Let’s take a break from the fun and festivities to talk about how it all started and other fascinating details about this vibrant festival.

Story #1

Holi’s origins are entwined with two mythological stories. To begin, demon king Hiranyakashyap demanded that his son Prahlad be killed by his sister Holika. Holika sat in the fire with Prahlad because she endured it. Prahlad, on the other hand, was rescued when he began praying to Lord Vishnu, while Holika was reduced to ashes.

The other tale is the well-known Radha-Krishna love story. Krishna had a dark complexion and believed that Radha, who was lighter in complexion, would not accept his love. As a result, he smeared colors on Radha’s forehead, and the Holi festival began.

Story #2

Holi is celebrated in a special way by South Indians. They credit the festival to Lord Kamdeva’s sacrifice, in which he risked his life to free Lord Shiva from meditation and save the earth.

Story #3

Holi is celebrated at its pinnacle in Mathura and Vrindavan, with festivities beginning a week before the festival. Locals not only enjoy a splash of color, but also engage in a game of Lathmar Holi, which involves bamboo sticks and shields. Not only that, but Vrindavan residents have set aside a day to play Holi with flowers.

Story #4

Discrimination is smashed, and all age-old traditions are broken during Holi. It’s a one-of-a-kind festival that brings people of all religions together to celebrate.

Story #5

Widowers in Vrindavan have been playing Holi two days before the festival since 2013. Holi, true to its heart, has once again defied age-old traditions by inspiring all souls to have fun and laugh.

Story #6

Nepal has a whole week devoted to Holi as well. They decorate a bamboo pole with colorful clothes a week before Holi and then burn it on Holika Dahan.

Story #7

India and its neighbors aren’t the only ones who are celebrating. People in the United States and parts of Europe celebrate Holi as they would every other holiday.

Holi is one of those rare festivals in which people participate regardless of their religious beliefs. This colorful festival brings people together to play. Holi, appropriately dubbed “the festival of colors” and “the festival of passion,” has captured hearts not only in Asia, but also in Europe and the United States. Germany went to the extent to hold a large open-air music festival to commemorate Holi.

In a world full of religious fanatics, there are few religious festivals that are celebrated uniformly, cutting across religious and national boundaries. It’s as if the colors had the ability to transcend social, ethnic, and religious barriers. Holi has been a grand ambassador for Hinduism, spreading the ultimate concept that Hinduism seeks to preach: 7 billion people on diverse paths all leading to the same God! This is evident on Holi, as people from various countries and religions come together to celebrate the festival of love.

Women have greater control over their careers when they are empowered in the workplace. You will ensure their job development by engaging in recruitment, mentoring, equality services, college scholarships, and promotions to senior-level positions. This is crucial for building long-term staff.

Many businesses, thankfully, do have programs in place that promote and inspire women to achieve equality in the workplace. Here are few ideas for empowering women in the workplace.

1. Amplify Female Voice to Prominence

Allowing women to have a voice at the table is a good place to start. If a woman has a brilliant idea, support her and make sure she receives praise rather than allowing someone else to do so. Provide platforms for female workers to speak in public, both internally and externally. Be sure the organization has networking resources for everyone to interact with senior management.

Invite inspiring women to talk at work, and make sure that everybody is able to listen. Finally, if the organization is asked to be on a forum, decline if there is no female representation on the panel. Give women a voice and make sure they are heard when you give them the opportunity.

2. Promote Women to Diversify Leadership Pool

Make sure the high-achieving women in your organization are fairly included in succession planning. During quarterly reports, have active, continuing discussions about their development prospects and set career goals. Encourage women to seek career prospects at all levels of the organization. Open up your talent pool to all-female managers in the same way.

Women are respected when you invest in growing their talents and potential if you promote them equally to men. Fortune 500 firms claim that three or more women on the board of directors outperform their peers, with a 53 percent increase in return on equity, a 42 percent increase in revenue, and a 66 percent increase in investment money.

3. Formulate Goals with Gender Diversity as One of the Aims

Change isn’t something that can happen overnight. You can begin by examining how you operate in terms of gender diversity. Begin by soliciting ideas for changes to the organization, and then pay attention to what your employees have to say. Establish corporate priorities for improving gender equity in the workplace based on the evidence gathered.

Be sure the rest of the team is mindful of the latest plans after you’ve set these targets. Educate employees to ensure that the priorities are met continuously in all lines of operation. You can’t just set targets and expect that they’ll magically inspire women; you have to work hard to make them a fact.

