilda’s Malayalam Songs – on his 92nd birthday. ‘It may encourage folks to look up and listen to unknown gems’.

“Dekh Lo Ishq Ka Martaba Dekh Lo” – B.S.Thapa – B.S.Thapa ji who completed 92 on last 3 July may not be active in films now but his contribution to the Cinema as a teacher and a director can’t be denied with.

P.Susheela just turned 80 – A tribute with a list of some of her songs. Some of her Hindi films songs are here.

Please Go To My Post From Last Year to Celebrate the Birthday of the Great Sitara Devi – At this time last year, the author had posted ‘seven of her film scenes. Unfortunately, it is impossible to find an additional seven comparable clips on YouTube, especially if one tries to look for scenes from other films’. Here is one of her famous Kathak dance sequence – Thumak Chalat Ramchand.

S D Burman also gets a special mention on 40th Anniversary – on 31st October. Here are some notable tributes.

Ten best songs (solos) composed by SD Burman – The earlier saturation coverage has provided a good building block to choose one song per singer to pay the tribute to the master in this post.

Tere Mere Sapne Ab Ek Rang Hain – Eternal Melodies of SD Burman-Rafi By Peeyush Sharma – Had it not been the occasion of S D Burman’s anniversary, this post could have done full justice in this blog carnival’s special space of posts on Mohammad Rafi.

The Incomparable Music Of S D Burman Transcends Generations –

My Favourites: Children’s Songs celebrates Jawaharlal Nehru’s 125h birthday on 14th November. These are not necessarily patriotic songs, but songs picturized on children, and are the ones that are sung by the children on the screen.

Some of the less heard songs:

We move over to other regular posts.

Watch 100 Years of Indian Cinema Come Alive in 200 Seconds of Sand Art – Tanaya Singh pays due credit to Rahul Arya, a well-known sand artist for this 200-second action packed journey.

Posts on Scroll.in –

Do Chetan Anand’s best-known films stand the test of time?

Back to Boral: Looking for Satyajit Ray in the town in which he shot ‘Pather Panchali’ –

The brilliance of Salim-Javed lies not just in what they said, but how they said it

When Javed told Salim, ‘I was thinking that maybe we should work separately’ – Diptakirti Chaudhuri  · A new book speculates on why Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar split after a writing partnership that created some of the most iconic Hindi movies of the 1970s.

Saxy Desi: Check out the sounds of the saxophone in South Asia – Nate Rabe  – this most romantic of jazz instruments, often purringly referred to as the sexaphone, was invented in 1841 in the lowlands of a somewhat more prosaic Belgium by Adolphe Sax to create a sound that floated somewhere between the silken tone of the clarinet and the brash flare of the trumpet :

The Braz Gonsalves 7 – Raga Rock | Joe Gomes – O Saathi Re | Unknown – Spinboldak Saxophony | Rudresh Mahantappa – Abhogi | Sahib Shihab – Om Mani Padme Om

Hai kya kya jalwa bhara hua Ghanshyaam tumhaari aankhon mein – Atul, while discussing the HFM related statistics pertaining to 1932, noted that only nine songs from movies of 1932 are available. Six of these songs are already covered in the blog. Here is the seventh song of 1932 to appear in the blog : Hai kya kya jalwa bhara hua – Aankh Ka Taara (1932) – Jahanara Kajjan – Motilal Naik

My Favourites: Teasing Songs are the songs, only about situations where the heroine (or in one case, the hero) is already in love with the hero, and her friends (/his friend) – as friends will – tease her about it.

Songs of Sensuality – Inspired by Conversations Over Chai’s great post on the same topic, here’s list of classic Hindi and Bengali songs that explore sensuality, physical affection, and longing.

Top Ten Songs Sung by Actors Themselves (or by Singers Appearing Onscreen) – Guest Post by Abhik Majumdar – ‘songs actually sung by (not merely lip-synched by) actors. Not singer-cum-actors, but people who were known only for their acting. First off, only one track per artiste. Secondly, there’s no point including songs by people known equally for their singing and acting. So no Kishore Kumar, no Suraiya, no Rajkumar (the Kannada actor), no Talat Mehmood even. Thirdly, the singing must conform to certain minimum standards of excellence. (A certain Mr Bachchhan stands excluded on this count.) Fourthly, in the early days of talkies when playback singing was unknown actors, even the most atrociously off-key ones, were compelled to sing their own songs. Since such examples are a penny a dozen, no point adding them …..’

Ten of my favourite ‘Aaja’ songs i.e. Hindi film songs that begin with the word “Aaja” The post has all the songs that would immediately reverberate in our mind when we read the title. Here are some of the less heard songs, picked up from the discussions by the readers:

Sapnon ke gaaon mein taaron ki chhaaon mein – K Satish Shenoy remembers that this song used to be played invariably in the same session on Radio Ceylon with another song ‘Kahan le chale ho,…’ from Durgesh Nandini.

