Not Doing It
Paramendra Bhagat
March 31, 2004

I sent out an e-mail to every SEBS member whose e-mail address I could get hold of - tens of them bounced back, of course - on September 27, 2003, suggesting I might consider running for SEBS NA President on July 4, 2004. I also outlined a tentative platform. Since then, I have also communicated on other occasions. All of those are listed here.

I have come to the conclusion I do not want to do it after all. And I wanted to make public my decision well in advance so the existing leadership, and anyone else hoping to be part of the future leadership may plan accordingly.

To me the turning point was the Dinesh Prasain petition. I sent it out to every SEBS e-mail address I had on file, and it would have taken about 20 seconds to read the petition and another 10 to sign it, and still the vast majority of SEBSers did not express their support for a document talking about a very clear violation of human rights seeking a very specific, simple outcome. To each his or her own, but that gave me a glimpse into how SEBS can not for now be turned into a mass-based organization.

Those who actively work for SEBS as an organization are perhaps less than 10 in number. Perhaps less than 5. For the vast majority, SEBS just is not a big part of their lives. An occasional visit to the SEBS Directory to get someone's phone number or e-mail address might be it. Many new SEBS members seem to like to populate the General Forum. For the vast majority, SEBS is their classmates and circle of friends, which is nothing to do directly with SEBS as an organization. And perhaps that is where the equilibrium happily rests, which is nothing really to complain about.

To maintain SEBS as it is itself is a lot of work, and I commend the current leadership for it.

I have managed to find alternate ways for some items on my platform though. I hope to have a 21st Century Nepal Online Think Tank, to be expanded down the line. For networking on the career front, I believe SEBSers are so much better off getting signed up at LinkedIn than setting up our own exclusive network at our own small insulated site.

The BNKS endowment idea will have to wait until SEBS is much larger and more SEBSers are involved or when my business takes off, which might be in a few short years.

The biggest reason perhaps why I am not doing it is because I just might not have the time. I have a rapidly expanding business that needs all the attention from me it can have. I work days, nights, weekends as it is. That pace is not about to slow down. I presented it as an opportunity for every SEBSer - undergrad, grad student, or professional - but that did not go down too well at the forum thread where it stayed for a few weeks. Well. No denying a billion people will be online by 2010. Close to 31% of all retail sales in America will be online by then compared to 1% now. We are part of the greatest shift in lifestyle the world has ever seen. You could cash on it by getting involved, or you could look back two decades from now and try and understand what just happened.

Anyways, that is a whole different topic. I hope to continue to rejuvenate my existing contacts in the SEBS circles, and hopefully strike new friendships among the newer and older generations as the opportunities might arise: I just met a 100A person locally here in Indy. So there goes!