4. Equality in Pay Patterns

Studies and surveys suggest that women get 21 cents on the dollar less than their male counterparts when it comes to fair pay. For people of color, the divide widens even further. Women don’t feel respected at work because they believe they are being robbed of equal wages.

Pay equity audits are an easy way for businesses to address this. Look for inconsistencies in pay scales. Then, regardless of an employee’s gender or color, ensure that all workers with comparable experience in a similar profession are paid equally.

5. Justified Parental Leave Policy

You have a responsibility as a business to help mothers and fathers working in your organization as employees to achieve a functional work-life balance, even though they work from home.

A fair parental leave program would simplify the process of women returning to work. Employees will feel they are respected no matter what family choices they make if the employer has a common mission and love for parents. Empower women and men in your business who want to start a family.

6. Plan Out-of-office Activities that Empowers Women

When planning a fun corporate event outside of the workplace, make sure it is an experience that all staff will participate in.

Take it a step further and schedule events that would simultaneously inspire women. Consider booking events with an organization that allows you to unite as a group and also empowering people in the city.

7. Recognize the Upcoming Challenges

Despite the efforts of businesses to encourage women, there are still many obstacles to overcome. PwC’s research gives us an idea of the magnitude of the challenges that women face in the workplace.

In the poll, 44 percent of women were concerned about how raising a family would affect their jobs. Less than half of female employees think their employer is doing enough to address gender disparities. 31% think their ethnicity, sexuality, or ethnic origin would stifle their career advancement. Although 27 percent of women who won promotions in the last two years had negotiated for it, 63 percent had not.

Working women serve as role models for those who recognize that there is a lot more behind their grins than it appears like hard work, societal strain, family pressure, a broken heart, a sore body, and the spirit of never giving up before they accomplish their target. This makes some of them far more competent than their male counterparts, but sadly, many times are subdued. Let us pledge to encourage and promote female empowerment and have them share the opportunity, rights, and happiness in this society.

According to a Proverb, Women hold up half the sky!

Although we have stepped in 2021, yet, the COVID-19 pandemic effect is continuing to transform business strategies throughout the telecommunications, media, and entertainment sector. In the media and entertainment industry, the pandemic has boosted many trends that were already afoot.

Just for instance, in most part of the world, movie theatres and multiplex were closed. In the later part of 2020, they started to operate in some parts of the world but with limitations in the number of attendants. This created a new trend by which customers got more attracted towards direct-to-home (DTH) or direct-to-customers (DTC) platforms. This switching of customer preferences compelled the leading studios to make first-run movies available to such customers via streaming services.

As a result, there has been a great leap in the consumption pattern of the streaming content with a positive trend. This has led to an increase in the number of subscription services along with an increase in the categories of online advertising models. These advertising models are designed to satisfy the increasingly cost-conscious customers.

Owing to such events and market factors, the leading M&E industry players have set customer retention versus acquisition as their top priority goals. In order to achieve the same, DTH and DTC services providers and OTT networks have started providing a broad range of content like video, music, games and podcasts.

This is simply a brief of the “new normal” of the M&E industry as gradually we are recovering from the COVID-19 blow.  The industry players are keen in the process of understanding consumer behavior patterns and developing a more nuanced approach to engage with customers. As consumers are repeatedly experimenting with the entertainment options, providers are scaling themselves to adopt new strategies and agile approaches for content development, aggregation, and delivery.

In 2021, the telecommunications, media, and entertainment organizations would be focusing on three key strategic opportunities for dual purpose to recover from the COVID-19 crisis and to boldly position them to thrive in the future:

Therefore, you also might be having a great expectation related to the significance and goodness of the phenomena of arrival of 2021. If thought deeply, people might have sounded eager for the arrival of 2021, but from the inside, they were craving badly to dispose off 2020 in time trash. Now as it is already a couple of months passed in 2021, I think you are already having your major goals and tasks planned. Yet, to make them more yieldable, you must take care of few things –

Don’t repeat 2020

2020 wouldn’t have been so pathetic without the COVID-19 viruses roaming around us vigorously. But the virus is not the culprit alone. Negligence of humans also led to their sufferings in many parts of the world.

So, it is advised that never forget to maintain the social distancing norms as far as possible with a continued use of sanitizers, gloves and masks until next official notification. Also stay updated with local news to get information on COVID-19 vaccination process and get vaccinated whenever it is available in your locality.

Don’t repeat 2020 by getting affected by the deadly virus or grief-stricken by knowing someone close has been detected COVID-positive. Stay safe and spread the awareness to safety among your friends and relatives.