In photos: Bollywood cinema is life and life is a movie – Photojournalist Fawzan Husain captures the making of Hindi movies as well as their impact on the world beyond the sets.

A tailor in Kamatipura in Mumbai works under the watchful eye of Hindi cinema’s leading ladies from the black-and-white era
A tailor in Kamatipura in Mumbai works under the watchful eye of Hindi cinema’s leading ladies from the black-and-white era

Best songs of 1950: Wrap Up 4 which is about the best duets of 1950 in continuation of the Overview post, Wrap Up 1 (best male solos), Wrap Up 2 (best ‘other’ female solos) and Wrap Up 3 (best songs of Lata Mangeshkar).

Best songs of 1950: Final Wrap Up 5 lives up to the expectations of distillation post on a subject that always had a wide range of discussions.

We have moved the songs remembered by our friends to a separate, full-fledged post w.e.f. this month. These posts will be titled as “Fading Memories….Unforgettable Songs” and would be published on second Sunday every month.

We would therefore revert to posts on Mohammad Rafi to end each of the episode of our blog carnival.

Jaao Mere Siva Tum Kahan Jaaoge – Remembering Rafi through Rahul Dev Songs By Peeyush Sharma

Here are some not so known songs:

Ten Songs of Mohd. Rafi We Could Not Include in ‘Gaata Rahe Mera Dil’ – By Balaji Vittal – We can read the excerpts of The book co-authored by Aniridha Bhattacharjee, published by Harper.

We continue our pursuit of the golden period of Hindi Film Music ……

Carnival of Quality Management Articles and Blogs – November 2015

Welcome to November, 2015 edition of Carnival of Quality Management Articles and Blogs.

The search for “Improving measures of measurement of process” took us to the first building block -‘performance measures and metrics’, followed by the search for resources relating to the ‘structuring for the process of improvement’, “Deploying the Improvement Process” and “Implementing the Improvement Process”. While we were @ Measuring the Improvement Process, we had observed references to several techniques of measurements. Among these we had a detailed look at one of the most discussed one: The Balanced Scorecard.

In this last part of our journey of Continuous Improvement, we will take a look at some of the representative articles on “Sustaining Continuous Improvement’.

Sustainability of lean process System

How to Create and Sustain Successful Continuous Improvement Teams – Renee Bassett – Porter at Irving Oil: “Keep it fresh, keep improving the system.  Do not let it stagnate.  Your competition is making improvements every day; evolving change is now a way of life.” Click here to read how understanding human motivations can go a long way toward ensuring a successful continuous improvement program.

Sustaining Continuous Improvement Initiatives – Simon Bodie – Continuous Improvement Initiatives are often launched with a flurry of excitement .This can soon wane as executives fail to see value and question the rationale for continuing. Achieving longevity requires careful management of the program. Just completing ‘good work’ is not enough, benefits need to be understood calculated and extracted. Progress needs to be communicated effectively.

Sustaining a Continuous Improvement Culture in a World of Flux – It is not so much that we are afraid of change, or so in love with the old ways, but it is the place in between we fear….. like being in between trapezes……there is nothing to hold on to. CI should not merely be an institutional priority, but should be integrated into the strategic plan. A well-defined structure for implementing CI programs, transparent flow of information, listening to views of each stakeholder, showing the benefits to the individuals and maintaining the consistency of approach (towards CI) help build the culture that creates environment for sustaining the CI.

Visual Management Helps You Sustain Continuous Improvement – You can’t make your operations more efficient if your employees don’t know what is going on!  Communicating information throughout all departments and levels of your company is critical. Visual management is a fundamental element of process control that helps you sustain continuous improvement.

Creating and sustaining value: Building a culture of continuous improvement – Saleem Chattergoon, Shelley Darling, Rob Devitt, Wolf Klassen have narrated a phased approach adopted at Toronto East General Hospital . These are: Phase 1 – Setting the stage ; Phase 2 – Team-driven performance management and Phase 3 – The daily management system and cross-appointment model. The three phased approach takes the movement beyond individual projects to the cultural transformation.

Continuous Improvement through a Productive Culture

Actions that Build a Productive Work Culture

  1. Practice good leadership at all levels
  • Create trust and respect
  • Be committed and persistence
  • Be patient and understanding
  • Be consistent
  • Allocate resources fairly & where needed
  • Explain the goals and reasons
  1. Lead by example, by “walking your talk”
  • Role model desired behaviours
  • Coach, mentor and teach
  1. Determine appropriate criteria for rewards, praise, and status
  2. Select good people and supporters – Put individuals in the right roles
  3. Practice open 2-way communication
  4. Manage by walking around
  5. Develop and communicate values, behavioural expectations and norms – Deliver common and consistent messages and behaviours at all levels
  6. Focus on the quality of relationships – respect people
  7. Ensure the physical and emotional safety and well-being of employees – Listen to ideas and concerns and take appropriate action
  8. Let employees enjoy the rewards of their hard work
  9. Help people to understand all the ways the change will be good for the organisation and also for them
  10. Promote collaboration and cross-functional problem solving
  11. Provide stability and consistency
  12. Promote creativity, innovation & learning – Within boundaries remove obstacles and encourage rule breaking
  13. Create personal responsibility for results
  14. Provide employees with feedback
  15. Create a sense of identity, ownership and pride of work
  16. Provide development opportunities, new skills and fresh knowledge
  17. Provide career opportunities
  18. Provide challenges and challenging opportunities
  19. Impose real-time consequences that matter
  20. Be connected to your community