Don’t repeat mistakes

Now let us speak about the other aspects apart from COVID-19. Recall all the activities you did in 2020 which involved great effort and labor from your side, but was unable to fetch you any results. All those activities were your mistakes.

Whenever you push yourself to work without any planning and least knowledge and information, it will never yield result and you will achieve nothing else other than failure. Hence, make a note of all such activities you did in 2020 and try not to repeat the same in 2021. 2020 has already thrown human civilization a year back in the timeline; hence, you should never afford to lose a single second in 2021.

Make a chart of mistakes done by you in the past year and try to learn from those mistakes. You must remember that although mistakes leads to failure and it takes away many things from you, yet, it teaches you a lot and you gain experience. Utilize that to boost your achieving power in 2021.

Identify the Big Goal

You year may have started with many goals and missions. But there is always one greatest and biggest task to be accomplished. It is February now, and if still you have not been able to identify the big goal, you are in trouble and I wonder what can you make out of this 2021.

You can have different dimensions of life, for example, a personal and a professional life, and hence, you can have multiple goals as well. But, for any particular dimension of your life, you must have one primary or biggest goal. Personally you may target of buying a new sedan or gifting your wife with some valuables, while, professionally you may target for a job promotion.

Identify similar big goals and strive hard to achieve them. Be it your personal, professional, recreational or spiritual goal, once you move nearer to the primary goal, all other goals gets achieved automatically.

The Big Goal! Why and How?

As you have identified the big goal or goals, ask to yourself as why are you seeking to achieve those. You should always be able to validate your targets and goals with proper reasons behind your intent of achieving those. This will help you stay focused towards your goals and would encourage you to get closer to them.

If you do not know the reason behind your craving for whatever you have wished to achieve in 2021, I must say that you are simply hitting the bush around. If you are unable to find the “Why” of your goal, you will never be able to figure out the “How” of the same.

If you fail to figure out the “How”, you can never achieve the goal you have targeted. Therefore, these two interrogatory words are the answer to your question as how you can make 2021 the best year.

Bottom Line

You must know that it is the fulfillment of any desire, wish or expectation which makes us the happiest. The same logic is applicable for making your 2021 the best year. As already told that every New Year holds a treasure of new possibilities and opportunities, but to get the most out of them, you need to strive either in a hard or smart way.

What went well? Where did you feel stuck? What was out of your control, and how did you react? What did you learn?  

Is there anything you can be grateful for in 2020? Nothing will improve your big why more than gratitude. You still have family, you still have friends who are one phone call or text message away and you still have people from work you can reach out to. Plus, the sun keeps coming up daily, your heart keeps beating, food keeps its flavor (wine, too!). 

Start to think in abundance. Start working to become the person who’ll achieve the big goal(s) you promised yourself. And then imagine how your future self will look back a year from now and think, “2021 was my best year ever!” 

Three-part methodology to formulate your offshoring strategies;

1. Keep Your Core Tight

Outsource low-priority works while keeping the high-priority process in-house. However, the critical works must be carefully considered. Thus, your first step should be to prioritize the process based on the value it will create for the clients and to the company. 

Your executives should know the importance of this, but they may not know the way to factor them into determining about offshoring. Well, a simple way of doing this could be answering one question that is how important is the process in comparison with others in building value for the company? Though, the answer will vary from business to business and sometimes industries, by the end you are likely to come to a definite decision.

2. Find the Elephant in the Room

Risk analysis is critical to offshoring. Look systematically at the process to find and then eliminate the operational risk and structural risk, if any, to ensure smooth operation.

Companies can lower their operational risk by;

1. Codifying the work. While documenting
   the works for the employees, state the different issues that can be faced and
   stipulate the responses for each. For example; if a financial institution draws
   up rules regarding their consumer loans, they should have stipulated measures
   to resolve exceptions arising out of the same. This way one can even outsource
   even the most complex tasks such as equity research.

2. Using appropriate metrics to analyze the quality of processes. Most businesses fail to develop efficient metrics, especially when they are outsourcing for the first time. This is why they do not understand whether the providers have executed better than their employees. Therefore, businesses must create better metrics to measure the quality of both offshore and in-house processes.

Structural risk;

This occurs when vendors do not invest in training the employees or hire professionals who aren’t enough qualified as the agents. For example; when signing contracts, the vendor may tell you that they will hire people with postgraduate degrees. But as the business grows, they may staff the projects with managers who may have a master’s degree, but not necessarily in the specific field that your outsourced project will need. And thus the quality of service falls. In such a situation you have no choice but to bear the entire training cost to speed up the process.