Continuously improve your chances for project success: Whitepaper 3 || kpmg.com/nz ||

Effective management of major projects relies on three key concepts:

  1. early planning and organization
  2. stakeholder communication and project controls integration, and
  • Continuous improvement.

This third instalment of a three-part series, outlines the third key component in managing a major project, continuous improvement……A collaborative culture – where information is exchanged informally and through multiple channels – is preferable for inspiring continuous improvement.

From lean to lasting: Making operational improvements stick

The broader challenge underlying such problems is integrating the better-known “hard” operational tools and approaches—such as just-in-time production—with the “soft” side, including the development of leaders who can help teams to continuously identify and make efficiency improvements, link and align the boardroom with the shop floor, and build the technical and interpersonal skills that make efficiency benefits real.

Why do continuous improvement initiatives fail to sustain? By Thomas Liesener – The four most commonly occurring hot spots are: lack of will, support, commitment and leadership from (senior) management; not right metrics selected, monitored and reviewed (for CI and change); lack in professional human development / trainings and career pathing; not right and enough resources allocated or available for implementation and projects.

Sustaining the continual improvement will find as many variants as required by the as differing needs of differing circumstances, varying by the degree in which the people involved vary with as many differing backgrounds. Obviously, we cannot cover all such variants in a single episode of our blog carnival. The ultimate message is that continuous improvement sustains in thrives in the culture of people who feel involved, who keep evolving and openly share their views and feelings.

The journey of the continuous improvement never ends.

We will now turn to our regular sections:

Bill Troy, ASQ CEO presents four guest posts:

A Day With the Future of Quality – Edwin Garro presents a very intimate documentation of his visit to a junior high school class at the San Rafael de Poás Technical High School, Alajuela, Costa Rica. The Quality and Productivity Technical program was conceived as long term answer to shortage of skilled quality technicians. The visits talks about aspirations of the students of the program.

Big Data and Quality Professionals – by Ponmurugarajan Thiyagarajan – Big data is in play when data size is huge (Volume), moves in high speeds (Velocity), comes in variety of forms (Variety) and in varied quality (Veracity) which conventional database systems cannot efficiently process.

Analytics built over big data enable organizations to process structured and unstructured data to derive useful intelligence and provide actionable insights for end-users.

This has interesting implications for quality professionals who may become involved with big data efforts. Assurance of quality is key in such projects: data clean-up must happen in an automated fashion and reconciliation reports to be produced in real-time to track quality parameters. Thus, relevant tools need to be built for quality assurance. It will be interesting to see how quality tools such as Plan-Do-Check-Act, the 7 quality tools (Fishbone diagram, Check sheets, Control charts, Histogram, Pareto Charts, Scatter Diagrams, Flow Charts) etc., can be customized for a big data project.

Facing Cultural Barriers by Leaders to Strengthen a Culture of Quality – by Luciana Paulise – company culture is modeled upon top management behavior. So, in effect, leaders need to change their behavior first if they want to change the entire company culture—and they have to do it through a systemic model considering four types of intelligence, viz. spiritual, intellectual, physical and emotional.

Talking To the C-Suite About Quality – by Dr. Suresh Gettala – emphasizes the following five rudimentsTalking to C-suite about quality culture that are indispensable when talking about quality to the top management:

  1. The long term – short term continuum
  2. The Language of Metrics
  3. Economic case for Quality
  4. Success Anecdotes
  5. “Big Q” Approach

The current month episode of ASQ TV is: Quality in Pop Culture . Celebrate World Quality Month by watching examples of quality appearing in pop culture. Quality touches nearly all aspects of society. And it’s not surprising to see it in mainstream entertainment—whether it’s being satirized for its seemingly complicated tools and methods, or indirectly referenced for how it improves our lives.

For the present month, our ASQ’s Influential Voice is Bill Troy, the CEO of ASQ.

Bill TroyWe have been regular visitor to his View From the Q.

We had taken our first look at View from Q in September 2013, when it was under the guidance of the then ASQ CEO, Paul Borawski.

Presently, we seem to have reached the end of the present list of ASQ Influential Voices. We will take a different approach to visiting the views of ASQ Influential Voices, beginning January 2016.

I look forward to your active participation in enriching the blog carnival as we pursue our Improvement journey …………