So, you see there’s nothing to assume that the vendors will act to maximize both your and their interest. Instead, you must put your company’s supervisors at work to monitor your vendors work and ensure best practices.

3. Have Your Cake and Eat It, Too

Determine the locations for the offshore process and the organizational forms like joint venture who can examine the process risks. When picking the organizational forms businesses trade off the authority and quality with the profits from the vendor’s offered specialization. In such a scenario, when offshoring has led to a more hybrid form of organization, it is more agreeable to work adopt sense-and-respond methodology instead of command-and-control.

In a hybrid business ecosystem, it is more expected from the companies to specify the quality of services while working closely with the vendors to ensure high quality. And today when technology enables almost everything, real time exchange of information is no big deal. Since offshoring isn’t only about companies crossing geographical boundaries, but also redrawing organizational boundaries to cater to a collaborative knowledge, and, expertise, attaining an extended or hybrid organization can prove to be cost-effective. 

To sum up, though it may sound a bit cliché, businesses must treat offshore processes as indispensable, it is only then one can reap all the benefits.

In short, digital experiences will replace physical experiences. And marketers must take it from there. 

1. Fit into Your Consumers’ Pipeline

Listening to social media posts and asking your customers what they want is the best way to adapt your strategy to their demands. For example; people are looking for lesser or free deliveries for their online purchases.

Build your business model in a way to cater to their wants. That’s how you spread the word.

2. Get Your Social Media Marketing Right  

If you do not have a social media page for your business yet, get it now. Send invites to your friends, relatives and acquaintances and let them know about your business. You can even share your business page in your personal profile and announce the availability of the good and services. Let’ say you serve home-cooked foods and offer free delivery, then share the menu on the page and request your friends and followers to share your business profile on their page. A video of the kitchen is worth sharing too.

Join social media marketplaces and engage with a pool of other businesses and customers. Market your business there and make the maximum use of your online presence. This is a great way to establish a mutually benefited online business ecosystem.

3. Digi-payment is the Need of the Hour

Do not be rigid about the payment method as in the time of social distancing people are hesitant to pay cash. Keep all the payment methods open for your customers, like bank transfers, and e-wallets, etc. 

4. Get Your Online Store Model, Now!

World Trade Organization survey says merchandise trade will drop up to 32% in 2020 and estimates of recovery in 2021 is highly uncertain, with results depending on the duration of COVID-19 and responsiveness of the economic policy.

As customers are getting more involved in panic buying of food and essential items during lockdown, they are shifting to online purchases.

Retailers who do not have an online store model, they must implement or turn to doorstep delivery over a phone call or open their store on online marketplaces such as Amazon and hire a delivery van for deliveries during the lockdown period.  

5. No Hard Selling, Please!

When people are dealing with anxiety and are full of doubt, let’s not hard sell our products. Instead transform your business into a more meaningful brand.  You focus should be to build a rapport with your customers beyond what you sell.

Seek creative ideas to help your customers reach you. For example; these days, you will find many influencers partnering with various fitness apps to ensure people stay healthy at home. In fact, Vogue is offering three months free digital access to support its consumers.

These ideas will only give you loyal customers who will keep coming back to you even when this pandemic ends.

As Ralph Waldo Emerson rightly said, “The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.”

I will see you where there is no enemy;
Where there is no one to bring down their wish upon.
A place so serene, so cozy;
May be somewhere between hell and heaven.
For I don’t need perfection
And neither do you!
—- Anonymous

And for that a lot needs to begin from home. Daughters shouldn’t be raised to be a much-bedecked lamb who one-day will be led to the slaughter of the wedding ceremony. Sure, it is always good to teach kids the ways to do the household chores as the common basis for survival and not because “shoshur barir lok ki bolbe!” (Literal meaning: preparing for marital life).

Girls should be raised to be ambitious, develop their personal interests, be self-sufficient and take charge of their life. Dependence of any sort can never be a choice, neither for a man nor a woman. Similarly, a woman who is career-driven even after having a baby, should not be questioned when they leave her baby at home with a nanny. And it is also not okay to call out her husband for “not being manly enough” when he is being supportive. Having said that, I understand it is a lot to ask for, especially in a society where women are deprived of their basic rights like education, and safety. And then there are also few privileged women who enjoy playing the second-sex card. But you see I am an optimist.